Re: Decent Word / Excel Conversion: Not yet?

2002-12-12 Thread Anthony E. Greene
On 11-Dec-2002/17:11 -0600, Ed Wilts [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

We don't even need to start the war on my not ask your users to save all
their documents in portable formats.  Most don't know how - as far as
they're concerned, the native Microsoft formats are all there are.

FWIW, the best way to accomplish this is to change their settings so that
their apps automatically save in the desired formats.

Tony
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Re: Decent Word / Excel Conversion: Not yet?

2002-12-12 Thread Anthony E. Greene
On 11-Dec-2002/15:36 -0800, nate [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I think longer term, the solution is not to work with them, but
design a good open format. But before we even try to impose this
format on the rest of the world, the open source/free software
suites need to support it fully. Sofar I haven't noticed any
activivies on the parts of openoffice/staroffice, koffice, abiword,
and others to even start on such a format unfortunately. And no
XML by itself isn't good enough, all XML is a buncha tags, it can't
be decoded and displayed right unless everyone knows what all the
tags mean. I mean, Zope can export my websites to XML, fat chance
that I'll be able to load them in openoffice though!

I look forward to that day, if it ever comes!

Someone is working on it:

  http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/11/20/021120hnopenoffice.xml

XML + stylesheets will do the trick. I'm sure that once the standard is
agreed upon, it won't take long for Star/OpenOffice to support it.

Tony
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Re: Decent Word / Excel Conversion: Not yet?

2002-12-12 Thread Ed Wilts
On Thu, Dec 12, 2002 at 09:46:35AM -0500, Anthony E. Greene wrote:
 On 11-Dec-2002/17:11 -0600, Ed Wilts [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 We don't even need to start the war on my not ask your users to save all
 their documents in portable formats.  Most don't know how - as far as
 they're concerned, the native Microsoft formats are all there are.
 
 FWIW, the best way to accomplish this is to change their settings so that
 their apps automatically save in the desired formats.

That's naive.  The vast majority of us have absolutely no control over
somebody else's desktops.  What if you decided to start sending me MS
Word documents?  Are you going to let me change your desktop?  What
about my customers?

We need good conversion tools, that's all there is to it.  We need to
play in their world, not assume world domination by making them change.

.../Ed

-- 
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program



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Re: Decent Word / Excel Conversion: Not yet?

2002-12-12 Thread Javier Gostling
On Thu, Dec 12, 2002 at 10:30:25AM -0600, Ed Wilts wrote:

 We need good conversion tools, that's all there is to it.  We need to
 play in their world, not assume world domination by making them change.

Have the issue play backwards. Send them documents in OpenOffice native
formats. If they complain, ask them How come you don't have OpenOffice?
You can download it freely... It will sure get some attention to the
software.

Cheers,
-- 
Javier GostlingAv. Kennedy 5757, of. 1502
Ingeniero de Sistemas  Las Condes, Santiago, Chile
Virtualia S.A. Fono: +56 (2) 202-6264 x 130
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Fax:  +56 (2) 342-8763



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Description: PGP signature


Re: Decent Word / Excel Conversion: Not yet?

2002-12-12 Thread Anthony E. Greene
On 12-Dec-2002/10:30 -0600, Ed Wilts [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Thu, Dec 12, 2002 at 09:46:35AM -0500, Anthony E. Greene wrote:
 On 11-Dec-2002/17:11 -0600, Ed Wilts [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 We don't even need to start the war on my not ask your users to save all
 their documents in portable formats.  Most don't know how - as far as
 they're concerned, the native Microsoft formats are all there are.
 
 FWIW, the best way to accomplish this is to change their settings so that
 their apps automatically save in the desired formats.

That's naive.  The vast majority of us have absolutely no control over
somebody else's desktops.  What if you decided to start sending me MS
Word documents?  Are you going to let me change your desktop?  What
about my customers?

The message said ask your users... not ask your correspondants so a
sysadmin type like myself started thinking along the lines of how I might
get my users to save docs in less restrictive formats. This was a language
and background induced misunderstanding.


Tony
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Re: Decent Word / Excel Conversion: Not yet?

2002-12-12 Thread gabriel
On December 12, 2002 11:30 am, Ed Wilts wrote:
 We need good conversion tools, that's all there is to it.  We need to
 play in their world, not assume world domination by making them change.

it may sound naive, but it's not.  how else can we expect people to stop using 
proprietary formats?  wait for microsoft to adopt standars?  no.  social 
change is the only way, and it starts with people like us.  if we recieve a 
proprietary formatted file, open it in windows and re-save as an rtf or 
something... BUT then send them an email with a brief explanation as to why 
(and more importantly how) they should save documents they intend to 
distribute in open formats.  it doesn't have to be technobabble, just 
something simple like: i got your file, but it took me 20minutes to open it 
since micros~1 has refused to adopt a standardised system.  if you're going 
to send me files, please use a more universal format.

even my grandmother would understand that, and with simple instructions, 
she'll send me a text file next time.

