On 10/09/2007, Richard Smedley < smedley358@btinternet.com> wrote:

On Mon, 2007-09-10 at 17:58 +0100, ArchLinuxUser dick_turpin wrote:

>         (We dont have any windoze machines in the house). So I saved
>         it in a format supposedly compatible with Microsoft Office
>         2003, but...of course, microsoft's (lack of) support for open
>         document format has redered the rather hefty assignment
>         useless to the school.
>
> Whoa hang on Kris lets be honest here, MS Office was around long
> before oOo while I agree it would be nice for Mr Gates to include
> support for oOo in his product I doubt he will seeing as that would
> lose him money. IMV its for oOo to improve their compatibility with MS
> Office and not the other way round. Don't get me wrong I'm not
> defending MS or anything but I prefer fact to fiction and the fact is
> its oOo that's at fault here not MS. oOo is notorious for being
> cumbersome, bloated and not too hot with compatibility. Lets not cover
> up OSS failures by using the fog of MS insults to cloud whats really
> going on.

While it would be good for them to have OpenOffice.org, they can
open ODF docs from Microsoft Office by installing Sun's plug-in:
http://www.sun.com/software/star/odf_plugin/

ODF is, after all, the agreed (ISO) international standard for
office data interchange, and .doc is a binay dump of the current
MS documant in RAM, hidden behind a culture of secret data
formats and lock-in :-/

>
>         I think this is a pile of animal's fecal matter, the school
>         should cater for the people that are actually using some
>         software that is compatible with open formats available on the
>         *nix platforms.
>
> I agree and this has been discussed over and over again, actually
> Sneyd school, Bloxwich is starting to change, at the end of last term
> the IT teacher was handing out oOo on cd's, Firefox has been installed
> on one or two machine along with one or two other OSS apps such as
> Dia.

I hope everyone with contacts in education has informed them
about the Open Schools Alliance's Success In Education
event. We're holding it in Liverpool on 19 October.

http://www.openschoolsalliance.org/education-event
http://www.openschoolsalliance.org/education-event/itinerary/

>         I intend to complain at my school today to see if I can get
>         some form of open solution for the software made available to
>         us. But I am interested to hear your oppinions on this issue,
>         and if its actually worth promoting.
>
> Yes it is, just remember you are promoting an alternative that will have incompatibilities and missing features compared to the product they have used for at least the last 10+ years.

That applies to all upgrades of course - they will find more than
a few differences were they to change to Office 2007, rather more
changes in fact than if they went to OOo.

Regards,

- Richard

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