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Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way

blogs.computerworlduk.com

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Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way

#21

Post by twodayslate »

jrockway wrote: post #10
af3 wrote: post #8

No, I won't stop. There is nothing better than Word to collaboratively work on a manuscript in a research environment. Yes, this is "Editing - Emailing - Editing" cycle, but no one has suggested anything better that actually works.

Google Docs works rather well for this workflow. You can add comments, edit concurrently (like SubEthaEdit), press a button to open a video hangout with your collaborators, and you get a full revision history. And, you don't have to email the doc around!

Google Docs is most often blocked by organizations.

Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way

#22

Post by spindritf »

darklajid wrote: post #13
codesuela wrote: post #2

or use Google Documents instead of Hybrid PDFs where again you need LibreOffice to edit them.

Never used Google Docs. Don't you, in that case, require a) that I have a Google account (not sure) and b) limit my access to the document that you sent me to times when I'm online (unless I go ahead and export it to another format and save it locally. Probably as text or pdf, depending on whether I want to edit or read)? I assume b) is a given. If a) is true as well then I'd consider sending Google Docs links just a…

a) The person publishing the document has full control over who has access and can edit it. You can allow anyone to view it, only people with a link (still no Google Account required from them, the link itself acts as a key/password), users from your domain... it's pretty flexible.

b) You can download the original file or, when Google format are used, export to a format convenient for you.

I use Google Docs that way constantly. It's by far the easiest and most reliable way I found to share a document, especially spreadsheets, with someone I haven't worked with before.

Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way

#23

Post by klausa »

gst wrote: post #20
af3 wrote: post #8

No, I won't stop. There is nothing better than Word to collaboratively work on a manuscript in a research environment. Yes, this is "Editing - Emailing - Editing" cycle, but no one has suggested anything better that actually works.

I hope this is meant as a joke. I've worked in research for several years and we almost exclusively kept LaTeX documents in a Git repository. This worked perfectly: Multiple people can edit the document at the same time and you can also add additional comments to the document that don't show up in the output.

That may be true for math and CompSci research, but I think you'd have rather hard time convincing panel of, say, climatologists to learn LaTeX and git.

Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way

#24

Post by ilaksh »

Editable PDF files are better than .DOC? Wow.

Please don't send me an editable PDF instead of a DOC. wtf. PDF files are designed to load slow and make my hard disk thrash.

If you send me a DOC at least I can edit it in google docs..

Much better send me a link to a google doc or some other online document.. zoho or whatever

Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way

#25

Post by spindritf »

freehunter wrote: post #6
codesuela wrote: post #2

or use Google Documents instead of Hybrid PDFs where again you need LibreOffice to edit them.

I don't know if GDocs still has this problem, but when I first started using it, it seemed like they would do some update every few months that would break all my formatting. I used it mainly for storing guitar tablature, so when the formatting broke, I lost the music, some of it forever (if I couldn't remember the timing). I stopped using it a few years ago because of this. Actually I just checked my resume that I h…

> when I first started using it, it seemed like they would do some update every few months that would break all my formatting

You can now use it to store arbitrary files in their original format and view them through their webinterface when convenient. It has certain limitations like not displaying tables (or their contents) in .doc files but otherwise works well, pdfs generated from latex are displayed flawlessly as far as I've tested it.

Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way

#26

Post by nagrom »

af3 wrote: post #8

No, I won't stop. There is nothing better than Word to collaboratively work on a manuscript in a research environment. Yes, this is "Editing - Emailing - Editing" cycle, but no one has suggested anything better that actually works.

I do research in physics. Typically we use git and latex. That's because it is easy to branch out and change the structure of the document, you can include the scripts and data used to generate data in the same repository and there's a nice, easy-to-use front end in Github.

You get most of the features of word, and the math looks better. And it's platform-agnostic! It doesn't matter whether you make that document on Windows, Mac or Linux, and it doesn't matter which software you use either. And cross-linking in the document is easy and a file-based database can be used to store the bibliography.

Word is very hard to you use once you get used to that system...it's too inflexible and a complicated document gets mangled when crossing the OS boundary.

Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way

#27

Post by masklinn »

ilaksh wrote: post #24

Editable PDF files are better than .DOC? Wow. Please don't send me an editable PDF instead of a DOC. wtf. PDF files are designed to load slow and make my hard disk thrash. If you send me a DOC at least I can edit it in google docs.. Much better send me a link to a google doc or some other online document.. zoho or whatever

> PDF files are designed to load slow and make my hard disk thrash.

You are aware you don't have to use Adobe software to read PDFs right? I've got 7+MB PDF books (as in 500 pages or so), OSX's Preview loads them in a fraction of a second. Even "The Macintosh Way" (40MB of scanned images) takes barely half a second. That's not enough time to start an empty instance of Word

Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way

#28

Post by JohnnyFlash »

So the message is. Lets all switch to LibreOffice!

Seems like nonsense to me. If you are running Windows, which most people are, you are almost certainly going to have Word / Wordpad etc.

A far better solution to .doc attachments is to ask if your content really needs to be in an attachment. A lot of the time it simply doesn't.

To be honest though this isn't really a problem is it? When Microsoft first brought out their .docx format it seemed like there was a lag before other free applications could read the files. I found that a problem.

Today, everyone has an application to open a .doc file. A lot of people are using gmail. I just click the preview button. I assume that Windows Live Mail has something like this which makes use of Office365 functionality (might be wrong on this). It really is a non-issue.

Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way

#29

Post by spindritf »

nagrom wrote: post #26
af3 wrote: post #8

No, I won't stop. There is nothing better than Word to collaboratively work on a manuscript in a research environment. Yes, this is "Editing - Emailing - Editing" cycle, but no one has suggested anything better that actually works.

I do research in physics. Typically we use git and latex. That's because it is easy to branch out and change the structure of the document, you can include the scripts and data used to generate data in the same repository and there's a nice, easy-to-use front end in Github. You get most of the features of word, and the math looks better. And it's platform-agnostic! It doesn't matter whether you make that document on…

> I do research in physics. Typically we use git and latex.

That's only convenient for an already existing research group. The usual workflow of incidental cooperation, like a course instructor sending additional materials to students, is to generate a pdf from the LaTeX documents they wrote or otherwise obtained and e-mail it.

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