Re: [Fsfe-uk] Re: AbiWord format

[Chris Croughton]

On Wed, Mar 09, 2005 at 12:25:27PM +0000, John Seago wrote:

> I have to admit that normally when CC'ing a document by email I normally 
> run the cut and paste thingy over it and paste it into the body of the 
> Email as plain text.

Anything received by me which only has an attachment is likely to get
binned unless I have explicitly requested it (for some reason my
sister's email program, when asked to send attachments, sends one
message with any plain text and another with just the attachment, so I
am used to receiving attachments from some people).

> However my complaint against the Healthcare Commission is that they could 
> not read my attachment.

So?  They are expected to spend their time on every possible format
someone might send them?

> If I were to write a post card in block capitals 
> in pencil, they could read that,

Yes, it's a clearly readable format.

> were I to send a letter in Braille, Urdu, Welsh, Scots Gaelic or any
> other of a number of languages they would accommodate me.

Languages they are required by law to accept, at least in the case of
Cymraeg and I believe Gaelic (possibly Urdu, I'm not sure what the
current list of languages is).  They would probably recognise Braille
(does anyone write it?  All of the people I know with sight problems
write (or type) in ordinary text).  I doubt, however, that someone using
1337 5P33K would be taken very seriously.  Or ROT-13...

> If I were to write in an almost illegible hand in a sealed 
> letter they would still manage to decipher it. In fact were I to use 
> almost any form of written communication and transmit it by the Royal Mail 
> it would eventually receive an answer, no matter how illegible, or in what 
> language.

If they do, that's their choice (if it is truly illegible and they can't
make out the return address either, I doubt you'd get a reply).  But if
they can't read it easily the reply is likely to be something like
"Sorry, we were unable to read your letter, could you please send it
again or contact us in some other way?"

> Yet an electronic form of word processing, in English, they are 
> unable to read, why?

Because it wasn't recognisably in English or in any other language they
understood.  Indeed, even my "last resort" option (using strings(1) to
extract text) would have failed because it's all 'text', just that the
text I'm interested in is embedded in penc.  I would have been more
annoyed had they spent taxpayers' money trying to install some special
software to read it (which they probably aren't allowed to do, because
of worries about security, viruses etc.).

Had I received it, I might possibly have bounced the email with a
request to resend in one of the supported formats (including plain
text).  Did they do that?  If so, it's the most I would expect them to
do.  They could well have binned it as being some weird kind of UCE.

> When they make all the other efforts to accommodate 
> other methods of communication, why should those using specific forms of 
> electronic communication be at a disadvantage? One factor which increases 
> my ire, is that I am paying for this with my taxes, and the Welsh who can 
> get an answer in their own language make up only 1.9% of the population, 
> (see: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/uk.html#People ), 
> and only about 26% of those actually speak Welsh.

That's still around 200,000 people by my calculations (via bc(1)).  How
many use Abiword and have the idiocy to send that format as attachments
without any plain text?  I'd never even heard of Abiword until you
posted your complaint, and I regard anyone who uses a word processor for
emails and doesn't bother to save as plain text as being not worth the
time and effort (as I said above, unless the attachment was requested
and needed to be in that format for a specific reason).

> Now all of you have kindly explained the reason that AbiWord doesn't work 
> I'm not quite so cross, It is in fact, to the best of my recollection, the 
> first time I've ever used an attachment. The original reason for making a 
> complaint in the first place had me seething anyway, and the notification 
> that couldn't read my attachment, just exacerbated matters. I will in 
> future have to cease using AbiWord.

You can still use it, as long as you use an open format for
communication.  I don't even object (much) to people who use strange
characters in email or Usenet posts because they copy&paste from broken
word processors which use odd characters for "smart quotes", the text is
usually mostly readable.

Sending important information in some format specific to a particular
program is, quite frankly, stupid.  The more important the information,
the more important it is to make sure that it is in a format which is
easy to process.  Plain text, HTML, possibly RTF and PDF, are about the
only ones for which there is near-universal support (MSWord DOC on
Windows platforms, but not all of those and fewer Mac ones).  Anything
else deserves the bitbucket unless it is expected.

Chris C