Emails

[agmlego.livejournal.com]

As promised here, below lie links to the various boilerplate emails I send out for various issues, including...

• ...the sending of Office attachments (first, second times): here
  
• ...the sending of Office attachments (third, fourth times): here
  
• ...the sending of Office attachments (fifth time): here
  
• ...the sending of Office attachments (sixth time): here
  
• ...the sending of unsubscribe (or personal/sensitive) messages to lists: here
  
• ...the polite asking for help in fields I am not familiar with: here
  
• ...the rude asking for help in fields I am not familiar with: here
  
• ...(NEW, adapted from here) the spamming of lists/address books with panic emails: here
  

Note that, though the files linked above are HTML files, the actual emails sent are in plaintext format. The rationale behind the HTML files above is the increased efficacy of hyperlinks when viewed in a web browser. The pages linked to are either reference materials (Google, Wikipedia, Snopes, ATLAS, etc.,) or rationale pages (like this), which are almost guaranteed to be up at all times. If you do use these documents, especially the rationale pages, please consider mirroring them on a server more personal to you. Feel free to modify these documents and the rationale pages as you see fit--I release them into the public domain.

Enjoy!

--
"Memento Mori Ergo Carpe Diem"

Comments

[guinevere33.livejournal.com]

...[S]ending people Office documents can be seen as a discourtesy because it implies that, if they don't own the programs that you use, you're not interested in whether or not they can read what you've written.

That's true. Get off your high fucking horse.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

So true.

How hard it is it to simply say "Sorry, I/we do not use Office. Please use another document format like RTF (or whatever you accept)."

It reminds me of this fucking moron who refuses to serve content to IE browsers and serves up a page about how evul IE is. Yeah, like we have a browser choice at work, dick, and if you can't serve up HTML that IE can render, you have serious problems.

[guinevere33.livejournal.com]

I mean, I'm sympathetic to a point. My dad primarily uses Unix at work and, as he has no need for them, has neither Office nor OpenOffice installed on his primary machine. So he gets pretty pissed when the secretaries insist on saving their 1-line email text as a Word document and attaching it to a blank email (it helps that this is fucking stupid). However, the appropriate response is to send them an email - and reminders will be needed every now and again - that you can't read this file format without breaking out your laptop and ask them to please accommodate your weird self.

[metao.livejournal.com]

As much as Im more than okay with antimonopolism, if your computer cant read an Office document you need to:

a. learn to use your computer (and get Office, OpenOffice etc etc)

or

b. buy a computer that was made after 2001.

Like it or not, the second most recent Office is a de facto standard.

[agmlego.livejournal.com]

Up until very recently, OpenOffice.org did not open the Office 2007 format (.docx, etc.,). Because I run solely Linux, with the occasional very lightweight (read, no Office) XP VM for work, there is not much I can do in the way of avoiding this issue. Besides, I know a number of fellow students who cannot afford Office, and thus are stuck either pirating it (not something I recommend) or being forced to go to the labs every time they want to even view a document, much less edit it.

The other issue comes with Powerpoint attachments--OO.o almost renders PPTs correctly. However, note the emphasis. It is trivially simple to get a free PDF converter and render PPTs as PDF, bypassing any issues students (this is mainly directed towards professors who cancel classes, then send the intended Powerpoint out as notes) might have in reading them.

I suspect that the issue will lessen somewhat with M$' soon-to-be support for the Open Document Formats.

--
"Memento Mori Ergo Carpe Diem"

[gholam.livejournal.com]

Office Home and Student costs eighty bucks for three seats.

[metao.livejournal.com]

Oh you are definitely right about Powerpoint. That file format is pretty much the devil.

As for pirating Office... people buy Office? lol

Doesnt Microsoft have some sort of student program where you can get Office for about 20 bucks? I know they were bringing something like that in back in 2004 or so...

[ghostdandp.livejournal.com]

I just want to make sure I understand..

You're suggesting they go from one proprietory format (office) to another (Adobe PDF, even though there are tons of converters and such, is still proprietory). Yes, you can view PDF in Linux with proper software. You can also view word documents in Linux with software (Open office). :)

[jon787.livejournal.com]

What about one for the people who respond to emails on mailing lists but for no reason they send it to the person who wrote the email instead of the list? I like to reply back to the list with their email fully quoted and above it text similar to:

I wish they'd fix that bug in the email software that removes the mailing list from the To: line of the email.

If I can identify their mail client from the headers, I usually name the mail client.

I stole the idea from here: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/10/19/844008.aspx

[agmlego.livejournal.com]

This works to a point, though only on smaller lists where it does not tend to cause the list to spam itself with stupidity.

--
"Memento Mori Ergo Carpe Diem"

[jon787.livejournal.com]

Well it serves two purposes:

1) ridicule of the person who failed to reply to list
2) gets the contents of the message that should have gone to the list onto the list

I don't see why this doesn't work on larger lists.

[gholam.livejournal.com]

You know, I've seen snobbish emails, and I've seen very snobbish emails, but this takes the cake, eats it, and asks for more.

