I received yet another set of attachments from a non-commercial body - UNESCO (Canada) - with Word attachments today. This really is disappointing.

Here's what I sent in response:


I would like to make a suggestion that documents such as this are not
sent in a proprietry, vendor-specific format. It excludes many people
and is equivilent to making a road that only Ford vehicles can access.
Reasonable alternatives are PDF or RTF; you can "save as" RTF from MS
Word.


And yes, I'm serious about this. People who use "but most people use X" rules without thought shouldn't be given positions of responsibility.

These people think their assumptions are ok, and that people who can't afford MS Word are stealing it. Or its ok to put them through hoops to read what they said (and introduce the possibility of error with an undocumented format). Or it's ok that some people just won't see what they said.

It sure would be convenient if everyone were using MS Word, but there sure wouldn't be any competition in that case either. It would be different if MS made the Word format a true open standard, which might happen with enough customer pressure, but so far they have just been running interference. (The latest version of MS Office does save documents in an XML format, which can lead to good interchange capability, but it is still not right to put the burden of reading a document on the recipient).

I know a number of very important people who will refuse to read proprietary documents, and while I'm much more a moderate, I hope it is understood that people of conviction are vital to every process.

So, I try to politely bring it to these people's attention. I hope others will too.

As a follow up, I recieved revised documents from the same individual, in MS Word format again. They ignored what I wrote. Good thing we have these open channels.