Agreed. The problem is not unsolved, though docx files recently forced me to make manual modifications to my Open Office so as to be able to read them. Fortunately, I expect this problem will become rarer as formats become relatively standardised.
regards, Darryl On 28/11/2007, Terry Hancock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Denton Andrews wrote: > > We are all using word processors, whether proprietary or not, if we are > > practicing law. We may also be using some forms of proprietary time > keeping, > > administrative management, or other law office tool ( which usually > works > > only on a Microsoft OS) But if you try to convert your office documents > or > > try to talk to someone who only uses Word, or whatever, you must have > the > > software on your OS to convert or communicate. Without some way to > > immediately convert or translate the document, you are going no where. > The > > programmers of the world seem to be oblivious of this problem. I think > that > > is because they are not word processor specific. They do not appreciate > the > > communication problem we are facing. > > It has been a couple of years since I have seen a DOC file that Open > Office Writer (v2) can't open. I still make a point of complaining about > the use of DOC files just for the principle of the thing (and because > people keep sending me 65 KB emails in order to express 10 lines of > plain text), but in practice, they are not that hard to deal with. > > When I did see problems, it was with exotic documents like fill-in forms > and/or heavy use of application embedding -- which probably aren't even > compatible between different versions of MS Word, so you're going to > have those problems even with MS Office installations. > > In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to find that OpenOffice.org is MORE > compatible with MS Word than MS Word is! > > To me, it seems that the bulk of DOC files that are transmitted via > email contain nothing but plain text formatted as business letters, > which is a bizarre waste of bandwidth, regardless of what OS you are > using. In some cases it would've been less wasteful, not to mention more > precisely formatted, to render the document as a GIF or PNG image and > send a pixel-by-pixel representation! > > My main complaint is that OOo still seems to take an eternity to start > despite all of the claimed speed improvements, and since I don't use it > for anything except reading DOC and ODF files, I don't usually leave it > open. I suspect this is true of MS Word, though, and I imagine this > isn't so much of an issue for people who use OOo Writer for most of > their word processing needs. > > So is there *really* an unsolved problem here? > > Cheers, > Terry > > > -- > Terry Hancock ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) > Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >
