[wellylug] TradeMe Linux jobs

Atom Smasher atom at smasher.org
Sun Jun 29 19:09:36 NZST 2008


On Sun, 29 Jun 2008, Bruce Hoult wrote:

> Using Word yourself is a perfectly fine thing to do. It's an excellent 
> piece of software (especially if you don't run it on Windows).
============

i have nothing nice to say here, so i won't say anything.


> Using it to distribute finished (not collaborative) documents to others 
> shows lack of clue, for all sorts of reasons:
=============

how many times i've gotten a company newsletter, invite, or other 
"finished" product in MS word format, and it always looks like a horses 
ass. if there's one thing that PDF excels at (if it's properly prepared), 
it's making sure that *everyone* sees the same fonts, formatting, images, 
etc, not to mention that my eyes aren't drawn to red & green squiggly 
lines under things that windoze thinks is a typo (if i open it on a 
company computer that's defiled with windoze). in that regard it really is 
electronic paper, in a way that no other format comes close to (except 
(E)PS).

before my mom got a mac, she decided to save money by doing "web design" 
for herself, using M$-word (it saves as HTML, so it must be good for 
making websites, right?). i tried to explain to her that it may look ok 
with internet-exploiter, but using *ANY* other browser it really looks 
like crap. after she got a mac she saw how it looked in safari & 
firefox... well, i told her so.


> - it requires the other to have proprietary software, capable of reading 
> a secret document format.
>
> - even if they have Word themselves, it is entirely likely that your 
> careful formatting and choice of fonts will be destroyed.
>
> - there is no reason for someone else to have an (easily) editable copy 
> of your document, especially a CV.  If they think, for example, that it 
> would be better for it to be customized for a particular job application 
> (which of course it should be) then they should communicate the ways in 
> which it should be modified to *you*, not take it upon themselves to 
> butcher it.


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         ...atom

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