[X-Newbies] .xls

[Vincent Cayenne]

>On Dec 16, 2005, at 6:18 AM, Vincent Cayenne wrote:
>
>>At 2:20 AM -0500 12/16/05, Charles Martin wrote:
>>>95% or better of all the Word and Excel documents people receive 
>>>were created by people who are just barely functional with the 
>>>most basic featureset of those programs. In my experience, greater 
>>>than 95% of the word documents I receive could have been sent as 
>>>plain text with no change of appearance. The same goes for Excel 
>>>Worksheets -- apart from the occasional bit of formatting (like 
>>>bold, italic or some fancy font they have that I don't), nothing 
>>>changes in 95%+ of the worksheets I get -- and I've opened many of 
>>>them in Excel proper just to be sure of this. This is but one of 
>>>the many reasons to hate Microsoft.
>>
>>I can think of so much to dislike about Microsoft but can't quite 
>>follow the reasoning you use above. Perhaps there are some unstated 
>>elements in the logic? It seems as though you're saying one should 
>>hate Microsoft because people are "just barely functional with the 
>>most basic featureset" of Word and Excel. By that reasoning, one 
>>would vilify any and every maker of an email client...

At 9:34 AM -0600 12/16/05, Steven Rogers wrote:
>When people send you plain text in word, send them back a reply in 
>Adobe Illustrator or InDesign. If they complain, say all your 
>friends have it, and use it constantly for email communications 
>because its so convenient - and it runs great on the Mac and PC.
>
>But I don't see what that has to do with hating Word or Excel. If 
>someone sent you a plain text message in Maya, would you hate that 
>program too? I'm having to strongly resist the urge to make 
>political analogies . .

Steven are you replying to *my* post? Because I've made none of the 
claims that you seem to be refuting. I don't see where your analogy 
tracks mine at all. I haven't advocated the use of any particular 
product at all and simply noted that I do not understand Charles' use 
of the statement "95% or better of all the Word and Excel documents 
people receive were created by people who are just barely functional 
with the most basic featureset of those programs. In my experience, 
greater than 95% of the word documents I receive could have been sent 
as plain text with no change of appearance" as a reason for hating 
Microsoft. Since in that example, Microsoft Word CAN be use to save 
plain text, it seems that it once more underscores the fact that the 
users are "barely functional". Surely you're not saying that the mere 
existence of a larger-than-barebones feature set is a negative? As 
far as I'm aware, Open Office and the other products mentioned in 
this regard all save in a rich text format and so would have the same 
"limitation" and hence be subject to the same reason for hating their 
parent companies.

I really don't "get" how it's relevant to postulate the use of a 
product completely outside of a particular purpose as an example - 
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? Word is a word processor, best 
tasked with producing printed material. Word document exchange is 
best where production of printed correspondence and the like remains 
the ultimate objective. Text editors, word processing applications, 
publishing programs, and email clients all have common ground but do 
not readily address each others' usage goals. There is no reason for 
Word to be the best text editor, the best HTML editor or the like. 
And it surely doesn't even come close. It's a very good word 
processor and is a failure at almost anything else for which 
Microsoft's marketing drones make claims. And it's overkill for most 
of its users, who have little choice but to use it. But the reason 
for that limitation in choice is not Word's richness of features. 
Perhaps if Microsoft would just ship an already-skinned Word, 
presenting only the typical needs by category of user or task set -- 
basic office user; high school student; legal; friendly 
correspondence -- then maybe you'll see Word used without the users 
being just "barely functional".

I've no political analogies to offer either, sorry...
-- 
'tis as said. [Reality is defined by being described]