I think the message is a great summary of the problem; but from experience I say that users who don't already have a political understanding of the issues or a thorough technical background will:
1. Not be able to understand what to do in order to comply with the message 2. Not be capable of carrying out the steps if they do understand.
The document also mixes ideas of convenience with politics, but comes across as being about convenience and interoperability.
For example: most users cannot handle ogg for flac files. Most users who can't accept mp3 but can accept ogg do so out of conscious rejection of mp3. And so the argument for ogg is political and not about interoperability and therfore will seem dishonest to non-technical readers who will then doubt the entire argument. Imagine when nearly everyone they send an ogg to (after the initial difficulty of producing the ogg - from an mp3) needs to ask what an ogg is and how to play it. It will soon be apparent that mp3 should have been used.
On the other hand I often say that I don't want to have to buy five hundred pounds of office suite and operating system in order to read their docx (or worse: ms publisher) properly; I ask for a PDF (which they are familiar with) and there is a free printer driver pdf writer for windows which I can point then to. Thus I reduce my problem and their future problems. Asking for ogg would make problems.
So I think the stance of the document needs clarifying, is it a political document or a guide to convenient communication - it can't serve both aims well.
Sam
-----Original Message----- From: Hugo Roy hugo@fsfe.org Sent: 31 March 2010 18:18 To: discussion@fsfeurope.org Subject: Re: Explaining Open Standards email attachements
Hello,
A new version is available at: http://hugoroy.eu/open-standards-att.php
Send me attachments I can read, use open standards!
There are many ways to share documents, files and data over the Internet. Among them, emails are often used because people can communicate from one mail server1 to another without any difficulty. Why does it work so simply? Because emails are designed to use a set of open standards2, based on the Internet protocols.
However, sometimes people send attachments along with their emails, and it happens frequently that the attachments cannot be read by the recipients. For example, many attached files are documents produced by word processors and it can be impossible to read them correctly if you do not have the same word processor. Many proprietary word processors use proprietary file formats3. In 2002, a campaign was started to put an end to Word attachments. But the same is true for all kinds of documents and files: texts, spreadsheets, slides, videos, etc.
When you attach a file to an email, please make sure that your correspondent will be able to read your files correctly. It is a basic principle of courtesy. And there is an easy way to make sure it is possible: use open standards. If you do so, your correspondent will have the possibility to choose which program he or she wants. Open standards guarantee sustainability and interoperability for your data, making sure you will be able to access them in the future, even with another software, on another platform or operating system.
Moreover, by promoting open standards you will help everyone: sharing documents can be as easy as sending and receiving emails! If you receive an email using proprietary file formats, don't hesitate to share this page and explain why it is important to use Open Standards.
Campaigns for Open Standards
* Document Freedom Day * Play Ogg and rOgg On!
On Document Freedom Day, the FSF started a campaign to call on computer users to start politely rejecting proprietary attachments.
Organisations and Software supporting Open Standards
* OpenOffice.org * VideoLan, the project making VLC * Free Software Foundation Europe support Open Standards
1. ^ Mail servers transfer emails from one computer to another. For more information, you can check Wikipedia 2. ^ Open Standards are protocols and file formats that can be freely used and implemented, and are designed in an open process. For more information, see the Open Standards definition. 3. ^ Microsoft Office by default save your files in the ".doc" format or the ".docx" format. If you share these documents with people using different word processors, it will not work properly. Good alternatives for Microsoft Word are documents in .RTF or in .ODT (use the "Save As" feature)
Sam Liddicott schrieb:
I think the message is a great summary of the problem; but from experience I say that users who don't already have a political understanding of the issues or a thorough technical background will:
- Not be able to understand what to do in order to comply with the message
- Not be capable of carrying out the steps if they do understand.
...
I agree. Additionally, many people who *do* have a political understanding and *are* capable, reject this out of pure laziness or convenience, or are obstinate because they do not want to be told what to do. Or, they feel they are already doing their bit to save the world and what harm is there in using <XY>? (e.g. "I already sort my trash and eat bio food, why should *I* waste my time with file formats?").
Therefore we also need a pragmatic approach.
...
On the other hand I often say that I don't want to have to buy five hundred pounds of office suite and operating system in order to read their docx (or worse: ms publisher) properly; I ask for a PDF (which they are familiar with) and there is a free printer driver pdf writer for windows which I can point then to. Thus I reduce my problem and their future problems. Asking for ogg would make problems.
I sometimes *send* people OGGs and when they complain use this to bring up the subject. But I can't complain if somebody sends me an MP3, as it is the "de facto" standard and everybody can open it, even most Linux users. The fine points about whether Fluendo's "free" MP3 codec ist free as in beer or in speach, or whether VLC is 100% legal is lost for everybody except the likes of us.
With DOCX I'm uncertain what do do now that OpenOffice can open these files. When somebody sends me one I somtimes pretend I still can't open it and ask for a PDF, RTF or even (Horror!) DOC. I generally explain that DOCX is a bad idea because the majority of people can't open it, i.e. everybody who hasn't got an up-to-date program or plugin. I expect this actually includes more Windows-users than Linux-users.
