On Mon, 26 Sep 2005, John Dell wrote:
I think this is quite significant, Massachusetts has decreed that all
government agencies must use open file formats.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050923142231938
*http://news.com.com/Massachusetts+moves+ahead+sans+Microsoft/2100-1012_3-5878869.html?part=rss&tag=5878869&subj=news
It could be that we just witnessed the high water mark for MS Office...
IMHO, at best Microsoft would add support for open formats in the Office
suite before a significant decline in sales occurs. Of course, they'll
limit editing capabilities for those files so that users will rely more
heavily on their proprietary formats... but it would be a start.
I'm trying to institute a policy similar to Massachusetts at my office
because I'm having several document compatibility issues. For example, in
our conference room we have an iMac running OS 9.x that is capable of
playing Powerpoint presentations stored in early formats. The "creative"
department is also beginning to use Keynote, a presentation software by
Apple that is designed to run on OS X 10.2.8+. The problems? A)
Powerpoint cannot be used to its full capability because the new file
formats cannot be played (if they are fonts/etc get all messed up), B)
Keynote won't run on the conference room computer. Furthermore, when
preparing a presentation to be given offsite, I find it naive to assume
that the presentation you are creating in PPT, keynote, or OOo will
display properly, or even be openable at another location. For that
matter, it is also naive to assume that any document file will be
displayed exactly as you see it at another location -- what if you used an
odd font, or are using different versions of software. For these reasons
I'm trying to push management into a PDF only policy. Users can continue
to use the Office suite (or whatever they prefer) to edit their documents,
but the end result must be in PDF format. The software to support this
structure will cost more, but the end result will be less headaches.
- Sebastian
_______________________________________________
RLUG mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.rlug.org/mailman/listinfo/rlug