-- 
corporation, n.
an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual 
responsibility.
- ambrose bierce



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RE: Decent Word / Excel Conversion: Not yet?

2002-12-12 Thread Periyasamy, Raj
You are contradicting your own statement. Just because you want to use a
particular format, does not mean every one should change over to that
format. The solution is compatibility and conversion tools. Every
document format has its own advantages and disadvantages. Hence, you can
not expect people to stop using proprietary formats if such formats have
proven to become a widely accepted standard. When Microsoft Word was
introduced, still people were using Word Perfect as standard for word
processing. However, Word had its own document format, at the same time
you could open WordPerfect documents under Word or save Word documents
as WordPerfect files. Ultimately Word document format became a standard.
Compatibility is the key word. If any new product whether Open source or
not needs to compete with existing products, the compatibility and
conversion has to be a very important future. Without which many not so
computer literate users wont even think of changing over to an Open
source application. Again, I am not saying Word format is the way to go.
COMPATIBILITY is what I mean. FYI, I am using Open Office suite with RH
8.0 on my home PC.


Regards,



-Original Message-
From: gabriel [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] 
Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2002 2:22 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Decent Word / Excel Conversion: Not yet?


On December 12, 2002 11:30 am, Ed Wilts wrote:
 We need good conversion tools, that's all there is to it.  We need to 
 play in their world, not assume world domination by making them 
 change.

it may sound naive, but it's not.  how else can we expect people to stop
using 
proprietary formats?  wait for microsoft to adopt standars?  no.  social

change is the only way, and it starts with people like us.  if we
recieve a 
proprietary formatted file, open it in windows and re-save as an rtf or 
something... BUT then send them an email with a brief explanation as to
why 
(and more importantly how) they should save documents they intend to 
distribute in open formats.  it doesn't have to be technobabble, just 
something simple like: i got your file, but it took me 20minutes to
open it 
since micros~1 has refused to adopt a standardised system.  if you're
going 
to send me files, please use a more universal format.

even my grandmother would understand that, and with simple instructions,

she'll send me a text file next time.

-- 
corporation, n.
an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual 
responsibility.
- ambrose bierce



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Re: Decent Word / Excel Conversion: Not yet?

2002-12-12 Thread Michael A. Peters
On Thu, 2002-12-12 at 08:30, Ed Wilts wrote:
 That's naive.  The vast majority of us have absolutely no control over
 somebody else's desktops.  What if you decided to start sending me MS
 Word documents?  Are you going to let me change your desktop?  What
 about my customers?
 
 We need good conversion tools, that's all there is to it.  We need to
 play in their world, not assume world domination by making them change.

Just for the record - the only time I've had trouble with MS Word
documents in Open Office - if I export FROM OPEN OFFICE to html - it
displays fine in Mozilla.

But anyway - before I had Open Office I would send the person a tactful
e-mail explaining that I could not read their document because I do not
have Microsoft Office, and asked them to save it as html.

They do with no issues.


-- 
Michael A. Peters [EMAIL PROTECTED]



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Re: Decent Word / Excel Conversion: Not yet?

2002-12-12 Thread Ben Russo
On Thu, 2002-12-12 at 15:32, Michael A. Peters wrote:
 On Thu, 2002-12-12 at 08:30, Ed Wilts wrote:
  That's naive.  The vast majority of us have absolutely no control over
  somebody else's desktops.  What if you decided to start sending me MS
  Word documents?  Are you going to let me change your desktop?  What
  about my customers?
  
  We need good conversion tools, that's all there is to it.  We need to
  play in their world, not assume world domination by making them change.
 
 Just for the record - the only time I've had trouble with MS Word
 documents in Open Office - if I export FROM OPEN OFFICE to html - it
 displays fine in Mozilla.
 
 But anyway - before I had Open Office I would send the person a tactful
 e-mail explaining that I could not read their document because I do not
 have Microsoft Office, and asked them to save it as html.
 
 They do with no issues.
 
 
 -- 
 Michael A. Peters [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
 

I figure that with all the countries beginning to endorse and distribute
Linux on a widescale basis that this will be a non-issue in 3 or 4 years
because Microsoft will have to try to make their office suite compatable
with standard formats in order to be competitive in the massive
emerging markets of India, China and Africa.

