MS raised prices so people will now start renting their office products instead

[Tom_Davies]

Hi
If only you could be strict with those people and demand
1.  a Pdf so you can see how it's meant to look
2.  Images as separate files in image formats
3.  The article in .doc format
For me that would be just about perfect.

Even with .docs the formatting some people fall into is fairly insane but at least i can paste-as-unformatted text and then fix it.  If they give the Pdf i stand some chance of getting reasonably close.

A local magazine wants us to send them an advert in .doc format and our art-work (logos etc) also in .doc format?!?!!?  wtf?  Luckily they claim to like scalar vector formats so i'm sending them .EPSs instead.  I can't read eps myself (the colours go weird and/or dotty) so it might be interesting to see what result i get.

Regards from
Tom

[doug11]

I recently replied to a thread about Microsoft Office on another list, and I
am going to copy my post here, because the LO, OO, and Symphony people
ought to know:

I am the editor of a small Newsletter (circulation ~1000)
and I am sent copy in .dos format that was made by MSWord on a Mac.
Most often, none of the programs I have on Linux will correctly open
the files. OO, LO, and Symphony all print the copy pushed off the the right
and over the edge of the page margin. Nothing will salvage the file and
make it useful. WordPerfect (XP or Win7) will write them perfectly.
A similar situation exists for the supposedly universal .rtf files, except
they are sometimes even worse to make readable than .doc files. I no
longer accept .rtf files at all.

So, until LO and/or LO and/or Symphony--my first choice-- can *really*
read MS documents, I will have to use a Windows program. Which I
really don't mind, except that I have to move the files and boot another OS.

What you folks in the dev labs need to do is to stop adding "features" and
make what you have *work.*

--doug

[planas]

Hi
Honestly, read "The Emperor’s New Clothes".

Also there was a vote to determine the most influential and
important music of the 20th Century and "The Spice Girls" got in at
number 1. Does that really mean they really were the most
influential? Is there any validity in disagreeing with the results
of the vote?

The assumption is that people using MS Office (or voted for the
ladies) had a properly informed choice. That they were aware of and
were knowledgeable about alternatives and that they made a fair,
unbiased logical and intelligent decision. Since the average IQ is
around 60 (or something utterly abysmal like that) i don't think
intelligent decision-making really entered the equation.

Regards from
Tom

More often the choice was spend more money on a Mac or which brand of
Windows machine do you want. Add to the fact that very few of the sales
floor staff are very knowledgeable so the less informed buyer is often
steered into buying Windows.

Also, in business "buying IBM" has often been replaced by "buying
MS/Windows/Office" without any real analysis of needs, costs, etc.

________________________________
From: Wolfgang Keller <feliphil@gmx.net>
To: users@global.libreoffice.org
Sent: Friday, 5 October 2012, 17:12
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] MS problems

If MSO is a 90% market leader all its users cannot be complete
idiots.

<cynism>

Thank you for this statement that clearly illustrates the typical
"pointy haired think" (i.e. un-think) of "leaders" (and their
followers).

The very simple fact is: LibO has to become better in a SWOT
analysis!

And what color should that SWOT analysis have?

Would Mauve have enough RAM?

</cynism>

Sincerely,

Wolfgang

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All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot
be deleted

I recently replied to a thread about Microsoft Office on another list,
and I
am going to copy my post here, because the LO, OO, and Symphony people
ought to know:

I am the editor of a small Newsletter (circulation ~1000)
and I am sent copy in .dos format that was made by MSWord on a Mac.
Most often, none of the programs I have on Linux will correctly open
the files. OO, LO, and Symphony all print the copy pushed off the the
right
and over the edge of the page margin. Nothing will salvage the file and
make it useful. WordPerfect (XP or Win7) will write them perfectly.
A similar situation exists for the supposedly universal .rtf files,
except
they are sometimes even worse to make readable than .doc files. I no
longer accept .rtf files at all.

dos not doc format? Not to be picky. Can you email a typical file off
list because I am curious what is happening.

[doug11]

Hi
Honestly, read "The Emperor’s New Clothes".

Also there was a vote to determine the most influential and
important music of the 20th Century and "The Spice Girls" got in at
number 1. Does that really mean they really were the most
influential? Is there any validity in disagreeing with the results
of the vote?

The assumption is that people using MS Office (or voted for the
ladies) had a properly informed choice. That they were aware of and
were knowledgeable about alternatives and that they made a fair,
unbiased logical and intelligent decision. Since the average IQ is
around 60 (or something utterly abysmal like that) i don't think
intelligent decision-making really entered the equation.

