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On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 12:53:06PM +0000, Tom Potts wrote: > On Wednesday 10 December 2008 12:26, Benjamin M. A'Lee wrote: > ... > > Of course, most of the things that people use docx/pdf for could be > > represented as plaintext, or at a push HTML, with no loss of > > information. > > PDF - Pointless Document Format. > My screen is not A4 or A5 and my printer driver can format anything to fit on > whatever paper its got in it thanks - assuming your document is so badly > written I have to print it to make sense of it. PDF is better than DOC/DOCX, as far as I'm concerned, and even ODT etc. if I don't need to edit the document, simply because xpdf is a much smaller, simpler piece of software than OpenOffice. I still wish people wouldn't use them unless it's actually necessary (i.e. probably never). Unless the presentation matters more than the actual content, all of these formats are massive overkill. > Plaintext is probably better than PDF in that it wont cost me (in terms of CPU > and diskspace) to edit or otherwise utilise your document but sensible use of > the hyperlink will make all our lives easier - assuming I cant get my > computer to talks to your computer and leave me out of it altogether.... I'd rather plaintext than HTML, for similar reasons - all computers[1] come with vi, so I can read/write plaintext anywhere; HTML adds extra flexibility in terms of formatting but more overhead in the markup used, and the tradeoff usually isn't worthwhile. If you really need to link to something, put a plain URL in and I'll open it in a browser. > Office software is to your computer what a car chassis is to the combustion > engine - stops it flying! But an engine isn't much use on its own, either... [1] All real computers, that is. -- Benjamin M. A'Lee || mail: bma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx web: http://subvert.org.uk/~bma/ || gpg: 0xBB6D2FA0 "The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html