Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
Hi :) I think you meant VHS but i really had to think about it. Interesting to hear the Betamax really might have outlived VHS afterall! People mostly moved to the various Dvd formats (including Bluray). Regards from Tom :) From: rost52 bugquestcon...@online.de To: users@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Thursday, 29 November 2012, 1:47 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice This reminds me to video systems: Video2000 was said to be the best but died quickly. Sony BetaMax is only alive in the professional sector, but VDF (is this correct?), always called the worst video system in still alive... On 2012-11-29 00:14, Mirosław Zalewski wrote: On 28/11/2012 at 15:55, VA cuyfa...@hotmail.com wrote: That may be the hazard of having a truly open and standard file format. It eliminates a program's ability to survive. This is far from truth. Take a look at e-mail protocols: POP3 and IMAP. Do we have only two e-mail server apps and two e-mail client apps, one for each? No. We have plenty of servers and tons of clients. Take a look at XMPP messaging protocol (this is what Gmail and Facebook uses for their chats). Again: plenty of servers, tons of apps. Take a look at BitTorrent file sharing protocol. There are many clients for every platform. We have standards for HTML and CSS, yet there are at least four competing web browsers out there (although there was time when market was monopolized). This list can go on. Standard file formats are pretty much irrelevant to program's ability to survive. It's number of features, availability on certain OS, UI, branding, number translations and other things which are around standards that matters. -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
Hi :) +1 In my country there is a saying a miss is as good as a mile. I do kinda agree with Dennis about the point that using xml in a zip-file format is a bit like using a red pen on paper. Just because 2 people use the same tools doesn't mean the result will be very similar. Regards from Tom :) From: VA cuyfa...@hotmail.com To: dennis.hamil...@acm.org; users@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Wednesday, 28 November 2012, 21:12 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice What I find maddening is that two document formats can be so similar, and yet remain so different. As Maxwell Smart would say, missed by THAT much. Virgil -Original Message- From: Dennis E. Hamilton Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 1:27 PM To: 'VA' ; 'Pedro' ; users@global.libreoffice.org Subject: RE: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice I don't understand the maddening aspect of this reaction. I suppose I don't have to. When ODF was developed at OASIS, one of the design points was to be based on the functionality of OpenOffice 1.x as it was at the time, starting from an XML format that was developed for that product. It was explicitly ruled out of scope for the format to have counterparts of Microsoft Office document features. When OOXML was developed, using the Open Packaging Conventions that were already used by Microsoft for a different project, a critical goal was to have fidelity-preserving, convertible features of legacy Microsoft Office documents. There is also a strict version that doesn't include so much of the legacy accommodation and has some better feature provisions going forward. There you have it. ODF 1.0 then ODF 1.1 and now ODF 1.2. Also, OOXML versions 1 through 3 (so far), although ODF changed more from ODF 1.1 to ODF 1.2 (because of the addition of OpenFormula) than anything that happened to OOXML since the ISO OOXML version. Neither of these are DocBook (an XML document format) or DITA or any other XML-carried document format. None of that is surprising in any technical way: XML is not a document format, it is a markup format for extending and customizing into any number of document models and schemas. XML by itself (unlike HTML, yet-another document format) doesn't establish any kind of document format whatsoever. There was an ISO working group looking into the harmonization of document formats, especially with what could make better portability among OOXML-based and ODF-based software. A recent report on the subject is rather interesting. Look at http://www.interoperability-center.com/en/dokumenten-iop-lab. The final report on Document Profiling and a White Paper on Document Interoperability are listed in the Publications sidebar. - Dennis -Original Message- From: VA [mailto:cuyfa...@hotmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 06:56 To: Pedro; users@global.libreoffice.org Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice This is utterly maddening. Based on Pedro's post, I ran a simple test. I created a document in Word (.docx) and an identical document in LibO (.odt). I saved them both and then extracted their contents using 7-zip Manager. I was amazed at how similar the two document contents were, and yet how different. Neither document had any of the binary smilie faces I've come to expect by opening a .doc document in a text editor. All of the individual files contained formatting codes in simple text. And, yet... The maddening part is how two programs can create the same type of documents (xml files saved in a zipped format) and yet remain so completely different. [ ... ] -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
Hi :) I'm completely lost now. I have a friend that is a VJ and he goes on about their different formats but i have no idea. He can just about get it when i go on about Pdf versus Odt versus DocX but that is pushing it. I'm currently struggling with trying to find good formats for still images. When i make a poster i can get it as a fairly tiny Png which doesn't get corrupted but other people often give me Jpegs or Pdfs with Jpeg compression that look really awful by the time they get to the website or get printed. For some reason a lot of people seem to think a good poster design is to make a nice jpeg image at say 4million pixels by 2 million or some ridiculously large size and then insert it into Word and then export to Pdf. So the image undergoes horrible mutilations and is ridiculously heavy by the time they send it and they can't understand because their original looked good in Paint or whichever stupid program they use. I'm just really glad i don't have to deal with video because i'm sure people would carefully avoid using anything decent at any stage of the process and then expect me to present it beautifully. Regards from Tom :) From: rost52 bugquestcon...@online.de To: Tom Davies tomdavie...@yahoo.co.uk Cc: users@global.libreoffice.org users@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Thursday, 29 November 2012, 11:47 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice Yes, I meant VHS - it just did not pop my mind. Thanks for your help. However, Blu-ray is only a storage format /technology not the video information. The video information is still in VHS or BetaMax. Thus the junk of VHS is still alive. All amateur video cameras work with VHS. (I hope that this is all correct!!!) http://www.blu-ray.com/info/ On 2012-11-29 18:15, Tom Davies wrote: Hi :) I think you meant VHS but i really had to think about it. Interesting to hear the Betamax really might have outlived VHS afterall! People mostly moved to the various Dvd formats (including Bluray). Regards from Tom :) From: rost52 bugquestcon...@online.de To: users@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Thursday, 29 November 2012, 1:47 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice This reminds me to video systems: Video2000 was said to be the best but died quickly. Sony BetaMax is only alive in the professional sector, but VDF (is this correct?), always called the worst video system in still alive... On 2012-11-29 00:14, Mirosław Zalewski wrote: On 28/11/2012 at 15:55, VA cuyfa...@hotmail.com wrote: That may be the hazard of having a truly open and standard file format. It eliminates a program's ability to survive. This is far from truth. Take a look at e-mail protocols: POP3 and IMAP. Do we have only two e-mail server apps and two e-mail client apps, one for each? No. We have plenty of servers and tons of clients. Take a look at XMPP messaging protocol (this is what Gmail and Facebook uses for their chats). Again: plenty of servers, tons of apps. Take a look at BitTorrent file sharing protocol. There are many clients for every platform. We have standards for HTML and CSS, yet there are at least four competing web browsers out there (although there was time when market was monopolized). This list can go on. Standard file formats are pretty much irrelevant to program's ability to survive. It's number of features, availability on certain OS, UI, branding, number translations and other things which are around standards that matters. -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
Hi Tom, all Let me be the Devil's advocate for a moment... Tom wrote MS keeps claiming that is what their new format is all about. They claimed it with Rtf which they no longer develop which fits their pattern for gradually dropping completely and they are claiming it again with their DocX and all. RTF is plain text with format codes. So it is true that you can open it even in a text editor. Even if it is discontinued, it is not encrypted. Docx is exactly the same as ODT. A Zip container which stores objects such as images, formats and the actual text in a XML file. Tom wrote Given that ODF 1.0 and 1.1 still open in LO, AOO and all the rest it looks like ODF might achieve the promise, especially given that contents written in Xml can be opened and read. The same applies to MS Office. You can always open previous MS files in a newer Office version. As explained above ODF follows the same logic as OOXML ;) In both cases you need to have some program that opens the zip container in order to have access to the XML file which contains the text. Cheers, Pedro -- View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Re-libreoffice-marketing-Good-Article-for-LibreOffice-tp4020703p4021203.html Sent from the Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
On 11/28/2012 09:05 AM, Pedro wrote: Hi Tom, all Let me be the Devil's advocate for a moment... Tom wrote MS keeps claiming that is what their new format is all about. They claimed it with Rtf which they no longer develop which fits their pattern for gradually dropping completely and they are claiming it again with their DocX and all. RTF is plain text with format codes. So it is true that you can open it even in a text editor. Even if it is discontinued, it is not encrypted. Docx is exactly the same as ODT. A Zip container which stores objects such as images, formats and the actual text in a XML file. Tom wrote Given that ODF 1.0 and 1.1 still open in LO, AOO and all the rest it looks like ODF might achieve the promise, especially given that contents written in Xml can be opened and read. The same applies to MS Office. You can always open previous MS files in a newer Office version. Up to a point, there are some very old MSO formats not supported. They are very old so presumably one updated the format to a newer format at some point. The problem with this is that some documents were generated and later never reopened after a few months of circulation and thus never converted As explained above ODF follows the same logic as OOXML ;) In both cases you need to have some program that opens the zip container in order to have access to the XML file which contains the text. Cheers, Pedro The problem is not that OOXML or MSOX formats are structurally similar to ODF formats but most users are completely unaware of the fact you can get the text out of them. On a more philosophical and practical note - why should users need to be unzipping these containers to retrieve their data? What should happen is that there is a firm, open, international standard (ODF) that is used by all. One should remember that computers are primarily tools for most people that allow them to do something useful. Most do not wish to muck around in the details of container structures or worry about opening files. They just want to do something with these details abstracted into the background. -- View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Re-libreoffice-marketing-Good-Article-for-LibreOffice-tp4020703p4021203.html Sent from the Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
