“As a Linux user, there are times when you have to play nicely with users of Windows or Mac OS – such as when they send you Microsoft Word files. When you receive a Word file, you can either follow Richard Stallman’s advice and refuse it, or bite the bullet and work with it. Modern Linux word processors – such as OpenOffice.org Writer, AbiWord, KWord, and TextMaker – can deal with most Word files. But if you don’t want to fire up a word processor in order to read or print the document, you can turn to the command line. A handful of small but powerful Linux command line utilities make viewing, printing, and even converting Word files to another format, a breeze.”
Not only are they useful to view Word .doc files from the command line, but they are also useful in the recovery of corrupted Word Documents. I managed to restore roughly 10 pages of a 14 page corrupted document once with antiword and a few other utilities.
Ha! That would’ve been useful when I was writing that 20-page term paper during my undergrad; MS Word decided to b0rk when I was on the final paragraph.
Even though I saved at 15 minute intervals, the crash left the file so corrupt that just trying to open it would cause MS Word to lock and crash again. I had no resources to recover the lost info and HOURS of work.
All the coffee in the world couldn’t make up for that one!
// When you receive a Word file, you can either follow Richard Stallman’s advice and refuse it//
Thereby making you appear as a complete idiot to 99% of business users.
Use the CLI apps. Don’t listen to the rantings of a madman.
“Thereby making you appear as a complete idiot to 99% of business users. ”
Its very easy for business users to exchange pdf files. Supporting proprietary formats will only lead to more vendor lock in
“Use the CLI apps. Don’t listen to the rantings of a madman.”
and throw the freedom of using your data in multiple platforms, architectures and for a long time out of the window
//Its very easy for business users to exchange pdf files. Supporting proprietary formats will only lead to more vendor lock in//
Spoken as someone who obviously doesn’t work with many businesses outside tech … a VAST MAJORITY of Word users still have no idea what the hell a PDF file even is … irregardless if it’s a better format.
So what you’re saying is that knowing your stuff is bad if other people don’t know it as well?
Interesting… How did you come to this philosophy?
I seriously doubt most of said people are so incompetent that the words “PDF is a format more people can look at than word, and it’s much better for presentation; that’s why the Government uses it for public documents” are really beyond them? Maybe if you could hold your temper long enough to let off the shift key you’d be able to explain the sentence!
But no, let’s leave users in the dark. That will work very well in the “Information Age.”
Hey, try getting off your pulpit for a minute. People just don’t care whether you happen to think that PDF is a better format than Word. They just use whatever format is necessary/practical to communicate with other human beings. And, frankly, that works just fine for the vast majority of people. So, there’s really no need to go out into the wilderness and preach the Gospel of Open Formats to people who could care less about such zealotry.
Agreed on the need for pragmatism. But.
The problem with using Word as a format for communication is that it is not one format. You will find that if the documents are at all heavily styled, different versions of Word are not completely compatible. This is an actual problem I’ve encountered, when trying to help an author who is receiving contributions to a collective work from a lot of independent collaborators. They run different versions of Word and Windows, and some of the files are readable as written, others not.
The moderate and sensible advice is not to tell people to use pdf, because that is going to be hard to get material in and out of, and their versions of Word probably do not support it. The right solution is for the sponsoring institution to advise exchanging files as rtf, which will always be readable, and for the recipient to just open what he can open, and ask for the ones he cannot to be resent in rtf.
This is doubtless why the recent draft BECTA standards in the UK specify that Office Word Processing packages in use in the educational sector SHALL be able to save in rtf or odf. Not that documents shall be kept in those formats, just that the applications shall be able to generate them.
One can always learn awk….
“Spoken as someone who obviously doesn’t work with many businesses outside tech … a VAST MAJORITY of Word users still have no idea what the hell a PDF file even is … irregardless if it’s a better format.”
Thanks for missing the point entirely. He said it’s easy to do, not that is is being done. What most people do and what can easily be done are two different things. Now, getting people to actually use open formats, that is the real challenge.
> Its very easy for business users to exchange pdf files.
This doesn’t help you if you get word files you *must* read, or *must* deliver word files. Of course, I’d use PDF whenever possible, but sometimes you don’t have a choice (or would suffer sever penalties for not using word files).
PDF files are a preference, and a strong one indeed for the reasons you named. But as soon as you insist on using them just for the sake of it, you have disconnected from reality. And that is exactly what Stallman does.
When I’m in doubt I usually send a .doc and a PDF. But if your documents are very large I could see how that would become a problem!
The PDF spec allows for built-in compression (LZW, if I’m not mistaken); but it’s just that not many apps actually use it (perhaps due to patent issues?). For example, OO.org’s PDF Export outputs uncompressed PDFs. What I usually do is put it in a zip file, as those seem to be the most “cross-OS” portable in terms of the support already built-in on Windows and other OSes mostly by default.
