I emailed Gedling county council in regards to a Council Tax query. They
replied, with the message in the form of a MS Word .doc attachment.
I appended this PS to my mail back to them:
<Quote>
PS. Can I recommend a change in policy in regards to sending documents
externally? It is a breach of 'netiquette' to send Microsoft Word documents
(.doc files), as these files can (usually) only be read using Microsoft Word.
Not everyone who has a computer has access to MS Word, and so many people
cannot read them. The format of these .doc files is a closely guarded MS
trade secret, and kept this way to prevent writers of other Word Processors
from being compatible with Word. The purpose of this is to extend Microsoft's
monopoly. I'm sure Gedling bourough council has no wish to aid a convicted
monopolist in extending thier monopoly any further!
May I recommend that in future, you use the open standard '.rtf' format for
such documents? The RTF format was developed for just this purpose, and is an
establised open standard.
</Quote>
To my suprise and delight, I got this reponse:
<Quote>
You are quite correct with regard to the .rtf format. However, I must
inform you that you are the first to query the format which probably only
goes to show that, as you say, most people use MS word.
Our external format has now been changed.
</Quote>
Nice!
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