This is utterly maddening. Based on Pedro's post, I ran a simple test. I created a document in Word (.docx) and an identical document in LibO (.odt). I saved them both and then extracted their contents using 7-zip Manager. I was amazed at how similar the two document contents were, and yet how different. Neither document had any of the binary smilie faces I've come to expect by opening a .doc document in a text editor. All of the individual files contained formatting codes in simple text. And, yet... The maddening part is how two programs can create the same type of documents (xml files saved in a zipped format) and yet remain so completely different. I found similar results when I tried saving .rtf files with different word processors. They all claimed to be .rtf, and in fact, were .rtf, yet they were all different. But, MS knows how to market its products. Programs need something to set them apart from other similar programs, and office suites are getting to the point that any decent suite will be able to perform the same tasks as the others. LibO is set apart by being free (both in $ and in license restrictions). MS can't compete head to head with that model, so the only way it can set itself apart is by maintaining some uniqueness in its file format. The only reason people buy MS is because everybody else buys MS. If it fully adopted the .odt format, there would no longer be a reason for people to buy MS. Unless it had some killer feature, it would die and LibO would win. I sense that a similar future lies for either Apache OO or LibO. Right now, the two programs are very similar and use the same file format. I use both programs interchangeably, sometimes forgetting which one I have open. My guess is that, at some point, either Apache or LibO will become different enough and so clearly superior that the other will fade away. That may be the hazard of having a truly open and standard file format. It eliminates a program's ability to survive. Virgil Virgil -Original Message- From: Pedro Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 9:05 AM To: users@global.libreoffice.org Subject: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice Hi Tom, all Let me be the Devil's advocate for a moment... Tom wrote MS keeps claiming that is what their new format is all about. They claimed it with Rtf which they no longer develop which fits their pattern for gradually dropping completely and they are claiming it again with their DocX and all. RTF is plain text with format codes. So it is true that you can open it even in a text editor. Even if it is discontinued, it is not encrypted. Docx is exactly the same as ODT. A Zip container which stores objects such as images, formats and the actual text in a XML file. Tom wrote Given that ODF 1.0 and 1.1 still open in LO, AOO and all the rest it looks like ODF might achieve the promise, especially given that contents written in Xml can be opened and read. The same applies to MS Office. You can always open previous MS files in a newer Office version. As explained above ODF follows the same logic as OOXML ;) In both cases you need to have some program that opens the zip container in order to have access to the XML file which contains the text. Cheers, Pedro -- View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Re-libreoffice-marketing-Good-Article-for-LibreOffice-tp4020703p4021203.html Sent from the Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
On 28/11/2012 at 15:55, VA cuyfa...@hotmail.com wrote: That may be the hazard of having a truly open and standard file format. It eliminates a program's ability to survive. This is far from truth. Take a look at e-mail protocols: POP3 and IMAP. Do we have only two e-mail server apps and two e-mail client apps, one for each? No. We have plenty of servers and tons of clients. Take a look at XMPP messaging protocol (this is what Gmail and Facebook uses for their chats). Again: plenty of servers, tons of apps. Take a look at BitTorrent file sharing protocol. There are many clients for every platform. We have standards for HTML and CSS, yet there are at least four competing web browsers out there (although there was time when market was monopolized). This list can go on. Standard file formats are pretty much irrelevant to program's ability to survive. It's number of features, availability on certain OS, UI, branding, number translations and other things which are around standards that matters. -- Best regards Mirosław Zalewski -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
On 11/28/2012 09:55 AM, VA wrote: This is utterly maddening. Based on Pedro's post, I ran a simple test. I created a document in Word (.docx) and an identical document in LibO (.odt). I saved them both and then extracted their contents using 7-zip Manager. I was amazed at how similar the two document contents were, and yet how different. Neither document had any of the binary smilie faces I've come to expect by opening a .doc document in a text editor. All of the individual files contained formatting codes in simple text. And, yet... The maddening part is how two programs can create the same type of documents (xml files saved in a zipped format) and yet remain so completely different. I found similar results when I tried saving .rtf files with different word processors. They all claimed to be .rtf, and in fact, were .rtf, yet they were all different. But, MS knows how to market its products. Programs need something to set them apart from other similar programs, and office suites are getting to the point that any decent suite will be able to perform the same tasks as the others. LibO is set apart by being free (both in $ and in license restrictions). MS can't compete head to head with that model, so the only way it can set itself apart is by maintaining some uniqueness in its file format. The only reason people buy MS is because everybody else buys MS. If it fully adopted the .odt format, there would no longer be a reason for people to buy MS. Unless it had some killer feature, it would die and LibO would win. Actually MS would need to adopt a different commercial model. The model could possibly be similar to Canonical's model with Ubuntu - the software is free or very cheap but you pay for professional support/training/certifications. The issue is providing value to the user. I have used Ubuntu and derivatives and other than donations to a project never spent any money. The real problem for MS in the hypothetical market is that they would need to adopt a different attitude towards users and their user community. Currently they do not have an MSO community similar to LO/AOO or Ubuntu. Another model that Oracle uses with MySQL is there is a community edition (free) and an enterprise edition (pricey). The enterprise edition includes more support options and features than the community edition. MS does have options if the ODF formats became the international standard. Whether they would adapt quickly enough is another story. I sense that a similar future lies for either Apache OO or LibO. Right now, the two programs are very similar and use the same file format. I use both programs interchangeably, sometimes forgetting which one I have open. My guess is that, at some point, either Apache or LibO will become different enough and so clearly superior that the other will fade away. That may be the hazard of having a truly open and standard file format. It eliminates a program's ability to survive. Product extinction is inevitable for many reasons. I can name old standards equivalent for Writer and Calc that have not been available for years/decades. I suspect LO and AOO will diverge somewhat with each having particular strengths and weaknesses. Virgil Virgil -Original Message- From: Pedro Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 9:05 AM To: users@global.libreoffice.org Subject: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice Hi Tom, all Let me be the Devil's advocate for a moment... Tom wrote MS keeps claiming that is what their new format is all about. They claimed it with Rtf which they no longer develop which fits their pattern for gradually dropping completely and they are claiming it again with their DocX and all. RTF is plain text with format codes. So it is true that you can open it even in a text editor. Even if it is discontinued, it is not encrypted. Docx is exactly the same as ODT. A Zip container which stores objects such as images, formats and the actual text in a XML file. Tom wrote Given that ODF 1.0 and 1.1 still open in LO, AOO and all the rest it looks like ODF might achieve the promise, especially given that contents written in Xml can be opened and read. The same applies to MS Office. You can always open previous MS files in a newer Office version. As explained above ODF follows the same logic as OOXML ;) In both cases you need to have some program that opens the zip container in order to have access to the XML file which contains the text. Cheers, Pedro -- View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Re-libreoffice-marketing-Good-Article-for-LibreOffice-tp4020703p4021203.html Sent from the Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
Hi :) I think AOO and LO have different niche markets they are more suitable for. Oddly the niche for AOO is currently finding LO to be a better choice for them but this may settle down in a few years with people eventually settling for the one that really does fit them better. Of course with the rapid pace of LO's community development and all other development too we may find that LO does fit that niche better by then. I think one of the main strengths of both projects is that the other one does exist and is easy to migrate to. Both are different enough that a calamity for one might be beneficial for the other. Both projects are able to focus on what they do best without having to worry about covering all options. Then remember there are loads of other projects such as Caligra/KOffice, Google-docs, Gnome Office and many others that have already settled into their respective niches but are still growing into other areas incrementally. Any or all could take over the areas dominated by AOO and LO at the moment. United we stand. Why let people push us into arguing between projects? Regards from Tom :) From: Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com To: users@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Wednesday, 28 November 2012, 15:38 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice On 11/28/2012 09:55 AM, VA wrote: This is utterly maddening. Based on Pedro's post, I ran a simple test. I created a document in Word (.docx) and an identical document in LibO (.odt). I saved them both and then extracted their contents using 7-zip Manager. I was amazed at how similar the two document contents were, and yet how different. Neither document had any of the binary smilie faces I've come to expect by opening a .doc document in a text editor. All of the individual files contained formatting codes in simple text. And, yet... The maddening part is how two programs can create the same type of documents (xml files saved in a zipped format) and yet remain so completely different. I found similar results when I tried saving .rtf files with different word processors. They all claimed to be .rtf, and in fact, were .rtf, yet they were all different. But, MS knows how to market its products. Programs need something to set them apart from other similar programs, and office suites are getting to the point that any decent suite will be able to perform the same tasks as the