Thanks for the story; what I'm hearing is: I know how to do this in Program X (WordPerfect), why in tarnation is it SO difficult to do the SAME thing in Program Y (OOwriter).
If you actually had a template already, it should transfer fine. Was your 15 hours spent trying things, or perusing documentation, or both? Do you have any idea how many cumulative hours you've worked with WordPerfect over the years? (including those legal secretaries' experiences!) Have you ever heard of LegalXML? It is not a layout/template standard but is designed to structure the important data in legal documents, since they are so often formatted according to a given firm's standards, or even the known preferences of the court in use. All that rubbish being spouted now, I should clarify that I have NO experience with the bibliographic tools in OOo but am a long-time user who also has some experiences surrounding the legal professions and the serving of justice. ...and.... so AbiWord is dead?? Sounds like a bad time you're having. Bummer. I hope it gets better!! :) ~ben On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 10:59 PM, marbux <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 5:23 PM, Mike Cherba <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Though to be honest, I've been Quite happy with > > OpenOffice the last few years. As Are all of the History Grad students > > in my Wife's Dept who I have introduced to it. > > Not to set off a holy war here ... :-) > > I use OOo for a few things, e.g., reading DOC files and converting > HTML to ODT. But I've found it horribly frustrating to use. E.g., to > get footnotes formatted the way I wanted for a particular document was > a 15-hour ordeal, with three separate and interdependent styles that > had to be modified. The cross-dependencies were a nightmare. > > One OOWriter stone wall I hit was producing documents in law office > pleading paper format. I spark-plugged a team of several OOo > sharpshooters to develop a document template for that format. We came > close but finally had to abandon the project because we simply could > not persuade OOWriter to do it. See project outline at > <http://evc-cit.info/pleadingpaper/>. > > A lot of formatting for complex documents that is trivial in > WordPerfect -- usually with four or five ways to do it -- is highly > problematic in both Word and OOWriter. That kind of flexibility plus > being able to see tokenized streaming markup in Reveal Codes really > beats the "my way or the highway" style dependency approach of Word > and OOWriter. > > On the plus side, I think OOWriter 3.0 is looking to be far more > useful for academics than 2.0 was. The RDF-based bibliographic support > looks very promising in the initial public beta. But on the other > hand, if I were engaged in primarily academic writing, I'd likely want > to use Nota Bene (formerly Xywrite), <http://www.notabene.com/>. It's > spendy and has a substantial learning curve, but that's dramatically > outweighed by the mid-term productivity gains. > > My major gripes with OOo, however, are that: [i] it's sucked virtually > all of developer mindshare from the market for competing FOSS apps; > [ii] Microsoft claims to hold 45 patents reading on OOo > (<http://tinyurl.com/64t4od>); [iii] Sun signed a Patent Covenant with > Microsoft in 2004 that gave Microsoft a hunting license to go after > OOo licensees for patent infringement, > < > http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/709519/0001193125-04-155723-index.htm > >; > and [iv] OOo is non-interoperable with other FOSS apps via the > OpenDocument formats bridge. > > Hype aside, ODF is anything but open; e.g., the spec is awash with > optional "may" and "should" clauses that all mask hard-coded > programming decisions in implementing apps; in like kind, the spec is > largely written in passive voice sentences that establish no > requirements at all; and app-specific extensions are deemed > conformant. > > FOSS has put way too many eggs in the OOo basket for my comfort. But > the short story is that we're still stuck in the era of > non-interoperable word processors and there is no single word > processor that is best for all circumstances. What works for me may > not work for others and vice versa. > > I want to see Microsoft lose its monopoly in word processors. But we > need to be careful about what we replace the monopoly with. > > Best regards, > > Paul > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > Universal Interoperability Council > <http:www.universal-interop-council.org> > _______________________________________________ > EUGLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug >
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