When putting a file on the web or attaching it to an email, you should never use a Microsoft Office file (or any other propreitary format) unless you have previosly arranged it with the intended recipient(s). I won’t go into the reasons right now, but here are some alternatives:

HTML

HTML is the native format of web browsers. Anyone with a web browser can view HTML files. Microsoft Word will save directly to HTML. (It doesn’t produce good HTML, but bad HTML is better than a DOC file.)

Unfortunately, I haven’t found a good HTML editor that doesn’t require some technical knowledge of HTML. So, while it may be good for something you want others to be able to read, it probably isn’t good for collaboration unless you are already familar with it.

RTF

RTF (Rich Text Format) was created by Microsoft. Unlike the DOC format, they documented it so that anyone could write a program that would read & write it. Almost every word processor application—including Word—supports it. Programs that can read & write RTF come with both Microsoft Windows (WordPad) & Apple Mac OS X (TextEdit). There is an equivalent Unix program called Ted that should work on most Unix or Unix-like systems (such as Linux). Most Linux distributions come with lots of programs that can handle RTF preinstalled.

For people who aren’t power users, RTF might be the best format for collaborating on text documents. (Short of a real collaboration system.) The file might look a bit different on each person’s system, but it is easily editable.

PDF

PDF (Portable Document Format) was created by Adobe &, like RTF, is openly documented. Where PDF shines is that it is the format that is most likely to look the same printed on different systems & different printers. Although PDF tends to work best for documents that are meant to be printed, it is also true that viewing a PDF on different systems is more likely to look the same than other formats.

To view PDFs, however, you will need a viewer. Adobe Acrobat Reader can be downloaded for free & is available for a wide range of systems. Mac OS X’s Preview application can view PDFs. XPDF is a Unix/Linux program that can view PDFs.

The best way to create PDF documents is to buy Adobe Acrobat. (The full version, not just the free Acrobat Reader.) There are free alternatives, however.

On Mac OS X, you can create a PDF from anything you can print. Just look for the PDF options in the print dialog box. OpenOffice.org (see below) can create PDF documents.

I’ve used Ghostscript on Linux & Windows (along with the companion Windows front-end called Ghostview) to print to PostScript & then convert to PDF. (Mac OS X’s Preview application can also convert PostScript to PDF.)

OpenOffice.org

It started life as an application suite to compete with Microsoft Office called StarOffice. It then became free (gratis). It then became free (libertas). It works on Microsoft Windows, Sun Solaris, Linux, & more. For Mac OS, there is a version called NeoOffice that integrates better into the Mac environment. (Unfortunately, NeoOffice isn’t working on Intel Macs at the time I’m writing this.)

OpenOffice.org does everything I would ever want Microsoft Office for, & it doesn’t cost a dime. (Other than the bandwidth you use to download it, but you were paying for that already.) I haven’t use Microsoft Office in many years, though, so I can’t really make a fair comparison.

OpenOffice.org can generate PDF files.

About email attachments

The methods used to add attachments to Internet email are hugely inefficient. (On the other hand, they were backwards compatible so that Internet email has remained stable.) It is almost always preferrable to find another way to exchange a file & send only a pointer to it in email.

If you have a web site, you could put the file there & email the URL instead. If you use Yahoo groups or a similar system, it’s better to upload the file to the group than to email it. Yahoo briefcase is another possibility.

last updated 1 year ago #