On 2005-12-04, Chad Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 12/3/05, John Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> > >> Agreed, a simple viewer would be nice. But installing OOo to view .odt >> files is no worse than having to install MS-Office to view .doc, .xls, and >> .ppt files -- cheaper too!
> You can download AbiWord to view MSO files too. Sure, but as you noted earlier, abiword will only handle .doc files, not .xls or .ppt. OOo will handle all those, and the OpenDocument formats as well. > Or a number of MSO viewers that exist, many from Microsoft itself. True, but I don't think any of the free viewers handle Office2003 formats yet, and the PowerPoint viewer only allows slideshows; you can't view speaker notes. > Plus, all Windows installs since like 98 or 95 include a little program > called WordPad (unless the user specifially asks for it not to be > installed) which can open Word DOC files. Yes, WordPad is a handy program, but it only handles the older .doc formats -- not Office2003 or .xls or .ppt. > Look, the point is not that you can view MS files for free - OOo proves > that. And it's not to promote MS Office, or it's formats. I'm using those > as examples of what *COULD* be done for ODF - and what I think *SHOULD* be > done. Telling someone the only way they're gonna open the spreadsheet I > sent them is to download a 75MB file and install a full-featured office > suite on their computer, is not a good way to promote OpenOffice.org - or > ODF. I suspect that a stand-alone OpenDocument viewer may be in the works, either as part of the OpenOffice.org project or from a third party. Since the format is open, and open source implementations of the format are available, the developers don't have to start from scratch at least. > Of course, all this could be avoided if you sent the file in a format they > could open - which to more than 90% of the world is MSO formats - .doc, > .ppt, .xls. > > PDFs work good too. Indeed. And OpenOffice.org supports them all! -- John ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
