Josef wrote:
simo.sorce@tiscalinet.it said:
Solution: push for open standards, or better, push for free (as in freedom) data formats for your data.
I agree with this, though I don't understand why that is linked to the OS.
For me to move to something else from MS Word I still need to be able to convert from/to the ubiquitous MS Word format and retain the information (including tables, headings, Graphics). That is not yet possible [...]
There you go! The problem is that MS Word is not a standard format, much less an open one, and the vendor only provides applications which can use that format on closed OSes. Here, you even make the point yourself:
I can run MS Word only on MS Windows because of Bill Gates closed policy.
People must wake up and realise that having files in MS Word format is not a good idea. If they do not have MS Word any more (eg MS invokes and enforces their termination clauses), they effectively do not have their data any more. How we can make them realise that? Suggestions, please!
I can run Octave only on Linux because of RMS's closed policy?
Last I heard, it ran under cygwin. Is that not the case?
MJR --
On Wednesday 31 October 2001 7:10 pm, MJ Ray wrote:
People must wake up and realise that having files in MS Word format is not a good idea. If they do not have MS Word any more (eg MS invokes and enforces their termination clauses), they effectively do not have their data any more. How we can make them realise that? Suggestions, please!
I participated recently to a conference where there was one guy demonstrating that files saved in MSWord format contain all information of previous savings. He brought an example of a Word file used for describing a project he made some time before. The file had pics and tables, headers, footes etc. He printed the doc with word. Then opened the same file in Open/StarOffice (some version, don't remember exactly): the file opened perfectly showing the same header, footers ecc BUT the pictures where the very first ones he put in when he began editing the document. It was scary! Imagine sending such a "final" document, digitally signed (so the content is "intact") to some official body, like the customer of the project. Suppose he opens the document with a different software, maybe the newestestestest version of MSWord (that you cannot afford, for example) and he sees something completely different from what you see. The file is signed, the content is integral BUT the presentation is different from what you meant. That freaked me out, I will use the same example in all my next speeches. I knew there where "issues" with the .doc format, as I knew there where with AutoCAD .dwg format, but I never actually thought about it. I am sure that there are more and more examples out there of companies that have _never_ owned their data because they don't own the format those are stored in. Maybe a page collecting these scary examples should be done. I will start with the one described.
Regards stef
I read something like that in Tasty Bits From the Technology Front (www.tbtf.com, I think). They were concerned on privacy issues.
What is you (or somebody in your company) has the habbit of making a copy of a previously written document, erasing the contents and writing a new document on that copy, so that they repeat the look of the documetn without using templates or so?.
Now what if the original document is more or less confidential like a customer's list, an offer to a customer, etc. and gets used as the basis of a document that is sent to someone who shouldn't read it, and although the person sending it thinks he or she erased the confidential info, it is still there and the recipient can see it either by inspecting the file with an hex editor or simply by coincidence when opening it in some other software ?.
I was told of a similar case in which by undoing changes the recipient could revive the history of comments people in the originating company had made to the drafts (they put the comments as text in the draft and erased them later, but they were still in the undo log). This case was only fun, but yes, the possibility is frigthtening.
I guess it's the eternal snake oil of promising people they'll get to do complex things without thinking about them.