At Sun, 31 Oct 2004 22:43:13 +0200 (IST), Orr Dunkelman wrote: > > There is no way to force lecturers to use anything (I know, as nobody > forces me to use PowerPoint). > > The way is to contact the computing commitee of your department (not the > system guys, even though they can tell you who is in charge of that), or > the undergraduate studies committee of your department, and explain to > them your problem. > > As the only solution is awareness, try to make people aware. The committee > will probably issue a call for the lecturers to try and produce .pdf or > ps of their slides, which can usually be done with little effort (or no > effort, once you install Open Office ;) ). > > As time goes by, you'll probably feel improvement in this field due to > several factors: > a) more awareness > b) more Linux users => more requests for open formats => lecturer is more > likely to use open formats as well
Actually at the moment there are less linux users in the exact science faculty. When I started my B.A in CS in 97 it faculty was almost exclusively linux, and all project had to be submitted on linux (which would cause quite a few problems BTW since people wrote the projects on MFC and then the day before would try to run them on linux and discover they had quite a few segmentation fault which windows didn't even peep about ...). Today the faculty is mostly windows (although the computers do reboot into linux after some time as they function as a bewulf cluster, but most students use windows). Most mathematics people use linux, or at least latex, so they can export a variety of formats (its hell to write math under office, and most publications expect latex or pdf anyway). Anyway, more to the point. Projects requiring MFC you have no choice with, although there is C# support now. Powerpoint presentation work quite nicely under OO (including mathematics). Two other options are to ask someone to install a virtual postscript printer and to print to file to get a postscript file, or I believe the regular printers are postscript in TAU so you can print to file and then just open it as a postscript file. (This would work for any file BTW) For word files you can also use wxWare (wv package under debian). Most web pages in tau I ran into work fine under linux. The one exception was the seker horaa, which is easy to fix (I even sent them fixes for most of it) but they still refuse to fix it, but send the junk mail to fill it out. I have also sent a response to some of the doc sending people in the student union (or however its called) and they did show acceptance to use a better format then doc, if you ask nicely they will probably agree (I am already getting some if the mail in rtf instead of doc =) > c) more lecturers who have Linux > d) better Linux replacements - One day OO will know to print presentation > 6 in page, and 4 in page, just like Power Point... > > > On Sun, 31 Oct 2004, Alexander Maryanovsky wrote: > > > > > Hi, > > > > Related to the "Welcome to Linux" series, I'd like to draw your attention > > to the following issue: > > > > It's quite hard to be a Linux-only student, at least at TAU (and at least > > on the exact sciences faculty, although the issue is probably much worse > > at other faculties). > > > > A few years ago, when I was a new student, I complained on this list that > > the TAU website had significant portions which were only usable with > > Internet Explorer - that issue seems to have been addressed, and for that > > I am thankful (I haven't done extensive research, but almost everything I > > needed in the last year or so seems to have worked. A notable exception is > > the "messages" page at > > http://graddsp.tau.ac.il/msglist.asp?faculty=3.Strangely, it even looks > > different under IE and Firefox/Opera). > > > > Once you start your studies, however, the main problem becomes that a lot > > of classes are given with PowerPoint presentations, which are then > > available at the course website. I often ask the prof. about availability > > of the lectures in a more open format (pdf for example)- some professors > > realize the error of their ways ( ;-) ) and worry about finding a solution > > for me while others simply tell me to go to the computer lab and look at > > the presentations from there. > > > > Ideally, it would be officialy policy to have all course materials > > available in an open format, but I would settle for having that as a > > de-facto policy. > > > > Any ideas what can be done about this? > > > > > > Alexander (aka Sasha) Maryanovsky. > > > > ================================================================= > > To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with > > the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command > > echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > -- > Orr Dunkelman, > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > "Any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that reason infallibly > be faulty" -- Herman Melville, Moby Dick. > > Spammers: http://vipe.technion.ac.il/~orrd/spam.html > GPG fingerprint: C2D5 C6D6 9A24 9A95 C5B3 2023 6CAB 4A7C B73F D0AA > (This key will never sign Emails, only other PGP keys.) > > ================================================================= > To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with > the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command > echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System > at the Tel-Aviv University CC. > ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
