Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 4:52 pm Post subject: doc or sxw -ability to read by everyone else
Dear all
Mac OS 10.3.8 with NeoofiiceJ.
Which format should I use for compatibility of document for those people who I deal with who have Microsoft Office, which will be everyone I deal with. I have tested both formats with a friend with MicrosoftOffice and both seem to work, however those who I send to have some problems. However with the inevitability of updates should I stick with .doc or revert everything to .sxw.
I would prefer .sxw, however I feel bound with .doc because I need other people to read my work documents.
Relevant link from openofffice.
http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=18677
Thanks for any comments.
Andrew lost in china.
Ultimately this is a personal choice...it depends on variables different to each person and/or project.
I typically save everything as .sxw, because it's the native format (and it's anywhere between 2x-10x smaller than .doc). Anything that I need to send to a MS Office user (that he/she needs to be able to edit), I will "save a copy" as .doc and send that copy; the original always remains .sxw (and if it's something that he/she doesn't need to edit, typically .pdf).
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Thanks for that reply.
It does appear to come down to personal choice.
You are right that if the other person does not need to edit the document then a pdf will suit them fine and it will ease their capability to open the document.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 11:55 pm Post subject:
I definitely second the PDF format. At my real job, I am exchanging docs with customers who usually are using Office on a Windows box. I've found that even using the Mac Office v.X versions has proven troublesome between lost fonts and the like. I've tried to standardize on PDF for exchanging docs. I've not noticed any complaints with either the PDF Export from within OOo/NeoJ or the save as PDF from the Print dialog. Actually, the most frequent comment is to ask how I was able to generate PDFs that easily as our company doesn't have a Windows Acrobat PDFWriter license
Joined: Apr 11, 2005 Posts: 13 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 10:18 pm Post subject:
And I third the PDF format! Particularly as a lot of the documents I send use multiple langages and alphabets. A lot of effort and difficulties are prevented by PDF.
But I suppose there's a (remote) possibility that the new Open Document format (to be supported by OpenOffice.org 2.0) may gain some ground one day.
Quote:
Actually, the most frequent comment is to ask how I was able to generate PDFs that easily as our company doesn't have a Windows Acrobat PDFWriter license
Well, there's always the Ghostscript/PDFCreator combo But I agree NeoOffice/J is easier!
You are right that if the other person does not need to edit the document then a pdf will suit them fine and it will ease their capability to open the document.
Very true. BTW, the British government decided to adopt PDF for externally distributed documents after their intelligence dossier failures just before the Iraq war. Apparently, Word documents contain quite a bit of info about previous versions and edits, which journalists exploited.
Myself, I will use .doc or .rtf if the document needs to be edited but I prefer .pdf because you have more certainty it looks like it was intended. Word documents have a nasty history of shifting around on different machines and different Office versions.. _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Joined: Sep 18, 2003 Posts: 434 Location: London, UK
Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 4:10 am Post subject:
ovvldc wrote:
BTW, the British government decided to adopt PDF for externally distributed documents after their intelligence dossier failures just before the Iraq war. Apparently, Word documents contain quite a bit of info about previous versions and edits, which journalists exploited.
Which has been a well known issue with the .doc format for about, ooh, a decade, especially so if you use the quick save feature... anyway, another blinding example of military intelligence being the best example of an oxymoron If you want to check this out, simply use a plain text editor to view any .doc files sent to you.
But before we go crowing about this, a similar security issue will exist with the .sxw format if you record any changes to your document so that the track changes feature can be used - those changes have to be stored somewhere in the file and will be visible to all who have a little bit of nous. _________________ PBG4, 1.5GHz, SuperDrive, 1GB RAM, 128MB VRAM, 5400rpm 80GB HD, MacOS X 10.4.5
Which has been a well known issue with the .doc format for about, ooh, a decade, especially so if you use the quick save feature... anyway, another blinding example of military intelligence being the best example of an oxymoron If you want to check this out, simply use a plain text editor to view any .doc files sent to you.
