[clug] weird tender requirements

[Paul Wayper]

Mike Carden wrote:
> Speaking as someone who is trying to change the Australian government
> file format monoculture from within, I can say that in the majority of
> commonwealth agencies there is little or no thought given to the fact
> that their 'choice' of desktop environment imposes file format
> constraints on themselves and on others.
>
> While agencies *should* be encouraged to accept standards based open
> formats, AGIMO is yet to fire up on the subject and it's fair to say
> that even if they did, they'd be pretty much ignored. I broached the
> subject at a meeting of commonwealth government CIOs back in June and
> they all laughed at the idea of moving to open formats.
What's the feeling on having all exported documents - documents that
other people merely have to read, rather than edit and update - in PDF
format, for example?

> You could attach a note to the efffect that they ought to accept ODF
> or PDF or XML or <file format of choice> but I'm guessing you'd like a
> chance to actually win the tender, yeah?
You could export it in every format that MS Word reads but not .doc,
just to make the point.  And also in PDF.

Or see if you can export it in Word 1.0 format.

But if you're tendering for business, I'd just send it as a PDF.

Have fun,

Paul