> Anyway, because of the "x" problem, we started converting to Office 2010.
The "x" problem could be avoided if everyone in the company chose to
save data in the old format via "Save As" option.
It's not my company, it's the people who send documents to us. We have to
handle those documents. We tried, for many years, to explain to them how to
use Save As. It just didn't work. Most people don't understand how to use
Save As, and a surprisingly large number of them can't even follow
step-by-step directions on how to do it. As time went on, they stopped
trying and we started getting angry responses: "Why don't you just upgrade
your software???". It was a losing battle from the start.
> As a not-for-profit, I can use TechSoup to get Office for a reasonable
> price--but only a max of 50 licenses every 2 years. I need more than
> twice that number. So I have to pony up around $350 per license for the
rest.
Did you write to Micro$oft or some government agencies to get special help?
MicroSoft refers people to TechSoup. It's their agreement with TechSoup
that imposes this 50-license limit.
We get our funding through government agencies. In the not-for-profit
world, no government contractor pays the full cost of what they are buying.
They expect not-for-profits to come up with a "share" of the costs out of
other funds. Increasingly, government agencies are unwilling to approve
budget lines for computer hardware and software. That's why we have to hold
special-event fundraisers and solicit donations.
> Open Office will open these later MS Office documents, but only correctly
> handles very simple examples. It cannot handle even slightly complex
> formatting, and we have to consume some VERY complex Word and Excel docs.
> Also, the last version of OO I tried still won't save docs in .docx and
> .xlsx format, nor can it originate documents in those formats. No option
> there.
Conversion to OpenOffice/LibreOffice meant doing everything the OO way
from the very beginning. It's very hard to convert documents from Office 2007
and older Office formats, notably the "x" formats.
I'm sure it is. But OO handles the proprietary binary .doc format just
fine, including complexly-formatted .docs. .docx is a zip folder full of
proprietary binary files. The problem of formatting is a problem of
documenting and reproducing the size and position of document elements. I
don't understand why properly positioning graphical and tabular elements in
a .docx file is so much more difficult than doing it in a .doc file, but
for sure I don't have the expertise to know. However, the explanations I've
heard from OO people seem to follow two tracks. Track One: We might get
sued by MS for duplicating their "look and feel". That's bogus; "look and
feel" is about the user interface, not about the content of documents.
Track Two: MS is the evil empire and you should just come over to our side
and use native OO formats. That's non-responsive. If OO wants to be its own
little walled-garden, let it. But it doesn't help me, and it doesn't help
the vast majority of people who have to send documents back and forth to
people who don't use OO.
> Meanwhile, one of our biggest contracts requires us to use a
state-developed
> web-based document management/workflow system that only works on IE, and
> only on IE versions 7, 8, and 9. Now I'm scrambling. I have to tell my
And that company refused to support non-IE browsers? That's sad....
The contractor in this case is a state agency. The actual techhie IE people
who work for the agency understand this was a bad idea. But the top-level
CIOs bought a sales pitch from MS, which makes a web-software development
package that was used to create this system. MS promised that the
development package would "eventually" be cross-browser, but they never
kept that promise. I'm not clear on whether compatibility with later
versions of IE is solely down to that MS package or also is controlled by
the application that was developed on it.
Ken Dibble
www.stic-cil.org
_______________________________________________
Post Messages to: [email protected]
Subscription Maintenance: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox
OT-free version of this list: http://mail.leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech
Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox
This message:
http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected]
** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the
author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added
to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