Regards from
Tom

More often the choice was spend more money on a Mac or which brand of
Windows machine do you want. Add to the fact that very few of the sales
floor staff are very knowledgeable so the less informed buyer is often
steered into buying Windows.

Also, in business "buying IBM" has often been replaced by "buying
MS/Windows/Office" without any real analysis of needs, costs, etc.

________________________________
From: Wolfgang Keller <feliphil@gmx.net>
To: users@global.libreoffice.org
Sent: Friday, 5 October 2012, 17:12
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] MS problems

If MSO is a 90% market leader all its users cannot be complete
idiots.

<cynism>

Thank you for this statement that clearly illustrates the typical
"pointy haired think" (i.e. un-think) of "leaders" (and their
followers).

The very simple fact is: LibO has to become better in a SWOT
analysis!

And what color should that SWOT analysis have?

Would Mauve have enough RAM?

</cynism>

Sincerely,

Wolfgang

--
For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to:
users+help@global.libreoffice.org
Problems?
http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot
be deleted

I recently replied to a thread about Microsoft Office on another list,
and I
am going to copy my post here, because the LO, OO, and Symphony people
ought to know:

I am the editor of a small Newsletter (circulation ~1000)
and I am sent copy in .dos format that was made by MSWord on a Mac.
Most often, none of the programs I have on Linux will correctly open
the files. OO, LO, and Symphony all print the copy pushed off the the
right
and over the edge of the page margin. Nothing will salvage the file and
make it useful. WordPerfect (XP or Win7) will write them perfectly.
A similar situation exists for the supposedly universal .rtf files,
except
they are sometimes even worse to make readable than .doc files. I no
longer accept .rtf files at all.

dos not doc format? Not to be picky. Can you email a typical file off
list because I am curious what is happening.

That was a typo. I meant .doc files. Yes, I will send you a couple of the files
and y9ou can see for yourself.

[Tom_Davies]

Hi
Just thought people might like a few equations to see what Wolfgang is driving at
"
As the old (is it really a joke) goes...

From http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/humor/equation.html

Knowledge is Power
Time is Money
and as every engineer knows, Power is Work over Time.

So, substituting algebraic equations for these time worn bits of wisdom, we get:

1.  K = P
2.  T = M
3.  P = W/T

Now, do a few simple substitutions:

Put W/T in for P in equation (1), which yields:

4.  K = W/T

Put M in for T into equation (4), which yields:

5.  K = W/M

Now we've got something. Expanding back into English, we get:

""Knowledge equals Work over Money.""

What this MEANS is that:

a)  The More You Know, the More Work You Do, and
b)  The More You Know, the Less Money You Make.

Solving for Money, we get:

6.  M = W/K

Money equals Work Over Knowledge.

From equation (6) we see that Money approaches infinity as Knowledge approaches 0, regardless of the Work done.

What THIS MEANS is:

""The More you Make, the Less you Know.""

Solving for Work, we get

7.  W = M K

Work equals Money times Knowledge

From equation (7) we see that Work approaches 0 as Knowledge approaches 0.

What THIS MEANS is:

""The stupid rich do little or no work.""
"

Nice eh?  Even maths 'proves' Wolfgang is correct :)  Have a good weekend all!  Make sure you get a chance to relax and enjoy
Regards from
Tom

[Dr_R_O_Stapf]

I think the market share of MSO has nothing to do with the users being idiots or not. The 90% share is caused by 3 things
1 - When you buy a PC you often get the MSO already pre-installed
2 - Not many people know about alternatives. I only learned about OO and LO from my brother who is a IT wizard. While talking to people about me utilization of LO I am always experiecing that almost all people do not know about OO or LO or other packages.
3 - Many IT departments in companies choose MSO because it is easily available and they consider the support as good. Keep in mind that introduction of an alternative suit requires a lot of testing in an IT department. The suit must be stable and keep productivity high.

If my above statements are wrong, then I am happy because I converted from MSO to LO, thus from an idiot to something else...

[Villeroy]

Am 05.10.2012 14:09, John Clegg wrote:

I thought LO was emulating MSO 97??

Read-only is the only sensible way to open other people's files (web
downloads, mail attachments).

