[oodisc] Fwd: Re: [school-discuss] Re: [IIEP] Open source and open formats

[Michael Shigorin]

	Hi!
Если кто не читал "Who owns your data?" ещё -- всячески
рекомендую, вот опять напомнили :-)

----- Forwarded message from Cameron Miller <cdmiller adams.edu> -----

Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 08:44:16 -0700
From: Cameron Miller <cdmiller adams.edu>
To: schoolforge-discuss schoolforge.net
Subject: Re: [school-discuss] Re: [IIEP] Open source and open formats

I'm going to agree with Vu Do Quynh on this one.  Proprietary document 
formats are a big problem and need to be dealt with.  To affect change 
and educate, folks need to make a little noise and push the use open 
formats whenever possible.  The problem is nicely summed up in this piece:

Who owns your data?
http://www.troubleshooters.com/tpromag/200104/200104.htm

Some related interesting reading on email attachments:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3793

Personal pages like these might help:
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~chak/email.html
http://www.dfki.uni-kl.de/~miller/no-word

- cameron

Michael Dean wrote:
>I can open any version ms .doc file with openoffice.org.!  It is the 
>Rosetta stone of word processors, and it shall rise or fall on this and 
>many other pragmatic features.  Must all of us eat our own dog food in 
>lockstep?  I paid for my copy of word.  And would you prefer we use the 
>feature of openoffice and mail in attachments in .pdf format?  Is one 
>proprietary format better than another?  I really think that most of us 
>paid for word, perhaps you didn't ?  Everything gets massively copied, 
>but in my book two wrongs don't make a right.  Would you also like us to 
>go back to steam engines in the name of eschewing proprietary software.  
>RTF is just as propreitary as doc format.  I don't think persons from 
>developing countries are being hurt by their ability to use openoffice 
>or word as much as their governments keeping hardware out of their hands 
>with confiscatory duties (like India) or mainland China companiews being 
>forced to smuggle in surplus hardware from USA through Hong Kong because 
>of their country's leaders having grandiose plans for home manufacture!  
>What you are suggesting is that you have THE ANSWER to political 
>correctness regarding software.  Probably what most people would want is 
>just a computer!  They can get the software, open source or proprietary, 
>on any street corner.  The righ patht is the most pragmatic path to 
>worker productivity.
>
>Vu Do Quynh wrote:
>
>>Hello everybody,
>>
>>I have been quite silent those past weeks but I did read all the posts
>>that went to the list and particularly appreciated the ones aiming to
>>refocus the forum.
>>
>>I would like to address one issue : the one on the format of information
>>exchange.
>>
>>I'd like to take a paradoxal example to illustrate my idea : Our forum
>>discuss about Opensource in education but many attached files, like the
>>latest one sent by G. Hume, are in a proprietary format (i.e. Microsoft
>>Word *.doc). Although it is quite recognized that MS Word is the major
>>word processor being used worldwide, still that position calls on
>>several remarks, one of which is that the predominant position of MS
>>Word is rather due to the rampant illegal copying of MS Office suite
>>(97, 2000, 2003, XP, etc.) rather than to people massively and
>>enthusiastically buying MS Office suite.
>>
>>By sending information in files formatted in a proprietary format like
>>the one from Word, we force other people to use Word to be able to open
>>it and by doing so, we also, consciously or not, induce people to use MS
>>Word instead of other free, or open source, softwares, like
>>OpenOffice.org or Abiword (that can run under several operating systems,
>>including MS Windows).
>>Thus if we want to guide other people, especially those in the
>>developing countries that certainly cannot afford to buy the licences of
>>expensive commercial softwares like the MS Office suite, we need,
>>especially people from developed countries that possibly have the money
>>to buy those same softwares (or are working in an environment that
>>obliges to do so), to send information in a file format that is as open
>>as possible.
>>
>>By order of priority, such an open format (for sending as attached
>>files) would be :
>>
>>1) *.txt, i.e. plain text format for information that does not need any
>>particular formatting style (like bold, italic, etc.)
>>2) *.rtf : for information that needs to include some formatting style
>>and tables (although RTF is still a proprietary format from Microsoft,
>>it is much more widely accepted over different computer platforms and
>>thus, more accessible)
>>3) *.pdf : for complex information that needs to include graphics,
>>photos etc. By the way, to open and print PDF files, you do not
>>necessarily need to install the "free" Acrobat reader which still is a
>>massive download of  10-18 Mb (depending on the version) : you can read
>>PDF files natively from any Linux distributions and, under Windows, you
>>can use a low-weight PDF readre like the one ("free") from FOXIT
>>Software (http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php) whiwh is less
>>than 1 Mb to download.
>>
>>
>>For downloadable information files on web sites, the same priority
>>applies (HTML could replace on some occasions *.txt and *.rtf files) and
>>OpenOffice.org formats can be offered en plus, as well as *.doc (Word)
>>format if really necessary.
>>
>>Using the free OpenOffice.org suite, that includes everything to work in
>>a modern office (Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw), you can read Word, Excel,
>>Powerpoint file formats, and save your documents under these formats as
>>well. You can naturally save in the OpenOffice.org format which is
>>composed of XML formatted information files (thus an open format) that
>>are compressed in a zip format (which makes them smaller than Word
>>files, unless the latter are compressed before sending), but it is not
>>yet pratical to distribute information under native OpenOffice format as
>>not so many people are using it but are rather using Word (legally or
>>not). I must say that OpenOffice (since 1.1.0) can export directly to
>>the PDF format which makes it a very productive and outstanding office
>>suite when you consider that it is freely distributed.
>>
>>All this is, of course, more work (at least in thinking and planning) on
>>the producer side, but such is the cost of a wider accessibility and to
>>really mean what we say !
>>
>>So maybe we should start with ourselves in showing the right path and
>>adopting as much as possible free and opensource software in our
>>everyday work. The first step is by using a more accessible file format
>>than the one from Word when exchanging information, and the second one
>>by gradually using free software until you can entirely switch to these
>>(I am at such a stage : using OpenOffice for all of my current word
>>processing and office work, just keeping in the background my "old" MS
>>Office 97, in case somebody send me a complex Word/Excel-formatted
>>document).
>>
>>Best regards.
>>
>>-- 
>>Vu Do Quynh
>>Agence universitaire de la Francophonie, Bureau Asie Pacifique
>>Responsable, Centre d'Acc?s ? l'Information scientifique et technique 
>>(CAI)  de Hanoi
>>08 rue Tran Hung Dao, Hanoi, Vietnam
>>T?l: +84-4-9331070 ; T?l?copie: +84-4-8247383
>>Sites de toile: http://www.vn.refer.org/
>>
>
>

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
 ---- WBR, Michael Shigorin <mike на altlinux.ru>
  ------ Linux.Kiev http://www.linux.kiev.ua/