Strong words? Perhaps, but consider - according to slide 30 of the
reference below, the number one feature that OpenOffice users themselves
want, the people that should matter, is compatibility with MS formats:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/w/images/1/11/Renaissance-status-2009-01-30_wiki.odp
This is far and away the single most important issue holding back adoption
of OpenOffice around the world. I encounter it with users every day. The
interoperability is getting better, for example with docx, but needs to be
*complete*, and issues remain for example with tables and fields in Writer,
defaults in Excel, and org charts and alignment in Impress.
Once interoperability is complete, OpenOffice will very quickly become the
number one office suite in the world. Nothing else is holding it back.
Complete success is completely dependent on this one issue, and failure to
achieve success is completely dependent on this one issue. See slide 30.
It saddens me greatly to see OpenOffice friends who claim to be "open"
minded show a "closed" mind on interoperability, blocking the complete
success that is so near at hand, and we all wish.
(Please don't respond to this post by trashing MS formats, the process by
which they achieved ISO approval, or lauding the technical superiority of
ODF as a standard. That is all old news, and agreed, but misses the
reality of today, the opportunity at hand for OpenOffice to "embrace and
replace", by being open instead of closed to the billions of MS documents
already in existence and being produced in greater quantities every day.)
Constructively intended,
Bill Stewart
Eseri, CEO
http://Eseri.com/
On 2/2/2010 2:05 PM, Joe Anderson wrote:
Hi Kim:
I think what you are seeing is the total garbage that Microsoft puts out. I
don't use Word or Office because I have a Mac, and putting that junk on my Mac
would be sacrilegious. I do use WordPerfect on a PC and have for many years,
when importing or opening a WP doc in Word it is always screwed up. Taking the
same doc from WP into OO works fine.
Just my 2 cents worth-Joe
On Feb 2, 2010, at 12:43 PM, kwalsh2004 wrote:
Hello -
I am writing to every e-mail address I could find on your Contact Us/Help
page on your web site. I teach computers part time at two small private
elementary schools - and one of them couldn't afford the licenses of MS
Office, so we've been using Open Office. I found it to lacking in all the
things that would make it easier for these younger kids to learn the
application, like Clip art, page borders, etc.
That aside, I am writing to tell you of my latest issue. I usually use MS
Word at home to write up my lesson plans, but last week, I updated the
page in Open Office Writer and saved it in the same format (MS Word), not OO
Writer. When I tried to open it today, in MS Word (my home computer) - none
of the text in my table is there - 99% of it has dissappeared! The onlything
left was my headers and 29 blank pages (it was only one page when I saved
it).
I had to download Open Office on my home computer, where I was able to open
the Word document in Writer. When I copied the table into a new Word
document, it was all messed up - the rows and columns were not the size they
appeared in Writer (or the original Word document), so I spent about 30-45
minutes to fix one of my lesson plans so that it look like I had it
originally. I have 4 total to fix. There was a one-page plan for each week
(Jan. 25th and Feb1st), and each had 3 columns (one for the class period
times, and one for each day that I teach: Tuesday and Thursday and the other
was Wednesday and Friday), and one school had 10 rows and the other had 11.
Now I have to fix the other two, and I don't really have 3-4 hours to waste
fixing this. It's been a struggle with the kids, but I have learned my
lesson - I will never use Open Office for any of my personal and
professional documents.
Kim Walsh
(P.S. I didn't register the version we use in school as we are hoping to be
able to afford MS Office next year and didn't want to be part of any
feedback study, or receive any e-mails or spam.)
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