OT: Massachusetts Verdict: MS Office Formats Out
Jeff Vian
jvian10 at charter.net
Sun Oct 2 05:20:35 UTC 2005
On Sat, 2005-10-01 at 23:16 -0400, Nancy Merckle wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Tom Pangborn wrote:
>
> > "... and word was no
> > longer available ; How would ..."
> >
> > Wouldn't you just install the old version of Word, the one the file(s)
> > were created with? Wait a minute, we're pretending aren't we.
>
> We weren't pretending when higher ups decided that we would now all be on
> a Word standard. This required all official documents for our office to
> be produced in Word format. After 18 years of a Word Perfect standard,
> there were a lot of legacy documents to be converted to Word. Neither
> Word nor Word Perfect was able to convert complex documents from one
> format to the other. Many hours were spent (by others) converting
> documentation from WP to Word. There are now less than a dozen licenses
> for WP in the division, so finding someone to convert a legacy document
> can be difficult.
>
> When OOo announced its upgraded Word Perfect filter about 18 months ago, I
> was experimenting with it and a co-worker mentioned a document with tables
> that he had tried to convert with no success. He e-mailed me the
> document, I opened it in OOo, saved it in Word format and e-mailed it
> back. It may not have been perfect, but he was very happy.
>
> With OOo, I'm no longer concerned about loosing access to my Word Perfect
> Documents. Also, I can read Word docs, without having to send $ to M$ for
> the privilege. (It is provided at work, but I don't even have to use it
> there.)
>
> My point is that sometimes old versions of the software are not available,
> having been removed for security purposes, non-renewal of the license, or
> the only remaining copy of the software died on a dead hard drive.
>
>
> Nancy
>
And that scenario IMHO is what using an open document format is expected
to eliminate. Using one proprietary format (WP) and having to convert
to another (M$) is a nightmare. If the format were open then it would
not matter which work processing tool you were using. They all could
read/write it.
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