Robin Laing Wrote:
I disagree. If I open something in text, I may want to save it as odf or
pdf with changes that are acceptable. I may also open a spreadsheet that
I want to export as text which will lose sheets and formatting. When I
run a program, I want all the features available. When I save it is when
I make a decision on what I can afford to lose. If I want to edit a text
document, I don't use OOo, I use emacs or a text editor. OOo is just
overkill.
Bob Writes:
First off, don't take anything I say as criticism of OOo. I actually
really like OOo, and that is not just the cheap engineer in me talking. I
really get frustrated with M$ and many other programs. I guess what this
jumble of words is, is just a suggestion of improvement for all programs.
Microsoft being the biggest culpret.
I had used text as an extreme example. Although, saying using OOo is
overkill misses the usefulness of spell check etc. I have found that the
only truly universally compatible format is text. Although, you have to be
careful when using an unfamiliar machine or program because if autocorrect
is turned on you could end up with 1/2 being turned into ½ and such. Of
course text is extremely limited. I have seen incompatibility issues
between OOo and M$ as well as between different versions of M$ or even the
same version of M$ but on different machines. I haven't tried going from
one version of OOo to another, but lets pick a scenario that is likely.
Lets say I have an old version of OOo on my old Pentium Laptop running Win95
( I do ) and I am using the latest version of OOo Spreadsheets. I expect
that there are some new formulas available on the new version of OOo. Lets
say I want to create a spreadsheet that I can use on either machine. I
would want to create the spreadsheet, then save as OOo 1.0 or whatever.
From the time I saved it, I would not want to be able to use features,
formulas or formatting that is not available in OOo 1.0 because then it
would be unreadable.
A good real world example that I have experienced happened with M$ and I
have experienced similar issues with other programs. I had a Microsoft
Excel 2003 that I used at work. There was a formatting option that I put
to good use where I could input a number and the number would be displayed
with letters. In this case I would enter say 5.30 and it would display
"$5.30 / month". I was on a friend's machine which had Microsoft Excel
2003 but I guess with a different service pack or something because it
changed all the cells with the "$5.30 / month" type formatting to text
format. I did not realize it until much later when I noticed some
calculations were screwed up. By then it was too late, I had to either
edit each of the old entries or redo everything. Fortunately I have
learned to always make a backup copy before editing if using an unfamiliar
machine so I had to just redo that day's work.
I have not been using OOo a lot until very recently. I have run into
compatibility issues with formatting. I actually think the issue is with
M$ and not OOo, but can not tell for sure. Maybe I am missing something.
For example, I use M$ to create and edit a word doc that I keep saved as
RTF. It works fine from one 'puter to the next (using word), but when I
bring it into OOo highlighted sentences are not highlighted and other
issues. Mostly minor. I would be willing to bet that M$ saves RTF files
with some extra crap that only works on M$.
So, anyway, the best suggestion I received here is also exactly what I would
want to see in all programs: The program will shadow out any commands etc
that are incompatible with the version that the file was last saved in.
Bob
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