others. LibO is set apart by being free (both in $ and in license restrictions). MS can't compete head to head with that model, so the only way it can set itself apart is by maintaining some uniqueness in its file format. The only reason people buy MS is because everybody else buys MS. If it fully adopted the .odt format, there would no longer be a reason for people to buy MS. Unless it had some killer feature, it would die and LibO would win. Actually MS would need to adopt a different commercial model. The model could possibly be similar to Canonical's model with Ubuntu - the software is free or very cheap but you pay for professional support/training/certifications. The issue is providing value to the user. I have used Ubuntu and derivatives and other than donations to a project never spent any money. The real problem for MS in the hypothetical market is that they would need to adopt a different attitude towards users and their user community. Currently they do not have an MSO community similar to LO/AOO or Ubuntu. Another model that Oracle uses with MySQL is there is a community edition (free) and an enterprise edition (pricey). The enterprise edition includes more support options and features than the community edition. MS does have options if the ODF formats became the international standard. Whether they would adapt quickly enough is another story. I sense that a similar future lies for either Apache OO or LibO. Right now, the two programs are very similar and use the same file format. I use both programs interchangeably, sometimes forgetting which one I have open. My guess is that, at some point, either Apache or LibO will become different enough and so clearly superior that the other will fade away. That may be the hazard of having a truly open and standard file format. It eliminates a program's ability to survive. Product extinction is inevitable for many reasons. I can name old standards equivalent for Writer and Calc that have not been available for years/decades. I suspect LO and AOO will diverge somewhat with each having particular strengths and weaknesses. Virgil Virgil -Original Message- From: Pedro Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 9:05 AM To: users@global.libreoffice.org Subject: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice Hi Tom, all Let me be the Devil's advocate for a moment... Tom wrote MS keeps claiming
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
Hi :) Thanks for the boost in morale there! Regards from Tom :) From: Mirosław Zalewski mini...@poczta.onet.pl To: users@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Wednesday, 28 November 2012, 15:14 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice On 28/11/2012 at 15:55, VA cuyfa...@hotmail.com wrote: That may be the hazard of having a truly open and standard file format. It eliminates a program's ability to survive. This is far from truth. Take a look at e-mail protocols: POP3 and IMAP. Do we have only two e-mail server apps and two e-mail client apps, one for each? No. We have plenty of servers and tons of clients. Take a look at XMPP messaging protocol (this is what Gmail and Facebook uses for their chats). Again: plenty of servers, tons of apps. Take a look at BitTorrent file sharing protocol. There are many clients for every platform. We have standards for HTML and CSS, yet there are at least four competing web browsers out there (although there was time when market was monopolized). This list can go on. Standard file formats are pretty much irrelevant to program's ability to survive. It's number of features, availability on certain OS, UI, branding, number translations and other things which are around standards that matters. -- Best regards Mirosław Zalewski -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
Hi :) I just tried it myself and found that Odt and DocX were much more readable in a text editor than Rtf mostly because my text-editor recognises Xml and colour-codes the coding so i can ignore it more easily and focus on the wording. While text-editors and more recent versions of MSO might be able to read MS's older formats they often render it badly or mess things up. A text-editor is the last relevant thing i would want to have to use to decypher an old document. The more modern formats, Odt and DocX do at least keep images intact in a separate folder inside the container format. Rtf turns images into mush. HoooRahh for playing devil's advocate. I should have tested it myself ages ago (hmmm, i think i did actually but had forgotten which is just as bad). It has reaffirmed my thoughts but shown me there are cases where Rtfs might survive. (Such as ones that don't have pics) Regards from Tom :) From: Pedro pedl...@gmail.com To: users@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Wednesday, 28 November 2012, 14:05 Subject: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice Hi Tom, all Let me be the Devil's advocate for a moment... Tom wrote MS keeps claiming that is what their new format is all about. They claimed it with Rtf which they no longer develop which fits their pattern for gradually dropping completely and they are claiming it again with their DocX and all. RTF is plain text with format codes. So it is true that you can open it even in a text editor. Even if it is discontinued, it is not encrypted. Docx is exactly the same as ODT. A Zip container which stores objects such as images, formats and the actual text in a XML file. Tom wrote Given that ODF 1.0 and 1.1 still open in LO, AOO and all the rest it looks like ODF might achieve the promise, especially given that contents written in Xml can be opened and read. The same applies to MS Office. You can always open previous MS files in a newer Office version. As explained above ODF follows the same logic as OOXML ;) In both cases you need to have some program that opens the zip container in order to have access to the XML file which contains the text. Cheers, Pedro -- View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Re-libreoffice-marketing-Good-Article-for-LibreOffice-tp4020703p4021203.html Sent from the Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
Hi :) I just think it's hilarious that people claim the MS format is the best for interoperability with one breath and with the next they clamour for the entire company to upgrade all machines at the same time in order to be able to read each others documents properly! Regards from Tom :) From: Steven Bradley stevencbrad...@gmail.com To: LibreOffice users@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Wednesday, 28 November 2012, 5:35 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice I sure hope so. I haven't got much faith, since every company strives to keep customers, and the best way to do that (they think) is to have a file format that others can't read or easily convert. However, every company also recognizes the need for interoperability, so there are limits. My frustration with the present system is boundless. It's an idea that's often repeated in the business world--who ever heard of standard car parts? Or standard prescription drugs? or... (fill in the blanks). It's much better to promote competition by being the best, and challenging the world to beat you at your own game. I thought that might be what Apple was doing with the iPad, until they sued Samsung for infringement. It's sort of like a competition in which everyone keeps changing the way the judges judge, or moving the goal, or altering the rules slightly so that you can't play. Steve Bradley On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 12:02 PM, Tom Davies tomdavie...@yahoo.co.ukwrote: Hi :) MS keeps claiming that is what their new format is all about. They claimed it with Rtf which they no longer develop which fits their pattern for gradually dropping completely and they are claiming it again with their DocX and all. Given that ODF 1.0 and 1.1 still open in LO, AOO and all the rest it looks like ODF might achieve the promise, especially given that contents written in Xml can be opened and read. Regards from Tom :) -- *From:* Steven Bradley stevencbrad...@gmail.com *To:* laurent alonso laurent.alo...@inria.fr; LibreOffice users@global.libreoffice.org *Sent:* Tuesday, 27 November 2012, 19:24 *Subject:* Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice That is really unfortunate. In Windows/DOS, we have problems with unrecognizable characters, and characters that are part of the formatting, but not so much the difficulties you are talking about--although at least one program (the old Ashton-Tate solution known as Framework) DID have quite a mess of confusing characters in it, and scattered throughout in some sort of order, so I'm not sure if this is the same thing you mean. It is really frustrating to realize that if you had written everything by hand, you might be better off than with a computer that stores your informationI picked up some of my old grad school notes (1970's), and they were quite readable--because they were typed and annotated on PAPER. This is something that has to be fixed for the future. That's why I said that it's important that there be a single standard, and that the various regulatory authorities demand that it be so (think if we had multiple voltages and amperages, and frequencies in our electrical systems, and if DC current was used by some, AC by others--in the same country...the preservation of data is at least as important.). On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 12:35 AM, laurent alonso laurent.alo...@inria.fr wrote: Hello Steven, Le 26 nov. 2012 à 19:43, Steven Bradley a écrit : I totally agree with all this--but in a pinch, as everyone I'm sure knows, one can open a document (most of them at least), and go back and decode it with a text processor like Notepad or Notepad++; come to think of it, I'm actually surprised that Sourceforge doesn't offer a converter for all those old documents--not to mention all the documents written on Apple II's, etc. All of us have them. I have many documents written in Wordstar, Wordperfect, and so on. As I am trying to do something similar on Sourceforge, for many archaic mac classic documents (you can look for libmwaw ) , this is not so simple : - maybe 1/3 of formats, that I see, do not store the text continuously but by blocks in order to be more efficient : for instance, they can cut the text in block which have between 128 and 256 characters and then stores block 3, block 1, block 2. Thus when you add some characters, they only need to update a small block (and sometimes split a block of 256 in two blocks ) : this includes Word v3-5, FullWrite, MacWritePro... This also means that if you read the file continuously you will read many junk part of the files which contains not relevant text. - I have 3 formats which compress text data before storing them on the disk : this includes MacWrite, MindWrite, HanMac Word
RE: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
