[Nottingham] CVs, Linux, and amusement

[Simon Huggins]

On Fri, May 23, 2003 at 03:29:53PM +0100, Robert Postill wrote:
> The flip side of that is that imposing a standard is no better than
> being M$. If we pout and tut and say you can't be free to give me
> information in your best-expressed format then really that's *my*
> problem for being too arrogant to accommodate you.  

There's a big difference here (and I imagine mostly I'm preaching to the
converted, so sorry in advance) between imposing a proprietary data
format and imposing an open data format.

If your best expressed format is MS Word then you can take MS Word and
export it to say RTF or even PS.  Likewise with an open format.

If the _required_ format is MS Word then unless you buy MS Word you
can't really produce this.  Sure you can use OOo and get close to what
MS Word would produce (probably close enough) but you'll never really
know how close unless you open it in MS Word.

So to get a job, suddenly you have to spend £339.49 [0] on Microsoft Word.

> I'd far rather be pragmatic and say that I'll do my best to help you

I'm pragmatic.  Whilst you're looking for a job you have to really give
in to the demands of silly HR departments or risk cutting out a large
part of the market.  That doesn't mean I like it though.

Don't get me started on other abuses like .docs by email for a few lines
of text or even for pictures embedded in Word documents just to show me
the text of an error message.


Simon.

[0] PC World don't sell MS Word separately (does anywhere?).  That's
    their price from their website today for MS Office XP Standard

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