So in the meantime I have stopped being so anti-microsoft, and use
CodeWeavers Crossover Office product to use MS Office 2000 on my Linux
Desktop, it works just fine.

-Ben.



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RE: Decent Word / Excel Conversion: Not yet?

2002-12-12 Thread James Francis
Raj, Well-worded.
Like it or not, and trust me I hate it, Microsoft Word is a standard.  For
what it is worth,  I receive .lwp documents from IBM all the time.  I can't
open them up in OpenOffice and I can't open them up in Microsoft Word.
After research, I realized that lwp is for Lotus Word Pro.  They ended up
reconverting it into a PDF format for me.

Conversion/Compatibility are the key and, in time, the standard may very
well change again, preferably to an open-doc format.

JMF
 -Original Message-
 From: Periyasamy, Raj [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
 Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2002 2:54 PM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: RE: Decent Word / Excel Conversion: Not yet?
 
 
 You are contradicting your own statement. Just because you 
 want to use a
 particular format, does not mean every one should change over to that
 format. The solution is compatibility and conversion tools. Every
 document format has its own advantages and disadvantages. 
 Hence, you can
 not expect people to stop using proprietary formats if such 
 formats have
 proven to become a widely accepted standard. When Microsoft Word was
 introduced, still people were using Word Perfect as standard for word
 processing. However, Word had its own document format, at the 
 same time
 you could open WordPerfect documents under Word or save Word documents
 as WordPerfect files. Ultimately Word document format became 
 a standard.
 Compatibility is the key word. If any new product whether 
 Open source or
 not needs to compete with existing products, the compatibility and
 conversion has to be a very important future. Without which 
 many not so
 computer literate users wont even think of changing over to an Open
 source application. Again, I am not saying Word format is the 
 way to go.
 COMPATIBILITY is what I mean. FYI, I am using Open Office 
 suite with RH
 8.0 on my home PC.
 
 
 Regards,
 
 
 
 -Original Message-
 From: gabriel [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] 
 Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2002 2:22 PM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: Decent Word / Excel Conversion: Not yet?
 
 
 On December 12, 2002 11:30 am, Ed Wilts wrote:
  We need good conversion tools, that's all there is to it.  
 We need to 
  play in their world, not assume world domination by making them 
  change.
 
 it may sound naive, but it's not.  how else can we expect 
 people to stop
 using 
 proprietary formats?  wait for microsoft to adopt standars?  
 no.  social
 
 change is the only way, and it starts with people like us.  if we
 recieve a 
 proprietary formatted file, open it in windows and re-save as 
 an rtf or 
 something... BUT then send them an email with a brief 
 explanation as to
 why 
 (and more importantly how) they should save documents they intend to 
 distribute in open formats.  it doesn't have to be technobabble, just 
 something simple like: i got your file, but it took me 20minutes to
 open it 
 since micros~1 has refused to adopt a standardised system.  if you're
 going 
 to send me files, please use a more universal format.
 
 even my grandmother would understand that, and with simple 
 instructions,
 
 she'll send me a text file next time.
 
 -- 
 corporation, n.
 an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without 
 individual 
 responsibility.
   - ambrose bierce
 
 
 
 -- 
 redhat-list mailing list
 unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=unsubscribe
 https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
 
 
 
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 unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=unsubscribe
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Re: Decent Word / Excel Conversion: Not yet?

2002-12-12 Thread Rick Johnson
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

James Francis wrote:
| Raj, Well-worded.
| Like it or not, and trust me I hate it, Microsoft Word is a standard.  For
| what it is worth,  I receive .lwp documents from IBM all the time.  I can't
| open them up in OpenOffice and I can't open them up in Microsoft Word.
| After research, I realized that lwp is for Lotus Word Pro.  They ended up
| reconverting it into a PDF format for me.

One word:

RTF

Problem solved. Cross platform, cross application, just about anything can
read it and most formatting isn't lost.

- -Rick
- --
Rick Johnson, RHCE - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Linux/WAN Administrator - Medata, Inc.
PGP Public Key: https://mail.medata.com/pgp/rjohnson.asc
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Signed and/or encpryted for everyone's protection.

iEYEARECAAYFAj35CPMACgkQIgQdhlSHZgN0yQCgjJuhxZhoPpGVlvPRGyj15JkG
XqMAmwbw4ReYqIarZXiigjE5aV09qZEs
=g4Mw
-END PGP SIGNATURE-



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Re: Decent Word / Excel Conversion: Not yet?

