At 08:02 AM 19/08/02 +1000, you wrote: >Hate to point this out, but two things. >OpenOffice.org can already handle Word & Excel. >CxOffice doesn't (yet) handle Access. The fact that nobody else does either >is beside the point. Problem for me is all my personal financing & budgeting >is done in Access. >Amanda
I would add the following comments... (1) Word and Excel. ==================== As much as M$ have tried to keep them proprietary, these .xls and .doc formats are nearly "public domain" in that lots of other proprietary and open source programs can read/write them reasonably well. That's what happened to the dBase format prior to 1990. They are good formats in that they are commonplace, but they are bad formats in that they old-fashioned in structure and are not plain text. In this regard HTML and XML and other markup languages are better, and there is no doubt that plain formats are the way of the future. Clearly the GNU/Linux world is leading in this respect. I hardly need add that the idea of a document being executable is abhorent. No IT manager in his right mind needs to approve this ability to spread viruses and then budget for all the prevention and removal. In big companies, documents do not need to execute, if this sort of behaviour is needed, it's time to add features to the corporate database. RTF is a much neglected format which is hard to read, but at least it's a standard. (2) Access - Saving your data. ============================== After trying many ways, i believe the best way is to export all your data (either all tables or relevant queries) as Excel 3 spreadsheets. The advantages of this are (a) Widely able to be read by other products. (b) Headings on all the columns are preserved as the first row in the spreadsheet. (c) values for dates are correctly transferred. Be aware that there are limits for the number of rows in a spreadsheet. The second best option is plain text. If you are having problems with single and double quotes and embedded carriage returns, use the pipe symbol as the field delimiter, and use a home made tag such as <end> as the value of the last field in every row, to act as a definite row delimiter. (3) Access - Where is the Linux version? ======================================== As a fan of Access, IMHO Access 2 (1994) was the best thing Microsoft has ever produced. However it contains at least 100K of pure assembler code to make it perform, and it has never been translated to the Mac platform for starters. It's a clever concept, but it does not fit easily in a Linux environment, and these days many people use Access as an easy front end to reach other databases such as SQL server. The problem in the Linux world is that the concept of a full-featured "Desktop Database" is essentially false on a multi-user, multi-tasking, networked machine. The best features of Access need to be cut into two parts, and this is what is emerging. The front end is a GUI product, with all the best bits of Access to do with building queries and making relationships, and there are already lots of interfaces that can build screens or forms just like in Access. The SQL engine back-end already exists in MySQL and similar products, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. As much as it would be nice to have a clone of the Pro Versions of office, this is actually a foolish concept. Access simply has to be split into parts. Brian =================================================== Linux IS ready for prime time, a previously posted link... http://www.pgts.com.au/pgtsj/pgtsj0206e.html ==================================================== -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
