Choppy, the comment I made at the beginning of this thread was why don't we use 'readers' to handle office documents instead of 'editors'? I was *specifically* looking for an app that would read documents, not edit them, and do it on multiple OS platforms. The whole issue of MS Office is that those docs can only be faithfully *read* on Windows. Even if someone sends me something simple like a letter or a little address book in a spreadsheet, I have to have Windows and possibly MS Office components just to read the thing. There's a business justification for PDF files. I know of organizations that only distribute documents in PDF format because they CAN'T be edited by the recipient. You were touting that as a "one way street" and as a bad thing. It's *exactly* what I was talking about when I started this thread. They're designed to preserve the author's original format, much more faithfully than HTML even, and to be read-only by the recipient in a free, multiplatform downloadable reader. The linux download of acroread 4.05 is 5.44 MB. If that took you two hours, I'm very sorry. It's on the cd of virtually every Linux distro... Maybe we've miscommunicated my earlier point. I was asking why there wasn't a practice of converting business docs to pdf before distribution. The format and content are preserved. They can be read anywhere in a browser plugin. They look just like the original design when viewed by the recipient. Word Perfect Office finally implemented Save As PDF for just these reasons, and I applaud them. It always strikes me as odd when my employer, the largest Sun support provider in the world outside Sun itself, distributes things like timesheets and simple memos as Office 2K docs...which can't be read on Unix and require a $450 license fee for the editors. Odd, that.
-- -j On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Chopin Cusachs wrote: > Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 16:49:35 -0700 > From: Chopin Cusachs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [brluglist] WINE > > > Need to be careful. PDF is a one way street. > Word Perfect, current version, can export to it, > but not open and modify a document once encoded. > To do that you need to pay more than I can justify > to get the Acrobat program. > > PDF documents can take forever to download on > a slow dialup connection; I tend to avoid them for > this reason. Even downloading the free reader > took a couple of hours. PDF format, I understand, > is very much like a postscript stream enclosed in > file packaging. It is not to be confused with the > postscript printer language or the Ghost program > for replicating hard drives or ghostwriter module > to print to a Wintel printer. I much prefer plain > text. > > If you just want to read and print a MS Word document, > you can use WordPad, a part of Windows, or download > a viewer/printer, free from Microsoft. WordPad has some > basic editing capabilities, but not the editor of choice > for Dustin's next book. > > Choppy > > > At 01:34 PM 7/10/01 -0700, you wrote: > >Right, I'm familiar with all the utilities that > >convert to PDF. I meant the office type apps. Which > >makes me wonder if Open Office has this capability? > > > ================================================ > BRLUG - The Baton Rouge Linux User Group > Visit http://www.brlug.net for more information. > Send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] to change > your subscription information. > ================================================ > ================================================ BRLUG - The Baton Rouge Linux User Group Visit http://www.brlug.net for more information. Send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] to change your subscription information. ================================================ <!-- body="end" --> <hr noshade> <ul> <li><strong>Next message:</strong> john beamon: "Re: [brluglist] WINE" <li><strong>Previous message:</strong> Chopin Cusachs: "Re: [brluglist] WINE" <li><strong>In reply to:</strong> Chopin Cusachs: "Re: [brluglist] WINE" <li><strong>Next in thread:</strong> William DePierri: "RE: [brluglist] WINE" <li><strong>Messages sorted by:</strong> [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ] </ul> <hr noshade> <small> <em> This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : <em>Thu Sep 06 2001 - 11:10:54 CDT</em> </em> </small> </body> </html>
