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Comment by georgespencer | Hacker News Reader

> Just spare a thought for those of us that choose not to use Microsoft Word, and respect our right not to do so.

The price you pay for inconveniencing me into sending you a document type which might alarm or confuse a non-technical person or necessitate additional software being installed is that when I send you a .doc file you have to email me back to specifically ask that I send it in a non-.doc format. I won't judge you, but you're asking people to optimise a standard behaviour (assumption that Word is ubiquitous) for a marginal gain (catering to the tiny fraction of nerds who get so agitated by this assumption that they lecture people on the internet).

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"necessitate additional software being installed"

Every computer on the market that can read Microsoft Word documents can also read plain text without anything being installed.

"you're asking people to optimise a standard behaviour"

"Standard" according to whom? Some rough numbers from Googling from a couple of minutes:

Number of personal computers in the world: 1 billion Number of copies of Microsoft Word sold: 100 million

So, no, having Microsoft Word (or at least a legal copy of it) is not standard.

"for a marginal gain"

Again, according to whom? What is the relationship here? If he is your teacher, boss, prospective boss, or customer, the gains might be anything but marginal. It looks like he is a computing teacher, actually. I've had plenty of teachers who required work to be formatted in a specific way from which you deviated at your peril.

The assumption that everyone has Microsoft Office running on a Windows machine was never true, but in today's mobile world it's not true with a vengeance.

.doc(x) != word. For example, I really like http://www.abisource.com/ on desktops.

Having the ability to open .doc(x) files IS standard, Microsoft Word is not. Lucky we got OpenOffice, LibreOffice, AbiSource and tons of other open source, freeware, shareware, commercial off the shelf software to open .doc(x) on every imaginable platform.

EDIT: I prefer text, because I am a vimmer, but accept opening (and often sending) .docx is a part of the requirements that I can't control.

Just yesterday we had a meeting off site, my boss was driving this computer someone lent. Finsihing the meeting he had to save a couple of documents that were the result of the meeting, he looks at me and says "how the fuck do I know what Office version was this saved as? How do I know I'll be able to open this back in the office?". Me: "I refuse to fight Office to find out what version it was, save a couple with different formats!" It's not the first time I see people that usually call us "...nerds who get so agitated... " get bitten by the very tool they are teaching us should be used for some unknown efficiency variable. I wont even mention the Office versioning nightmare they have on the Citrix farm ;)

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