[agmlego.livejournal.com]

Could you help me revise them to not sound snobbish? These emails are the result of collaborations with other people facing the same issues and are by no means intended to be snobbish in any way. Rather, with the exception of the few warning emails (which are used only after a long escalation, and then only with great reluctance), they are intended to politely ask the sender of the original email to change something they are doing, after presenting the case of the recipient clearly, under the assumption that most people are reasonable adults and understand that, if a simple action on their part can help another person deal with things easier, they will do it. Much like a person in a wheelchair may ask an able-bodied person to hold a door for them with no intention of seeming snobbish in the request, I send these emails to ask for a small aid from my fellow man, with 95-99% positive effect. I thank you humbly for any help you can give me to improve the writing in any or all of these emails to more politely and clearly transmit their intended messages.

--
"Memento Mori Ergo Carpe Diem"

[gholam.livejournal.com]

You are not a disabled person in a wheelchair. You're a healthy person who sits in a wheelchair and bitches at everyone around him to prove some sort of point. Therefore, no pity. Use the standards that everyone else is using, as you're perfectly capable of it, or STFU. You can easily run the free PowerPoint Viewer under wine for example.

[simoncion.livejournal.com]

Mad props. Thanks!

[agmlego.livejournal.com]

No problem. Thanks for not flaming me!

--
"Memento Mori Ergo Carpe Diem"

[ashonaut.livejournal.com]

While I agree in principle that the world shouldn't be expected to change to please a few, I also think that courtesy isn't too much to ask for. For instance, every single one of my professors requests in the syllabus and in each assignment that we all save our papers as .rtf when we submit them, because then there's no issue with compatibility. If you don't, they send it back to you with a note saying it won't be accepted as is - even if they COULD open it - because the very clear instruction was to save as .rtf.

[sgt-easton.livejournal.com]

Same thing with my profs. I even got a .docx sent to me once, then sent one back in return, which was rejected.

[shifuimam.livejournal.com]

Specific instructions are one thing. Casual correspondence is quite another, as is work situations where certain software is considered standard.

I work for a University. In my group, we have unmanaged machines - we're allowed to install whatever we want on them, and we're responsible for keeping them updated.

The majority of professors, faculty, and staff, however, use managed machines that Desktop Support maintains. They all have the same software and configuration. It makes much more sense to expect the standard, rather than to accommodate the minority - especially since the minority is generally computer savvy enough to figure things out as necessary.

Fair is Fair

[jon787.livejournal.com]

agmlego there used to send HTML only to a mailing list I was on with him. So I wrote up a little toy to make sure he was aware of this each time he did it :D

The PERL monstrosity:

http://glasstheplanet.org/~nuxi/htmlbounce.txt

And in .procmailrc:
:0c
* ^Content-Type: text/html
* ^From:.*agmlego@undisclosed\.location\.com
|/usr/local/bin/htmlbounce

In my defense to the lack of readability, I was probably a bit drunk when I wrote it. I should rewrite it in Python so its prettier.

[shifuimam.livejournal.com]

Worse still, sending people Office documents can be seen as a discourtesy because it implies that, if they don't own the programs that you use, you're not interested in whether or not they can read what you've written.

You're kidding, right? Sending people Office documents nearly always implies that you're a run-of-the-mill user who knows how to use Word, Internet Explorer, and AOL Instant Messenger. Maybe Picasa, but even that's probably a stretch.

People who send Office documents as attachments aren't thinking "haha! I don't care if agmlego can't read this! I'm going to send it anyhow because I'm so selfish and inconsiderate! muahahaha!" They're thinking "here's this status report I wrote yesterday; I need to send it to agmlego".

Not only that, but while you don't want to take the time to open an Office document in OpenOffice, you expect others to read the Gettysburg Address on the evils of closed formats? Don't you think that's a little hypocritical? If anyone sent me something like that monologue, expecting me to have the patience afterward to convert my document and resend it, I'd be more than happy to reply with a short email telling them to either open my file or fuck off.

Your entire attitude is really condescending and patronizing. Apologizing for offending someone in no way implies that you care about offending someone. In fact, the tone of all your messages seems to show me that you want to offend those around you so that you can feel special for using OSS.

[simoncion.livejournal.com]

Your entire attitude is really condescending and patronizing.

Do you know who authored this document (http://www.me.mtu.edu/~agmeyer/nooffice.html)?

[simoncion.livejournal.com]

FLAME ON, right?

[jill-idle.livejournal.com]

Although I think the message could be more brief and to the point, and perhaps 'nicer', the main point of all of this is to recognize it's the sender's responsibility to be sure they send information in a form that can be read by the receiver. Creating a document the majority can read isn't good enough. It should be readable by *the person they are sending it to*. To fail to do that means you message may not be read, and it will be your fault. I am not going to speak English to a French person and expect them to dig out their English to French translation tools/guides. I'll do my best to have it translated to French myself. It's *my* responsibility. Do you know what the first thing I do is when I'm sending a document to someone? I first send them an email asking if they can open ".xxx" type documents. If they say they can't, I'll have an exchange with them to determine what format I can convert it to that they can open. If we don't come up with a common computer format, i'll fax it to them, And failing even that, I'll mail it. To expect them to open my program's default format is smug and irresponsible. I don't do it.