The message
from tony sayer contains these words:

In article , Appin
scribeth thus
The message . com
from Jules contains
these words:

On Sun, 01 Mar 2009 21:47:45 +0000, Dave Liquorice wrote:

On Sun, 01 Mar 2009 18:39:26 GMT, soup wrote:

Why? Surely 90%+ of all businesses use Word (blinking Bill gets
everywhere), and while Open Office (for instance)can open DOC files I
don't think Word can open ODF files. So it would seem to make
sense to
send any correspondence to companies as a DOC file.

Far more sense to send it as a .pdf, not quite as easy to edit and far
more likely to appear the same on their machine as it does on yours.

Although by that metric (much as I agree), sending it as an image would
work even better (the electronic equivalent of posting it) - but I've
never heard of anyone doing that.


You have now.

I use Openoffice for just about everything, and it drives me nuts that I
have to go and locate a Windows machine with Word on it every time I'm
sending something "off site" in electronic form, purely so I can verify
that OO has correctly saved in Word format properly & that the doc will
look more or less as it should for the recipient.

Who knows what it will look like to the recipient. I was at a
committee meeting yesterday considering a document which had been
circulated in Word format. Everyone present had vastly different
rubbish -- ten people round the table, ten different documents, none of
them right.

Why can't they use PDF then?..

Precisely the question I asked. And when they saw the tremendous
variations among the attempts at printing out the documents which had
been distributed by email, they agreed :-).

The message . com
from Jules contains these words:

I'd much rather people either
left the errors intact or did their own proof-reading; the sign of
something that's been badly spell-checked implies laziness or
over-reliance on tools...

If you're sending something out to a potentially-critical audience, then
get it checked by a couple of reliable human proof-readers. We all
make mistakes, but better to have them discovered before they leave the
premises.

Then pop to the library to use their "all singing all
dancing" laser printer (O.K. it's more expensive than running them off
yourself, if to a better quality, but for a 'decent' job a bit extra
effort is warranted).


Consumer-grade printers seem to by and large be complete crap, plus they
really screw you on the consumables.

True, but reasonable ones aren't all that much more than the rubbish ones.

In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
PDF still depends on the viewer version to display the file
correctly.

Only if you use its more abstruse features.

Sod's law say they will.

Only if they start from Word ;-)

I often coming across simple documents that don't work correctly on the
PDF reader I use under RISC OS. Usually things like spec sheets from RS.

I discovered last week that OE7 dos not use th IE rendering engine for
HTML formatted emails. It is th Word rendering engine. It cannot cope
with any sort of HTML beyond the most basic.

I can't see any reason to even try it as Firefox works so well here.

--
*Women like silent men; they think they're listening.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
PDF still depends on the viewer version to display the file
correctly.

Only if you use its more abstruse features.
Sod's law say they will.

Only if they start from Word ;-)

I often coming across simple documents that don't work correctly on the
PDF reader I use under RISC OS. Usually things like spec sheets from RS.

I discovered last week that OE7 dos not use th IE rendering engine for
HTML formatted emails. It is th Word rendering engine. It cannot cope
with any sort of HTML beyond the most basic.

I can't see any reason to even try it as Firefox works so well here.

Not me prsonally, but I was developing HTML mails to be snt to
customers.'Your order has been dispatched' etc. And a little copmany
logo image in t corner.

The HTML was, I thought, if th simplest. In firefox it was perfct. OE
couldn't even manage to get th image displayed at all.

It apparently doesn't even begin to understand div style="position:
absolute;.......

On Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:03:35 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Not me prsonally, but I was developing HTML mails to be snt to
customers.'Your order has been dispatched' etc. And a little copmany
logo image in t corner.

The HTML was, I thought, if th simplest. In firefox it was perfct. OE
couldn't even manage to get th image displayed at all.

Hmm, I have any HTML display/reading capability turned off here. I'm
just interested in the information being sent, not lots of logos, colour
and flashy graphics...

In article ,
Appin wrote:
PDF still depends on the viewer version to display the file correctly.

And the constant "upgrades" and compatibility problems between
versions make it as big a PITA as Word.