I don't understand the maddening aspect of this reaction. I suppose I don't have to. When ODF was developed at OASIS, one of the design points was to be based on the functionality of OpenOffice 1.x as it was at the time, starting from an XML format that was developed for that product. It was explicitly ruled out of scope for the format to have counterparts of Microsoft Office document features. When OOXML was developed, using the Open Packaging Conventions that were already used by Microsoft for a different project, a critical goal was to have fidelity-preserving, convertible features of legacy Microsoft Office documents. There is also a strict version that doesn't include so much of the legacy accommodation and has some better feature provisions going forward. There you have it. ODF 1.0 then ODF 1.1 and now ODF 1.2. Also, OOXML versions 1 through 3 (so far), although ODF changed more from ODF 1.1 to ODF 1.2 (because of the addition of OpenFormula) than anything that happened to OOXML since the ISO OOXML version. Neither of these are DocBook (an XML document format) or DITA or any other XML-carried document format. None of that is surprising in any technical way: XML is not a document format, it is a markup format for extending and customizing into any number of document models and schemas. XML by itself (unlike HTML, yet-another document format) doesn't establish any kind of document format whatsoever. There was an ISO working group looking into the harmonization of document formats, especially with what could make better portability among OOXML-based and ODF-based software. A recent report on the subject is rather interesting. Look at http://www.interoperability-center.com/en/dokumenten-iop-lab. The final report on Document Profiling and a White Paper on Document Interoperability are listed in the Publications sidebar. - Dennis -Original Message- From: VA [mailto:cuyfa...@hotmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 06:56 To: Pedro; users@global.libreoffice.org Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice This is utterly maddening. Based on Pedro's post, I ran a simple test. I created a document in Word (.docx) and an identical document in LibO (.odt). I saved them both and then extracted their contents using 7-zip Manager. I was amazed at how similar the two document contents were, and yet how different. Neither document had any of the binary smilie faces I've come to expect by opening a .doc document in a text editor. All of the individual files contained formatting codes in simple text. And, yet... The maddening part is how two programs can create the same type of documents (xml files saved in a zipped format) and yet remain so completely different. [ ... ] -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
On Wed, 2012-11-28 at 16:14 +0100, Mirosław Zalewski wrote: On 28/11/2012 at 15:55, VA cuyfa...@hotmail.com wrote: That may be the hazard of having a truly open and standard file format. It eliminates a program's ability to survive. This is far from truth. Take a look at e-mail protocols: POP3 and IMAP. Do we have only two e-mail server apps and two e-mail client apps, one for each? No. We have plenty of servers and tons of clients. Take a look at XMPP messaging protocol (this is what Gmail and Facebook uses for their chats). Again: plenty of servers, tons of apps. Take a look at BitTorrent file sharing protocol. There are many clients for every platform. We have standards for HTML and CSS, yet there are at least four competing web browsers out there (although there was time when market was monopolized). This list can go on. Standard file formats are pretty much irrelevant to program's ability to survive. It's number of features, availability on certain OS, UI, branding, number translations and other things which are around standards that matters. -- Best regards Mirosław Zalewski The key issue is user experience. If the tool does what the user wants, in a manner the user understands, and with less effort than any similar tool, that is probably the best tool for that user. That doesn't mean it will be the best tool for all users, as each user values different things, so there will be as many tools as the market will bear and as the market will generate enough capital for support. Free tools exist because someone gets something, prestige, admiration, sense of accomplishment or cash for creating and maintaining that tool. Other tools have different values attached to them, according to the demands of the market place. Marketing can cause a tool to develop a following, and smart developers will find a way to build on their successes. Marketing includes commercials, self promotion, awards that make it into the public awareness, and the best one of all word of mouth. Marketing can overcome some limitations, and so some tools that are quite good may never become successful if they have no marketing at all. That is not to say they will die, because if there is a strong core of support, they will live perhaps for a very long time and may eventually be adopted by a majority of users, especially if the developers listen to their users and keep the experience delivering quality and meeting needs. I love linux. I use and like Fedora (most of the time ;-) ! -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
On 11/28/2012 06:55 AM, VA wrote: This is utterly maddening. Based on Pedro's post, I ran a simple test. I created a document in Word (.docx) and an identical document in LibO (.odt). I saved them both and then extracted their contents using 7-zip Manager. I was amazed at how similar the two document contents were, and yet how different. Neither document had any of the binary smilie faces I've come to expect by opening a .doc document in a text editor. All of the individual files contained formatting codes in simple text. And, yet... The maddening part is how two programs can create the same type of documents (xml files saved in a zipped format) and yet remain so completely different. I found similar results when I tried saving .rtf files with different word processors. They all claimed to be .rtf, and in fact, were .rtf, yet they were all different. ... Indeed: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=49502 [RTF: opening RTF file failed] https://bugs.freedesktop.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=specificorder=relevance+descbug_status=__open__product=LibreOfficecontent=RTF -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
What I find maddening is that two document formats can be so similar, and yet remain so different. As Maxwell Smart would say, missed by THAT much. Virgil -Original Message- From: Dennis E. Hamilton Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 1:27 PM To: 'VA' ; 'Pedro' ; users@global.libreoffice.org Subject: RE: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice I don't understand the maddening aspect of this reaction. I suppose I don't have to. When ODF was developed at OASIS, one of the design points was to be based on the functionality of OpenOffice 1.x as it was at the time, starting from an XML format that was developed for that product. It was explicitly ruled out of scope for the format to have counterparts of Microsoft Office document features. When OOXML was developed, using the Open Packaging Conventions that were already used by Microsoft for a different project, a critical goal was to have fidelity-preserving, convertible features of legacy Microsoft Office documents. There is also a strict version that doesn't include so much of the legacy accommodation and has some better feature provisions going forward. There you have it. ODF 1.0 then ODF 1.1 and now ODF 1.2. Also, OOXML versions 1 through 3 (so far), although ODF changed more from ODF 1.1 to ODF 1.2 (because of the addition of OpenFormula) than anything that happened to OOXML since the ISO OOXML version. Neither of these are DocBook (an XML document format) or DITA or any other XML-carried document format. None of that is surprising in any technical way: XML is not a document format, it is a markup format for extending and customizing into any number of document models and schemas. XML by itself (unlike HTML, yet-another document format) doesn't establish any kind of document format whatsoever. There was an ISO working group looking into the harmonization of document formats, especially with what could make better portability among OOXML-based and ODF-based software. A recent report on the subject is rather interesting. Look at http://www.interoperability-center.com/en/dokumenten-iop-lab. The final report on Document Profiling and a White Paper on Document Interoperability are listed in the Publications sidebar. - Dennis -Original Message- From: VA [mailto:cuyfa...@hotmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 06:56 To: Pedro; users@global.libreoffice.org Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice This is utterly maddening. Based on Pedro's post, I ran a simple test. I created a document in Word (.docx) and an identical document in LibO (.odt). I saved them both and then extracted their contents using 7-zip Manager. I was amazed at how similar the two document contents were, and yet how different. Neither document had any of the binary smilie faces I've come to expect by opening a .doc document in a text editor. All of the individual files contained formatting codes in simple text. And, yet... The maddening part is how two programs can create the same type of documents (xml files saved in a zipped format) and yet remain so completely different. [ ... ] -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
RE: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
I think you may be over-estimating the similarities. There are strong differences in the models and architectures of the two formats. And their goals were different. That they both use Zip and XML is a bit like saying my house and the railroad station both have copper plumbing. While it is the case that there are many common features that users see and use, how they are reflected in the format is quite different and, in some cases, lossy under portability, even sometimes incommensurable. Despite that, there is high portability for a class of documents. - Dennis Anecdote #1: Regina and I just ran into an interesting one. Passwords use to protect fields and sheets and text documents don't convert between the OOXML and ODF formats. One reason is that the code in which the password is stored before it is converted to a digital hash is different. So even if the hash is moved, it can't be unlocked using the other format because the internal form of the password is different, and there's no way to adjust the hash for that. (In the case of encrypted documents, as opposed to protected documents, that doesn't work either, not the least being that there is no encryption as part of OOXML.) Ignoring the encrypted document case, there are ways that the products could come closer with regard to protection passwords. Anecdote #2: Microsoft Word protects word documents by setting protection for the entire document and the user then selecting those parts of the document that are to have relaxed protection. Then a single password is used to lock in the arrangement. In ODF and OpenOffice, the selections to be protected are identified and they can be locked individually by passwords, with the rest of the document treated differently (or with yet another password). It is very had to take a protected document that was created in one model and convert it to a *protected* document in the other model. What is usually done is that each product ignores the protection settings from the other. This is a model incompatibility. That's a bigger deal, especially if it confounds something that is important to a very large number of users. -Original Message- From: VA [mailto:cuyfa...@hotmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 13:13 To: dennis.hamil...@acm.org; users@global.libreoffice.org Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice What I find maddening is that two document formats can be so similar, and yet remain so different. As Maxwell Smart would say, missed by THAT much. Virgil -Original Message- From: Dennis E. Hamilton Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 1:27 PM To: 'VA' ; 'Pedro' ; users@global.libreoffice.org Subject: RE: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice I don't understand the maddening aspect of this reaction. I suppose I don't have to. When ODF was developed at OASIS, one of the design points was to be based on the functionality of OpenOffice 1.x as it was at the time, starting from an XML format that was developed for that product. It was explicitly ruled out of scope for the format to have counterparts of Microsoft Office document features. When OOXML was developed, using the Open Packaging Conventions that were already used by Microsoft for a different project, a critical goal was to have fidelity-preserving, convertible features of legacy Microsoft Office documents. There is also a strict version that doesn't include so much of the legacy accommodation and has some better feature provisions going forward. There you have it. ODF 1.0 then ODF 1.1 and now ODF 1.2. Also, OOXML versions 1 through 3 (so far), although ODF changed more from ODF 1.1 to ODF 1.2 (because of the addition of OpenFormula) than anything that happened to OOXML since the ISO OOXML version. Neither of these are DocBook (an XML document format) or DITA or any other XML-carried document format. None of that is surprising in any technical way: XML is not a document format, it is a markup format for extending and customizing into any number of document models and schemas. XML by itself (unlike HTML, yet-another document format) doesn't establish any kind of document format whatsoever. There was an ISO working group looking into the harmonization of document formats, especially with what could make better portability among OOXML-based and ODF-based software. A recent report on the subject is rather interesting. Look at http://www.interoperability-center.com/en/dokumenten-iop-lab. The final report on Document Profiling and a White Paper on Document Interoperability are listed in the Publications sidebar. - Dennis -Original Message- From: VA [mailto:cuyfa...@hotmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 06:56 To: Pedro; users@global.libreoffice.org Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
