> Just spare a thought for those of us that choose not to use Microsoft Word, and respect our right not to do so.
The price you pay for inconveniencing me into sending you a document type which might alarm or confuse a non-technical person or necessitate additional software being installed is that when I send you a .doc file you have to email me back to specifically ask that I send it in a non-.doc format. I won't judge you, but you're asking people to optimise a standard behaviour (assumption that Word is ubiquitous) for a marginal gain (catering to the tiny fraction of nerds who get so agitated by this assumption that they lecture people on the internet).
Every computer on the market that can read Microsoft Word documents can also read plain text without anything being installed.
"you're asking people to optimise a standard behaviour"
"Standard" according to whom? Some rough numbers from Googling from a couple of minutes:
Number of personal computers in the world: 1 billion
Number of copies of Microsoft Word sold: 100 million
So, no, having Microsoft Word (or at least a legal copy of it) is not standard.
"for a marginal gain"
Again, according to whom? What is the relationship here? If he is your teacher, boss, prospective boss, or customer, the gains might be anything but marginal. It looks like he is a computing teacher, actually. I've had plenty of teachers who required work to be formatted in a specific way from which you deviated at your peril.
The assumption that everyone has Microsoft Office running on a Windows machine was never true, but in today's mobile world it's not true with a vengeance.
Having the ability to open .doc(x) files IS standard, Microsoft Word is not. Lucky we got OpenOffice, LibreOffice, AbiSource and tons of other open source, freeware, shareware, commercial off the shelf software to open .doc(x) on every imaginable platform.
EDIT: I prefer text, because I am a vimmer, but accept opening (and often sending) .docx is a part of the requirements that I can't control.
Just yesterday we had a meeting off site, my boss was driving this computer someone lent. Finsihing the meeting he had to save a couple of documents that were the result of the meeting, he looks at me and says "how the fuck do I know what Office version was this saved as? How do I know I'll be able to open this back in the office?". Me: "I refuse to fight Office to find out what version it was, save a couple with different formats!"
It's not the first time I see people that usually call us "...nerds who get so agitated... " get bitten by the very tool they are teaching us should be used for some unknown efficiency variable.
I wont even mention the Office versioning nightmare they have on the Citrix farm ;)
How utterly ridiculous. Please stop posting your own shitty, over-entitled rants. That you clearly think that you are still "1337" by being so dissmissive of a commonly used tool is arrogant and ridiculous. Also, your list of installed apps is missing TextEdit, which reads doc and docx files perfectly well. Unless of course you remove all of the other apps that come with OS X and literally only use those you list, which would be absurd.
I used to think this way. In fact, when applying for a job, I would only submit my resume in PDF. I've stopped this.
I know you think you're doing good to the world by telling people to shove it, by adhering to your standards. But what you're really doing is exactly what you claim they are doing to you. The world works in Microsoft Office. 9 out of 10 computers have Microsoft Windows installed. Gartner has estimated that 9 out of 10 Microsoft Windows installations have some version of Microsoft Office installed.
With the advent of online document, spreadsheet, and presentation software popularity, and the fact the Microsoft Office documents are natively supported, it's a losing battle. There are good strong technical arguments why proprietary formats should not be used, even including open binary formats. You won't win that argument.
It doesn't help your cause either, when the reply back to your refusal to open a .docx is "Well then, install it, or don't read it." By you trying to force work on others, you will simply just be missing out on what the content of the document is. Unless, of course, you install LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org.
If you want to send open standard document formats to your contacts, go for it. But by demanding that the sender do extra work curtailing to your needs, so you don't have to do extra work installing office software, is hypocritical.
> 9 out of 10 computers have Microsoft Windows installed.
Nine out of 10 traditional desktop/laptop PCs, maybe, but that's a smaller and smaller share of the computers people use every day.
> 9 out of 10 computers have Microsoft Windows installed.
That's probably true; unless things have changed recently, nearly all consumer PCs shipped with Windows for several years (and Windows/Office versions) have shipped with whatever the current "Home" version of Office is installed, though the license may have been a time-limited trial. So, yeah, if you are looking at installed, you'll get a pretty high number.
