Actually, at work i try to send restructuredText + a neatly generated .pdf.
Looks better, is easily editable.
As one of the few Linux/LibreOffice users i HATE(HATEHATEHATEHATE) .doc and especially .docx. It's a nightmare to work with and collaborate on it between MS Word and LibreOffice Writer. Something always gets screwed up.
Please, Office people in the world: Uninstall the nightmare that is called MS Office. LibreOffice will do everything you will ever (everevereverever) need.
And if it doesn't have to be WYSIWYG: restructuredText is a pretty, awesome, lightweight, cross platform, easily editable solution to a lot of crap that i can find in my inbox (including rst2pdf and rst2odt and rst2html, etc etc ;) ).
I have to vigorously disagree. I used OpenOffice exclusively my entire college career and am an avid LibreOffice user now, however you are simply incorrect when you state that LibreOffice comes even close to MS Office. If you're going to say that LibreOffice smacks MS Office then I'm going to posit that you have never used a pivot table in Calc, and that you do not work in a corporate environment. In addition, for the 10 years that I have used Open/LibreOffice, I have not once had a problem opening any of the hundreds of .doc and .docx files sent to me via email.
In addition to pivot tables do not forget trying to do anything with MS Access. I have also noticed that opening powerpoint presentations can grind LO to a halt. Most recently the Stream Ciphers lecture from Boneh's class took forever to open in LO on a 6 core AMD with 8 gigs of ram...
I agree that most of the time opening .doc/.docx with OO/LO is problem free. But you never used StarOffice, back in the day things were not always so easy:) Plus StarOffice was not guaranteed to stay open;)
May i ask if you edited every of those files with Writer, saved them as .docx again and they had no format changes in Word? If so, i don't believe you. Happens far too often for me.
Also, all the excel sheets i have in my inbox contain just simple calculations. In my experience Excel is used by most corporate persons for simple things. Make a Todo List, add some numbers, structured text more or less..
And still, some things don't work out. The last powerpoint i got, had weird text formattings (making it unreadable) in LibreOffice.
The last Excel i got contained 2 emails embedded (drag&drop windows stuff). Hooray.
As a consultant i am working all day with corporate people in very different areas, and i bet that most of them don't even know what advanced features can be used.
Also, in my opinion, Excel should only be used for the simple cases. If you want to do some deeper analytics on data, i don't believe it the right tool to do. But that's probably just me...
for the 10 years that I have used Open/LibreOffice, I have not once had a problem opening any of the hundreds of .doc and .docx files sent to me via email.
My clients currently love sending me change requests as .doc files which contain a table of fields describing the work they want done. For some reason LibreOffice only displays the first page if the table is split between more than one page. After a while of annoyance, I noticed I if I use "select all" it would select even the off page text (despite LibreOffice saying "page 1 of 1") and I can paste it (table and all) into a new document and everything works fine. I don't know why this problem occurs, but to me it is a minor annoyance when they send me .doc files (and was a major annoyance before I found the workaround).
What is the difference between sending a .doc or a .odt? I say this as someone who has not used office since staroffice released working binaries for redhat (3.0.3 I think).
Not much, except that .odt is a true open standard, that the "editor" is free and that the "editor" is available for every major platform. And practically does everything you need, as well.
Now, do you think i would pay money for MS Office? Even if i would, i couldn't because it's Windows/Mac only anyway.
I'd say, sending .odt/.docx around is the least preferable option but .docx additionally has far more downsides for me as well..
"Far more downsides for me as well." Sadly most people in the world do not care about what is easier/cheaper for you (and me). The most widely distributed office program is MSOffice, not libreoffice. MS Office users would have to bear the costs of installing/learning a new office product.
As one of the few Linux/LibreOffice users i HATE(HATEHATEHATEHATE) .doc and especially .docx. It's a nightmare to work with and collaborate on it between MS Word and LibreOffice Writer. Something always gets screwed up.
Please, Office people in the world: Uninstall the nightmare that is called MS Office. LibreOffice will do everything you will ever (everevereverever) need.
And if it doesn't have to be WYSIWYG: restructuredText is a pretty, awesome, lightweight, cross platform, easily editable solution to a lot of crap that i can find in my inbox (including rst2pdf and rst2odt and rst2html, etc etc ;) ).