I feel that Virgil is right and still have hope that the 2 teams will join one day again. This enlarged team would be a very strong one against MS. There is a proverb in German, which goes approximately like this: Hope only dies at the very end! On 2012-11-28 23:55, VA wrote: My guess is that, at some point, either Apache or LibO will become different enough and so clearly superior that the other will fade away. -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
This reminds me to video systems: Video2000 was said to be the best but died quickly. Sony BetaMax is only alive in the professional sector, but VDF (is this correct?), always called the worst video system in still alive... On 2012-11-29 00:14, Mirosław Zalewski wrote: On 28/11/2012 at 15:55, VA cuyfa...@hotmail.com wrote: That may be the hazard of having a truly open and standard file format. It eliminates a program's ability to survive. This is far from truth. Take a look at e-mail protocols: POP3 and IMAP. Do we have only two e-mail server apps and two e-mail client apps, one for each? No. We have plenty of servers and tons of clients. Take a look at XMPP messaging protocol (this is what Gmail and Facebook uses for their chats). Again: plenty of servers, tons of apps. Take a look at BitTorrent file sharing protocol. There are many clients for every platform. We have standards for HTML and CSS, yet there are at least four competing web browsers out there (although there was time when market was monopolized). This list can go on. Standard file formats are pretty much irrelevant to program's ability to survive. It's number of features, availability on certain OS, UI, branding, number translations and other things which are around standards that matters. -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
well said. On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 10:38 AM, Tom Davies tomdavie...@yahoo.co.ukwrote: Hi :) It's interesting that there has been almost no posts about articles such as this one. https://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/660608-libreoffice-a-continuing-tale-of-foss-success There are some interesting stats that are very well presented in there and it's worth using to spread the word of how LibreOffice works. For me one of the key things that no article seems to mention is that while many hefty companies are vanishing seemingly overnight it seems somewhat dangerous to rely on just one. It would be like not making back-ups of critical information!! If we can bear to think of LO and AOO as being similar enough that users can migrate from one to the other fairly easily and thus as being 2 prioducts supported by 1 community then that community is massive. Taken as being 1 product it is so robust that even if 1 or 2 companoes the size of IBM or Google (or RedHat or SUSE) were to simply vanish overnight then there would still be a good product out there. By sticking with MS people are risking everything they have by being so heavily dependant on just 1 company and that company is losing market share to mobile devices. Perhaps Win8 might help them recover the OS battle but it might not. Regards from Tom :) From: frido...@kathan.co.nz frido...@kathan.co.nz To: market...@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Sunday, 4 November 2012, 8:07 Subject: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice A positive informative article about LibreOffice. https://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/660608-libreoffice-a-continuing-tale-of-foss-success Greetings from Tauranga Fridolin -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
That is really unfortunate. In Windows/DOS, we have problems with unrecognizable characters, and characters that are part of the formatting, but not so much the difficulties you are talking about--although at least one program (the old Ashton-Tate solution known as Framework) DID have quite a mess of confusing characters in it, and scattered throughout in some sort of order, so I'm not sure if this is the same thing you mean. It is really frustrating to realize that if you had written everything by hand, you might be better off than with a computer that stores your informationI picked up some of my old grad school notes (1970's), and they were quite readable--because they were typed and annotated on PAPER. This is something that has to be fixed for the future. That's why I said that it's important that there be a single standard, and that the various regulatory authorities demand that it be so (think if we had multiple voltages and amperages, and frequencies in our electrical systems, and if DC current was used by some, AC by others--in the same country...the preservation of data is at least as important.). On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 12:35 AM, laurent alonso laurent.alo...@inria.frwrote: Hello Steven, Le 26 nov. 2012 à 19:43, Steven Bradley a écrit : I totally agree with all this--but in a pinch, as everyone I'm sure knows, one can open a document (most of them at least), and go back and decode it with a text processor like Notepad or Notepad++; come to think of it, I'm actually surprised that Sourceforge doesn't offer a converter for all those old documents--not to mention all the documents written on Apple II's, etc. All of us have them. I have many documents written in Wordstar, Wordperfect, and so on. As I am trying to do something similar on Sourceforge, for many archaic mac classic documents (you can look for libmwaw ) , this is not so simple : - maybe 1/3 of formats, that I see, do not store the text continuously but by blocks in order to be more efficient : for instance, they can cut the text in block which have between 128 and 256 characters and then stores block 3, block 1, block 2. Thus when you add some characters, they only need to update a small block (and sometimes split a block of 256 in two blocks ) : this includes Word v3-5, FullWrite, MacWritePro... This also means that if you read the file continuously you will read many junk part of the files which contains not relevant text. - I have 3 formats which compress text data before storing them on the disk : this includes MacWrite, MindWrite, HanMac Word ( a format which I am studying actually, ...) ; FullWrite also stores a space character with the ascii code 0 (which means that notepad will not retrieve any space characters ) - after on Mac Classic, you can have as many fonts as you want and each can have a different encoding ; this means that you must at least retrieve the fonts name, if you want to retrieve the good character ( this also means that as I found/code only a subset of the fonts encoding, I can only retrieve roman text ). -- Amicalement, Laurent. -- Steven C. (Steve) Bradley CA Dept of Real Estate, Lic. #00869762 619-316-8781 Direct 619-442-8833 XT 119 Office See my websites: Real Estate and Finance http://realestateandfinancialwisdom.blogspot.com Relationship with God: http://truevoiceofthefather.blogspot.com/ http://realestateandfinancialwisdom.blogspot.com/ The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money. --Margaret Thatcher The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. - Samuel Johnson -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
Hi :) MS keeps claiming that is what their new format is all about. They claimed it with Rtf which they no longer develop which fits their pattern for gradually dropping completely and they are claiming it again with their DocX and all. Given that ODF 1.0 and 1.1 still open in LO, AOO and all the rest it looks like ODF might achieve the promise, especially given that contents written in Xml can be opened and read. Regards from Tom :) From: Steven Bradley stevencbrad...@gmail.com To: laurent alonso laurent.alo...@inria.fr; LibreOffice users@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Tuesday, 27 November 2012, 19:24 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice That is really unfortunate. In Windows/DOS, we have problems with unrecognizable characters, and characters that are part of the formatting, but not so much the difficulties you are talking about--although at least one program (the old Ashton-Tate solution known as Framework) DID have quite a mess of confusing characters in it, and scattered throughout in some sort of order, so I'm not sure if this is the same thing you mean. It is really frustrating to realize that if you had written everything by hand, you might be better off than with a computer that stores your informationI picked up some of my old grad school notes (1970's), and they were quite readable--because they were typed and annotated on PAPER. This is something that has to be fixed for the future. That's why I said that it's important that there be a single standard, and that the various regulatory authorities demand that it be so (think if we had multiple voltages and amperages, and frequencies in our electrical systems, and if DC current was used by some, AC by others--in the same country...the preservation of data is at least as important.). On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 12:35 AM, laurent alonso laurent.alo...@inria.frwrote: Hello Steven, Le 26 nov. 2012 à 19:43, Steven Bradley a écrit : I totally agree with all this--but in a pinch, as everyone I'm sure knows, one can open a document (most of them at least), and go back and decode it with a text processor like Notepad or Notepad++; come to think of it, I'm actually surprised that Sourceforge doesn't offer a converter for all those old documents--not to mention all the documents written on Apple II's, etc. All of us have them. I have many documents written in Wordstar, Wordperfect, and so on. As I am trying to do something similar on Sourceforge, for many archaic mac classic documents (you can look for libmwaw ) , this is not so simple : - maybe 1/3 of formats, that I see, do not store the text continuously but by blocks in order to be more efficient : for instance, they can cut the text in block which have between 128 and 256 characters and then stores block 3, block 1, block 2. Thus when you add some characters, they only need to update a small block (and sometimes split a block of 256 in two blocks ) : this includes Word v3-5, FullWrite, MacWritePro... This also means that if you read the file continuously you will read many junk part of the files which contains not relevant text. - I have 3 formats which compress text data before storing them on the disk : this includes MacWrite, MindWrite, HanMac Word ( a format which I am studying actually, ...) ; FullWrite also stores a space character with the ascii code 0 (which means that notepad will not retrieve any space characters ) - after on Mac Classic, you can have as many fonts as you want and each can have a different encoding ; this means that you must at least retrieve the fonts name, if you want to retrieve the good character ( this also means that as I found/code only a subset of the fonts encoding, I can only retrieve roman text ). -- Amicalement, Laurent. -- Steven C. (Steve) Bradley CA Dept of Real Estate, Lic. #00869762 619-316-8781 Direct 619-442-8833 XT 119 Office See my websites: Real Estate and Finance http://realestateandfinancialwisdom.blogspot.com Relationship with God: http://truevoiceofthefather.blogspot.com/ http://realestateandfinancialwisdom.blogspot.com/ The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money. --Margaret Thatcher The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. - Samuel Johnson -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