Something of an exaggeration there. And the real point is that Reader
is free, so no-one has any excuse for not being able to read up to date
features.

It may be free, but the latest version may need the latest PC to work on.
And not everyone uses PCs - or the latest one.

--
*Why do the two "sanction"s (noun and verb) mean opposites?*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ,
Appin wrote:
Until last week it was a very long time since I came across anyone who
had problems in that connection. Last week, granted, I had sent a file
which had been reduced from 10-MB to 5 MB for ease of emailing and the
recipient had problems because she had had only version 4 of Acrobat.
But then she didn't have broadband either :-). Nothing like the
problems of using Word, IME.

Makes me wonder what is so different about a document made today over one
made 15 years ago on a then competent DTP package? It's only likely to be
text and graphics so why should one be forced to upgrade just to read it?
Different matter with AV etc files I suppose.

--
*I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:49:32 +0000 (GMT), Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Makes me wonder what is so different about a document made today over
one made 15 years ago on a then competent DTP package?

In the case of pdf not an awful lot. The version I use is 3.0 (c) 1997 and
most of the time it can render pdfs fine. Colour Space is the thing that
normally trips it up but, IIRC, when I looked into that it was a
limitation of my OS rather than Acrobat.

It's only likely to be text and graphics so why should one be forced to
upgrade just to read it?

IMHO if you have a modern version of a program it should be capable of
reading and rendering all files produced by older versions and the
defaults for generating new ones should be as backwardly compatible as
possible. But commercial companies don't want that as it gives no push to
buying the "latest and greatest".

--
Cheers
Dave.

Jules wrote:
On Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:03:35 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Not me prsonally, but I was developing HTML mails to be snt to
customers.'Your order has been dispatched' etc. And a little copmany
logo image in t corner.

The HTML was, I thought, if th simplest. In firefox it was perfct. OE
couldn't even manage to get th image displayed at all.

Hmm, I have any HTML display/reading capability turned off here. I'm
just interested in the information being sent, not lots of logos, colour
and flashy graphics...



Well, yes and no.

It wasnt flashy graphics, Just a delivery note.I could have created a
PDF, and sent that as an attachment, but I reasoned that a very simple
HTML would be as good an not require anything special from the other end.

Most mail clients *accept* HTML...you can control what you send, but not
what is displayed.

On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:19:13 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

Jules wrote:
On Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:03:35 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Not me prsonally, but I was developing HTML mails to be snt to
customers.'Your order has been dispatched' etc. And a little copmany
logo image in t corner.

The HTML was, I thought, if th simplest. In firefox it was perfct. OE
couldn't even manage to get th image displayed at all.

Hmm, I have any HTML display/reading capability turned off here. I'm
just interested in the information being sent, not lots of logos, colour
and flashy graphics...



Well, yes and no.

It wasnt flashy graphics, Just a delivery note.I could have created a
PDF, and sent that as an attachment, but I reasoned that a very simple
HTML would be as good an not require anything special from the other end.

Most mail clients *accept* HTML...you can control what you send, but not
what is displayed.

A good enough reason, IMHO, *not* to use HTML in emails.

I *always* turn off HTML email viewing BTW. If someone really needs
flashy graphics then this can be sent in a suitable attachment.

--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Owing to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking most articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.
See http://improve-usenet.org

On Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:17:09 +0000, Grimly Curmudgeon
wrote:

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Jules
saying something like:

On Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:04:38 +0000, tony sayer wrote:
PDF still depends on the viewer version to display the file correctly.

Really?, what's wrong with Foxit reader then?..

IT's not Adobe and so quite obviously crap, even though it isn't cruddy
bloatware (unlike Acrobat) and (IME) does a far better job with far less
than Adobe's own offering ;-)

I find Foxit very useful in the way it will save stuff that's not
supposed to be saved

Does it work as a firefox plug-in yet?

