On Wed, 2005-10-05 at 11:01 -0500, J David Eisenberg wrote: > The San Jose Mercury news (http://www.mercurynews.com) > has a front-page link to an article by Dawn Chmielewski entitled > "OpenOffice free software not obscure anymore." > > Her review is slightly favorable, but towards the end are some paragraphs > that may need a response: > > "But certain aspects of OpenOffice caused palpitations. When I attempted > to save my column composed in Write, the software flashed a warning that I > might lose aspects of the document's formatting or appearance. Others who > have worked with the software say it can hiccup over complex PowerPoint > presentations with intricate graphics and several fonts. > > The allure of free is powerful. This is doubly true when the free, > community-developed product is superior to the Microsoft offering. That's > the case of Mozilla's Firefox Web browser, which is securer and more > elegant than Internet Explorer. > > But these OpenOffice glitches are enough to deter one analyst who shares > research with clients from using it on reports, for fear of circulating a > flawed document."
I replied as follows Hi Dawn, "But these OpenOffice glitches are enough to deter one analyst who shares research with clients from using it on reports, for fear of circulating a flawed document. That's a major hurdle for Sun and Google to overcome." To be fair, the major hurdle is caused by Microsoft's proprietary file formats. Since MS do not publish all the details of how their files are structured its impossible to make 100% reliable translations of them in other software. This is why Open Document Format (ODF) is so important. The state of Massachusetts recently declared that in 2007 it would only accept documents in Open Document Format or pdf. Microsoft are free to adopt Open Document Format but have chosen to develop their own proprietary version for Office 12 and now say there is no customer demand for them to support the internationally agreed standard. Strange really since the European Union as well as Massachusetts stated that ODF is its preferred format. Rather large customers. MS is hoping that it can keep office document formats proprietary so that users like yourself will be locked into their products no matter how good and low cost the competition. It is in all customers' interests to insist that MS adopt and support the internationally agreed standard and then we can all choose our software tools on the basis of price and performance. If MS produce the best value software they have nothing to worry about. -- Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ZMSL --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