[planas]

I think the market share of MSO has nothing to do with the users being
idiots or not. The 90% share is caused by 3 things
1 - When you buy a PC you often get the MSO already pre-installed
2 - Not many people know about alternatives. I only learned about OO
and LO from my brother who is a IT wizard. While talking to people
about me utilization of LO I am always experiecing that almost all
people do not know about OO or LO or other packages.
3 - Many IT departments in companies choose MSO because it is easily
available and they consider the support as good. Keep in mind that
introduction of an alternative suit requires a lot of testing in an IT
department. The suit must be stable and keep productivity high.

Some of the IT departments I had to work with convinced me the average
tech person in the department knew less about computers in general than
I did. Not that I necessarily know that much. I can remember trying to
solve a networking problem according to my then employer's IT staff and
nothing worked. Eventually, they found that the hardware and software
they had specified did work well together. My sarcastic engineering
comment was to ask if they had bothered to read both spec sheets; I was
working in chemical process engineering then and reading spec sheets was
a mandatory practice for us to avoid killing innocent people.

Another problem is that it is often easier in many companies to get
approval to buy/install from a "name brand" than from someone who is not
a "name brand". MS, Apple, Dell, HP, and Intel are "name brands" and it
is presumed safe to buy from them. A superior product may not get
installed/bought because of this mindset. In the 70's and 80's the joke
was "no one got fired for buying IBM" even if their product was the
worst in the market segment because of the brand image of IBM.

[Spencer_Graves1]

Why?

       What if I want to edit it? Are you outlawing collaborative work? I'm confused.

       Spencer

[John_Clegg]

I have seen many specific instances of hardware items that will not work
together even though they are both well known branded products and there is
no indication that they shouldn't work together. Life just isn't that
predictable.

[Dennis_E_Hamilton]

[From the great minds think alike department]

Microsoft SkyDrive accepts and presents, via the Office Web Applications, ODF documents. (These applications support a nice variety of features but not all features of the full Microsoft Office applications are supported, and there are warnings about those if noticed in an uploaded document that is opened for editing via browser.)

In presenting an ODF document, it is opened read only, with an indication that has been done.

If the Edit button is depressed, SkyDrive makes a *copy* of the document and opens that for editing. The original, uploaded ODF document is not touched. There is a warning that some features of the document may not be preserved. (The editing is being done in Word, and features that are not imported into Word will be lost. Also, use of Word features that don't export will be lost too.)

That strikes me as a nicely cautious way to handle formats that are not the "natively-supported" format of an application.

- Dennis

[Villeroy]

Am 06.10.2012 17:37, Spencer Graves wrote:

Am 05.10.2012 14:09, John Clegg wrote:

I thought LO was emulating MSO 97??

Read-only is the only sensible way to open other people's files (web
downloads, mail attachments).

      Why?

      What if I want to edit it? Are you outlawing collaborative work?
I'm confused.

      Spencer

Browsers and mail clients have 2 commands to handle document files. One
command for viewing and another for downloading. When you download a
document (or detach it from a mail) then you create a new file copy in
your own file system (home directory or Windows "My Files"). You specify
the location of that file and you get the ownership of the file. You can
find the file at any time and it will be included in your automatic backup.
When you "open" a document by clicking a browser link you get some other
computer's document *for viewing*. Technically, the browser downloads a
copy of that document to a *temporary* folder on your file system and
starts the associated application to open the read-only file.
Under no circumstance LibreOffice is able to change the read-write
status of any file on the file system. It is always your browser or your
mail client which creates the read-only copy for instant viewing before
the respective application gets started to show the file.
You do not know the temporary directory, the temporary file may have a
randomized file name, the temporary file might be deleted on next system
start.

Some other applications may allow you to edit the loaded read-only file
but as soon as you save the file you would be prompted for a new
location since no application is able to overwrite a read-only file.
I definitively prefer the way how LibO handles the temporary, unknown file.

Collaboration on one document goes like this:
You open an inbox attachment for viewing.
You click the edit button, do your work and call File>Send>...
The incoming mail with its attachment won't be changed. Your outgoing
version resides in the outbox. When you save your document to disk you
better choose the ODF file format. When you send the file you choose PDF
for finished documents, doc/xls for collaboration with MS users and you
ODF for normal document exchange.

[upscope]

> I think the market share of MSO has nothing to do with the users being
> idiots or not. The 90% share is caused by 3 things
> 1 - When you buy a PC you often get the MSO already pre-installed
> 2 - Not many people know about alternatives. I only learned about OO
> and LO from my brother who is a IT wizard. While talking to people
> about me utilization of LO I am always experiecing that almost all
> people do not know about OO or LO or other packages.
> 3 - Many IT departments in companies choose MSO because it is easily
> available and they consider the support as good. Keep in mind that
> introduction of an alternative suit requires a lot of testing in an IT
> department. The suit must be stable and keep productivity high.

