subject: death to DOCX posted: Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:18:49 +0100
[recently sent to a customer, who had received a Word 2007 document
in DOCX format ("Office Open XML" eg. M$-proprietary BS) - Stu]
...the deal is basically, that the DOCX format is poorly supported by
everyone except Microsoft.
Everyone else supports the OpenDocument standard. Microsoft
deliberately chose to reject OpenDoc and instead try and create their
own "standard".
The result is that Microsoft users can't open documents created by
everyone else, and everyone else can't open documents created by
Microsoft.
This is why we have open standards, so that everyone can work
together. The reason DOCX is not widely supported is because it will
undermine all the work everyone else in the world has done on
OpenDoc.
The available document converters are not known for their
reliability, and I certainly don't recommend using one to convert an
important business document. It might miss out a whole table of
important data (for example).
Definitely, the best course of action is to ask the sender to resend
in a standard format. This will let you open the document, and also
discourage the sender from sending documents in non-standard formats
in the future.
Back in the 90's this kind of foolishness might have been acceptable,
but in 2008 Microsoft have no excuse for deliberately undermining the
market and creating confusion amongst users, simply for the purpose
of lining their own pockets.
