[X-Newbies] .xls

[Vincent Cayenne]

At 11:55 AM -0600 12/16/05, Steven Rogers wrote:
>>why would one conceive of responding to a text message with the 
>>output of an illustrator's tools? Is it somehow heinous to respond 
>>to a letter with one generated by Word?  . . .
>
>Speaking from experience from the OS 9 days when I didn't have 
>office, it can be a real pain when people just assume you have Word, 
>and use it to send a one or two line message as an attached Word 
>document.  Its annoying because A) why do you just assume I have 
>this expensive program, and B) why are you using a word processor to 
>send me two lines of plain text as an attachment?

See, we're all making the assumption that Microsoft likes - that Word 
is good for exchanging documents. I use it to generate stuff for 
printing.

To give or receive a static document, a PDF is easy enough if the 
"look" of the document matters. If not, and it's a pure text content, 
then plain text suffices.

It's when the document is a living one, needing change, review and 
more exchanges that Word's format can be compared to the 
alternatives. It would be interesting if the "native" Word format 
were open, transparent and malleable enough to support the content 
being handled entirely independently of the formatting**. Then again, 
I believe that's one of the scenarios that Microsoft is determined to 
prevent.

** I think the OS 9 Nisus did something of the sort.
-- 
'tis as said. [Reality is defined by being described]