On 12/7/2019 2:40 PM, Pablo Rodriguez wrote:
I know, but he was one of my bosses. And I remember I was totally
shocked when he explained to me that the standard document format for
any word processor was OpenOffice.org.
Anyone claiming that something is a standard (esp in computer science)
is unaware of history. I bet that our ancestors of thousands of years
ago also considered themselves modern, with standards etc. But sometimes
I think that many folks today think of themselves as being on top of the
human (intelligence, progress, morale, etc) pyramid compared to whoever
came before. History proved them wrong. (Similar are claims of this or
that being better (software, operating systems, etc) while in the end
much converges to the same.)
Anyway, it's a waste of time and energy discussing with those folks.
And we as texies should also be honest: how many of the acclaimed
'happy' tex users are really 'happy' with their system and are those
'millions' really (unforced) users who couldn't as well be using word or
google docs or ... given what and how they deal with documents. And
let's not add the quality argument because a coupel of weeks ago I
noticed how bad tex output didn't look any better in a display of some
80 summaries at some meeting (the, oh, look how bad that table looks
experience).
(I'm sure Arthur, when reading this, can comment as we sort of had this
at a theme of a talk!)
(And, yes I consider myself a happy tex user, but I also admit that I
don't have to write much. And yes, it's a specific kind of user and usage.)
I cannot recall the accurate details from his explanation, but he seemed
to think that even Microsoft Word was at fault for not implementing the
Open Document Text format (.odt) as its native format.
I suppose he read the specs of both formats in detail (in print of course).
The reasoning was so bizarre and shocking to me that I understood that
it was better to me simply to decline the discussion. Also other factual
inaccuracies about the work done in other departments made me clear that
it was better to avoid the conversation.
Indeed. Waste of time. Just think of this: you could kind of check his
claims, so how about all the other claims someone makes ... stuff you
know little about ... how valid are those claims then.
OOo was the cause of many compatibility issues in that company, because
they simply uninstalled Microsoft Office and installed OpenOffice.org
(no previous warning) in one evening.
Well, as long as they're happy ... in most cases no one cares how output
looks, nor cares about long term storage and exchange of data. Going
belly up means 'delete all data and thrash the machines'.
The installation was so poorly performed that they forgot to assign
Microsoft Office extensions to OOo programs in Windows. AOnly this minor
incident was a huge problem for the vast majority of users.
And then they entered denial state.
It was clear to me what I knew decades ago: free software isn’t programs
for free. I think they still have to deal with issues in OOo.
Although, not all free software comes for free. I'm not that sure of
online tex services are cheaper than bulk microsoft licenses.
I only talked no more than five times with that guy. But if he was the
evangelist of free software in that company, I’m afraid I totally agree
with the people working there that hated OOo.
It's all about honnesty isn't it? And about people spending time and
energy, That doesn't always goes well with commercial objectives. And
there's always the knowledge issue. And expecially when open source and
such starts looking like a religion (one without a long history of
dealing with itself and communicating properly) it gets even trickier.
Hans
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Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
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