With regard to the sidebar on MSWORD and the news article, here is my reply, as requested:
Quote:
It is not important what I think, what is important is what the people whom I communicate (and work with) think and use. I must communicate in formats that they use in their business operations. For most large companies, that means: MSWORD, ASCII, ASCII/HTML, POWERPOINT, EXCEL, PDF, FLASH. Most of these formats are vendor proprietary and they all are 'de facto' standards in the business world. I don't dictate to people how to commuicate, I accept and create communications in their format because the goal is to [I] communicate[I]. I don't think it is wise to allow personal bias to stand in the way of communications.
I'm not a supporter of (IT) religious wars and jihads either and don't find any userfulness in them. Bashing products and companies has little value. If two people want to communicate using the "foo" format, then that is their choice, freedom and right. Cooperation is based on mutual gain. Obviously applications like MSWORD, PPT, and XLS have a broad base of users who like to use them.... they do have a choice, many choices.