"Shawn K. Quinn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Thu, 2006-08-31 at 15:14 +0100, Jim Ottaway wrote: >> A prior question, I suppose, would be whether my lack of confidence is >> misplaced. I haven’t any empirical evidence of such problems, but, as >> I >> said, I am very risk-averse about losing time by having to re-do the >> edits in, for example, MS Word. > > It would be much easier to write proper converters if Microsoft's Office > file formats were well documented and such documentation was widely > available. Unfortunately, Microsoft has decided it's not in their best > interests to tell their customers about the format their information is > stored in. > > Play Microsoft's game, follow Microsoft's rules. > > The OpenOffice.org developers have done a commendable job in spite of > Microsoft's monopolistic attitude. > >> One thing I definitely can’t do is to ask the original authors to >> consider using OpenOffice.org. > > You are aware there's a Windows version of OpenOffice.org, right? I > would assume the original authors have already read documents like > http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html ?
While I agree, more or less, with the sentiments expressed about Microsoft here and elsewhere, and the need to advocate free software alternatives, there are occasions where it is not appropriate to do so and this is one of those. That’s why I put the qualifier that I definitely can’t ask the original authors to change. Perhaps I should have supplied a little more detail about my situation: this is freelance work, and it would be inappropriate even to raise the subject with them, to do so would probably mean that I would not get any more work. So no, it is not a reasonable assumption that the original authors have read documents like that. It’s actually rather tiresome that my request, in my view entirely straightforward and reasonably well-specified, for some information about compatibility should be responded to with these kinds of advocacy for OpenOffice.org. A simple “no, there is no such thing” would have sufficed. Regards, -- Jim Ottaway --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
