Document file formats

[Origisaurus]

Gorn, that was one fine rant!   

And I learned that Word (DOC) is more widely used than I thought.  Thank you.  You didn't mention RTF which is another lingua franca format.

PDF is great for protecting your document, and the file size is probably the most compact except for TXT.  there are several printer drivers which can make a PDF of any file your computer can print.

And a tale. 

A while back, a writer you and I know invited me to be a "first reader", to read his novel before he sent it off to his editor.  He sent it as a PDF.  It was so full of typos and other errors that I couldn't stand to read it.  I finally persuaded him to send me the Word doc instead.  Later I was able to convince him that Word (actually M$, lurking in all Office apps) spellcheck is a useful tool.  An Applehead from way back, he was leery of anything from Redmond.

I highly recommend his latest novel.  Now available on Smashwords for 99¢.

Richard, that's quite a menage you're working with.  Is there any adult supervision? 

[The Gorn]

The rant comes from many past experiences. Laypeople (non techies) simply don't understand standards.

Except, for instance, when it comes to why they can't plug their hair dryer in, in the hotel in France.

I pretty much know what their excuses/comebacks will be.

Also, in the past couple of years I have received MANY .docx and .pptx ("new" Powerpoint) format documents from clients. I have had to install the plugins into Word and PP to edit these files.

When you dealing with a general business clientele you need to be able to accept almost anything within reason.

PS: The .nnnX format files (docx, pptx) appear to be XML-format versions of the old classics.

[I D Shukhov]

What  about Rich Text Format?  All these editors can handle it:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format#Implementations

[The Gorn]

As Benali said of RTF, "blech". RTF is a so called universal standard for rich text that never really seems to have taken off. It's been around forever. I used SDKs for creating rich text editors back in the early 1990s that supported RTF as their primary transfer format. I have received RTF in an email attachment as a word processor document perhaps w or 3 times in my life.

.doc is the best practical choice right now, unless there are specific problems with compatibility of non-MS applications that write and read .doc files.

[benali72]

Gorn -- great summary, I think you got this figured out for us. Thanks.

[I D Shukhov]

I have Office installed on my Mac, so it reads .doc and .docx files.  If the whatever other editor it has can read .doc files, I'd agree that's the best choice.  I'll check it out.

Edit:  Yes, TextEdit on Mac OS X Snow Leopard can read and edit .doc files.   They open with a border around them in a larger window, but they can be edited and saved in .doc (Word 97, Word 2003 and Word 2007) format.  When they're opened with Office on the Mac, you don't see the border around the document -- it fills the whole window.

The Linux people can use the OpenOffice word processor, which Ubuntu has installed by default (version 3.2 of OpenOffice is what I have) and it saves Word 6.0, Word 97 and Word 95 files.

It looks like Word 97 is the best bet.

[Richardk]

It looks like Word 97 is the best bet.

Then it's settled. Mac's, Linux and of course Windows can all edit DOC files.

[The Gorn]

Here is the timeline for the Word product family: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Word

This explains the file format options in depth.

I do a "Save as" in Word 2003 (with addons added for Word 2007 support) and I see this option:

Word 97-2003 & 6.0/95 - RTF (*.doc)

This would explain why .DOC support is so widespread: this particular format has been around since Word 6.0, or from 1993, which means it is almost 19 years old. Anything earlier is for strictly DOS platforms.

Amazing, for a PC product.

I'll *tentatively* say that .DOCX should be safe enough - it has been in use for 3+ years, and Open Office Write (free == everyone can use it) supports it. And you can definitely upgrade Word 2003 for free to fully support it. I don't know about Apple, though.

If I did not have any word processor on my system and I had to use one that supported .docx I'd use Open Office. The ribbon bar UI stuff totally irritates me.