Document Interchange in a Heterogeneous Environment

The hazards of trying to exchange various documents
with your colleagues, especially when they run a
different operating system or office suite than you do.

• What is the problem?

• What are the different formats?

• What should I NOT do?

• What formats should I use?

• Conclusions

• Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, Unix... all different.

• Until recently, no common document format between them

• Workarounds:
  
  
  • Plain Text ("ASCII"): functional, but loses style, panache
  • PostScript: hard to generate from Windows
  • PDF: not always easy to generate from Linux, Unix; $$$ needed on windows
  • HTML: fine for online, but:
    • Issues with browser-specific extensions (micro$oft at it again with IE)
    • No control over printout details (pagination, etc.)

• Document conversion DOES NOT WORK. WordPerfect to Word, .doc to OpenOffice, etc. loses details, formatting, and more. Functionality at 90% level isn't enough.

• .DOC (word): works fine in microsoft word, works poorly elsewhere

• .RTF (word): See ".DOC" above. Same thing, just in ascii markup format, not binary

• .WPD (wordperfect): works fine in wordperfect, problematic importing to other systems

• .SXW (OpenOffice): good for OpenOffice, open specification, not importable to other formats yet

• .HTML (web): HyperText Markup Language: web pages. Fine if your word processor sticks to W3M standards (word doesn't).

• .PDF (Adobe): Supposed Portable Document Format: a good end product, not for document interchange or collaboration.

• .PS (Adobe): PostScript, the de facto standard for end productdocumentation on Unix/Linux. Not well accepted in the windows world. A standard in the Mac world.

• .TeX (and .LaTeX): Excellent for collaboration, not GUI or WYSIWYG (mostly), more accepted by Scientists and on Unix/Linux.

  See also Spreadsheet formats

• Excel (.XLS) format is reasonably portable

• gnumeric (Linux) can read/write this format (better in RH9 than earlier versions)

• Avoid macros that call visual basic (use simpler ways if possible)

• Don't send .DOC (word) files to a Linux or Unix user
  (unless they have Crossover Office with word installed))

• Don't send .WPD files unless you know recipient has WordPerfect

• Don't send .PDF or .PS files for editing (they're an "end product")

• Don't send a fancy format when a simple one (like plain ASCII text) will do the job

• Do send the simplest format possible
  
  
• Start using OpenOffice (even if you have Word, WordPerfect, AbiWord already)
  
  
• Try to "embed fonts" in PDF documents (your recipient may not have your desktop fonts)

• Linux users needing to interchange MS Office files: consider Crossover Office

• Office "productivity" software makes more work in a heterogeneous environment

• Resistance (to using fancy word/wpd features) is not futile! Keep it simple!

• We really need one common office suite that works everywhere

• OpenOffice comes with Red Hat Linux v9, is available for windows too.