Who can you trust?
Posted on Mon 18 August 2003 by alex in geek
I was reading another href=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3154479.stm>article on MS
WORD on the BBC site today. Sometimes some of my friends grumble when I
ask them to send attachments in standards based formats that I can
easily read (although href=http://www.openoffice.org>OpenOffice.org usually does an
ok job). But really its not just for my convenience...I hope people realize every time they save a word document they are trusting
their data to:
- An undocumented file-format (other programs have to guess how to read them)
- A binary file (i.e. you can't open it with a text-editor, say to recover data from a corrupted file)
- A unnecessarily bloated file (Word save all sorts of junk in a .doc file, have you ever wondered why your cover letter takes 100's of K?)
You don't have to switch to Linux, or even change your word-processor.
Its as simple as clicking Save As and selecting a format like RTF. Not
only will I be happier, but should you ever want to change your
word-processor, or recover data believe me you will be too!
p.s At almost at the same time as me can I wish href=http://www.debian.org>Debian a happy birthday.