On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 10:21:05 -0500, Dan Williams <dcbw@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
For 2.0 a bunch of work went into the Word & Excel filters, so compatibility there is much greater than just 90%. A lot also depends on the fonts you have, even on Windows with Office if you don't have the same fonts as the document requires, Office has to do some guessing same as OOo does.
For me the showstopper is lacking the ability to write comments on documents.
This is almost 100% of what I use MS word for. Even back in '99 when OO was called Star Office I felt that it was adequate for writing documents... I'd convert it to word and send it to the publisher and everything was cool. But then I'd get it back in word format with comments and I'd need to use Microsoft word in order to see the comments, reply to them, make edits that the system could track with "track changes".
Since my publisher went out of business, I've rarely used any kind of office program to create a document -- I generally use "emacs". I think that e-mail attachments are a great way to pass unimportant business documents around, but if you really want me to read something (rather than put it off to something I might do next week) you'd best do it as ordinary text, and that's true even if I'm reading my mail on Windows.
I think the "import filter" idea is 100% of what's wrong with workflows that involve office programs and other software (such as CMS systems.) It's necessary, because different systems use different representations, but then even 99.9% accuracy isn't enough because the kind of people that exchange office documents with other people expect to be able to do round-trip scenarios and even the slightest bit of mangling is a huge annoyance when it has to get unmangled again and again. (Or doesn't get noticed until you get back 1500 copies from the printer.)
My wife's sister works for a social service agency where they'd bought one copy of MS word and installed it on all the machines. At some point they realized they weren't in compliance with the license but they couldn't afford to buy MS Office for all their computers -- so they switched to Star Office. They had the kind of "round trip" problems dealing with outside agencies and found it just wasn't worth the bother and they finally found the cash to pay the troll.
