Re: [Usability] Default document formats

[Vidar Braut Haarr <vhaarr+usability gmail com>]

On 9/22/05, Joachim Noreiko <jnoreiko yahoo com> wrote:
>
> --- Vidar Braut Haarr <vhaarr+usability gmail com>
> wrote:
>
> > So I say: Make OOo and Abiword default to either
> > saving in RTF (which
> > would be sufficient for most documents - if the
> > document contains
> > things that RTF do not understand, it could just
> > auto-switch the
> > document type to something silly, like OpenDocument)
> > or MS Office 97
> > format.
>
> Perhaps one solution would be a prominent section in
> the "Getting Started" section of the user manual,
> called "Exchanging documents with other applications"
> or even "Staying compatible with Microsoft Office". (I
> don't have the manual to hand; this might already
> exist.)

You didn't read the manual, I didn't read the manual.
Noone reads the manual.

IMHO, it would be better to have a sensible (from a users point of
view, not developers) default and then maybe add a "How to/Why use
open formats" section to the manual.

> MS Word for OS X has a "compatibility check" message
> in the save dialog, and a button that opens a seperate
> compatibility report. This is largely useless... but
> perhaps OOo and Abiword can take this idea and improve
> it.

I'd say that's part of what I suggested in the original e-mail; have
the application check if you really need to save the document in a
format other than RTF, and if you do, then _maybe_ OpenDocument could
be suggested (I'd prefer it to just use MS Office - or maybe export it
to PDF).

--
Vidar Braut Haarr
"Programmers don't die, they
just GOSUB without RETURN."