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brunovecchi
September 19th, 2008, 08:50 PM
I am in the process of writing a scientific article and a conference poster in collaboration with Windows users, and am really very bothered by the lack of knowledge of even the existence of open formats for each type of documents.

The less tech-savvy people don't even realize that non .doc documents can be opened within their word processor of choice (guess which), and they seldom care if they send you information in a proprietary format that forces you to

become a pirate
pay about 60% of your salary for a license
be lucky enough that any of the reverse-engineered .doc converters work without corrupting the information


So I made the decision that, as of now, I'll only share the information that I create using open formats (won't be "kind enough to send it in 'doc'"). And when sent files with closed formats, I'll try to educate the person by linking to www.openformats.org (http://www.openformats.org) and telling them that, even If I did get to open their document, it was not without major cursing to most of the individuals upstream their genealogy tree, specially their mother.

I'd like to hear your take on this. Personally, I encourage you to both use open formats exclusively, and promote its use to others.

I think we have a lot of teaching to do.

Here's a snippet from http://www.openformats.org/en5

Which proprietary formats should be avoided

Proprietary formats are not exchange formats. Most of the data that you stored in proprietary formats and that are meant for diffusion or electronic publication can be easily converted to the corresponding open formats.
Main proprietary formats to be avoided include the following:

* MS Word formatted text documents (DOC) <-- Absolute evil
* MS Excel tables and databases (XLS, XLW)
* MS Power-Point slide shows (PPS, PPT)
* Bitmap images (BMP, TIFF see below)
* Vectorial images (WMF)
* MP3 Audio files
* Windows Media Audio (WMA)

zmjjmz
September 19th, 2008, 09:01 PM
I thought GIF is fine now.

Npl
September 19th, 2008, 09:10 PM
I am in the process of writing a scientific article and a conference poster in collaboration with Windows users, and am really very bothered by the lack of knowledge of even the existence of open formats for each type of documents.

The less tech-savvy people don't even realize that non .doc documents can be opened within their word processor of choice (guess which), and they seldom care if they send you information in a proprietary format that forces you to

become a pirate
pay about 60% of your salary for a license
be lucky enough that any of the reverse-engineered .doc converters work without corrupting the information


So I made the decision that, as of now, I'll only share the information that I create using open formats (won't be "kind enough to send it in 'doc'"). And when sent files with closed formats, I'll try to educate the person by linking to www.openformats.org (http://www.openformats.org) and telling them that, even If I did get to open their document, it was not without major cursing to most of the individuals upstream their genealogy tree, specially their mother.

I'd like to hear your take on this. Personally, I encourage you to both use open formats exclusively, and promote its use to others.

I think we have a lot of teaching to do.

Here's a snippet from http://www.openformats.org/en5

Which proprietary formats should be avoided

Proprietary formats are not exchange formats. Most of the data that you stored in proprietary formats and that are meant for diffusion or electronic publication can be easily converted to the corresponding open formats.
Main proprietary formats to be avoided include the following:

* MS Word formatted text documents (DOC) <-- Absolute evil
* MS Excel tables and databases (XLS, XLW)
* MS Power-Point slide shows (PPS, PPT)
* Bitmap images (BMP, TIFF see below)
* Vectorial images (WMF)
* MP3 Audio files
* Windows Media Audio (WMA)

Most of those formats are fine and a "standard" in their category (no matter where they came from, but just how well supported and popular they are).

I particulary disagree on converting lossy compressed files to an open lossy format. You degrade quality that way.

brunovecchi
September 19th, 2008, 09:16 PM
Most of those formats are fine and a "standard" in their category (no matter where they came from, but just how well supported and popular they are).

Well, they are actually both not fine and not a standard in their category. They might be de-facto standards, but that doesn't mean that they are the best choice, or that a lot of people have to struggle with them.


I particulary disagree on converting lossy compressed files to an open lossy format. You degrade quality that way.

That's ok, but what audio and video format will you be using from now on?

OTOH, the post was mainly aimed at text documents and presentations.

Npl
September 19th, 2008, 09:28 PM
Well, they are actually both not fine and not a standard in their category. They might be de-facto standards, but that doesn't mean that they are the best choice, or that a lot of people have to struggle with them.Well, if you send around .odt files you sure will make life miserable for the majority of people who use word and cant deal with them. doc gets opened by all Texteditors. Just because there are free programms supporting these doesnt mean everyone want to use them.




That's ok, but what audio and video format will you be using from now on?

OTOH, the post was mainly aimed at text documents and presentations.Flac, AAC and Mp3 for Audio. Vorbis is going nowhere and that makes my choice of lossy format a proprietary one.
Similar for Video - Theora cant compete with Mpeg4 ASP (much less AVC)

karellen
September 19th, 2008, 09:41 PM
it's a fine and noble idea, but I'm afraid it won't succeed. the formats you've listed are the de-facto standards in their category, and the few persons using .odt instead of .doc and .ogg instead of .mp3 won't change nothing, they'll just annoy and alienate the other vast majority. I've tried and I gave up...
old habits die hard