[X-Newbies] .xls

[Steven Rogers]

On Dec 16, 2005, at 11:36 AM, Vincent Cayenne wrote:

>> 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?

Really more "piling on" than replying.

> 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 -

You can make some really cool looking text in Illustrator. If they  
can't be bothered to PDF their Word file (or type their two lines  
directly into the email program), perhaps I can't be bothered to PDF  
my Illustrator document. It cuts both ways . . .

> 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?

But I agree - how does this frustration translate into a problem with  
Word?  It isn't the program, it is the *user* who is the problem.  
Don't they understand that I don't want to launch a program to read  
their two lines of text? Do they not know how to type into their  
email program?  Thankfully, this seems to have tapered off a LOT in  
the last few years, but that could be because I don't know that many  
true internet newbies anymore.

There are lots of things I hate about Word (mostly relating to the  
way it handles images), but I still use it quite a bit for cranking  
out the "numbered sections" kinds of documents, and circulating them  
for mark-up. Its reasonably good at that. I just don't assume that  
everyone else in the universe has it - any more than I assume they  
have Illustrator.

SR