Wow there is an amazing amount of animated advercrap on that page.
Felt like I was entering a web-based rectum
Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way
51–60 of 72 posts
Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
In theory there are some features in word processing packages for security (either password to open or password to edit) and for collaborative working (edits are marked) that you don't get with HTML. In practice, those security features are often broken. HTML and CSS would be an excellent solution, and in tune with the original idea (device-agnostic) of HTML. You don't know what software, or OS, or machine the receiv…
Unfortunately, HTML isn't a rich enough container. If you try to add a diagram to HTML, suddenly you need two files. The "webarchive" file formats get around this, but they're not standard. It seems to me that we need something like PDF, but that isn't so hung up on the idea of formatting physical pages. If I'm reading on a phone, I want it to reflow.
If you try to add a diagram to HTML, suddenly you need two files.
That's not strictly true. You can embed inline object data in object tags (http://www.w3.org/TR/html40/struct/objects.html#h-13.3) using the data: URI scheme (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2397.html). Whether that is good enough, I don't know. The data needing to be physically inserted at each point of use certainly isn't great for space usage and performance.
But then, in the context of email, why not just use MIME?
Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way
#53No, 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 infinitely better for this. The feature set may not be as comprehensive, but it nails ~97% for me, and the ease of collaboration is far superior.
Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The fact is that it's much harder to train people who haven't had programming experience (e.g. biologists or medical doctors) to use this stuff. Word does the same thing pretty well (better imho, the reviews interface is intuitive), and has plenty of citation managers too
It's also close to impossible if the journal or conference doesn't give you a LaTeX stylesheet, which is uncommon outside physics/math/CS. Sure, you can in principle produce your own stylesheet conforming to the formatting requirements, but even most seasoned LaTeX users find the stylesheet language to be black magic (I dread having to make even minor edits to a stylesheet).
Matching citation styles used to be a problem also, but tools like Jurabib and Biber have mostly solved that problem.
Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way
#55No, 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.
This is very true. We've tried using Google Docs and it just doesn't work the same; this is esp. true with less tech savvy users. If I am working on different page and someone is editing the top of the doc then it pushes everything I am doing down and interrupts my train of thought.
View > Document view > Compact
Yeah, Google made a mistake in changing the default to Paginated. Still, Docs is light years ahead of Word + trying to emulate git's CVS via file names and mental notes.
Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way
#56Or even better: just send the damn text WITHIN the actual email. You know, just how sane people do this :) .
How does that work with, for example, a spreadsheet with 8,000 rows and 9 columns?
Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the difference between sending a .doc or a .odt? I say this as someone who has not used office since staroffice released working binaries for redhat (3.0.3 I think).
Not much, except that .odt is a true open standard, that the "editor" is free and that the "editor" is available for every major platform. And practically does everything you need, as well. Now, do you think i would pay money for MS Office? Even if i would, i couldn't because it's Windows/Mac only anyway. I'd say, sending .odt/.docx around is the least preferable option but .docx additionally has far more downsides f…
"Far more downsides for me as well." Sadly most people in the world do not care about what is easier/cheaper for you (and me). The most widely distributed office program is MSOffice, not libreoffice. MS Office users would have to bear the costs of installing/learning a new office product.
Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately, HTML isn't a rich enough container. If you try to add a diagram to HTML, suddenly you need two files. The "webarchive" file formats get around this, but they're not standard. It seems to me that we need something like PDF, but that isn't so hung up on the idea of formatting physical pages. If I'm reading on a phone, I want it to reflow.
HTML isn't a container at all but what you're describing is basically ePub3 - HTML and resources inside a container, designed for reflow and other advanced scenarios which clash with PDF's basic philosophy.
That's true; ePub is certainly trying to do the right thing here. I haven't used it much myself, so I don't know how well it works. For my own uses, I'd like to get decent equations and LaTeX-like special characters (e.g. \nabla), but I can live with embedded PNG or GIF.
(Not that that really alters the basic point, which was that HTML, by itself, isn't enough. The object tag might be a good enough solution, I don't know.)
Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Citation? Google Docs is often used at organizations (they even pay for it!). There's a reason why Microsoft is moving into the same territory with Office 365--businesses require collaboration and emailing docs around is incredibly bad at accomplishing that.
Even more telling is MS stopped Office Live which didn't edit online in favor of Office 365 which does edit online. It's just a matter of time before it switches and the desktop version is an add-on while the cloud version is standard.
Re: Stop sending .DOC files as mail attachments There is a better way
#60Actually, at work i try to send restructuredText + a neatly generated .pdf. Looks better, is easily editable. As one of the few Linux/LibreOffice users i HATE(HATEHATEHATEHATE) .doc and especially .docx. It's a nightmare to work with and collaborate on it between MS Word and LibreOffice Writer. Something always gets screwed up. Please, Office people in the world: Uninstall the nightmare that is called MS Office. Libr…
I have to vigorously disagree. I used OpenOffice exclusively my entire college career and am an avid LibreOffice user now, however you are simply incorrect when you state that LibreOffice comes even close to MS Office. If you're going to say that LibreOffice smacks MS Office then I'm going to posit that you have never used a pivot table in Calc, and that you do not work in a corporate environment. In addition, for th…
In addition to pivot tables do not forget trying to do anything with MS Access. I have also noticed that opening powerpoint presentations can grind LO to a halt. Most recently the Stream Ciphers lecture from Boneh's class took forever to open in LO on a 6 core AMD with 8 gigs of ram...
I agree that most of the time opening .doc/.docx with OO/LO is problem free. But you never used StarOffice, back in the day things were not always so easy:) Plus StarOffice was not guaranteed to stay open;)