Playing Nicely with Others

by David Czepanski Mar 13, 2006

You know the drill. You’re asked to email a document to someone; you have a Mac, they don’t… so what’s the best way to make sure that they will be able to open what you send them? What about formatting? How can you make sure that what they get looks the same as what you sent??

This happens a lot and it may be one of the world’s great time-wasters.

“Hi, Bill. Yeah, can you resend that report? I don’t have SuperTexter 5.12* and I can’t open it using ProPrint 3.1*”
*insert any number of applications here.

What about MS Office and Word? Well, sure - that’s an option; if you want to pay for it but personally, I will not intentionally give micro$oft any money if I can possibly avoid it. Office doesn’t come bundled with a Mac, although there is a trial version on most new machines.

So what are the options? How do Mac users play nice with others?

Let’s look at text first.

The obvious choice is to download a free office suite which is compatible to MS Office. There are a couple of these around but the one I settled on was Neo Office. It’s not super fast and I’m told that it is lacking some of the more advanced features of the commercial applications, but at least you can open and create MS Office documents without shelling out hundreds of dollars. Neo Office has coped with all the Word, Excel and PowerPoint files I have been sent so far.

We don’t have time to go into the whole “how did MS Office documents become the ‘standard’ anyway??” right now. The point is, I have been able to manage very well thanks to the hard work of those that created Neo Office and Open Office and chances are you will too - power users excepted!

But what if you’re on a dial up connection and don’t want to download over 100Mb…

Most word processing applications, including AppleWorks, have the option to save as Rich Text Format or RTF. This was how I worked between my PowerBook 150 and the PCs at teachers college in 1997. Writing in ClarisWorks and saving as RTF, I was able to work on my PowerBook saving the file on a PC formatted floppy disk. I could then take this to college, open it on the PC and print it out.

The rules for RTF are sometimes a little vague and some formatting may be lost in translation.

If the file is only to be read at the other end then making a PDF is a great option.

OS X has the ability to make a PDF from practically any application. It’s in the print dialog; instead of printing, choose to save (or “print”) the document as a PDF.

This is a really good option for a couple of reasons. First, you can be confident that the PDF that you send will look the same at the other end. This means that you can use your favorite application to make a document and at, the end of it, just make it into a PDF and send it off. At the other end, all that’s needed is a PDF reader - and Adobe Acrobat, the Grandfather of PDF readers, is free.

The downside of this method is that it’s read-only at the other end. If what you’re sending needs to be altered, this isn’t going to work so well. The recipient can copy and paste the text into another application if they need to. For the most part, things that I send to people are not going to be changed at the other end and so a read only PDF is perfect.

Finally, we should not forget TextEdit. This little gem actually opens Word documents and does a pretty good job of it. It’s a lean mean text editor that saves in Rich Text or plain text; if all else fails a plain text file will at least get the content to someone else. Everyone can open a plain text file!!

How about pictures? Can we all agree to just send the images as attachments rather than embed them into a one gigabyte PowerPoint slide show? Jpegs are great for lots of colors, gifs are great for a few colors and PNG’s are also widely used.

Remember to optimize your personal pictures too. It’s a hassle to download half a dozen full size, uncompressed pictures even if you have a fast connection. Remember folks, this is about good manners!!

You can make your pictures smaller by
1) making their physical size smaller e.g. going from 800x600 pixels down to 300x200 pixels dramatically reduces the file size and therefore the download time of the picture.
2) reducing the number of dots per inch down (dpi) to 72 or somewhere down there. If all you’re doing is sending photos to your friends or family to look at, this sort of resolution is fine. YouI’d go may need to keep it higher if you’re going to print the images.
3) compressing the image

Free programs like the Gimp and Graphic Converter have these options but iPhoto does a good job of doing all of this for you.

What about spreadsheets? Here Excel really does rule the roost. The main reason for that is that it’s actually a really good application. If someone sends you an Excel spreadsheet, Neo Office and the other variations will open it however things like macros may be lost. Most of the spreadsheets I deal with are simple and work fine.

If you’re trying to move between AppleWorks Spreadsheet and Excel (or any other spreadsheet applications) you can always try and export the file as a tab delimited or comma separated text. If you’re on the same Mac, sometimes a simple copy and paste will do the trick.

Finally, let’s not overlook email. Let’s not use Word attachments where the body (or even the subject line) of the email will suffice. You don’t need a Word document to say that a meeting has shifted from 4.00pm to 4.30pm!!

I’m sure that there are heaps of other tips and tricks of how to be a good citizen and how to play nicely with others. So do your bit and let us know what they are!

Comments

  • “I will not intentionally give micro$oft any money if I can possibly avoid it.”

    Yikes…I didn’t know we hated Microsoft - sorry, micro$oft - this much. For a second there I thought I stumbled on Linux Matters or something. At least over there, it wouldn’t be so hypocritical to criticize MS for pursuing the dollar sign.

    ANYWAY, back on topic. I’ve tried NeoOffice on my mom’s mac, and I must say, it feels like someone tried to copy MS Office but forgot they were on a mac. It doesn’t even fully utilize Aqua, though at least it does better than OpenOffice. So no, I don’t recommend people “play nice” with this.

    You’ve left a glaring omission: iWork. As a college student, I chose this instead of MS Office for my new mac due to being 1/3 the cost with my discount. Also, it doesn’t try to copy the tired old toolbar interface of Office.