--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Owing to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking most articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.
See http://improve-usenet.org

On Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:23:55 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

Man at B&Q wrote:
On Mar 5, 12:55 am, Appin wrote:
The message
from soup contains these words:

Appin wrote:
I wouldn't employ anyone who used Word, myself
Why? Surely 90%+ of all businesses use Word (blinking Bill gets
everywhere), and while Open Office (for instance)can open DOC files I
don't think Word can open ODF files. So it would seem to make sense to
send any correspondence to companies as a DOC file.
It makes sesnse to send correspondence as a PDF file with embedded fonts.

Try to send a file in the native docx format of the current version of
Word and a great many (probably most) companies will be unable to read
it.

Sorry to disappoint you, but that's rubbish. I have a .docx doc here
which opens just fine in Word 2003. It pops up a little dialog to warn
me some features may have been removed.

I think the reality is if you UTILIZE FEATURES OF docx then there may
be problems. For a simple doc like a CV I would anticipate very few
problems.


The best example is when people try to be clever, using hard carriage
returns and the space bar to justify text in some obscure font thy found
in their computer, send the file off and it gets rendered in times
roman..and looks a complete dog's breakfast.

I get sent lots of those. I don't think they are trying to be clever
though. I just think they don't know how to use a WP.

I still get word documents where the headers & footers are added into
the body of the text. No prizes for guessing how that looks.

--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Owing to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking most articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.
See http://improve-usenet.org

On Mar 5, 4:57*pm, "Bob Eager" wrote:
On Thu, 5 Mar 2009 15:11:15 UTC, "Man at B&Q"
wrote:



On Mar 5, 12:55*am, Appin wrote:
The message
from soup contains these words:

Appin wrote:
I wouldn't employ anyone who used Word, myself
Why? *Surely 90%+ of all businesses use Word (blinking Bill gets
everywhere), and while Open Office (for instance)can open DOC files I
don't think Word can open ODF files. So it would seem to make sense to
send any correspondence to companies as a DOC file.

It makes sesnse to send correspondence as a PDF file with embedded fonts.

Try to send a file in the native docx format of the current version of
Word and a great many (probably most) companies will be unable to read
it.

Sorry to disappoint you, but that's rubbish. I have a .docx doc here
which opens just fine in Word 2003. It pops up a little dialog to warn
me some features may have been removed.

Yes, but...that's because (whether you know it or not) you have the
2003/2007 Compatibility Pack installed.

Oh.

MBQ

On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:19:13 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
It wasnt flashy graphics, Just a delivery note.

Well what on earth do you need in a delivery note that requires anything
other than plain text and a few line breaks?

On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:49:32 +0000, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

In article ,
Appin wrote:
Until last week it was a very long time since I came across anyone who
had problems in that connection. Last week, granted, I had sent a file
which had been reduced from 10-MB to 5 MB for ease of emailing and the
recipient had problems because she had had only version 4 of Acrobat.
But then she didn't have broadband either :-). Nothing like the
problems of using Word, IME.

Makes me wonder what is so different about a document made today over one
made 15 years ago on a then competent DTP package? It's only likely to be
text and graphics so why should one be forced to upgrade just to read it?

Because Adobe want to keep their shareholders happy by constantly adding
new features to their product and be seen as "making progress", even when
their product did what 99.9% of people needed many versions ago?

Ditto most software companies TBH - even UNIX app vendors seem to be going
the bloated feature-rich monolithic application route these days.

On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 12:26:44 +0000, Owain wrote:

Mark wrote:
I still get word documents where the headers & footers are added into
the body of the text. No prizes for guessing how that looks.

I've had to reformat entire theses typed that way.

I think that's the point where it's quicker to save it in a non-Word
format and whip up a quick bit of code to do the formatting for you...
(I've had to do just that here a few times, unfortunately)

cheers

J.

In article ,
"Dave Plowman (News)" writes:
In article ,
Appin wrote:
Until last week it was a very long time since I came across anyone who
had problems in that connection. Last week, granted, I had sent a file
which had been reduced from 10-MB to 5 MB for ease of emailing and the
recipient had problems because she had had only version 4 of Acrobat.
But then she didn't have broadband either :-). Nothing like the
problems of using Word, IME.

Makes me wonder what is so different about a document made today over one
made 15 years ago on a then competent DTP package? It's only likely to be
text and graphics so why should one be forced to upgrade just to read it?
Different matter with AV etc files I suppose.

