On Monday 24 March 2008 17:16:35 Michael McDonald wrote:
On 24/03/2008, Graham Lauder <yorick_(a)openoffice.org> wrote:
I doubt that MS will ever move down the OSS track
In some respects, MS is moving down a similar track by selling cheaply into some markets ("3rd world" and academic) in an attempt to stop others gaining market share. But open, no.
I'd like to see the day, but history is against them and cost free is not OpenSource. Other companies of their size and influence in their respective markets have been hit by disruptive technologies and the names were very big. Western Union hit by Bell telephone (Bell actually offered them the technology but they refused.) HMV killed by the Sony Transistor Radio Harley Davidson taken out by Honda's "You meet the nicest people" campaign National Cash Register reduced to a shadow of it's former self by Panasonic putting adding machines on top of a cash drawer All of these companies had functional monopolies in their market, I was actually working for NCR when it started downhill for them. And all were taken down by their own internal structures preventing them from dealing with the upstarts. The inertia in Mega Corporates is huge.
My opinion of Ubuntu is extremely low if only for the bad screwing with OOo that they do and the fact that OOo gets blamed because the marketing has the world convinced that Ubuntu can do no wrong and a large chunk of the Linux community has swallowed it HL&S.
That has aroused my curiosity as it is the software I use (by choice) and I wasn't aware of any issues. Can you elaborate?
The Ubuntu install breaks certain things which I can't remember off the top of my head but I can search the Users list for it. But the problem was when people came to the users list for help with a particular problem the normal fixes didn't work, so suddenly the issue was OOo's fault. Our advice now is "Install the proper latest OOo deb from OOo repositories". invariably the problems went away.
As an aside ... just a couple of days ago I received a PowerPoint presentation that ran away with all my RAM and swap space. First time I've seen that happen. I must file a bug report for that one.
Wooo that's weird, do file that bug report, but do it with Ubuntu's issue tracker.
One thing that I do find a nuisance from time to time, and as far as I can recall it also occurred with Fedora Core (up to 4) is that line spacing in an MS document increases when using OO under Ubuntu. The result is that pagination is all out of whack with what the author intended. In most cases, of course, the author, in common with most ordinary users, has used the wrong techniques to control where text is placed on the page.
I haven't researched the problem. I suspect it is nothing to do with Microsoft's doc format - just that that is what commonly arrives in the mail. I have noticed that some of my earlier OO documents suffer the same fate.
Any comments?
Invariably the problem is to do with the MS document if it originated as a doc. Microsoft hasn't until recently released its file format specifications, This requires OOo Devs to back engineer the binaries and basically guess how they do it. This can cause all sorts of issues and the issues vary according to MSO version as well. Tables are an ongoing issue for instance and the way graphics are handled in a text document. Odd ball fonts, styles and so forth can also cause issues. There are a number of controls in the OOo settings that deal with line spacing and they may display differently depending on your GUI's default settings. One of the newer extensions that is being worked on right now strips out the foreign formatting and uses your default templates. I love it. I come back to a comment I made in my reply to Ian, compatibility is not an OOo issue, it's a Microsoft issue. At least OOo can render a MSO document into a readable state. Something that MSO is incapable of doing with ODF. This is a lack in Microsoft not a problem with OOo Compatibility would be really good if MS released it's file formats for public scrutiny, but they don't. This is not OOo's fault but Microsoft's. When an MS User gets an ODF document and MSO can't open it, does the User complain to MS, no he complains to OOo. If an OOo user gets an MS document that he can't read, does that user therefore complain the MS, no they complain to OOo and yet both of these are MS issues.
I have struck quite a bit of "Ford v Holden" thinking. Many are prepared to try OO, but as soon as they strike a difference they go running back to MS Office. Perhaps my powers of persuasion are not good enough!
That is common, but "Trying" isn't enough and persuasion should give way to education. Any organisation that is going to move to OOo has to do it with a migration strategy in place before they start. It is a point of continual frustration to me that many ignore this simple piece of advice and the migration fails because there are no goals, no milestones no evaluation and no ongoing support and of course the failure is blamed on OOo. Migration is not about software it is about people. Individuals that decide to try OOo are often looking for a free version of MSO, when they find it's not, they go scurrying off to find a pirated version of Office without ever finding out that there are many other reasons to stay with OOo other than the cost. Cheers GL -- Graham Lauder, OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html INGOTs Moderator New Zealand www.theingots.org.nz GET DRESSED : GET OOOGEAR Gear for the well dressed OOo Advocate www.ooogear.co.nz