    Admittedly, my new mac hasn’t arrived yet, so I can’t say I’ve put iWork thru its paces. But it CAN read/write .doc, .rtf, and .ppt files. If I ever need to read Excel stuff, I’ll bite the bullet and dl NeoOffice.

    Here’s to playing nicely with others - both with compatible software and non-dogmatic editorials grin

    Oskar had this to say on Mar 13, 2006 Posts: 86
  • Lovely article David, I wish there were more like it. In fact I wish buying a PC and being allowed to use it would include the lecture and “Yes I will do so” signature under an informative text like this. Far too many people in front of Computers have exactly ZERO idea about what they are doing. Most text programs for example will automatically save to their proprietary format. Which is not a problem to people who know

    a) that there are other formats
    b) which format they want
    c) what a chooser is and how to use it
    But then again, far too many people… you get my drift.

    If you want to drive a car it is taken for granted that you could inflict terrible damage with it to you & other people. Therefore it is agreed that you cannot drive without a license (and insurance, in civilized countries). For some bizarre reason it is not being realized that the personal computer holds equal potential, but since the damage potential of a PC is more “virtual” - it does not come crashing through your fence at 3am most of the time just because the user is drunk - you need no license.

    You fail to mention the potential safety hazards of certain formats. I for one do not accept anything in DOC format. When people do send me one anyway - they do even if you tell them not to, it is very interesting - I deny working with it until they send me a PDF. Or plaintext in the Email, just as you propose. Sometimes they then yammer. I then tell them some interesting facts about their computer from the DOC file. That ususally helps.

    The true problem is that we have developed a culture of users who are not only totally ignorant about what they do, they also reluctant to learn or change their behaviour. It is sad that the only thing that seems to help is learning though pain & frustration.

    Bad Beaver had this to say on Mar 13, 2006 Posts: 371
  • Oh and did I mention that most people can’t even use Email, for example have no idea what “BCC” is for? Just the other day I was sent some information about an album release (unrequested by the way) and the “helpful soul” sending the mail had put roughly 400 people into “TO”. At least the admin agreed about this being a very, very wrong thing to happen & excused after I sent them a rose scented letter in return.

    Bad Beaver had this to say on Mar 13, 2006 Posts: 371
  • The true problem is that we have developed a culture of users who are not only totally ignorant about what they do, they also reluctant to learn or change their behaviour.

    If I understand you, I disagree fundamentally with this position. It is absolutely not the job of computer users to be clued-up about things like document formats. It’s the role of the industry to make it easy to ‘play fair’, and if that means the role is to come up with easy ways of opening and sharing documents that doesn’t require paying microsoft for the privilege, they should be thankful for the opportunity. (I’m not saying we shouldn’t try and spread the word btw - I absolutely laud this article’s message.)

    My philosophy supervisor insisted that we sent him essays in “microsoft format”. I just sent them as pdfs instead (the integration is one of my favourite features of OS X). He didn’t mind. People for just want to be able to open this crap, and who can blame them?

    Benji had this to say on Mar 13, 2006 Posts: 927
  • Ben, ideally, of course. Ideally things would integrate perfectly and just work. Realistically that is simply not the case. Using a networked computer is a minefield for the uninitiated person. Of course it would be great if the industry came up with the perfect infallible product by next tuesday. It is not happening though. (Baby steps are being taken. Look at Bonjour for example. Stunning.) You cannot blame people for wanting things to “just work”. We here use Macs, we are used to just that attitude I guess. Yet I do think a minimum level of involvement about what one is actually doing, knowing which lever will do what, is very helpful and beneficial to everyone.

    Bad Beaver had this to say on Mar 13, 2006 Posts: 371
  • Yet I do think a minimum level of involvement about what one is actually doing, knowing which lever will do what, is very helpful and beneficial to everyone.
    Beaver, ideally, of course. Ideally people would integrate perfectly and just work. Realistically that is simply not the case.
    ;P
    I think it’s always going to be the case that the majority of computer users don’t know or care about what they’re actually doing. Thankfully there are people who do know generally in good enough supply to help the ignorati out. I think the most productive call-to-arms is addressed at those people, since they protentially have lots of influence on the way the rest of the population uses a computer (in terms of software choice, etc.)

    The power of waxing lyrical is not to be underestimated. My neighbour just bought a mac!

    Benji had this to say on Mar 13, 2006 Posts: 927
  • “I will not intentionally give micro$oft any money if I can possibly avoid it.”

    I cannot moreso recommend you to listen to this, David: http://mymac.com/showarticle.php?id=2268

    I didn’t choose to purchase Microsoft Office with my Mac because it was compatible with PCs. I choose it because it’s an awesome application on the Mac.

    Although I do despise receiving word documents. I always make a point to only send out pdf documents.

    Luke Mildenhall-Ward had this to say on Mar 13, 2006 Posts: 299
  • Good one, Ben wink
    What I perceive as problematic here is this certain nonchalant callousness regarding the cause of one’s actions.
    A: “Excuse me, please do not use document type X, it may cause massive problems”
    B: “Yeah? But everybody uses it, so what?”
    Now if it wasn’t for the Net, it wouldn’t matter. This type of user normally doesn’t even bother with backups. Evolution would take care of it. In the networked scenario, these specimen take down others with them. This is why ignorance can only be looked at with a mild eye due to the general PC-illiteracy of the common user, but cannot be ignored in any case.

    Bad Beaver had this to say on Mar 14, 2006 Posts: 371
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