On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:02:49 -0000, Nick FitzGerald <[email protected]> wrote: > First, and I'm no MS apologist, the problem set you describe has > usually been avoidable _if_ the IT folk at said enterprise actually do > the job, read the fine manuals and roll out the new version with > policies enforcing the "use format X" option (or even just push such > policies as part of their standard environment management stuff.
Ah; you've never met consultants or marketeers then :-) > Second -- and much bigger -- is that while it can be a PitA to Email > the sender back and explain how to "Save as... and choose the 'correct' > file format" that is rather different than the situation where the OOO > user sent a Word-capable format document that does not open properly, > or that does, but is clearly seriously munged or quickly becomes that > way after you, say, decide that there needs to be a comma after that > word in the opening sentence. And, that's the old reason why the word format should be killed for data exchange: nobody knows it, not even Microsoft. Use ODT (not ooxml, as not even Word can write it according to the spec). > My "complaints" with OOO are not that it does not (natively) do MS > formats, but that it is incomprehensibly buggy in _all_ its format- > handling capabilities. And this is where I have the problem with your argument: I have multiple files that I've written on my server that go back to April 2001, when it was StarOffice 5, and I can read them all exactly as they were when I wrote them; 5 different computers ago and using a different Operating System (IIRC it was on SuSE 7). The only time I've ever had a problem with OOo reading files is generally due to badly mangled word docs. These are also not trivial docs: they have embedded objects, images, layout change and a host of styles. I wonder whether this is a YMMV situation. _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
