CD Cross-Platform Question

[Joe]

This may be a dumb question, but I gotta ask it.

I am part of an organization that has minutes of its Board Meetings going back ten years. We are trying to preserve these records, as well as make them available to present and future Board Members.

If I (a PC user running Windows 7) burn a data CD with minutes in cross-platform files (like Word .DOC or DOCX; ODT; PDF), and copy and distribute this CD, will people who have Macs or who are running Linux be able to read these CDs? Or not?

I really do not know the answer to this question.

And (unfortunately) people have not been cooperative in trying it and reporting back the results.

 

[Spang]

I have a MacBook Pro, and I can open up all those file types.

 

[Second Summer]

Yes, that should work. As for file formats, ODT is probably the preferred format, especially for non-Windows OSes, I would think. It works in Word 2007 and later as well as OpenOffice, LibreOffice etc. PDF is well supported as well, but that's read-only. Then again, maybe that is exactly what you want.

 

[Joe]

Thanks for your replies.

I guess my main concern was not reading the individual files, but whether the file structure or formatting imposed by Windows might not allow the CD to be read on a Mac or Linux computer. Maybe I'm not articulating that well. But I will burn the CDs and pass them out.

PDFs are both good and bad. The bad I've seen is PDFs without bottom-of-page margins, that in fact slice through a line of text so that the top of the line is on one page and the bottom of the line is on the next page. But I have no control over which format is used to prepare the minutes. That is done by the Secretary.

I used to be the Secretary for the organization. When I was I always did the minutes in MS Word, since that seemed to be the word processor most people had. But Open Office has become much more popular over the years.