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Am 06.10.2012 20:18, Jay Lozier wrote:
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.
Bullshit.
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.
See www.winehq.org.
On an *operating* system that actually deserves that designation, it
runs Windows applications better than Windows itself. I.e. with far less
"cursor animation syndrome".
Sincerely,
Wolfgang
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
*snip*
2 - Not many people know about alternatives.
That's what I call ignorance. Ignorance plus unwillingness to inform
oneself to remedy that ignorance equals idiocy.
I don't have anything against idiots, as long as they don't impose
their idiocy onto me.
3 - Many IT departments in companies choose MSO because it is easily
available and they consider the support as good.
IT departments, just like "managers" "choose" (in fact, they don't
choose at all) MS because it's not them who have to do the actual
work, so they can't have a clue. And because they're too lazy and
ignorant to get some input from the information workers who have to do
the actual work.
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.
With MS products, user productivity will be minimised compared to all
available alternatives.
Sincerely,
Wolfgang
I think I tried to install WP on Wine once, but I'll try it again. Let's see
what happens. I'll report back--doug
Dear Wolfgang,
I am in no way trying - not even in a a such position - to limit anyone's right to express one's opinions, but
>> I wish you will give the same right to others -- we shall respect all others
>> this list is meant to help LibO and its users - not to humiliate or calling names, nor to write irrelevant bullshit
So please, don't insinuate but say clearly what you mean - my english is not good enough to understand what you mean at all - nor expressions like "snip".
Some posts ago you blamed company managers and called them "IT-illiteral morons" claiming that they do wrong decisions buying MS/MSO programs forcing the company's employees "who do the actual work" to be ineffective. I replied that you are barking at a wrong tree -- that it is the IT stuff, the IT-managers and their knowledge you should blame.
Now confirm that by blaming that IT-people - hired as consultants or employed experts " by these "IT-illiteral moron" managers - to be too lazy and ignorant to listen to these workers "who do the actual work".
Can you please explain what you really mean - if you happen to know - and provided that it is of any use for this list.
Just blaming Microsoft and its programs is not productive, nor is it relevant - it is only negative.
If you have a good medicine how to make LibO better and more used it might be of interest if you tell us.
And I can assure you with about 25 years own experience that MSAccess - in practice - is not in any way a "pathological data shredder" -- no doubt has all the MS/MSO programs been good enough to beat WP, Lotus 123, Symphony, etc. -- even still better than any open source programs.
My hope and intention with these posts of mine is that LibO should be enough better to beat MS/MSO as a market leader.
Regards
Pertti Rönnberg
> Everything that you get from LaTeX: structure markup instead of
> spaghetti formatting, parameterized formatting, etc...
>
> Instead of clicking through dozens of dialogboxes for each and every
> line of text, slide title, list item, figure, etc. to get
> everything the way you want it, you just change a few parameters
> once for the whole document and that's it.LibO/OOo already provides this. As did MS Word 5.x for DOS around
1994.
MS Word 5.0 for DOS was published in 1989. As the first document
processing software in history that couldn't print. Because MS was
unable/too lazy to supply printer drivers in time for the release.
It's called "styles". Which incidentally don't provide only
formatting information, but also tell the word processor where that
particular paragraph (or title) sites in the document hierarchycal
structure.
The point with MS Word, as (unfortunately) with LO Writer is, that,
unlike e.g. Wordperfect or FrameMaker their document model is thoroughly
unstructured ("spaghetti"), and the way "styles" are implemented they do
not allow to "emulate" "structure markup" convincingly.
As soon as you try to author significantly complex documents with it you
will notice this. At least if you've ever done similar work with
document processing software that does allow to use "structure markup".
I've used over a dozen different document processing applications over
the past >20 years, and from day one I have always used "structure
markup" without even knowing about the expression since for me it was
just the natural way to work with documents, but I've never used a
document processing software that made "structure markup" as thoroughly
impossible as MS Word or LO/OO.
> I just cited LaTeX as one example for structure markup. Other
> examples are Wordperfect or Framemaker. My point is that LO should
> not keep the MS Office-style "spaghetti" content models that were
> already outdated in the 80s and pile up features on top, but
> instead LO should focus on providing a functional concept that
> allows users to work with documents in a more structured and thus
> more efficient way. MS Office is by far the worst "example" in the
> market. And, as such, the example *not* to follow.Are you complaining that OpenDocument format (which not long ago
became an ISO standard) uses a "spaghetti content model" ?
Unfortunately, LO/OO is just a 1:1 clone of MS Office. And yes, the MS
"document model" is plain spaghetti, as is LO/OO's. It's a pity, but
that's the way it is and that's why currently I don't use LO Writer for
anything else than for converting .doc files to .pdf.
The problem with Calc is the same, btw: Instead of "cloning" a good,
well designed example (i.e. Lotus Improv), it is just a 1:1 clone of the
worst spreadhseet available, i.e. "Excel" (what an orwellish branding).
Sincerely,
Wolfgang
Could you explain this for those of us who have never used Wordperfect or
FrameMaker? I still fail to understand why "styles" can not "emulate"
"structure markup".
Since the average IQ is around 60 (or something utterly abysmal like
that) i don't think intelligent decision-making really entered the
equation.
The average IQ is - per definition - equal to 100. It's even calibrated
to be a normal distribution.
Sincerely,
Wolfgang
But Ooo/LO does use structure markup. All .odt/.ods documents are XML files.