2002-12-12 Thread Bret Hughes
On Thu, 2002-12-12 at 16:08, Rick Johnson wrote:
 -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
 Hash: SHA1
 
 James Francis wrote:
 | Raj, Well-worded.
 | Like it or not, and trust me I hate it, Microsoft Word is a standard.  For
 | what it is worth,  I receive .lwp documents from IBM all the time.  I can't
 | open them up in OpenOffice and I can't open them up in Microsoft Word.
 | After research, I realized that lwp is for Lotus Word Pro.  They ended up
 | reconverting it into a PDF format for me.
 
 One word:
 
 RTF
 
 Problem solved. Cross platform, cross application, just about anything can
 read it and most formatting isn't lost.
 

Not too bad a solution or at least a step in the right direction.  I too
have been hit with this from both sides.  Unfortunatly for anything in
the general business world, Word appears to be the defacto standard but
that may be on the verge of change.  Did anyone read the infoworld
interveiw with McNealy of Sun where he said that Sony was going to
bundle star office on all their computers with others to follow?

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/12/11/021211hnmcnealy.xml?1212theb


I have been running Office 97 on win4lin for a couple of years now
because we redline documents with various vendors and attorneys all the
time.  If we caould get a cross platform spec on that it would be a fine
world indeed.

Bret



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Decent Word / Excel Conversion: Not yet?

2002-12-11 Thread Ryan
I've been somewhat disappointed with the quality of the conversion of 
Office documents into native *nix documents by most of the decent GUI apps 
(Kword, Staroffice, Openoffice, etc.).

Is everyone with me on this?  It's a current barrier holding me back from a 
complete dump of everything M$, and I know each new version of the MS 
Office data formats incorporates an even more closed, corrupted, arcane 
(and unstable!) system to prevent easy translation.

I'm sure M$ doesn't want to repeat the mistakes of Samba, but if RedHat 
really wants to take over the desktop market share, isn't decent document 
import one of the first requirements in a sea of nonstop incoming .doc's on 
email (another issue)?

If anyone's found an import that can handle all the highly used features in 
MS Word properly (tables, numbering, footnotes, and redline are a start), 
I'd certainly like to be corrected on my appraisal of the problem!

Of course, I don't intend to launch the why import when you can use open 
source? question, because most people don't have a choice: M$ documents 
are (sadly) not yet extinct.  But maybe a good import filter could help 
keep their population under control until the old monopoly fades away.

Ryan



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Re: Decent Word / Excel Conversion: Not yet?

2002-12-11 Thread Manuel Camacho
Well, my best option until now has been using rtf format rather than M$ 
Word format. Still not perfect, and I have some problems with tables of 
content, but it is better than trying to load a native Word format.

-Manuel.

-Original Message-
From: Ryan [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 19:22:17 +
Subject: Decent Word / Excel Conversion: Not yet?

 I've been somewhat disappointed with the quality of the conversion of 
 Office documents into native *nix documents by most of the decent GUI
 apps 
 (Kword, Staroffice, Openoffice, etc.).
 
 Is everyone with me on this?  It's a current barrier holding me back
 from a 
 complete dump of everything M$, and I know each new version of the MS 
 Office data formats incorporates an even more closed, corrupted, arcane
 (and unstable!) system to prevent easy translation.
 
 I'm sure M$ doesn't want to repeat the mistakes of Samba, but if RedHat
 really wants to take over the desktop market share, isn't decent
 document 
 import one of the first requirements in a sea of nonstop incoming
 .doc's on 
 email (another issue)?
 
 If anyone's found an import that can handle all the highly used
 features in 
 MS Word properly (tables, numbering, footnotes, and redline are a
 start), 
 I'd certainly like to be corrected on my appraisal of the problem!
 
 Of course, I don't intend to launch the why import when you can use
 open 
 source? question, because most people don't have a choice: M$
 documents 
 are (sadly) not yet extinct.  But maybe a good import filter could help
 keep their population under control until the old monopoly fades away.
 
 Ryan
 
 
 
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Re: Decent Word / Excel Conversion: Not yet?

2002-12-11 Thread Ed Wilts
On Wed, Dec 11, 2002 at 07:22:17PM +, Ryan wrote:
 I've been somewhat disappointed with the quality of the conversion of 
 Office documents into native *nix documents by most of the decent GUI apps 
 (Kword, Staroffice, Openoffice, etc.).

What can we say?  When you're right, you're right.  There are no good
open source translators out there - not even for MS Word.  Every one
I've tested failed on trivial documents, and I gave up.  Not even
StarOffice on Windows was anywhere close to usable a couple of months
ago and I bought Office XP for my home systems.

