Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice

I sure hope so.  I haven't got much faith, since every company strives to
keep customers, and the best way to do that (they think) is to have a file
format that others can't read or easily convert.  However, every company
also recognizes the need for interoperability, so there are limits.  My
frustration with the present system is boundless. It's an idea that's often
repeated in the business world--who ever heard of "standard car parts?"  Or
"standard prescription drugs?" or... (fill in the blanks). It's much better
to promote competition by being the best, and challenging the world to beat
you at your own game.  I thought that might be what Apple was doing with
the iPad, until they sued Samsung for "infringement."   It's sort of like a
competition in which everyone keeps changing the way the judges judge, or
moving the goal, or altering the rules slightly so that you can't play.
Steve Bradley



On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 12:02 PM, Tom Davies <tomdavies04@yahoo.co.uk>wrote:

> Hi :)
> MS keeps claiming that is what their new format is all about.  They
> claimed it with Rtf which they no longer develop which fits their pattern
> for gradually dropping completely and they are claiming it again with their
> DocX and all.
>
> Given that ODF 1.0 and 1.1 still open in LO, AOO and all the rest it looks
> like ODF might achieve the promise, especially given that "contents"
> written in Xml can be opened and read.
> Regards from
> Tom :)
>
>
>   ------------------------------
> *From:* Steven Bradley <stevencbradley@gmail.com>
> *To:* laurent alonso <laurent.alonso@inria.fr>; LibreOffice <
> users@global.libreoffice.org>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, 27 November 2012, 19:24
> *Subject:* Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good
> Article for LibreOffice
>
> That is really unfortunate.  In Windows/DOS, we have problems with
> unrecognizable characters, and characters that are part of the formatting,
> but not so much the difficulties you are talking about--although at least
> one program (the old Ashton-Tate solution known as Framework) DID have
> quite a mess of confusing characters in it, and scattered throughout in
> some sort of order, so I'm not sure if this is the same thing you mean. It
> is really frustrating to realize that if you had written everything by
> hand, you might be better off than with a computer that stores your
> information....I picked up some of my old grad school notes (1970's), and
> they were quite readable--because they were typed and annotated on PAPER.
> This is something that has to be fixed for the future.  That's why I said
> that it's important that there be a single standard, and that the various
> regulatory authorities demand that it be so (think if we had multiple
> voltages and amperages, and frequencies in our electrical systems, and if
> DC current was used by some, AC by others--in the same country...the
> preservation of data is at least as important.).
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 12:35 AM, laurent alonso <laurent.alonso@inria.fr
> > wrote:
>
> >        Hello Steven,
> >
> > Le 26 nov. 2012 à 19:43, Steven Bradley a écrit :
> >
> > > I totally agree with all this--but in a pinch, as everyone I'm sure
> > knows,
> > > one can open a document (most of them at least), and go back and
> "decode"
> > > it with a text processor like Notepad or Notepad++; come to think of
> it,
> > > I'm actually surprised that Sourceforge doesn't offer a converter for
> all
> > > those old documents--not to mention all the documents written on Apple
> > > II's, etc. All of us have them. I have many documents written in
> > Wordstar,
> > > Wordperfect, and so on.
> >
> >        As I am trying to do something similar on Sourceforge, for many
> > archaic mac
> > classic documents (you can look for libmwaw ) , this is not so simple :
> >
> > - maybe 1/3 of formats, that I see, do not store the text continuously
> but
> > by blocks
> >  in order to be more efficient : for instance, they can cut the text in
> > block
> > which have between 128 and 256 characters and then stores block 3, block
> > 1, block 2.
> > Thus when you add some characters, they only need to update a small block
> >  (and sometimes split a block of 256 in two blocks ) : this includes Word
> > v3-5,
> >  FullWrite, MacWritePro... This also means that if you read the file
> > continuously
> >  you will read many junk part of the files which contains not relevant
> > text.
> >
> > - I have 3 formats which compress text data before storing them on the
> >  disk : this includes MacWrite, MindWrite, HanMac Word ( a format which
> >  I am studying actually, ...) ; FullWrite also stores a space character
> > with the
> >  ascii code 0 (which means that notepad will not retrieve any space
> > characters )
> >
> > - after on Mac Classic, you can have as many fonts as you want and each
> > can have
> >  a different encoding ; this means that you must at least retrieve the
> > fonts name,
> >  if you want to retrieve the good character ( this also means that as I
> > found/code only
> >  a subset of the fonts encoding, I can only retrieve roman text ).
> >
> > --
> >  Amicalement,
> >    Laurent.
>
>
> --
> Steven C. (Steve) Bradley
> CA Dept of Real Estate, Lic. #00869762
> 619-316-8781 Direct
> 619-442-8833 XT 119 Office
> See my websites:
> Real Estate and Finance
> http://realestateandfinancialwisdom.blogspot.com
>
> Relationship with God:
> http://truevoiceofthefather.blogspot.com/
> <http://realestateandfinancialwisdom.blogspot.com/>
>
>
> "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other
> people's money."
> --Margaret Thatcher
> "The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him
> absolutely no good." - Samuel
> Johnson
>
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-- 
 Steven C. (Steve) Bradley
CA Dept of Real Estate, Lic. #00869762
619-316-8781 Direct
619-442-8833 XT 119 Office
See my websites:
Real Estate and Finance
http://realestateandfinancialwisdom.blogspot.com

Relationship with God:
http://truevoiceofthefather.blogspot.com/
<http://realestateandfinancialwisdom.blogspot.com/>


"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other
people's money."
--Margaret Thatcher
"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him
absolutely no good." - Samuel
Johnson

-- 
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