But as soon as you insist on using them just for the sake of it, you have disconnected from reality.
You are obviously confused as to why he doesnt want to use the MS word format.
I agree with him to a point. Just because someone else walks off a cliff doesnt necessarilly mean you should follow, but you can if you want to.
> You are obviously confused as to why he doesnt want to
> use the MS word format.
No. Actually, you didn’t read my post correctly. I know why Stallman doesn’t want to deal with word files, and it’s just for the same reasons I don’t want to. What I talked about is the way you respond to people who send you word files, or expect you to send them.
We are talking about non-techies here. Simply saying “Word files always screw up on my computer, and actually on most computers I’ve seen. Could you try to save it as a PDF?” or something like that is still 99% correct and gives people a good, understandable, and close-to-life reason not to send you and others word files.
On the other hand, people will stick you in their “weird” category if you tell them:
“This specific problem is a major obstacle to the broader adoption of GNU/Linux.” (Do you want me to name some problems in the broader adoption of my favorite car brand?)
“In effect, you become a buttress of the Microsoft monopoly.” (Do you think people will be nicer to you if you call them guilty of something?)
“You sent me five files in the non-standard, bloated .doc format that is Microsoft’s secret, rather than in the international, public, and more efficient format of plain text.” (How many people would NOT call .doc a standard? Yes, it’s their secret, suprise: every company has its trade secrets. Plain text can’t do formatting and embedded images, by the way.)
If you now think that I don’t care about the “word mass infection” then you should read the above again. But simply being stubborn hasn’t ever cured an illness.
Files with tables, in different versions of Word, on a collaborative work project. Couldn’t open all of them in my own copy of Word. Yes you can get them resent in rtf. Or, you can strip out the binary in text editor, but you still have a text file which is not tabular. To get it tabular, so you can easily import it into say a spreadsheet, awk is the answer.
Awk is not intuitive, but it is incredibly concise, and there is nothing like it for text/string manipulation. A couple of days learning it is an investment for the rest of your life. The best book is awk and sed – O’Reilly, as usual.
I think PDF is the solution for todays modern world! and for business!
Microsoft Word documents are too expensive solution even if the readers are free.
I think in PDF you can share everything for everyone!
Exchanging invoices, orders or other business documents in word is too complicated and painfull..
try to edit some word file on 3 Computers running ms office, I don`t think the file will stay the same after 3th save 
Free word processors + PDF = solution for everyone!
Edited 2006-03-01 21:17
Can read MS-Word files aswell, and is installed on most *nix machines.
Edited 2006-03-01 21:16
PDF may be nominally open, but it’s far from portable or available to “everyone”.
Want portability? Use a human readable format such as plain text or HTML.
Browser: ELinks/0.11.0 (textmode; OpenBSD 3.9 i386; 80×48-3)
Stallman has a really good sense of reality. He advises you to refuse Word documents. You can be sure he himself does. He also is in a position he is able to do so (he doesn’t work for someone using word files or so). So his advice is reasonable from his position.
So everytime someone gives you an advice, you have to neogiate yourself wether this advice fits you or not. If not, this doesn’t mean the advice is unrealistic in general!
The only stupidity here is the missing distinction between advice and command, and that’s definitely not on Stallman’s side.
Regards,
Ford Prefect
I was a little put off by the Stallman comment in this news entry. If you’re interested, you can read Stallman’s stance on Word docs here:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
Maybe i’m being oversensitive, but i think the comment makes Stallman come off as a kook, and as you can see from the above article, his stance is very thoughtful.
Stallman has said in other places that Free software to aid interoperability is important, so i don’t think he’s claiming that Word docs are inherently evil at least when edited/read/created using Free solutions. The essay is merely asking that people “in the know” make a small effort to educate others who don’t consider deeper issues in software.
There are document formats that are unemcumbered by patents, platform agnostic, and technically superior. Why not support them?
Stallman quite frequently comes across as crazy. I know I don’t agree with a lot of the things he’s said (I wouldn’t word any of those “don’t send me Word Documents” quite that rudely), but at least he’s got the guts to come up with radical statements for the rest of us to dismiss.
I mean, it’s one thing to sit and ponder something and say “naah, that wouldn’t work”. It’s another to have a confrontational “visionary” like Stallman who says emphatically yes, and makes big noises to make himself harder to ignore. He may still be wrong, but he’s forced you to figure out WHY you don’t agree with him.
And occasionally he comes up with something- the GNU project, the Open Source movement- that seems to work longer than you’d think.
And occasionally he comes up with something- the GNU project, the Open Source movement- that seems to work longer than you’d think.
Well, RMS is actually at odds with the Open Source movement, as he believes they put pragmatism ahead of ideals. However, he did come up with the Free Software movement.