Doc
John Henry Holliday (August 14, 1851 – November 8, 1887), known as Doc Holliday, was an American gambler, gunfighter, and trained dentist who gained notoriety in the Old West for his alliance with Wyatt Earp and participation in the 1881 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.[1][2] Born in Griffin, Georgia, to a family of means, Holliday studied dentistry at the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery, graduating in 1872, but his career was curtailed by chronic tuberculosis, likely contracted in his youth, and a growing affinity for alcohol and card games.[1][3] Migrating westward in search of drier climates to alleviate his respiratory affliction, Holliday abandoned formal dentistry for faro dealing and poker in saloons across Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico, where his sharp wit, Southern drawl, and readiness with a revolver earned him both allies and enemies.[1][3] In Tombstone, temporarily deputized during the tense feud between the Earp faction and the Cochise County Cowboys, he fired shots in the 30-second O.K. Corral clash that killed three opponents, an event tried in court where he and the Earps were cleared of murder charges amid claims of acting in the line of duty.[1][3] His involvement extended to the subsequent Earp Vendetta Ride, where he participated in the killing of suspected ambushers, including Frank Stilwell, solidifying his image as a loyal but lethal companion.[3] Holliday's life was marked by at least three documented killings—often asserted as self-defense—and numerous arrests for assault and vagrancy, reflecting a pattern of volatility exacerbated by his illness and intemperance, though exact tallies of his violent encounters remain disputed due to sparse records and frontier chaos.[3][4] Despite romanticized portrayals in later fiction and film emphasizing chivalric gunplay, primary accounts portray a consumptive wanderer whose survival hinged on gambling winnings and precarious friendships, culminating in his death from tuberculosis complications in a Glenwood Springs sanitarium at age 36.[2][3]Abbreviations and common terms
Medical and professional titles
"Doc" functions as an informal abbreviation and colloquial title for "doctor," most commonly applied to physicians and other medical practitioners skilled in healing arts.[5] This usage emerged in the mid-19th century in American English as a shortened, familiar form of "doctor," distinct from the formal abbreviation "Dr." which denotes a professional qualification.[6] The term conveys a casual or endearing tone, often employed in interpersonal interactions rather than official documentation or correspondence. In medical contexts, "Doc" is frequently used by patients, colleagues, or subordinates to address physicians (holding degrees such as M.D. or D.O.), reflecting a relational dynamic rather than hierarchical formality.[7] Its acceptability varies among professionals; some physicians embrace it for its approachability, while others perceive it as overly informal or diminutive, preferring "Doctor" in clinical settings.[8] In military environments, "Doc" serves as a standard informal title for medics, corpsmen, and combat physicians, originating from early 20th-century U.S. armed forces traditions where brevity and camaraderie shaped nomenclature. Beyond medicine, "Doc" rarely abbreviates doctoral titles in non-clinical professions, such as Ph.D. holders in academia or other fields, where formal address remains "Doctor" or the degree-specific honorific.[9] This distinction arises because "doctor" originally derives from the Latin docēre ("to teach"), but its medical connotation solidified through historical association with healing, limiting "Doc" to healthcare roles over broader scholarly ones.[10] Professional guidelines, such as those from medical boards, do not recognize "Doc" as an official title equivalent to licensed designations like M.D. or D.O., emphasizing its role in vernacular rather than regulatory usage.[11]Computing and file formats
The.doc extension designates the binary file format employed by Microsoft Word for storing word processing documents, serving as the default from early versions through Microsoft Word 2003.[12] This proprietary format, an abbreviation of "document," originated with Microsoft Word 1.0 for MS-DOS in 1983 and evolved into a de facto industry standard by the 1990s due to Word's market dominance.[13] [14]
Structurally, .doc files adhere to the Compound File Binary Format (also known as OLE Structured Storage), comprising hierarchical streams and storages that encode text, rich formatting, images, tables, macros, and metadata in a non-human-readable binary structure.[15] This design supports complex features like revision tracking and embedded objects but lacks inherent compression or XML transparency, contributing to compatibility challenges across non-Microsoft applications. Microsoft released the full technical specification in 2007 under the Open Specification Promise to enable third-party implementations and reduce vendor lock-in concerns.[12] [15]
In 2007, Microsoft transitioned the default to the .docx format with Word 2007, an XML-based, zipped structure standardized as ECMA-376 and later ISO/IEC 29500, addressing .doc's opacity and bloat while maintaining backward compatibility through built-in converters.[16] [17] Despite this, .doc persists in legacy systems, archival contexts, and environments requiring Word 97-2003 fidelity, with modern Word versions supporting read/write access but recommending .docx for new documents to leverage improved security and efficiency.[18] Other software, such as LibreOffice and Google Docs, offers import/export for .doc via reverse-engineered parsers, though fidelity varies for advanced features like custom macros.[14]
Less commonly, .doc has denoted formats in niche applications, such as PalmDoc compressed text files for Palm OS devices or Apple Macintosh DOCMaker files from the 1980s, but these are distinct from the dominant Microsoft implementation and rarely encountered today.[19]