As an adjunct to this, I encourage everyone with school-age kids to contact school boards and the like to encourage the school systems to require open formats for materials meant to be communicated to parents and students. It's rare a week goes by without one of my kids coming to me with a "Dad, this file won't open..." complaint--it's usually a .docx with undocumented weirdness embedded in it; last week it was something called a .pub file.
I've been working with some people--teachers and admin folks--in my local school district. They seem open to changing the way they store files, but most have never even considered that there's any option--they hit "Save" and what happens after that isn't their problem. It never crosses their minds that what they've just saved may be, to Linux and Mac households, about as useful as a clay tablet embossed with cuneiform.
Mostly what's needed is a little education in the ability even some Microsoft apps have of saving in .odt, .pdf, or some other open format--it doesn't cost the school systems a thing. I encourage y'all to ping your school boards to get the education going.
Authored Comments
As an adjunct to this, I encourage everyone with school-age kids to contact school boards and the like to encourage the school systems to require open formats for materials meant to be communicated to parents and students. It's rare a week goes by without one of my kids coming to me with a "Dad, this file won't open..." complaint--it's usually a .docx with undocumented weirdness embedded in it; last week it was something called a .pub file.
I've been working with some people--teachers and admin folks--in my local school district. They seem open to changing the way they store files, but most have never even considered that there's any option--they hit "Save" and what happens after that isn't their problem. It never crosses their minds that what they've just saved may be, to Linux and Mac households, about as useful as a clay tablet embossed with cuneiform.
Mostly what's needed is a little education in the ability even some Microsoft apps have of saving in .odt, .pdf, or some other open format--it doesn't cost the school systems a thing. I encourage y'all to ping your school boards to get the education going.