Generalities can sometimes be annoying
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Ridcully Jul 15, 2013 10:52 PM EDT |
I realise the author has hedged his bets:Quoting:I prefer native Linux apps to trying to run Windows applications. I recognize that your mileage may vary in that sense, I'm sure some folks find Wine useful. but I strongly suspect that "some folks" may be "lots of folks", otherwise Wine would have disappeared long, long ago. The Linux world can be brutal: if it isn't used and wanted, it falls by the wayside. As far as I am concerned, Wine and its more friendly younger brother "Crossover Office" are both indispensable. I use Win-based software for both my accounts and image manipulation and I have used the same software now for over 10 years so it is a "well trodden rut" in my mind. I really don't want to have to re-learn GIMP or a FOSS based accounting program which may NOT do exactly what I want. And as for an old version of Office, it's there in Crossover because I like to test .doc files before I send them to "unwashed Windows users" after composing them in OpenOffice. You can never tell with Microsoft Office - what it does one day may not be what it does the next and never, never bring up the subject of the "so-called ISO standard of .docx".........the standard you are having when you're not having a standard.....as an old advert used to go. I agree completely: Use Linux based software if you can; but I remain a very pragmatic person and as far as I am concerned, if what you use does what you want, why change it ? My accounting software is now about 11 years old....it ran on Win98SE, but it still works perfectly and is crucial to my business records. Wine and its more cultivated brother both do sterling jobs....I'd hate to lose them. |
| notbob Jul 16, 2013 12:55 PM EDT |
I was about to cave and buy a W7/Office box so I could interface easily with the courts, my attorney, and a couple stubborn banks, but someone made me hip to the fact that almost all these OSS/M$ compatibility problems can be eliminated by converting everything to pdf's. Sure enough, I can export my LO writer files and calc files to pdf, I can convert jpg files to pdf with imagemagick, etc. Sadly, my rural ISP is flakey enough I've had major throughput problems, lately, and I finally broke down and bought a new fax machine, something I thought I'd never ever use again, but turns out they're still in heavy use. In fact, one CA govt agency I've had to deal with still insists on fax only to xfer docs. Un-freakin-believable! |
| Fettoosh Jul 16, 2013 2:01 PM EDT |
Quoting:and I finally broke down and bought a new fax machine, I thought such machines were discontinued and replaced by Digital Fax/E-mail Servers! I don't blame some people for not trusting all digital communications. Too many crooks and snoopers in the digital world. |
| tmx Jul 16, 2013 2:23 PM EDT |
It does help me to be able to delete my Windows partition and not have to dualboot anymore which I never though would happen. Wine have gone a long way, especially PlayonLinux is useful for newbies. I am running Office 2007 easily and many of my older games work fully. Steam Linux was another step forward to not having to dualboot. And I was delighted to find that CUPS allowed me to print wirelessly to my printer which never had linux drivers. I admit on odd occasions I will have to boot up use Windows through VirtualBox, but it has become less and less. |
| Ridcully Jul 16, 2013 5:58 PM EDT |
Notbob, you have just hit a solution I am currently trying to get across to members of a large organisation to which I belong. They persist in using .doc and most annoying of all, .docx, in order to send documents. Security and/or its lack with respect to those documents is not a factor....we don't care who reads them, but they have to be readable, and .docx is foul in every way as far as I am concerned. My solution is the one you suggested: pdf. But trying to get fossilised minds to understand that pdf is a format that everyone and the drover's dog can read is rather difficult. And, I'd like to ask a question of everybody, purely because my latest version of Office is Office2003 and it is kept only to open .doc files to make sure that they work. So my question is simply: Can the latest versions of Office still export in .doc format or are they welded to .docx ? And do these latest versions of Office have the ability to export files in pdf ? If I can get affirmative answers to both those questions, it will make life much easier. |
| notbob Jul 16, 2013 7:29 PM EDT |
heh..... I've had no real prob reading almost all doc/docx/xcl files with LO, but was worried about the M$ droids being able to read my LO files. Now, I don't give a rat's ass. If you can't read pdf's, yer problem. Here's a solution and it won't cost you one thin dime. Made my attorney aware of LO. Since she pays to use Office on her Mac, I'd think she'd have enough brains to get a clue. Maybe not. I don't care. Here's a pdf! If you gotta recreate it in yer format, TS! Again, not my problem. She seems happy with pdf's. She can print 'em and submit to court. The business and legal sector is the reason a paperless workplace will never happen. They thrive on paper. I'm gonna bury 'em in faxes. ;) |
