6.3.3.1. General use of office documents

Try to limit the use of office documents for the purposes they were meant for: the office.

An example: it drives most Linux users crazy if you send them a mail that says in the body something like: "Hello, I want to tell you something, see attach", and then the attachement proves to be an MS Word compatible document like: "Hello my friend, how is your new job going and will you have time to have lunch with me tomorrow?" Also a bad idea is the attachment of your signature in such a file, for instance. If you want to sign messages or files, use GPG, the PGP-compatible GNU Privacy Guard or SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificates.

These users are not annoyed because they are unable to read these documents, or because they are worried that these formats typically generate much larger files, but rather because of the implication that they are using MS Windows, and possibly because of the extra work of starting some additional programs.