office apps

[Chad Perrin]

On Tue, Jun 08, 2010 at 08:16:03AM -0700, Chip Camden wrote:
> On Jun 07 2010 22:12, Chris Hill wrote:
> > On Mon, 7 Jun 2010, Chip Camden wrote:
> > 
> > >[...] I do have clients who send me Word docs, and one who requires that 
> > >I send them specs in Word format.  For that, I guess I'm stuck using 
> > >some behemoth office tool, if only for converting from a different 
> > >format.  I'm currently doing that work on a Windows workstation, but I'd 
> > >like to limit my involvement with Windows to only developing for it when 
> > >I must.
> > 
> > I have clients like that too. What I've done - only once or twice, and 
> > really just to be a dick - is to do my writeup in ASCII text, then `mv foo 
> > foo.doc`. There, it's in word format! And Word really can open the file, 
> > so...
> > 
> That's great -- I'll have to remember that one.

I sorta did that once.  I sent someone a plaintext file.  He double
clicked the file, causing it to automatically open in Notepad, which
puked on my Unix-style linebreaks.  He asked me to give it to him in DOC
format.  I said he should just open it in another application, at which
point he gave me his pathetic sob story about how he always double
clicked a file to open it and if it doesn't work that way he can't open
the file et cetera, et alii, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

To make a long story short (too late), I changed the filename from
filename.txt to filename.doc and sent it to him again.  He
double-clicked, and it automatically opened the file in Word.  I still
find the gall of the man kind of surprising, demanding that I find some
way to save the file in DOC format and re-email it to him when he could
just open MS Word and use File > Open to browse to the file.  I seem to
recall he didn't want to be bothered figuring out how to Save As to
change it into DOC format himself, either, even if he did get it open in
MS Word, which makes the whole situation even more bizarre and
aggravating for me.

It was just the once that I did that, though.  Aside from 1) requests for
resumes and 2) files that I originally got from someone else in MS Office
file formats, I haven't really had any need to deal with the DOC(X) and
other MS Office formats.

-- 
Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
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