[discuss] OpenOffice is closed
Wm Stewart
Strong words? Perhaps, but consider - according to slide 30 of the
reference below, the number one feature that OpenOffice users themselves
want, the people that should matter, is compatibility with MS formats:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/w/images/1/11/Renaissance-status-2009-01-30_wiki.odp
This is far and away the single most important issue holding back adoption
of OpenOffice around the world. I encounter it with users every day. The
interoperability is getting better, for example with docx, but needs to be
*complete*, and issues remain for example with tables and fields in Writer,
defaults in Excel, and org charts and alignment in Impress.
Once interoperability is complete, OpenOffice will very quickly become the
number one office suite in the world. Nothing else is holding it back.
Complete success is completely dependent on this one issue, and failure to
achieve success is completely dependent on this one issue. See slide 30.
It saddens me greatly to see OpenOffice friends who claim to be "open"
minded show a "closed" mind on interoperability, blocking the complete
success that is so near at hand, and we all wish.
(Please don't respond to this post by trashing MS formats, the process by
which they achieved ISO approval, or lauding the technical superiority of
ODF as a standard. That is all old news, and agreed, but misses the
reality of today, the opportunity at hand for OpenOffice to "embrace and
replace", by being open instead of closed to the billions of MS documents
already in existence and being produced in greater quantities every day.)
Constructively intended,
Bill Stewart
Eseri, CEO
http://Eseri.com/
On 2/2/2010 2:05 PM, Joe Anderson wrote:
>
> Hi Kim:
> I think what you are seeing is the total garbage that Microsoft puts out. I don't use Word or Office because I have a Mac, and putting that junk on my Mac would be sacrilegious. I do use WordPerfect on a PC and have for many years, when importing or opening a WP doc in Word it is always screwed up. Taking the same doc from WP into OO works fine.
> Just my 2 cents worth-Joe
>
>
> On Feb 2, 2010, at 12:43 PM, kwalsh2004 wrote:
>
>> Hello -
>>
>> I am writing to every e-mail address I could find on your Contact Us/Help
>> page on your web site. I teach computers part time at two small private
>> elementary schools - and one of them couldn't afford the licenses of MS
>> Office, so we've been using Open Office. I found it to lacking in all the
>> things that would make it easier for these younger kids to learn the
>> application, like Clip art, page borders, etc.
>>
>> That aside, I am writing to tell you of my latest issue. I usually use MS
>> Word at home to write up my lesson plans, but last week, I updated the
>> page in Open Office Writer and saved it in the same format (MS Word), not OO
>> Writer. When I tried to open it today, in MS Word (my home computer) - none
>> of the text in my table is there - 99% of it has dissappeared! The onlything
>> left was my headers and 29 blank pages (it was only one page when I saved
>> it).
>>
>> I had to download Open Office on my home computer, where I was able to open
>> the Word document in Writer. When I copied the table into a new Word
>> document, it was all messed up - the rows and columns were not the size they
>> appeared in Writer (or the original Word document), so I spent about 30-45
>> minutes to fix one of my lesson plans so that it look like I had it
>> originally. I have 4 total to fix. There was a one-page plan for each week
>> (Jan. 25th and Feb1st), and each had 3 columns (one for the class period
>> times, and one for each day that I teach: Tuesday and Thursday and the other
>> was Wednesday and Friday), and one school had 10 rows and the other had 11.
>> Now I have to fix the other two, and I don't really have 3-4 hours to waste
>> fixing this. It's been a struggle with the kids, but I have learned my
>> lesson - I will never use Open Office for any of my personal and
>> professional documents.
>>
>> Kim Walsh
>>
>> (P.S. I didn't register the version we use in school as we are hoping to be
>> able to afford MS Office next year and didn't want to be part of any
>> feedback study, or receive any e-mails or spam.)