Hi 
Thanks :) That restores my faith in humanity a little
Thanks and regards from
Tom
Greetings,
This thread has been ongoing for a relatively long time now and IMHO it has forked many times and veared off of its original message: that MS was to start renting their software and the lock on users that that implies. Well, as we have been debating all these forked threads, there are other mainstream software suppliers that have also signed on to the software rental business model. Although this is not directly competitive with LO, it is related to the subject and may interest office suite users. I see today in our local big-box office supplies outlet advertisement that Adobe is now renting their mainstream software such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Dreamweaver and Adobe Create Cloud. They call it a "subscription", but it looks like rental to me. On one listing for example, the "subscription" for Adobe Photoshop is listed at $59.99 (US) and the rental period is only 3 months! I don't know what Photoshop is selling for since I don't use it, but that seems expensive to me. Maybe I am just cheap or unrealistic in today's market. In all cases, I am *never* going to put my data at the mercy of a corporation - whether it be "the cloud" or limited-usage rented maintenance tools. I still have the scars from doing that in the past.
I'm getting off my soapbox now...
Girvin Herr
Hi
There are no quick answers and there are no "one size fits all" answers either.
The only way LO will ever be an easy sell is if everyone else is already using it. In IT diversity and "freedom of choice" is generally seen as a bad thing. It's much easier just to go along with whatever everyone else is using. It's less challenging, less to think about, easier to get your ideas accepted by people paying your wages.
It's a bit like bands or fashion or art or wine. How do people decide which is best if they are not experts themselves? How do you find experts that really are experts rather than being salesmen. How do you know when they are giving good advice rather than just fobbing you off with something they think you'll be happy to hear just to get rid of you quickly.
Regards from
Tom
There was a missing bit in my description: if the attachment would be opened R/W, the file would be saved in the user's temp folder. So it would be lost at best, or in worst case scenario deleted as temp folders gets cleaned.
OK, if I accept everything that has been said, then why wouldn't opening an
in-memory r/w copy be the sensible default action?
Am 08.10.2012 14:13, John Clegg wrote:
OK, if I accept everything that has been said, then why wouldn't opening an
in-memory r/w copy be the sensible default action?
Tell your mail client, browser, whatever to call soffice with the -n
switch. The -n switch treats every document as if it were a template.
The builders of your mail client, browser, whatever can not know about this.
Sounds as if the Peter Principle as returned 
will folks heed it this time 'round; I guess not ;-(
Hi
so true.
I think the market share of MSO has nothing to do with the users being
So that when the user would try to save it a Save As dialog would appear ?
Sounds good to me.
Am 09.10.2012 09:14, Marcello Romani wrote:
OK, if I accept everything that has been said, then why wouldn't
opening an
in-memory r/w copy be the sensible default action?So that when the user would try to save it a Save As dialog would appear ?
Sounds good to me.
Again, it is not the office program which creates read-only files. In
most cases some other application calls the office to *view* some
document. In most cases the office is called by a browser, mail client
or cloud application to view online content or mail attachments.
There are many reasons why this application has a viewing mode. It must
not open some document in unsaved template mode just because the file is
read-only. That would be extremely annoying for many users.
Most of our ODF documents (documentations, print-outs, database forms,
reports) are strictly read-only because only one person (me, the file
owner) is supposed to modify these. The co-workers can work with the
contained material (read, print, mail as PDF, edit databases through forms).
All you've got to do is hitting the edit button in order to get an
editable new and unsaved document.
All you've got to do is saving the same document in your own file system
in order to get your own editable copy of the document.
Some Microsoft "feature" carries over the read-only flag when an
application saves a document under another name. I'd call this a bug. No
other file system behaves that silly. You need to turn it off in the
file properties (right-click file in Win Explorer>Properties...).
There is also an internal read-only mode implemented in the office
program (File>Save As... save with password, open read-only with
password). But that is another story. The internal flag within the
document does not protect the file from being manipulated by other
applications and the read-only status is carried with every copy of the
file.
Am 09.10.2012 09:14, Marcello Romani wrote:
OK, if I accept everything that has been said, then why wouldn't
opening an
in-memory r/w copy be the sensible default action?So that when the user would try to save it a Save As dialog would appear ?
Sounds good to me.
After all I probably answered too quickly... 
Again, it is not the office program which creates read-only files. In
most cases some other application calls the office to *view* some
document. In most cases the office is called by a browser, mail client
or cloud application to view online content or mail attachments.There are many reasons why this application has a viewing mode. It must
not open some document in unsaved template mode just because the file is
read-only. That would be extremely annoying for many users.
Most of our ODF documents (documentations, print-outs, database forms,
reports) are strictly read-only because only one person (me, the file
owner) is supposed to modify these. The co-workers can work with the
contained material (read, print, mail as PDF, edit databases through forms).All you've got to do is hitting the edit button in order to get an
editable new and unsaved document.
All you've got to do is saving the same document in your own file system
in order to get your own editable copy of the document.Some Microsoft "feature" carries over the read-only flag when an
application saves a document under another name. I'd call this a bug. No
other file system behaves that silly. You need to turn it off in the
file properties (right-click file in Win Explorer>Properties...).There is also an internal read-only mode implemented in the office
program (File>Save As... save with password, open read-only with
password). But that is another story. The internal flag within the
document does not protect the file from being manipulated by other
applications and the read-only status is carried with every copy of the
file.
Well, it seems if one thinks twice about the issue at hand, one must come to the conclusion that what we have now is a good compromise between functionality/security/ease of use.