__/ [chrisv] on Tuesday 11 October 2005 16:42 \__
> I thought it was bad-enough that some people use Word docs to
> communicate what could easily be text files or plain-text emails.
> What happened today, boggled my mind. I received an email, which had
> an attached Excel spreadsheet. The sole purpose of the spreadsheet
> was to contain three pictures, and rather small and crappy ones at
> that. A proprietary-format file, of 3MB size, to transmit 3 small
> jpgs. Incredible.
When I use OpenOffice I frequently think of it, for one odd reason or
another, as running virtual PC. It's a resource pig and it's difficult to
take away and edit at some faraway resort. OOo 1.1 is very slow because
it's JRE-reliant and the process of opening an M$ proprietary from an
E-mail using OOo makes up a long 'recipe' of steps. Thus, I am always very
reluctant to use OOo. By using OOo I believe I may encourage people to send
me more of the same junk. Why? Because I am able to 'absorb' it silently. I
recently exported all proprietary including spreadsheets as HTML and I now
manage everything on-line, even what is forced upon me.
It is very disturbing when I get Word files that contain nothing more than
uniform-styled text telling me that I must do nothing to register (this
afternoon that was...). What is the deficiency of plain ASCII.?Look....
*bold*, /italics/, _underlined_. Many clients even interpret these
correctly, e.g. KNode, KMail, Horde...
What's worse than proprietary formats and idiotic software can sometimes be
the people who use it. That's exactly what your message has reminded us. I
still have hundreds of MB's in my inbox due to colleagues who compile LaTeX
to produce 5 MB PDF's when identical PDF's can be as small as 300k using
some compression knowledge, production experience or having /awareness/ and
competence. Some people don't know (or wish to know) about E-mail archives,
modem connections or standards (some would say "elegance"). Linux users, on
the contrary, have retained good awareness and understanding of technology
and it is often why they get rewarded the most, albeit not using monetary
measures as a criterion.
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Pentiums melt in your PC, not in your hand"
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux | PGP-Key: 74572E8E
5:05pm up 47 days 5:19, 3 users, load average: 0.00, 0.04, 0.03
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