Some of the IT departments I had to work with convinced me the average
tech person in the department knew less about computers in general than
I did. Not that I necessarily know that much. I can remember trying to
solve a networking problem according to my then employer's IT staff and
nothing worked. Eventually, they found that the hardware and software
they had specified did work well together. My sarcastic engineering
comment was to ask if they had bothered to read both spec sheets; I was
working in chemical process engineering then and reading spec sheets was
a mandatory practice for us to avoid killing innocent people.

Another problem is that it is often easier in many companies to get
approval to buy/install from a "name brand" than from someone who is not
a "name brand". MS, Apple, Dell, HP, and Intel are "name brands" and it
is presumed safe to buy from them. A superior product may not get
installed/bought because of this mindset. In the 70's and 80's the joke
was "no one got fired for buying IBM" even if their product was the
worst in the market segment because of the brand image of IBM.

This statement goes back further than that. i remember it in the 60's. There
were far superior systems than IBM at that time, but the company bought IBM,
mainly because of the above statement.

[planas]

Spencer

Usually "Save As" 'will allow you to create an editable version.

The issue is security and balancing usefulness and safety. If you are
only allowed to open with limited privileges (no macro execution or
editing) the possibility of infecting your computer unintentionally with
malware is lessened considerably. This gives the users a chance to
verify before granting full privileges on their computers.

Having cleaned serious malware infections on friends and coworkers
computers; the inconvenience is worth the protection. It is not perfect
but puts another step in the way of disaster.

[John_Clegg]

Whilst a condom is always wise I still prefer to put it on for
myself........

[Felmon_Davis]

I am still not sure how one gets an infection from saving a file as writable. on a Linux system it's not executable, not sure how it works on Windows.

how would infection occur?

(if you download an .exe file in Windows, it wouldn't matter if it's writable, right?)

F.

[Miroslaw_Zalewski]

It's rather that in read-only mode, office suite will not run any macros
attached to document, despite macro security configuration.

[Villeroy]

Am 06.10.2012 19:16, John Clegg wrote:

Whilst a condom is always wise I still prefer to put it on for
myself........

If you prefer to not choose anything, the other side will take her own
precautions.

-- Your mail/cloud client creates a *temporary file for viewing* unless
you explicitly *downloaded* your own copy of the document. You can never
be sure about the life time, location or file name of a temporary file.
Your modification on a temporary file will be all lost on restart. If
you want an editable file you need to download your own copy to a
location and file name of your choice.

-- Any other application which allows me to edit a document loaded from
a read-only file will not allow me to save the modified document to the
same file. It will force me to choose another path-name to store my
modifications.

-- The application which displays the document loaded from a read-only
file is not the application which is responsible for the read-only
status of that file.

-- LibreOffice never ever modifies the read-write status of any file on
your entire file system. It has no means to do such things.

[Villeroy]

Am 06.10.2012 19:59, Felmon Davis wrote:

I am still not sure how one gets an infection from saving a file as
writable. on a Linux system it's not executable, not sure how it
works on Windows.

how would infection occur?

It's rather that in read-only mode, office suite will not run any
macros attached to document, despite macro security configuration.

thank you for the clear and illuminating answer.

F.

... which is plain wrong like so many answers on this particular list.

[planas]

Am 05.10.2012 14:09, John Clegg wrote:

I thought LO was emulating MSO 97??

Read-only is the only sensible way to open other people's files (web
downloads, mail attachments).

      Why?

      What if I want to edit it? Are you outlawing collaborative
work? I'm confused.

      Spencer

Spencer

Usually "Save As" 'will allow you to create an editable version.

The issue is security and balancing usefulness and safety. If you are
only allowed to open with limited privileges (no macro execution or
editing) the possibility of infecting your computer unintentionally with
malware is lessened considerably. This gives the users a chance to
verify before granting full privileges on their computers.

Having cleaned serious malware infections on friends and coworkers
computers; the inconvenience is worth the protection. It is not perfect
but puts another step in the way of disaster.

I am still not sure how one gets an infection from saving a file as
writable. on a Linux system it's not executable, not sure how it works
on Windows.

how would infection occur?

VBS macros in MSO documents have been used to infect Windows computers.
The issue is what is good practice regardless of the OS. If you follow
good practices, the possibility of problems is significantly reduced.