Explaining Open Standards email attachements

Carsten Agger agger at modspil.dk
Mon Apr 5 16:46:43 UTC 2010


On Mon, Apr 05, 2010 at 06:35:32PM +0200, Hugo Roy wrote:
> > > 
> Last time I checked, political involves "power" and social control.
> Here, it is just about: if you use Open Standards, it works. If you use
> something else, it's wrong because you cannot be sure it works, which is
> a pity when you are communicating.
> 
However, Sam is still right in pointing out that because of the
widespread use of proprietary de facto standards, switching to Open
Standards for most people will mean switching from something which works
to something which doesn't. "Don't send people Word files, use ODT
instead" would, for many people, be equivalent to saying: Don't send
people files they can read, send them files they can't read instead. 

I wouldn't do it in a job application.

And, most people don't have and don't want to have a clue about *why*
they can't read them either. I'm all for open standards and never send
people attachments in Word format (usually using PDF, RTF, HTML or plain
text), but I think there must be a better way to do it than to start
sending people files they can't open.



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