Is there a way to convert those? For some reason the administration at my university uses .PUB files. I read some old advice on a webpage to open them in Preview and print to save as .PDF, but they won't even open.
iMac 24",
Mac OS X (10.6.2),
2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo; 1 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
You can't open Microsoft Publisher files with anything other than Microsoft Publisher. If the administration at your university is expecting people to have Publisher, they're crazy. They need to convert those to PDF or something else that normal people will be able to open.
Oh, I agree. I had sent them a .PDF file (which their call for papers said they accepted) and got back a snarky message "Please send it in a form that most people can open."
I put in a query at the university library's interactive media center too. Maybe that office can talk some sense into the other ones and get them off of their .PUB kick.
A snarky response like that deserves polite education in response:
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The PDF format is an international standard for documents, as specified ISO/IEC 32000-1:2008 that is independent of hardware and operating system. It is the most widely supported and pervasive document format (outside of HTML and plain text) in existance.
There are currently free tools for all currently distributed operating systems for both viewing and creating PDF-formatted data, including desktop computers, e-readers, PDAs and mobile phones. Macintosh computers come with their own built-in support for reading and writing PDF documents, while Windows users can download a PDF viewer from Adobe.com or elsewhere (though this is seldom necessary as most computer vendors pre-install it because most of their documentation is in PDF format). PDF is the standard for document retention and the defacto standard for the commercial print industry.
The .PUB format is an unpublished and proprietary format used by Microsoft Office Publisher, a product that is shipped as part of the Small Business and Professional versions of Microsoft Office (it's not available in the Standard or Student editions). Only two other programs are available capable of reading the .PUB format: Adobe PageMaker and Corel Draw X4. Unlike PDF, Publisher documents are generally not accepted by commercial printers. Publisher documents cannot be viewed without the application (unlike PDF), they cannot be viewed by non-Windows users, on mobile platforms, or on electronic readers.
PDF is accessible to screen-reading and assistive technologies for the visually impaired. Publisher documents, however, are not. PDF would therefore, be the preferred format were the university to choose to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The PDF file format is also indexable by web search engines and desktop indexing and search tools, whereas Microsoft Publisher documents are ignored by web search engines, non-Windows desktops, and Windows systems not using the Business or Professional versions of Microsoft Office. In a practical sense, Publisher documents are simply not discoverable in a search, where PDF content would be.
In short, I would ask that your department please use a form that most people can open (PDF).
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