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Chapter 4
The RTF files produced by Word can get crazy if they include complex
formatting, tables, graphics, or objects embedded from other Microsoft
applications, so you may want to simplify your document first. On the other
hand, whatever application you use to open the RTF file might simplify things
for you--the text will appear (more or less) the same, with page breaks, italics,
tables, and possibly even footnotes, but most of the other Word-related junk
not recognized by your application will be ignored.
NOTE
RTF uses the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), PC-8, Macintosh, or
IBM PC character set to control the representation and formatting of a document, both
on the screen and in print. See the Rich Text Format specification at http://latex2rtf
.sourceforge.net/rtfspec.html.
S T O P S E N D I N G W O R D D O C S !
If you must continue to use Word, at least try not to inflict this punishment on the
rest of us. Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman encourages people
who dislike receiving Word doc files to follow his example:
*
"For about a year,
I've made a practice of responding to Word attachments with a polite message
explaining why the practice of sending Word files is a bad thing, and asking the
person to resend the material in a nonsecret format. . . . If we all do this, we will
have a much larger effect. People who disregard one polite request may change
their practice when they receive multiple polite requests from various people. We
may be able to give `Don't send Word format' the status of netiquette, if we start
systematically raising the issue with everyone who sends us Word files."
As a result, a minor revolt is spreading across the Internet, as people post
web pages explaining, in an ever-so-polite manner, why they will not accept Word
attachments:
· "MS-Word is not a document exchange format" by Jeff Goldberg
(www.goldmark.org./netrants/no-word/attach.html)
· "Don't send Microsoft Word documents to me" by Jonathan de Boyne Pollard
(http://homepages.tesco.net/~J.deBoynePollard/FGA/dont-send-word-
documents.html)
· "Please don't send Word Documents by email" by Tobias Brox
(www.cs.uit.no/~tobias/NEW/word-rejection.html)
· "Avoid e-mail attachments, especially Microsoft Word" by Neal McBurnett
(http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/attachments.html)
· "Attachments in proprietary formats considered harmful" by Manuel Chakravarty
(www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~chak/email.html)
*
Stallman, Richard. "We Can Put an End to Word Attachments." GNU project. See
www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html.
T I P F O R W O R D A D D I C T S
As a general rule, you can lose the revision logs and other Word weirdness by
saving the Word document as an RTF file that people can edit easily or as a PDF file
that looks great but can't be edited easily. Choose File Save As and pick the RTF
file format from the Format drop-down menu. Creating a PDF file is more complicated,
thanks to Microsoft--see the section "PDF Was Made for This" later in this chapter.
jsntm_02.book Page 76 Wednesday, September 28, 2005 1:10 PM
No Starch Press
© 2005 by Tony Bove