And this is a reason that my employer insists that quick saves be turned off. However, some documents have to be versioned, which means that we have to track any changes made so that they can be 'backed out' if necessary.
JKT wrote:
But before we go crowing about this, a similar security issue will exist with the .sxw format if you record any changes to your document so that the track changes feature can be used - those changes have to be stored somewhere in the file and will be visible to all who have a little bit of nous.
You are very correct about this. However, you can edit the .sxw file with a text editor and remove those offensive words without destroying the document, unlike MS Word formatted documents, easily. I try to stay away from writing things into documents that will end my gainful employment. Bills don't pay themselves.
Thanks for all of the replies.
How doe you ensure that the receiver of a sxw file can not see the previous versions.
Yes turn off track changes in Edit > Changes.
Yes File > Save As, when asked to replace the original file click Yes.
Is there anything else to be aware of ?
Edit properties of the files - does this help ?
What are "Quick Saves" ?
Joined: Sep 18, 2003 Posts: 434 Location: London, UK
Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 5:36 am Post subject:
andrew wrote:
Thanks for all of the replies.
How doe you ensure that the receiver of a sxw file can not see the previous versions.
Yes turn off track changes in Edit > Changes.
Yes File > Save As, when asked to replace the original file click Yes.
Is there anything else to be aware of ?
Edit properties of the files - does this help ?
What are "Quick Saves" ?
Cheers.
Andrew
lost in china.
Quick saves are a feature of MS Office - notorious for corrupting your documents and adding all manner of spurious content to them. In the initial release of Office 98, it even caused data from other documents open at the time to get included in the file - a severe security/privacy risk which MS eventually "fixed" in an update.
As far as I know, as long as you are not recording your changes, you are OK with the .sxw format. FWIW, you can check the exact contents of the files by drag/dropping them on Stuffit Expander (I recommend using a copy of the original just to be on the safe side) - the .sxw format is actually a compressed file that SE will decompress to reveal all the components, most of which are .xml files that you can view using TextEdit to check exactly what has been included. _________________ PBG4, 1.5GHz, SuperDrive, 1GB RAM, 128MB VRAM, 5400rpm 80GB HD, MacOS X 10.4.5
Joined: Jan 30, 2004 Posts: 4 Location: USA, MA/NH border
Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 6:53 pm Post subject: doc or sxw -ability to read... -- back to main topic
I recently had to craft a resume using NeoOffice/J that I wanted to be
presented and presentable in MSWord's .doc format (some employment
agents and HR departments insist). It is fairly hard to ensure that
you won't be tripped-up by changes in font, margins, and other subtleties.
One thing I found was that I absolutely could not use any paragraph
style-tag that was based-on the style "Default" -- all of mine had to be based
on "None" and have all of their details completely specified. Since I don't
own a copy of MSWord, I had to request other people to tell me what the
result was: most of the evidence I got was that I had succeeded.
Has anyone reading this list had the same problem? If so, what insights
did you get in working out a solution?
Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 7:31 pm Post subject: Re: doc or sxw -ability to read... -- back to main topic
CompilersPres wrote:
One thing I found was that I absolutely could not use any paragraph style-tag that was based-on the style "Default" -- all of mine had to be based on "None" and have all of their details completely specified.
My guess is this is because the Default style is stored locally and not in the document (and that any derived styles or changes to Default are 'computed' based on the local default style). By creating styles based on "none" and having details specified, the entirety of the styles gets saved in the document rather than just the "addition" instructions. This is, however, only a guess based on some rather limited observations.
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
PDFs make the most sense if you're sending out a finished document, but after about a year I settled on RTF because I'm an editor and most of the writers I work with use windows boxes with some variant of Word. Just about anything will open an RTF, and I don't have to remember to save in a different format, or ask what software someone is using.
I save my spreadsheets in Excel for the same reason. There are a lot more of them than us, so we might as well make it easy on ourselves.
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But I agree NeoOffice/J is easier!