Robin Laing wrote: >> I did mention that I considered Crossover office, but the reports on >> Microsoft Word 2003 (which is the version I have a license for and most >> of my colleagues have) are mixed. Not exactly a vote of confidence in the >> product for my purposes. >> > > I don't know how many different versions of Office/Word you have tried > but we have the same issue of moving documents between different > versions of Word as we do with OOo.
Quite possible. But the problems between different (closeby) versions of Office (say XP and 2003) are minor compared to the ones I see here. If only there were a LaTeX to doc conversion system (I have tried latex2rtf and it does not do the job). I just downloaded and installed version 2.2. Opened the latest doc file that gave me trouble. The Word document's references are still messed up. Later this week, I will write up something and open it in Microsoft Office 2003 and see what it does though it does not look good right now. I also received my license for SoftMaker, and installed it. Will try that too. Maybe a comparison of the PDFs generated from Word from both programs will help settle this. >> I can't reform a few thousands of my colleagues, hence the problem :) > > One at a time. :) I deal with the same issue where I work. Heck, many > are moving to LaTeX instead of OOo due to problems with Word. I am afraid that does not happen here. The whole community, with a very few exceptions (who are dwindling in number - they use LaTeX), uses Word. And no one wants to stick their neck out and be the person whose documents no one else understands. The funding agencies all require Word, as do most of the journals (the journals do give LaTeX as an option but few people use that option). Conferences almost unanimously mandate Word. Given a choice, I would prefer LaTeX (or TeXmacs) given how portable and robust that format is, but this is not a logical argument (at that level) in a community that depends on logic for its bread and butter. The issue is communication and owing to the dominant market share, Word trumps all rivals. I imagine that any change in this matter would have to come from the top - if the funding agencies like NSF, DARPA, etc., started requiring ODF / LaTeX, things might change for the better, but that is unlikely to happen as the proposal reviewers themselves come from the community. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