I sure hope so. I haven't got much faith, since every company strives to keep customers, and the best way to do that (they think) is to have a file format that others can't read or easily convert. However, every company also recognizes the need for interoperability, so there are limits. My frustration with the present system is boundless. It's an idea that's often repeated in the business world--who ever heard of standard car parts? Or standard prescription drugs? or... (fill in the blanks). It's much better to promote competition by being the best, and challenging the world to beat you at your own game. I thought that might be what Apple was doing with the iPad, until they sued Samsung for infringement. It's sort of like a competition in which everyone keeps changing the way the judges judge, or moving the goal, or altering the rules slightly so that you can't play. Steve Bradley On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 12:02 PM, Tom Davies tomdavie...@yahoo.co.ukwrote: Hi :) MS keeps claiming that is what their new format is all about. They claimed it with Rtf which they no longer develop which fits their pattern for gradually dropping completely and they are claiming it again with their DocX and all. Given that ODF 1.0 and 1.1 still open in LO, AOO and all the rest it looks like ODF might achieve the promise, especially given that contents written in Xml can be opened and read. Regards from Tom :) -- *From:* Steven Bradley stevencbrad...@gmail.com *To:* laurent alonso laurent.alo...@inria.fr; LibreOffice users@global.libreoffice.org *Sent:* Tuesday, 27 November 2012, 19:24 *Subject:* Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice That is really unfortunate. In Windows/DOS, we have problems with unrecognizable characters, and characters that are part of the formatting, but not so much the difficulties you are talking about--although at least one program (the old Ashton-Tate solution known as Framework) DID have quite a mess of confusing characters in it, and scattered throughout in some sort of order, so I'm not sure if this is the same thing you mean. It is really frustrating to realize that if you had written everything by hand, you might be better off than with a computer that stores your informationI picked up some of my old grad school notes (1970's), and they were quite readable--because they were typed and annotated on PAPER. This is something that has to be fixed for the future. That's why I said that it's important that there be a single standard, and that the various regulatory authorities demand that it be so (think if we had multiple voltages and amperages, and frequencies in our electrical systems, and if DC current was used by some, AC by others--in the same country...the preservation of data is at least as important.). On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 12:35 AM, laurent alonso laurent.alo...@inria.fr wrote: Hello Steven, Le 26 nov. 2012 à 19:43, Steven Bradley a écrit : I totally agree with all this--but in a pinch, as everyone I'm sure knows, one can open a document (most of them at least), and go back and decode it with a text processor like Notepad or Notepad++; come to think of it, I'm actually surprised that Sourceforge doesn't offer a converter for all those old documents--not to mention all the documents written on Apple II's, etc. All of us have them. I have many documents written in Wordstar, Wordperfect, and so on. As I am trying to do something similar on Sourceforge, for many archaic mac classic documents (you can look for libmwaw ) , this is not so simple : - maybe 1/3 of formats, that I see, do not store the text continuously but by blocks in order to be more efficient : for instance, they can cut the text in block which have between 128 and 256 characters and then stores block 3, block 1, block 2. Thus when you add some characters, they only need to update a small block (and sometimes split a block of 256 in two blocks ) : this includes Word v3-5, FullWrite, MacWritePro... This also means that if you read the file continuously you will read many junk part of the files which contains not relevant text. - I have 3 formats which compress text data before storing them on the disk : this includes MacWrite, MindWrite, HanMac Word ( a format which I am studying actually, ...) ; FullWrite also stores a space character with the ascii code 0 (which means that notepad will not retrieve any space characters ) - after on Mac Classic, you can have as many fonts as you want and each can have a different encoding ; this means that you must at least retrieve the fonts name, if you want to retrieve the good character ( this also means that as I found/code only a subset of the fonts encoding, I can only retrieve roman text ). -- Amicalement, Laurent
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
Hi :) Arachaic formats (ie old formats that are almost never used nowadays but may have been popular once) might be something that Extensions could be used to deal with. We might not want legacy code retained in the main code to read ancient formats that 'no-one' uses anymore but it might be nice to be able to add-on an Extension to read old love letters and such. Also formats that kept the same name but went through many changes. So that one Extension might help people read Doc formats prior to the 1997 version and another reads the 97 one. That might be something to help our poor devs deal with the 3 different DocX formats now in use. One to read DocXs from MSO 2007, another for the 2010 and the 3rd for MSO 365. At the moment it would probably be best to have the 2010 one by default but if that could easily be swapped-out and replaced by the 365 one in a couple of years then we might retain a way of being able to read all of them. I think such Extensions would need to be released on OpenSource licenses either BSD type licenses that need to attribute previous artists/authors/coders or GPL type ones that don't acknowledge previous coders. Then when the Extensions become outdated it might still be possible for people to update them so they work in whichever future version of LO we are on by that time. Regards from Tom :) From: Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com To: users@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Sunday, 25 November 2012, 23:56 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice On 11/25/2012 05:27 PM, Girvin R. Herr wrote: Tom Davies wrote: Hi :) It's interesting that there has been almost no posts about articles such as this one. https://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/660608-libreoffice-a-continuing-tale-of-foss-success There are some interesting stats that are very well presented in there and it's worth using to spread the word of how LibreOffice works. For me one of the key things that no article seems to mention is that while many hefty companies are vanishing seemingly overnight it seems somewhat dangerous to rely on just one. It would be like not making back-ups of critical information!! If we can bear to think of LO and AOO as being similar enough that users can migrate from one to the other fairly easily and thus as being 2 prioducts supported by 1 community then that community is massive. Taken as being 1 product it is so robust that even if 1 or 2 companoes the size of IBM or Google (or RedHat or SUSE) were to simply vanish overnight then there would still be a good product out there. By sticking with MS people are risking everything they have by being so heavily dependant on just 1 company and that company is losing market share to mobile devices. Perhaps Win8 might help them recover the OS battle but it might not. Regards from Tom :) Greetings, My primary goal is to reduce, or preferably eliminate, risk to my data. I learned the hard way many years ago that depending on M$ and other proprietary software suppliers was way too risky. I then decided to switch to Open Source software and take back control of my computer. I have never regretted that decision. Even if LO/AOO go away, there are still other applications, such as Koffice, that will still allow me to read/maintain my documents data. And, if it comes down to it, I can always unzip my LO/OO files and get the data from the file(s) inside. That allows me to sleep at night. Girvin Herr +1 I prefer the FOSS / open formats model better for the reasons you noted. From a general user perspective; open formats are probably more important for long term accessibility. Most long term users can remember proprietary formats for software that were very popular 15+ years ago that are unreadable by any software in current release. To make matters worse you may even have files you would like to read in these formats. You may find a conversion software that claims to accurately convert the obsolete format to a currently used format - I can not vouch for anyone's claims. The problem with any proprietary format is whether someone will continue to provide software that can edit it in the future or will it eventually become an orphan. Amipro and Wordstar come to mind and I am sure others can be named. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
On 11/26/2012 04:39 AM, Tom Davies wrote: Hi :) Arachaic formats (ie old formats that are almost never used nowadays but may have been popular once) might be something that Extensions could be used to deal with. We might not want legacy code retained in the main code to read ancient formats that 'no-one' uses anymore but it might be nice to be able to add-on an Extension to read old love letters and such. Also formats that kept the same name but went through many changes. So that one Extension might help people read Doc formats prior to the 1997 version and another reads the 97 one. That might be something to help our poor devs deal with the 3 different DocX formats now in use. One to read DocXs from MSO 2007, another for the 2010 and the 3rd for MSO 365. At the moment it would probably be best to have the 2010 one by default but if that could easily be swapped-out and replaced by the 365 one in a couple of years then we might retain a way of being able to read all of them. I think such Extensions would need to be released on OpenSource licenses either BSD type licenses that need to attribute previous artists/authors/coders or GPL type ones that don't acknowledge previous coders. Then when the Extensions become outdated it might still be possible for people to update them so they work in whichever future version of LO we are on by that time. Regards from Tom :) IMHO the real problem with archaic formats is the lack of available documentation forcing one to reverse engineer the format. I suspect this sounds much easier that it really is; particularly if you do not have a clue about the final text. Some of the very ancient formats may be accessible because they did not include any graphics/art/images in the file. They were all text with embedded codes for bold/italics, etc. For LO we need to make an intelligent cut and say these formats we will have the ability to import but others will not be supported. The selection being we already have the ability so updating/maintaining the code is required and others are so ancient that we do not have the resources