Michael Polák ( )
Přečteno 170278x, 26 komentářů, rubrika: (en) Archive

Czech government have declared, that .DOC (MS Word file format) became offficial text document exchange format for all government offices. This is shame, especially when compared with anti-trust efforts of U.S. governement.

Czech goverment had lot of other options: they could publish list of accepted formats, and recommend one of these formats. They should definitely list HTML as one of allowed formats. They could even mark .DOC as recommended format, but not the only offical format. They could also recommend RTF as primary format, because many Czech internet users already got used to the fact, that this is the only way to send or receive text documents if one party is using some older version of MS-Word, eg. version 6.0. Specifying only one recommended format is bad decision itself, because not all document formats fit all requirements - still, HTML is most suitable if your are talking about document exchange - because you exchange document either on paper (where file format doesn't matter, you can print .DOC files if you want...), or by e-mail (where HTML is definitely the only meaningful solution - consider eg. the fact, that there are different sets of fonts installed on different PCs, so Word document created by beginner can look very ugly on other PC, etc.)

It is true, that they have mentioned, that they plan to move to XML in future - but I afraid that in future, it may be too late. If Microsoft won't be pushed to used XML instead of proprietary binary format, they may never start using open standards.

What's worse, now it is obligatory for all government funded institutions and offices to buy copy of Microsoft Office - which means, that when I am playing taxes to my government, part of these taxes is directly transfered to Microsoft ! Yes, it was always this way, but recent announcment have almost closed doors for competition on field of office software in Czech Republic. Support of .DOC in let's say StarOffice is sufficient for most basic tasks, but you will never be able to open 100% of .DOC files in StarOffice (StarOffice refuses to open small percentage of files), as well as MS-Office users sometimes encounter problem when opening .DOC files originated in StarOffice (MS Word simply crashes when trying to open some of these files ;-)

Anyway, approach of Czech government is definitely approach of of third-world country government, manipulated by strong lobies. They have made absolutely stupid decision, which will have exactly opposite effect then recent anti-trust efforts in countries like USA.