Heil Arlie,

--- In norse_course@..., Arlie Stephens <arlie@...> wrote:

>Now you want to switch to new formats (MS-RTF, and earlier
> a font whose result (for me) would be seeing ö as q). Why keep
changing?
>
> Personally, I'd much rather you stayed with something I could use,
rather
> than abandoning support for the Linux users who are already in your
class.
> Even switching to something I potentially _can_ translate forces me
to put
> effort into figuring out how to translate yet another microsoft
proprietary
> format, and possibly write tools for the purpose; this is time and
effort
> I then do not have available for studying the language.
>
> However, as you said, it's your class. If you want to make it too
hard for
> me to read your documents, I'll simply drop out of the class.

By all means, no! That is, don't drop out of the class. Of course we
don't _want_ to make it hard for anyone to read our documents!

The formats available right now do not reflect any specific policy of
ours. They reflect, rather, a lack of policy. The discussion about
formats, by people much more knowledgeable about them than me, has
left me confused. I got the impression that .rtf was the best format
(please bear with my stupidity, I'm as much a beginner in computer
standards as many here are in Old Norse), which was why I had let it
suffice. The format which we had previously presented, along with
the .doc, was .txt. The first lessons aren't available in .txt now
because I haven't taken the time to convert the updated .doc files
to .txt (it takes a little effort).

Basically, I had no idea what was going on in the formats issue, and
no understanding of it whatsoever (being an unimaginative MS user) so
I bailed and let it hang. I ask you all not to accuse me of any
unfriendly policy, because there is no policy.

Can someone who understands the issue well enough, such as you,
Arlie, please clarify it to me and write a workable list of the
formats you believe are necessary? I'm all will, you see, and once I
know what to do, I'll do it :)

BTW, I'm getting the impression that Microsoft's position in America
is somehow not nearly as dominating as in countries like Iceland.
Lots of Icelanders haven't even _seen_ non-MS OS. Perhaps this whole
issue is a cultural misunderstanding (?).

Óskar