| Ridcully Jul 16, 2013 9:17 PM EDT |
LO can usually, but not always, deal with .docx files. Plain text is fine; where LO is pushed to its knees with .docx in my opinion is where fancy formatting is used and then it can result in scrambled outputs. Columns of dates or figures really get trashed as far as I can see. Again, a supposed ISO format has been embraced, extended and extinguished by Microsoft to the point where .docx can really be successfully opened in Redmond-ware. However, I still need those two questions answered: 1. Can the latest versions of Office still save in .doc format ? 2. Can the latest versions of Office export in pdf ? |
| jdixon Jul 16, 2013 9:47 PM EDT |
The latest version of Office is 2013. It only runs on Windows 7 and Windows 8. So I don't have it. Office 2010 can both save in pdf and doc format. If I remember correctly, it complains about saving in doc format though, warning you that information may be lost. |
| Ridcully Jul 16, 2013 11:56 PM EDT |
Many, many thanks Jdixon......I think I can safely (remembering that this is Redmond and even a Start button is not sacred) assume that the latest Office versions can export to pdf......As for whinging about saving in .doc and losing info, that's rich coming from Microsoft.......heck, you can save a document in Office one day and the software will refuse to open it the next......and yes, that's happened to me - thank heavens I had Open Office at the time. I shall now see if I can institute a move by my society to use pdf for their minutes and communications. Simple and effective. However, I shall also get a few players to send the same document to me in .doc and .docx........I'll be surprised if there is any data loss......But again, this is Microsoft isn't it ? Not that I'm cynical.....no.......wouldn't think of it. |
| theboomboomcars Jul 17, 2013 12:37 AM EDT |
I have to use office 2013 at work, it is terrible. It does open .doc files. We work with some companies that still use the old office versions. I noticed it also has support for opening odf documents, I haven't had the opportunity to test this feature, so who knows how much MS borked it. |
| djohnston Jul 17, 2013 1:12 AM EDT |
It's been a while, but I remember that Office 2007 and 2010 can both save in .doc format. You can also set the Word configuration to save as .doc by default. That is, until you reboot. I don't know whether it was because of the policy applied to my corporate PC at work, but once I rebooted, Word's default was, again, to save as .docx. |
| BernardSwiss Jul 17, 2013 2:33 AM EDT |
Can the MS implementation of ODF formats inter-operate properly with any one else's implementation, yet? |
| tmx Jul 17, 2013 3:35 AM EDT |
Office 2007 can save to doc and in the settings you can set the default format it will save to. It can export to PDF without problems. I use this guide to install Office 2007 to Wine: http://samanathon.com/how-to-install-microsoft-office-2007-i... Unless I am doing something wrong, or due to lack of Windows Update service, as far as I know my Office 2007 is unable to open or save as ODT. The newer versions should though. |
| mrider Jul 17, 2013 3:18 PM EDT |
Just FYI: .docx and .xlsx almost always produces much smaller files. Much as I loathe Microsoft, I'm forced to use their shite at work. I often times send .???x files whenever I'm sending stuff internally, since it's so much smaller and I'm sure I'm sending to a captive audience. On a side note related to my Microsoft hate (and pretty far O.T.) - how the heck did Microsoft decide that their programs' automatic "help" warrant the name Intellisense? It should be more like Stupidisense, or maybe IgnoreWhatYouWantSense. And Visual Studio (which everyone seems to love) is the worst of the lot! I can't count the number of times I've had V.S. change what I've typed, and to add insult to injury, change it to something that won't compile! |
| skelband Jul 18, 2013 12:13 PM EDT |
> Can the MS implementation of ODF formats inter-operate properly with any one else's implementation, yet? No, it is still pretty appalling. A lot of the issues that I've had in the past with importing MS Word documents into LO is that the author of the original document didn't use the proper tools for constructing it in the way that was originally intended. Indeed, tables in frames moved around until they look right to line up with other things wouldn't even import correctly to different versions of Word. Proper use of styles, not assuming that fine tuned mouse-oriented lining up of things, sensible table usage: and most of the work is already done. I once had to convert a document for my son for a course he was working on. Instead of getting a PDF (which would have been sensible), we were supplied with a MS Word document that had two tables lined up side by side for alignment: one half of the table was a graphic, the other half was a hand tweaked table. Needless to say, it didn't look right and without a reference it was hard to see how the original document was supposed to look without a lot of work. |
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