From toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl Mon May 22 23:31:57 2000 Received: from moene.indiv.nluug.nl (mail@mail.moene.indiv.nluug.nl [195.109.255.217]) by dkuug.dk (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id XAA61185 for ; Mon, 22 May 2000 23:31:55 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl) Received: from localhost (moene.indiv.nluug.nl) [127.0.0.1] (toon) by moene.indiv.nluug.nl with esmtp (Exim 2.05 #1 (Debian)) id 12tyMt-0000Fz-00; Mon, 22 May 2000 22:00:03 +0200 Sender: toon Message-ID: <392991C3.86732FE3@moene.indiv.nluug.nl> Date: Mon, 22 May 2000 22:00:03 +0200 From: Toon Moene Organization: Moene Computational Physics, Maartensdijk, The Netherlands X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.07 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.2.12 i686) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: John Reid CC: SC22WG5@dkuug.dk Subject: Re: (SC22WG5.1795) Use of Word to distribute documents References: <200005221437.QAA59819@dkuug.dk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit John Reid wrote: > Proposal: That SC22 cease to use Word for document distribution > > John Reid, WG5 Convenor > > Word is not a standard and is unsafe (it provides a mechanism for > the import of viruses). It is not readily available to those running > systems other than Microsoft's. Marisa Peacock reports that she can > easily circulate documents in HTML or PDF instead. Another thing that most people seem to forget is that Word documents are often "edited" versions of other documents. The way the "deletion" of the deleted parts is done makes it possible to retrieve them. A Norwegian guy wrote on a Web page a few months ago how he used this to gain knowledge about the plans of his competitors by using WordPerfect on Linux, which (apparently) was able to show the "deleted" parts. Note that this is hearsay, on my part. I have to use Microsoft Word as the chairman of the works council in my Institute, but personally would rather use a key punch. -- Toon Moene - mailto:toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl - phoneto: +31 346 214290 Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG Maartensdijk, The Netherlands GNU Fortran 77: http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/g77_news.html GNU Fortran 95: http://g95.sourceforge.net/ (under construction)