In general I don't like to give answers that ignore part of the question; nobody would answer a question about Chrome with "here's how you do it in Firefox". But text-processing is turning into rather a special case -- people constantly specify a particular tool when they don't actually care what tool is used. I prefer to check first, and ideally edit the question if it turns out the asker doesn't care, but in a large majority of cases it seems like the particular tool doesn't matter.
On the other hand, if the asker really does care, you have to deal with it. I've seen cases where the asker says "no seriously, I have to use X" and people keep telling them they're wrong and they should really use Y. Answers that ignore part of the question that the asker clarifies is actually important are considered non-answers and can end up deleted
