Picture the scene, the busy dogcollar receives an email from the diocesan department of leg-waxing and nose-hair plucking (apologies if there is one) asking them to publicise their Saint Elizabeth (of Hungary) beauty event. Wanting to be a helpful sort the dogcollar send the poster to their printer only to be met with the dumb insolence version of 2001's Hal (i.e it can't even be bothered to tell you that it is sorry but it can't 'do that').
It only Windows wasn't in league with the devil a simple click would but bring up this dialogue box:
Why do diocesan staff (and a few others besides) persist so with this extremely naff programme? The only viewer/converter I have found cost money and I don't see why I have to pay for the privilege of using my ink, time and money to overcome something that the originator should have blinking well known (and I know they do because I have (very patiently) on a number of occasions told some of the persistent offenders about this problem). The bottom line is that there are NO plug-ins, viewers or any other means for dealing with a .pub file other than to have a copy.
This means that anyone in the 21st century probably not only hasn't got Publisher but doesn't even know what it was!
A polite request to all who would spend countless hours designing awful posters on an awful programme for me to not be able to even enjoy the laugh that seeing it might give me - STOP IT!
Some advice would be to distribute posters and the like in pdf or doc files but of course you can generate neither from Publisher so everyone would be better off if you used Word and exported the finished article as a pdf (doesn't need Word to open it) or as a Word document (.doc, which does require Word or open office0.
And a plea to stop wasting my precious time on sidetracks, detours and frustrations like this. We are supposed to be good at communicating, so why not give it a try?
Pax
7 comments:
Thought it was just me!
Don't think we are the same diocese but I received a 'poster' from our mission department in the dreaded publisher format. Couldn't open it but found someone who could - took me fifteen minutes each way and another fifteen at the person's computer to find it looked like the work of a mentally deranged UrangUtang.
An hour of real work down the drain Grrrrr!
How about we start a publisher liberation front?
I still use Publisher but I would not dream of sending a file to anybody else. Mind you I still use Word 2003 and have not quite stopped using Lotus Approach as my database.
Bite on that!
I was going to respond using WordStar or perhaps WordPerfect! I don't mind what anyone uses as long as they do it in the privacy of their own home. It only becomes a problem when they get me involved!
I usually put posters together in InDesign and would never be daft enough to send out native ID files for general consumption, that's what PDF files are for.
This post has got me thinking about what I have used and seen gone: Lotus 123, WordStar, BoeingCalc and so many others that were 'The App of choice' - happy daze :)
Now what about hardware?
Pax
Lotus 123 was an excellent program and had functions such as MOD before Excel had them.
.pdf rules! I DTP in PagePlus and export as .pdf ... not difficult to read, and not easy to edit - I send it out how I want it!!
Using a Mac now, so have Pages. Struggle with some of the Microsoft stuff. Had to buy Mac Office for my daughter, as Pages isn't up to handling her college stuff....!
Pages is great glossy output application but the loss of an Apple specific Wordprocessor is a bit sad, but then again Word does it so well, why compete or work to reinvent wheels.
Seems we're all in the 21st century here because, indeed, pdf does indeed rule when it comes to getting stuff out there in a readable format.
ISO32000 (Portable Document Format)
Does exactly what is says on the tin!
Thanks for for comments
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