Way back when PDF was first around, I used to do quite a bit of
work with generating postscript and PDF and EPS output for various
apps (PDF was originally basically a wrapper around postscript).

However, over the years, Adobe has been able to enhance it to
provide additional features such as form filling with protected
fields, document security and tracability features, and I would
guess wrapping a good deal more than just postscript nowadays
(although I'm not longer familiar with the possible types of
PDF you might build today).

Secondly, I would say that Adobe is very much the nice guy when
it comes to backwards compatibility. Acrobat reader 4 can still
open most acrobat 9 files, providing they don't absolutely require
some feature it doesn't have. That's in stark contrast to most
products in the software industry where everyone would have to be
on the latest version. It's not just Acrobat either -- I see the
same behaviour in things like Photoshop. I took a fancy
Photoshop 5 multi-layer image, and found I could happily open it
in Photoshop 2.something, even though the 2.something knew nothing
about layers, it still saw the full flattened image. Again, that's
just not the sort of attention to backwards compatibility I see in
most other software products, and is something Adobe is to be
commended for.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

Jules wrote:
On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:19:13 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
It wasnt flashy graphics, Just a delivery note.

Well what on earth do you need in a delivery note that requires anything
other than plain text and a few line breaks?


Having recently been involved in just that (delivery notes plus
invoices, credit notes, etc.) the answer is 'more'!

Logo.
Boxes.
Lines - vertical and horizontal.

Trying to do this in plain text is not so easy. For a start, monospaced
fonts take far more space than proportional (at an approximately similar
height). But as soon as you use proportional fonts alignment becomes far
more difficult.

--
Rod

Hypothyroidism is a seriously debilitating condition with an insidious
onset.
Although common it frequently goes undiagnosed.
www.thyromind.info www.thyroiduk.org www.altsupportthyroid.org

Jules wrote:
On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:19:13 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
It wasnt flashy graphics, Just a delivery note.

Well what on earth do you need in a delivery note that requires anything
other than plain text and a few line breaks?


Lining stuff up looks quite nice..
so a fixed width font is needed at the least.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Mark
saying something like:

I find Foxit very useful in the way it will save stuff that's not
supposed to be saved

Does it work as a firefox plug-in yet?

Yep, opens up when a .pdf is downloaded.

In article . com, Jules
.com
Hmm, I have any HTML display/reading capability turned off here. I'm
just interested in the information being sent, not lots of logos, colour
and flashy graphics...

And here. My perhaps bigotted opinion is that sending HTML pages instead of
plain text is the mark of a spammer or someone who is brainless. It doesn't
help the latter group that BillyGoatware has HTML turned on by default. If
it was OFF by default, I reckon there would also be a magmitude less malware
circulating too.

--
AJL Electronics (G6FGO) Ltd : Satellite and TV aerial systems
http://www.classicmicrocars.co.uk : http://www.ajlelectronics.co.uk

On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:49:22 +0000, Grimly Curmudgeon
wrote:

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Mark
saying something like:

I find Foxit very useful in the way it will save stuff that's not
supposed to be saved

Does it work as a firefox plug-in yet?

Yep, opens up when a .pdf is downloaded.

Thanks. I'll try this again.

--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Owing to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking most articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.
See http://improve-usenet.org

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Mark
saying something like:

I find Foxit very useful in the way it will save stuff that's not
supposed to be saved

Does it work as a firefox plug-in yet?

Yep, opens up when a .pdf is downloaded.

Thanks. I'll try this again.

I'm using v2 build 1606, so there's bound to be later improvements, but
it works fine for me.

The message
from "Dave Plowman (News)" contains these words:


Something of an exaggeration there. And the real point is that Reader
is free, so no-one has any excuse for not being able to read up to date
features.

It may be free, but the latest version may need the latest PC to work on.

But in fact it doesn't.


And not everyone uses PCs - or the latest one.

Quite. But the vast majority of computer users worldwide do use PCs.
And the latest ones are certainly not necessary to run Acrobat Reader.