Re: [Usability] Default document formats

[Kalle Vahlman <kalle vahlman gmail com>]

2005/9/22, 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.

That's a bug in the user, and yes indeed in most users. But it's one
of those bugs that applications can't be held responsible for not
fixing.

> 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.

It's MS Word that's being incompatible here. OpenOffice and friends
open word documents, why shoudn't it open theirs?

Yes, old versions. Well, old versions tend to be incompatible. You can
not open a word 2005 document in word 95 either, so the question is
more that we would need a ageless and perfect document format. Which
is hardly the .doc format. Or anything other. What would do a lot
would be a common standard that programs could implement. But that
would open the document markets for everyone which obviously is not in
the intrest of money-making business.

>From the political point of view, I don't think any open software
should default to closed formats as long as valid open ones are
available. That would be admitting that the closed formats are
good(sometimes) and fine(not really) and we love them(nevers!). Which,
I hope, is not true.

And don't bother repeating the fact that users don't care about
document formats. They care about it when things go wrong.

Unfortunately, it's usually too late then.

--
Kalle Vahlman, zuh iki fi
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