>
>
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M. Fioretti
> It saddens me greatly to see OpenOffice friends who claim to be
> "open" minded show a "closed" mind on interoperability, blocking the
> complete success that is so near at hand, and we all wish.
>
> (Please don't respond to this post by trashing MS formats, the
> process by which they achieved ISO approval, or lauding the
> technical superiority of ODF as a standard.
OK. Then I'll only ask you ONE simple question: do you understand that
what you call "complete success" is simply impossible? Catching up
with Microsoft's (or any other proprietary) formats is a neverending
task, by definition. Should you reach "complete success" tomorrow, it
would only last until the moment Microsoft changes something in the
format, just to keep you in a hamster wheel.
Is it so hard to understand that until you play by the rules that
Microsoft and only Microsoft arbitrarily sets and can change in any
moment you can never achieve "complete success"?
If most (potential) users of OpenOffice still keep asking complete
compatibility with Microsoft file formats... to OpenOffice, instead of
Microsoft, which is the only one that defines those formats, it simply
means that they don't get this fact of life. It's not THEIR
fault, because the average basic, cultural education on these themes
is still below the minimum. But those facts remains.
Constructively intended,
Marco
--
OOo4Kids, the office suite for all children... and their parents:
http://stop.zona-m.net/node/42
Alan Lord (News)
<snip />
> (Please don't respond to this post by trashing MS formats, the process
> by which they achieved ISO approval, or lauding the technical
> misses the reality of today, the opportunity at hand for OpenOffice to
> "embrace and replace", by being open instead of closed to the billions
> of MS documents already in existence and being produced in greater
> quantities every day.)
It is impossible to be 100% compatible with MS (or other Co.'s) formats
as they are proprietary and can be changed at the whim of the vendor.
What the world needs is for the Governments to wake up to the importance
of truly open standards. Things are moving in the right direction, as we
have seen recently in Denmark and the UK Gov's Open Source, Open
Standards Re-use Action plan.
Depending on one vendor's closed formats (and docx is not IS/IEC29500)
is a sure way to never to achieve your [admirable] objective. Better is
to send *your* contacts material in a really open format, such as ODF,
and make companies like Microsoft implement these standards properly.
But of course their shareholders won't like that much.
Al
--
The Open Learning Centre
http://www.theopenlearningcentre.com
Mike Scott
...
>
> Depending on one vendor's closed formats (and docx is not IS/IEC29500)
> is a sure way to never to achieve your [admirable] objective. Better is
> to send *your* contacts material in a really open format, such as ODF,
> and make companies like Microsoft implement these standards properly.
I sort of agree. Except that to many lay people in the 'real world' MS
/is/ the standard, even to the extent that 'Word' is synonymous with
'word processor' and 'Excel' with 'spreadsheet program'. People's
/perception/ is that if you don't send what /they/ see as standard, then
it's a problem /you/ have caused. No, I don't like it, but I can't see a
quick way round it. And it's not helped by academia here - at least one
university demands essays be submitted in /Word/ format(*): nothing else
allowed, not even PDF, so thank goodness OOo is up to the mark here!
> But of course their shareholders won't like that much.
Of course not. But that mustn't be allowed to justify unethical business
practices.
(*) No, they don't say which one :-)
jonathon
> reference below, the number one feature that OpenOffice users themselves
> want, the people that should matter, is compatibility with MS formats:
> http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/w/images/1/11/Renaissance-status-2009-01-30_wiki.odp
If MSO2k7 was less compatible with MSO 2k7 than OOo 3.1 is with
MSO2k7, you might have a point. But since MSO2k7 is just as
incompatible with MSO 2k7 as it is with MSO 2k3, and MSO2k....
> Once interoperability is complete, OpenOffice will very quickly become the number one office suite in the world. Nothing else is holding it back.
There is this little thing known as vertical application integration.
Very few products in that area can utilize OOo. That is a major issue
in corporate migration.
Now that Oracle is sponsoring OOo development, we _might_see some
changes in vertical application integration.
jonathon