Explaining Open Standards email attachements

[Kristian Rink]

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.


-- 
Kristian Rink * http://pictorial.zimmer428.net # kawazu at jabber.org
"What was once thought can never be unthought."
(Duerrenmatt - 'Die Physiker')