[Qcwa] ref special character sets, excel, etc

[Dick Rucker]

on 9/6/02 16:44, Bob Plamondon at bobp@att.net wrote:

> By the way, there is now "Open Office" and it has become VERY POPULAR on
> the LINUX platforms - which should take care of downloads/manipulations
> for everyone but the Macs, and they can run the special version of
> Office made for them.  (or maybe X can even handle Open Office?)

Since Mac OS X is built on top of the Berkeley standard version of Unix, it
can run Open Office from Sun just fine -- or so folks who have tried it say.

Many Mac users, like myself, have Microsoft Office for Mac OS X, or
Microsoft Office 98 written for Mac OS 9, and either will exchange files
with Windows users of Microsoft Office without difficulty.  At least that's
been my experience.

Since I'm the secretary of Vic Clark Chapter 91, I often send attached files
via email to our members from my Mac, nearly all of whom now have email
addresses.  The file format I now use is Rich Text Format (RTF), and I'm not
getting complaints back now like I did when I tried other versions of
formatted files.   It appears that everyone on our emailing list can handle
.rtf files, regardless of the operating system they're using.

To cover all bases, I usually publish an unformatted text file (.txt) copy
of most .rtf files that I post on our website, but those files loose
readability in the process.

When it comes to attaching Excel files, I don't know what our experience
would be, since Excel isn't a common everyday tool for many folks.  But for
those who use it, and I do, it would be an excellent way to present
membership data in a more useful form.

Dick Rucker, KM4ML