I use a desktop (or laptop) for doing work. The most I will do on my phone is send a short email reply, as the interface is so inferior for getting any "real" work done.
And neither are you or the OP. In fact, I'd hazard a guess that you are in actual fact a minority. Before you assert higher mobile sales again, think on how many people use their device for anything more than the very basics; photos, messaging and social networking etc.
No one is trying to tell you you can't use Word to your heart's content on your own machine. When you send email to another person, though, you can't assume that they're going to have it. Especially not now.
"In fact, I'd hazard a guess that you are in actual fact a minority."
Smartphones that do have email and don't have Microsoft Word are a minority?
How do you figure that? Neither iOS nor Android comes with the ability to view Word documents.
You're absolutely right, in the comparison you choose to set out.
I was probably being vague: I wasn't really looking at this in terms of mobile/desktop usage, more considering the average HN readers's expectations of the non-HN reader's technology preferences.
They like Microsoft Word, and there's more of them than us.
I notice that this post has bold-faced section headings, opens with an italicized pair of sentences, has a bulleted list, and quotes that are indicated with a gray vertical bar. The best part is the section title "Plain text should be plain" which is bolded.
The author must think they are a pretty good designer to not use plain text (their conclusion, not mine).
I used to think email should be plain text. I ranted at technical people that sent rich text or HTML email.
Then I realized I was being an idiot, and they were right.
Here's how I came to that realization. Imagine an alternate reality where computing developed almost the same as it did in ours, except for one key difference. They did not develop email--it just never occurred to anyone. They have Internet. They have FTP. They have the web. They have instant messaging. They have Facebook. They just don't have email. They still do their correspondence on paper, sent through the post office.
They, of course, use computers to write their mail. They then print it, and mail the printout. They think nothing of including inline photos, bold headings, embedding charts, and so on. If they need to send a lot of data with a mail, they drop a thumb drive or a memory card into the envelope.
When the recipient receives the mail, there is a good chance they scan it, OCR it, and store it in their computer, as that is more convenient than dealing with physical sheets of paper.
Now someone has the bright idea of skipping the "print/mail/scan" and instead using the Internet to transport the content. Does anyone think they are going to toss in a requirement that their new "email" system only can handle plain text? Of course not. They are going to try to make it as capable as the regular "print/mail/scan" mail system, and so are going to support inline graphics and photos, multiple typefaces and fonts, bold, underling, strikeout, color, and all that jazz.
The difference between that alternate reality and ours is that the people that got the bright idea for email in our reality got it at a time when most computer terminals couldn't handle more than simple plain text. The recipient was going to be reading on a teletype or, if lucky, on a video terminal that was effectively a glass teletype.
Those technical limitations have been long gone. There is simply no reason to keep email less functional than paper mail now that we are not forced to do so.
I've found through my time at University that the standard document format for anything that doesn't require the recipient to edit/add to the document is pdf. Most word processors will now export to it, and readers are pretty prevalent to.
This topic was already ranted to death what ... 20 years ago? This post brings absolutely nothing fresh to the discussion, just reiterates the same old tired points, continuing to preach the choir.
And none of the arguments in presented TFA referenced mobile devices at all. Even the section which would be relevant ("I don’t have Word installed") does not even mention mobile. And it doesn't even touch the real problems with .docs on mobile, eg their "non-responsive" layouts.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. There are plenty of other things that aren't the same now as 20 years ago. More people on Macs. More people on Linux. More free or low cost alternatives to Word. Stuff tends to be web-centric rather than 8.5x11" paper-centric.
A book could be written about all the things that have changed since then.
Just because an argument was had 20 years ago doesn't mean it isn't worth having again. Otherwise we'd still be using stone tools.
The price you pay for inconveniencing me into sending you a document type which might alarm or confuse a non-technical person or necessitate additional software being installed is that when I send you a .doc file you have to email me back to specifically ask that I send it in a non-.doc format. I won't judge you, but you're asking people to optimise a standard behaviour (assumption that Word is ubiquitous) for a marginal gain (catering to the tiny fraction of nerds who get so agitated by this assumption that they lecture people on the internet).