Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Re: Additional Platforms - 3rd Party Support Pamphlet

On 05/28/2011 12:04 AM, Tom Davies wrote:
<snip>
> Hi :)
> Thanks Drew :)  I didn't know how to upload and anyway i wasn't sure about my
> suggestions especially as it missed some other suggested changes.  I can't see
> the odt on the page at the moment so i guess it's on the way.
>
>
> I thought listing individual OSes could get a bit long!  There's about half a
> dozen Windows that LibreOffice seems to be being used on.  There are about 600
> (or so) Gnu&Linux distros that were picking it up quite fast.  Ok, not all those
> 600 are desktop OSes and some are just for embedded device, routers and stuff,
> but it's still a long list!  There is probably about a dozen Gnu&linux's that
> currently have LO as the default Office Suite but more have it in their repos
> afaik.  Pardus and Mageia were about the first to ship with LO.  So, cutting out
> the list of OSes and reducing it down to the platforms keeps it much clearer.
>
>
> With Bsd i think LO has to be compiled from source and i haven't heard of the
> source code being compiled in any platform that isn't already listed, ie i have
> heard a few people talk of compiling in Gnu&linux but there is an easier way to
> install in gnu&linux.  I get the impression that Bsd users are very used to
> compiling programs as the standard way of installing things.  Saying "other
> platforms" might give people the impression that iOS, Android and stuff are all
> covered when they might not be, yet.  So it was really just a way of getting
> Bsd's standard install method mentioned.
>
>
> Some of the colours seemed to go a bit wonky when i edited it so hopefully
> someone can use the branding guidelines to fix the strap-lines.
>
> Gnu stands fro "Gnu is Not Unix", it is easy to google for it and many linux
> users will already know or will stumble on it at some point.  I don't think the
> pamphlet is the place to explain Gnu, just as we wouldn't explain Windows for
> those that have never heard of that either lol.  Oddly enough i do know some
> people that have never heard of Windows.
>
>
> Regards from
> Tom :)
I was thinking about someone putting together a small booklet that would 
have some info that might cover some of the FAQ about what is stated in 
the pamphlet or about things that the user might want/need to know.  
These will be "standard" answers and will cover things like "GNU" or 
"can it read .docx files".  There may be a lot of information that could 
be covered in the booklet.  I know that there is a FAQ section on the 
LibreOffice web site[s], but I think it would be a good marketing tool 
to have a printable booklet [the web sites with complex CSS do not print 
well] that covers the information that might come up and we could use it 
instead of telling people that it is covered in the online FAQ or any 
other place.  This is not a Getting Started Guide, but information that 
could come up to a potential user of LibreOffice that the "marketers" 
would need to know or have access to offline.

I have seen such booklets before that were given out as a small guide to 
give the potential user more information to help them decide to become a 
user.  This gives the information that is on the brochure and also gives 
system resource needs, more indebted information about what formats it 
can use, special features that might be a "selling point", plus any 
other thing that might help with the decision making process.  This 
could be as small as a 4 page document, but no larger than 10 pages or so.

The marketers should also have a small version of a migration guide that 
could be handed out to the user.  This would be some simple things that 
would be useful to the user when moving from MSO to LibreOffice.  Also 
there may be question about why LO has problems with MSO .docx and other 
of their XML formats.  There should be some standard answers.  I do not 
know how well LO currently reads .docx files, but I know that since MS 
will not let people know "what is under the hood", it is hard to do a 
reverse engineering job on these formats and build a good "decoder" to 
do the work to make it usable internally.  The pre-2007 formats are 
easier to deal with and the system to read/write them is well done at 
this point.  Also, in my opinion, MSO users should not use those 
formats, since I have been told that if you save a complex .docx with 
MSO 2010, it may not be read correctly with MSO 2007.  MSO wants you to 
buy their new packages every time they come out, so they add features to 
their file formats, as well as their user interface.  What I tell people 
is that if you want others to use/edit you MSO document, you need to 
save it in the 2000 to 2003 formats and not use the XML formats like .docx.

Then there is the new questions about MSO reading and writing ODF.  I 
have read on the boards some questions about MSO's version of ODF 
support and saved files vs. LibreOffice's support and use of ODF.  I do 
not know how well MSO is actually supporting ODF anymore.  One of my 
"marketing lines" was that LibreOffice [OOo last year] reads and writes 
ODF which is "the" international standard for office document formats, 
while MSO's new formats were not chosen.  Also then there is the fact 
about MSO not supporting ODF properly, so MSO is not providing their 
users with the ISO formats that should be needed for files to be shared 
with a larger user base.

There is also the idea that many regional and national governments are 
either looking at open source or have already switched to open source 
for the computing needs.  That leaves MSO out of those markets.  It 
would be nice to list countries and other large organizations that have 
switched to open source [LO or OOo] from MSO.  I know that the USA 
government has a mandate to start using as much open source as feasable, 
but I lost track of all the other governments [local, regional, 
national], big businesses [IBM/Novel, etc.], or large organizations.

Then there should be an established, printable, list of all the upside 
selling points for using LO.  These thing could include; the price of 
FREE, the idea that the people who put out this package actually cares 
about the want and needs of its users, The number of languages it 
supports and the ease of switching to those other languages over having 
to buy additional copies of MSO.

There can be a lot of information that could go into a small booklet 
that could give a person more information to help them decide to use 
LibreOffice.  A simple 2-sided brochure/pamphlet is nice to get them 
wanting to know more, but we need something simple that will give then 
that "more".



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