E L Tonkin py7elt@bath.ac.uk writes: [...]
should they store their music in MP3, Windows Media Format, or Real Audio...? or their documents in Word, WordPerfect, WordPro, RTF?
Minor nits: I could have sworn I'd seen Ogg Vorbis downloads for Windows too, and everyone can use LaTeX... ;-)
You have a good point there ;-)
Everybody /can/ use LaTeX... (barring office rules and restrictions/compatibility issues) but then, the vast majority of the human race is at least as physically capable as I to take a Debian install disk and do the honourable thing.
I was just wondering how far the average person would actually go in one step. I haven't seen the Ogg Vorbis stuff for Windows, so I can't comment on its interface and general niceness/user-friendliness, but I have historically found it difficult to persuade anybody other than scientists to try LaTeX (journal publications are sometimes required in LaTeX). And, well, speaking for myself I'd rather see people using slightly nasty formats than the sort of thing that's absolutely unreadable without using the latest build of everybody's favourite monopoly's OS.
Plus, bear in mind that a lot of businesses' IT departments constrain themselves to the sort of options I described below. In short, installing and teaching anything radically new to over a thousand users is not an option. We had this once with MS Word files over an intranet; finally the decision was made that teaching people how to convert to PDF was an attainable goal - so, whilst this didn't mean we got to use a free format, we at least got as far as an 'open' format with some crossplatform compatibility.
I like lofty ideals - and certainly it is best to state the whole of those ideals at the outset - but to get best results it is probably also advisable to give second, third, and fourth best options too.
Em
// OLDSIG "All bad art is the result of good intentions." - Oscar Wilde
/* START NEWSIG */ Processor: (n.) a device for converting sense to nonsense at the speed of electricity, or (rarely) the reverse. - Tonkin's First Computer Dictionary
On 12 Jun 2001, MJ Ray wrote:
E L Tonkin py7elt@bath.ac.uk writes: [...]
should they store their music in MP3, Windows Media Format, or Real Audio...? or their documents in Word, WordPerfect, WordPro, RTF?
Minor nits: I could have sworn I'd seen Ogg Vorbis downloads for Windows too, and everyone can use LaTeX... ;-)
-- MJR