Cheers, Theo Schmidt
Le 02/04/2010 05:51, Theo Schmidt a écrit :
With DOCX I'm uncertain what do do now that OpenOffice can open these files. When somebody sends me one I somtimes pretend I still can't open it and ask for a PDF, RTF or even (Horror!) DOC. I generally explain that DOCX is a bad idea because the majority of people can't open it, i.e. everybody who hasn't got an up-to-date program or plugin. I expect this actually includes more Windows-users than Linux-users.
The point in docX is that actually OpenOffice (>3.x) users can perfectly handle them (at least for quite simple documents that represent, say, 99% of the production) whereas users of somewhat old versons of MS Office cannot read them.
At this peculiar time, it's a very good help making users migrate or at least install OpenOffice :-)
So despite the fact tha docX *is a bad idea*, it's inherent lack of backward compatibility helps a lot Free Software in some cases :-)))
Michel Roche
On 3 April 2010 14:22, Michel Roche listes.pichel@free.fr wrote:
Le 02/04/2010 05:51, Theo Schmidt a écrit :
With DOCX I'm uncertain what do do now that OpenOffice can open these files. When somebody sends me one I somtimes pretend I still can't open it and ask for a PDF, RTF or even (Horror!) DOC. I generally explain that DOCX is a bad idea because the majority of people can't open it, i.e. everybody who hasn't got an up-to-date program or plugin. I expect this actually includes more Windows-users than Linux-users.
The point in docX is that actually OpenOffice (>3.x) users can perfectly handle them (at least for quite simple documents that represent, say, 99% of the production) whereas users of somewhat old versons of MS Office cannot read them. At this peculiar time, it's a very good help making users migrate or at least install OpenOffice :-) So despite the fact tha docX *is a bad idea*, it's inherent lack of backward compatibility helps a lot Free Software in some cases :-)))
Heh. That's a reason to send people .docx then ;-)
- d.
* Theo Schmidt theo.schmidt@wilhelmtux.ch [2010-04-02 05:51:40 +0200]:
I sometimes *send* people OGGs and when they complain use this to bring up the subject. But I can't complain if somebody sends me an MP3, as it is the "de facto" standard and everybody can open it, even most Linux users.
Of course I can complain about that. I don't always do it, but in most cases I do. Especially in those where others want something from me. I want to be lazy, too. Why should only I install new stuff or convert things?
Best wishes, Matthias
Am 06.04.2010 12:03, schrieb Matthias Kirschner:
Of course I can complain about that. I don't always do it, but in most cases I do. Especially in those where others want something from me. I want to be lazy, too. Why should only I install new stuff or convert things?
I always thought of this discussion as of something rather funny yet dangerous. Very often I do recieve business mails (mainly end users asking for help, in most cases providing screenshots attached as bitmaps posted to a .doc file). I don't like it for obvious reasons, even though I can easily open them (using OOo, abiword or whatever application I have installed here).
The problem is: Most people aren't generally ignorant towards open standards - they simply don't know enough of that. They don't provide you with .doc files thinking "everyone uses Word" but because, at some point in time, someone showed them how to use their computer to write, save, print, and eventually send out a letter via e-mail, and that's what they do day-to-day. Eventually they know they're running MS Word because that's the text below that starter icon and that's what the splash screen says while launching the application, but they don't know any more about this. They hardly know about what an "application" or a "word processor" is, and they even less know about what a "file type", a "file format", "document type", ... is. They want (or, in some cases, have) to write and send out _letters_ not _files_, and this is what they do. Maybe some of them even would go out and use another office, text processor, ..., but they don't even know what to do whenever they encounter a message like "I can't read .doc files because I do not use Word". It's that "untrained end-user" point of view completely missing in this standards discussion so far, IMHO. It's people like these working for administrative / government institutions, in example, simply sending out documents they wrote (.doc), without the ability to treat a "can't-read-that" response the right way. They aren't necessarily lazy, they simply don't know. How to explain the matter of "open document standards" to someone who hasn't even an idea that there actually are "different ways" of storing a computer written text?
K.
Hello Sam,
Allow me just to answer to this point,
Le mercredi 31 mars 2010 à 21:42 +0100, Sam Liddicott a écrit :
For example: most users cannot handle ogg for flac files. Most users who can't accept mp3 but can accept ogg do so out of conscious rejection of mp3. And so the argument for ogg is political and not about interoperability and therfore will seem dishonest to non-technical readers who will then doubt the entire argument. Imagine when nearly everyone they send an ogg to (after the initial difficulty of producing the ogg - from an mp3) needs to ask what an ogg is and how to play it. It will soon be apparent that mp3 should have been used.
I have to say that it is not true, because a lot of very common and famous software can handle those files.
Examples: VLC & Firefox 3.5. The first one is easy to install and very popular.
Best,