to address the conversion. Note most ancient formats would probably only need an import filter not an export one. *From:* Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com *To:* users@global.libreoffice.org *Sent:* Sunday, 25 November 2012, 23:56 *Subject:* Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice On 11/25/2012 05:27 PM, Girvin R. Herr wrote: Tom Davies wrote: Hi :) It's interesting that there has been almost no posts about articles such as this one. https://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/660608-libreoffice-a-continuing-tale-of-foss-success There are some interesting stats that are very well presented in there and it's worth using to spread the word of how LibreOffice works. For me one of the key things that no article seems to mention is that while many hefty companies are vanishing seemingly overnight it seems somewhat dangerous to rely on just one. It would be like not making back-ups of critical information!! If we can bear to think of LO and AOO as being similar enough that users can migrate from one to the other fairly easily and thus as being 2 prioducts supported by 1 community then that community is massive. Taken as being 1 product it is so robust that even if 1 or 2 companoes the size of IBM or Google (or RedHat or SUSE) were to simply vanish overnight then there would still be a good product out there. By sticking with MS people are risking everything they have by being so heavily dependant on just 1 company and that company is losing market share to mobile devices. Perhaps Win8 might help them recover the OS battle but it might not. Regards from Tom :) Greetings, My primary goal is to reduce, or preferably eliminate, risk to my data. I learned the hard way many years ago that depending on M$ and other proprietary software suppliers was way too risky. I then decided to switch to Open Source software and take back control of my computer. I have never regretted that decision. Even if LO/AOO go away, there are still other applications, such as Koffice, that will still allow me to read/maintain my documents data. And, if it comes down to it, I can always unzip my LO/OO files and get the data from the file(s) inside. That allows me to sleep at night. Girvin Herr +1 I prefer the FOSS / open formats model better for the reasons you noted. From a general user perspective; open formats are probably more important for long term accessibility. Most long term users can remember proprietary formats for software that were very popular 15+ years ago
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
Hi :) I guess i am more thinking about formats that LO currently supports that are becoming archaic or that might have already become archaic but still being supported anyway. If some of those could be stripped out into being just Extensions then wouldn't it make things a bit more streamlined? I agree about import filters only. Regards from Tom :) From: Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com To: Tom Davies tomdavie...@yahoo.co.uk Cc: users@global.libreoffice.org users@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Monday, 26 November 2012, 13:59 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice On 11/26/2012 04:39 AM, Tom Davies wrote: Hi :) Arachaic formats (ie old formats that are almost never used nowadays but may have been popular once) might be something that Extensions could be used to deal with. We might not want legacy code retained in the main code to read ancient formats that 'no-one' uses anymore but it might be nice to be able to add-on an Extension to read old love letters and such. Also formats that kept the same name but went through many changes. So that one Extension might help people read Doc formats prior to the 1997 version and another reads the 97 one. That might be something to help our poor devs deal with the 3 different DocX formats now in use. One to read DocXs from MSO 2007, another for the 2010 and the 3rd for MSO 365. At the moment it would probably be best to have the 2010 one by default but if that could easily be swapped-out and replaced by the 365 one in a couple of years then we might retain a way of being able to read all of them. I think such Extensions would need to be released on OpenSource licenses either BSD type licenses that need to attribute previous artists/authors/coders or GPL type ones that don't acknowledge previous coders. Then when the Extensions become outdated it might still be possible for people to update them so they work in whichever future version of LO we are on by that time. Regards from Tom :) IMHO the real problem with archaic formats is the lack of available documentation forcing one to reverse engineer the format. I suspect this sounds much easier that it really is; particularly if you do not have a clue about the final text. Some of the very ancient formats may be accessible because they did not include any graphics/art/images in the file. They were all text with embedded codes for bold/italics, etc. For LO we need to make an intelligent cut and say these formats we will have the ability to import but others will not be supported. The selection being we already have the ability so updating/maintaining the code is required and others are so ancient that we do not have the resources to address the conversion. Note most ancient formats would probably only need an import filter not an export one. From: Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com To: users@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Sunday, 25 November 2012, 23:56 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice On 11/25/2012 05:27 PM, Girvin R. Herr wrote: Tom Davies wrote: Hi :) It's interesting that there has been almost no posts about articles such as this one. https://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/660608-libreoffice-a-continuing-tale-of-foss-success There are some interesting stats that are very well presented in there and it's worth using to spread the word of how LibreOffice works. For me one of the key things that no article seems to mention is that while many hefty companies are vanishing seemingly overnight it seems somewhat dangerous to rely on just one. It would be like not making back-ups of critical information!! If we can bear to think of LO and AOO as being similar enough that users can migrate from one to the other fairly easily and thus as being 2 prioducts supported by 1 community then that community is massive. Taken as being 1 product it is so robust that even if 1 or 2 companoes the size of IBM or Google (or RedHat or SUSE) were to simply vanish overnight then there would still be a good product out there. By sticking with MS people are risking everything they have by being so heavily dependant on just 1 company and that company is losing market share to mobile devices. Perhaps Win8 might help them recover the OS battle but it might not. Regards from Tom :) Greetings, My primary goal is to reduce, or preferably
Fwd: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
I totally agree with all this--but in a pinch, as everyone I'm sure knows, one can open a document (most of them at least), and go back and decode it with a text processor like Notepad or Notepad++; come to think of it, I'm actually surprised that Sourceforge doesn't offer a converter for all those old documents--not to mention all the documents written on Apple II's, etc. All of us have them. I have many documents written in Wordstar, Wordperfect, and so on. There IS a Wordstar converter (google it), but I don't know how it works on the early versions--I had version 3.3, and it works fine for me. I STILL think that the way to go is to separate text and formatting, rather than embedding it, if that's possible. It might not be possible with Calc and other similar documents. Also, and not to be forgotten, is Google Drive; Drive has never failed to upload and convert any of my Word documents, although I admit I've not gone below Word 2000 in my attempts. I don't think I have any Word 97 docs to try, since I was still using a combination of Word for Windows 3.1 and Wordperfect (I loved Wordperfect, but it was rapidly being eaten by the MS behemoth). I also used a program called askSam (pretty much defunct now, and pretty primitive), which was a textually-oriented database; that has given me the most satisfaction, since the newest version gives me a choice of export to a number of common formats, and will import most Word versions, and also html--however, it's been pretty much supplanted by the Google products, since one can search any text across documents. I think that some of my greatest challenges are going to come from the documents I put together in Publisher and similar programs over the years, not thinking I'd want them again--but of course I do. I am still thinking, Text Processor with external formats added on top for retrievability/interoperability. I can't imagine what these issues must be like for a corporation with terabytes of data, or a government with similar quantities of data. I have megabytes, but my problems are small compared to say, Germany. --Steve Bradley On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 1:39 AM, Tom Davies tomdavie...@yahoo.co.uk wrote: Hi :) Arachaic formats (ie old formats that are almost never used nowadays but may have been popular once) might be something that Extensions could be used to deal with. We might not want legacy code retained in the main code to read ancient formats that 'no-one' uses anymore but it might be nice to be able to add-on an Extension to read old love letters and such. Also formats that kept the same name but went through many changes. So that one Extension might help people read Doc formats prior to the 1997 version and another reads the 97 one. That might be something to help our poor devs deal with the 3 different DocX formats now in use. One to read DocXs from MSO 2007, another for the 2010 and the 3rd for MSO 365. At the moment it would probably be best to have the 2010 one by default but if that could easily be swapped-out and replaced by the 365 one in a couple of years then we might retain a way of being able to read all of them. I think such Extensions would need to be released on OpenSource licenses either BSD type licenses that need to attribute previous artists/authors/coders or GPL type ones that don't acknowledge previous coders. Then when the Extensions become outdated it might still be possible for people to update them so they work in whichever future version of LO we are on by that time. Regards from Tom :) From: Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com To: users@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Sunday, 25 November 2012, 23:56 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice On 11/25/2012 05:27 PM, Girvin R. Herr wrote: Tom Davies wrote: Hi :) It's interesting that there has been almost no posts about articles such as this one. https://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/660608-libreoffice-a-continuing-tale-of-foss-success There are some interesting stats that are very well presented in there and it's worth using to spread the word of how LibreOffice works. For me one of the key things that no article seems to mention is that while many hefty companies are vanishing seemingly overnight it seems somewhat dangerous to rely on just one. It would be like not making back-ups of critical information!! If we can bear to think of LO and AOO as being similar enough that users can migrate from one to the other fairly easily and thus as being 2 prioducts supported by 1 community then that community is massive. Taken as being 1 product it is so robust that even if 1 or 2 companoes the size of IBM or Google (or RedHat or SUSE) were to simply vanish overnight then there would still be a good product out there. By sticking with MS people are risking everything they have by being so heavily dependant on just
[libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