 Of course, I don't intend to launch the why import when you can use open 
 source? question, because most people don't have a choice: M$ documents 
 are (sadly) not yet extinct.  But maybe a good import filter could help 
 keep their population under control until the old monopoly fades away.

We don't even need to start the war on my not ask your users to save all
their documents in portable formats.  Most don't know how - as far as
they're concerned, the native Microsoft formats are all there are.

.../Ed
-- 
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program



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Re: Decent Word / Excel Conversion: Not yet?

2002-12-11 Thread nate
Ed Wilts said:

 What can we say?  When you're right, you're right.  There are no good open
 source translators out there - not even for MS Word.  Every one I've
 tested failed on trivial documents, and I gave up.  Not even
 StarOffice on Windows was anywhere close to usable a couple of months ago
 and I bought Office XP for my home systems.

what can one expect? when MS themselves cannot make their own
shit compadible with their own shit :) I've read lots of stories
about MS word on win32 docs not being able to open on MS office on
mac, or vise versa, a more extreme example, a few months ago a former
co worker was writing his resume in word 2000, About half the people
he sent the resume to could not open it(despite all of them running
word 2000). And this guy was no idiot, he was/is a very smart guy who
has a lot of experience on MS platforms(and other platforms as well. Even a
couple people in the same office(using the same MS office cd to install),
had
problems opening the document! While others, had no problems. In the end he
had to use some $500 software package to export his document to PDF(maybe
there was another way but thats what he chose). Meanwhile I provide my
resume(being unemployed too) in .DOC, .TXT(CRLF  LF), .PDF, .PS, .HTML, .RTF,
and .SXW and never had a problem:) of course it was written in star office
6(though I do admit I had to do some changes to the HTML version to make it
have better formatting, even though it was easily readable it wasn't as
clean). I purchased staroffice 6 to show support for open office, its easier
for me then filing bug reports(and I cannot program).

I agree that compadiblity with MS documents is important, but if the
company who makes it(I'm sure some quick google searches will turn
up hundreds of results like the time I think they released an update
to office 97 so it could write documents readable in office 95)
can't accomplish the task of making a portable document format accross their
very own products, how can anyone else expect to achieve 100% compadibility?

I think longer term, the solution is not to work with them, but
design a good open format. But before we even try to impose this
format on the rest of the world, the open source/free software
suites need to support it fully. Sofar I haven't noticed any
activivies on the parts of openoffice/staroffice, koffice, abiword,
and others to even start on such a format unfortunately. And no
XML by itself isn't good enough, all XML is a buncha tags, it can't
be decoded and displayed right unless everyone knows what all the
tags mean. I mean, Zope can export my websites to XML, fat chance
that I'll be able to load them in openoffice though!

I look forward to that day, if it ever comes!

despite all that though I still love linux and have been MS-free
for more then 4 years, after having used their stuff for more then 8
years.

nate





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Re: Decent Word / Excel Conversion: Not yet?

2002-12-11 Thread Ryurick M. Hristev
On Wed, 11 Dec 2002, Ryan wrote:

 I've been somewhat disappointed with the quality of the conversion of 
 Office documents into native *nix documents by most of the decent GUI apps 
 (Kword, Staroffice, Openoffice, etc.).

Are you expecting perfection ? There is no such thing! You want more ?
What have _you_ done to solve your problems ? 

 Is everyone with me on this?  It's a current barrier holding me back from a 
 complete dump of everything M$, and I know each new version of the MS 

Then don't. Is as simple as that! Is nobody's fault that _you_ choose to
keep your docs in an closed and proprietary format. Nobody's forcing
you to dump of everything M$.

 Office data formats incorporates an even more closed, corrupted, arcane 
 (and unstable!) system to prevent easy translation.

Exactly, AFAIK even Microsoft's own Word had some troubles importing from
one version to another.

 I'm sure M$ doesn't want to repeat the mistakes of Samba, but if RedHat 
 really wants to take over the desktop market share, isn't decent document 
 import one of the first requirements in a sea of nonstop incoming .doc's on 
 email (another issue)?

In other words: If you want me to come on your side then Gimme, Gimme, Gimme!

Instead of moaning at what OpenOffice does not, better be amazed at what it _does_!

AFAIK the Microsoft doc format is completely closed and there has been a
tremendous effort to reverse engineer it and have what you already see.

Cheers,
-- 
Ryurick M. Hristev mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Computer Systems Manager
University of Canterbury, Physics  Astronomy Dept., New Zealand



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