Thread: Is it okay for a student with limited financial resources to pirate software?
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RobbieThe1st is offline RobbieThe1st
2010-10-18 , 04:52
Posts: 842 | Thanked: 1,197 times | Joined on May 2010
#241
Originally Posted by Wikiwide View Post
If you want to be sure that the document preserves colors, shapes, alignments - use either .pdf or .html. Period.

With .doc, only the program-creator knows what it meant - and even this program can damage the document and destroy it.

With .html, you can edit the document in Notepad, vi, nano, emacs, anything, and you see clearly what is going on.

With .pdf, nobody can edit it (except, maybe, Adobe Acrobat or PDFedit) - it's make once and never edit, best format for printing.
Yea, that's very true. You make a highly defined, proprietary .doc file, probably with one of the later versions (and -not- saving it in compatibility mode), then assume that a free program will read it perfectly? Yea... I said it was "good enough", not great.
For what my teachers gave out, it did the job. And I had no trouble converting my OO-designed stuff to .doc as a backup.

If you want -perfection-, or proper printing, you should be saving to a format that's designed for such. Like Wikiwide said, PDF's designed for that, and you can almost always "print to PDF" from your chosen program, then print that when you want it.
You could also try using a PostScript file, but whether that works or not depends on the printer and software installed.

That being said, I would argue that HTML -- while excellent for making a readable, formatted page viewable on different sized screens/paper -- is not going to be good at making a "perfect" printed document.


Also, NDI, the point I made earlier was that there are alternatives that -most- can use. Sure, if you are in a "professional presentation" design class, things won't "just work".
You will either need to A, purchase proper software, or B, learn to use a free alternative. And if you are doing the former, you -still- shouldn't pirate it!