Hi :) It's interesting that there has been almost no posts about articles such as this one. https://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/660608-libreoffice-a-continuing-tale-of-foss-success There are some interesting stats that are very well presented in there and it's worth using to spread the word of how LibreOffice works. For me one of the key things that no article seems to mention is that while many hefty companies are vanishing seemingly overnight it seems somewhat dangerous to rely on just one. It would be like not making back-ups of critical information!! If we can bear to think of LO and AOO as being similar enough that users can migrate from one to the other fairly easily and thus as being 2 prioducts supported by 1 community then that community is massive. Taken as being 1 product it is so robust that even if 1 or 2 companoes the size of IBM or Google (or RedHat or SUSE) were to simply vanish overnight then there would still be a good product out there. By sticking with MS people are risking everything they have by being so heavily dependant on just 1 company and that company is losing market share to mobile devices. Perhaps Win8 might help them recover the OS battle but it might not. Regards from Tom :) From: frido...@kathan.co.nz frido...@kathan.co.nz To: market...@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Sunday, 4 November 2012, 8:07 Subject: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice A positive informative article about LibreOffice. https://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/660608-libreoffice-a-continuing-tale-of-foss-success Greetings from Tauranga Fridolin --Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to marketing+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
A thing about FOSS that is good, is that there is more than one voice involved in the way the product will be designed/used/etc.. MS people tend to say - This is what you are going to use now and this is how your will do it. Products involved with many companies helping with the development, listens to more than one voice to make the decisions in how to use the product, what it can do, and what it will be like for the user experience. MS will not likely stop being a big company and provide the products and services they feel the market needs. For a FOSS package, it is good to have a large base of volunteers and companies that provide development of the product. Sure, with everything in the hands of one company and its highly stressed development teams under the control of one manager [that may be just a professional manager] - could be a good thing for a product. But is that better for the user or just better for the company's product manager? MS has in the past shown that they are not in sync with its users, and has done so many times. With the FOSS model, it is hard not to include the user of the package in its development process. Volunteers tend not to want to work on a product that the users will not want to use. MS makes a package and tell the users - here it is so use it the way we tell you to use it. The article was written the first week of November, and I think I have read it before. I think packages that cares about the user, like LibreOffice does, will be successful and gain market shares from the products that do not include the users in development of the product, like MS does.. On 11/25/2012 11:38 AM, Tom Davies wrote: Hi :) It's interesting that there has been almost no posts about articles such as this one. https://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/660608-libreoffice-a-continuing-tale-of-foss-success There are some interesting stats that are very well presented in there and it's worth using to spread the word of how LibreOffice works. For me one of the key things that no article seems to mention is that while many hefty companies are vanishing seemingly overnight it seems somewhat dangerous to rely on just one. It would be like not making back-ups of critical information!! If we can bear to think of LO and AOO as being similar enough that users can migrate from one to the other fairly easily and thus as being 2 prioducts supported by 1 community then that community is massive. Taken as being 1 product it is so robust that even if 1 or 2 companoes the size of IBM or Google (or RedHat or SUSE) were to simply vanish overnight then there would still be a good product out there. By sticking with MS people are risking everything they have by being so heavily dependant on just 1 company and that company is losing market share to mobile devices. Perhaps Win8 might help them recover the OS battle but it might not. Regards from Tom :) From: frido...@kathan.co.nz frido...@kathan.co.nz To: market...@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Sunday, 4 November 2012, 8:07 Subject: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice A positive informative article about LibreOffice. https://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/660608-libreoffice-a-continuing-tale-of-foss-success Greetings from Tauranga Fridolin --Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to marketing+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
Tom Davies wrote: Hi :) It's interesting that there has been almost no posts about articles such as this one. https://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/660608-libreoffice-a-continuing-tale-of-foss-success There are some interesting stats that are very well presented in there and it's worth using to spread the word of how LibreOffice works. For me one of the key things that no article seems to mention is that while many hefty companies are vanishing seemingly overnight it seems somewhat dangerous to rely on just one. It would be like not making back-ups of critical information!! If we can bear to think of LO and AOO as being similar enough that users can migrate from one to the other fairly easily and thus as being 2 prioducts supported by 1 community then that community is massive. Taken as being 1 product it is so robust that even if 1 or 2 companoes the size of IBM or Google (or RedHat or SUSE) were to simply vanish overnight then there would still be a good product out there. By sticking with MS people are risking everything they have by being so heavily dependant on just 1 company and that company is losing market share to mobile devices. Perhaps Win8 might help them recover the OS battle but it might not. Regards from Tom :) Greetings, My primary goal is to reduce, or preferably eliminate, risk to my data. I learned the hard way many years ago that depending on M$ and other proprietary software suppliers was way too risky. I then decided to switch to Open Source software and take back control of my computer. I have never regretted that decision. Even if LO/AOO go away, there are still other applications, such as Koffice, that will still allow me to read/maintain my documents data. And, if it comes down to it, I can always unzip my LO/OO files and get the data from the file(s) inside. That allows me to sleep at night. Girvin Herr -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
On 11/25/2012 05:27 PM, Girvin R. Herr wrote: Tom Davies wrote: Hi :) It's interesting that there has been almost no posts about articles such as this one. https://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/660608-libreoffice-a-continuing-tale-of-foss-success There are some interesting stats that are very well presented in there and it's worth using to spread the word of how LibreOffice works. For me one of the key things that no article seems to mention is that while many hefty companies are vanishing seemingly overnight it seems somewhat dangerous to rely on just one. It would be like not making back-ups of critical information!! If we can bear to think of LO and AOO as being similar enough that users can migrate from one to the other fairly easily and thus as being 2 prioducts supported by 1 community then that community is massive. Taken as being 1 product it is so robust that even if 1 or 2 companoes the size of IBM or Google (or RedHat or SUSE) were to simply vanish overnight then there would still be a good product out there. By sticking with MS people are risking everything they have by being so heavily dependant on just 1 company and that company is losing market share to mobile devices. Perhaps Win8 might help them recover the OS battle but it might not. Regards from Tom :) Greetings, My primary goal is to reduce, or preferably eliminate, risk to my data. I learned the hard way many years ago that depending on M$ and other proprietary software suppliers was way too risky. I then decided to switch to Open Source software and take back control of my computer. I have never regretted that decision. Even if LO/AOO go away, there are still other applications, such as Koffice, that will still allow me to read/maintain my documents data. And, if it comes down to it, I can always unzip my LO/OO files and get the data from the file(s) inside. That allows me to sleep at night. Girvin Herr +1 I prefer the FOSS / open formats model better for the reasons you noted. From a general user perspective; open formats are probably more important for long term accessibility. Most long term users can remember proprietary formats for software that were very popular 15+ years ago that are unreadable by any software in current release. To make matters worse you may even have files you would like to read in these formats. You may find a conversion software that claims to accurately convert the obsolete format to a currently used format - I can not vouch for anyone's claims. The problem with any proprietary format is whether someone will continue to provide software that can edit it in the future or will it eventually become an orphan. Amipro and Wordstar come to mind and I am sure others can be named. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
On 11/25/2012 06:56 PM, Jay Lozier wrote: /snip/ important for long term accessibility. Most long term users can remember proprietary formats for software that were very popular 15+ years ago that are unreadable by any software in current release. To make matters worse you may even have files you would like to read in these formats. You may find a conversion software that claims to accurately convert the obsolete format to a currently used format - I can not vouch for anyone's claims. The problem with any proprietary format is whether someone will continue to provide software that can edit it in the future or will it eventually become an orphan. Amipro and Wordstar come to mind and I am sure others can be named. I can send a copy of WordStar if anybody needs it. (DOS version.) However, you're right about the CPM version--I had it on 8 floppy, and I threw all of them out many years ago--probably nobody has a working 8 drive anymore! --doug -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice
On 11/25/2012 08:44 PM, Doug wrote: On 11/25/2012 06:56 PM, Jay Lozier wrote: /snip/ important for long term accessibility. Most long term users can remember proprietary formats for software that were very popular 15+ years ago that are unreadable by any software in current release. To make matters worse you may even have files you would like to read in these formats. You may find a conversion software that claims to accurately convert the obsolete format to a currently used format - I can not vouch for anyone's claims. The problem with any proprietary format is whether someone will continue to provide software that can edit it in the future or will it eventually become an orphan. Amipro and Wordstar come to mind and I am sure others can be named. I can send a copy of WordStar if anybody needs it. (DOS version.) However, you're right about the CPM version--I had it on 8 floppy, and I threw all of them out many years ago--probably nobody has a working 8 drive anymore! --doug Doug You noted another problem, even if you have the media do you have a device to read it. I never had 8 floppies but at one time many 5.25 and 3.5 floppies. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
