Re: [libreoffice-users] how to tell m$ about ods formula behaviour failure

Hi :)
Yes.  With regards to paragraph 1 with the amendment that i think you mean MSO 2010 rather than the 
non-existent MSO 2012.  There is a version for Mac called 2011 but that is really just 2010 redone 
for Mac and it takes them about a year to do that.  MSO just doesn't develop that fast.  It's 
typically 3 or 4 years between releases which is one reason they have such problems with security 
and need such frequent patches.  

For the 2nd paragraph neither option is optimal.  It's why almost all of us on almost all lists 
recommend keeping an original in ODF but use "Save as" to to the older MS formats when sharing with 
other people.  

When people start using LibreOffice there is no need for them to ever buy a new version of MS 
Office.  They can keep using their ageing one if they feel the need but will probably find they 
'need' it less and less as they get used to doing everything with LibreOffice and other OpenSource 
tools.  

It is generally considered extremely foolish to get rid of the old suite at least until after "the 
end" of the migration process.  It's what MS recommends.  

For their own products they mitigate against the problems by offering training and encouraging 
people to become "Microsoft Certified" in the new version.  It costs quite lot.  The training, 
books, certificates are all published by MS and each is quite expensive.  It builds-up the "blame 
the user" culture of the MS world.  

During a migration even quite hefty bumps in the road are easy to work-around by using the older 
tool that you are familiar with.  That gives the user plenty of time to work out how to deal with 
the bump in LO.  It might be something simple that most people don't use, such as not knowing where 
"undo" is in the menu ("Ctrl z" or "right-click and undo" are usually faster than moving the mouse 
up to the top of the screen).  

If the user had followed the idiotic "Microsoft-world advice" of getting rid of the old then not 
knowing how to "undo" could then de-rail the move away from MS products and with an added push of 
stupid advice form the MS world could rack up extra costs of re-purchasing old versions of MS 
Office again.  

So, the usual advice within the OpenSource world and given to newcomers is to keep the old version 
near at hand while trying out the new version.  For OpenSource products it's not an issue because 
all the various options are cheap and easy so you can uninstall, reinstall, test-drive, virtualise, 
parallel install (alongside), LiveCd it and back again without having to repurchase or re-license 
anything.  For MS products it means not uninstalling in the first place.  


Just in case anyone thinks my example of the "undo" was too idiotic and foolish i have to say i 
agree completely.  Every time it happens i just shudder or laugh.  The last example was a German 
(?) city that then went and reported to the press blaming LO but in the course of the article it 
became obvious that the city had been extremely foolish (and that it wasn't even LO that they had 
been upgrading too).  


So, no don't buy new versions of MSO but also don't entirely switch to always using ODF.  At least, 
not yet.  Be sensible.  If your organisation has LibreOffice installed for everyone then you can 
stick to using ODF internally but when sending documents to people outside of your organisation you 
will have to use an MS format.  The new ones are rubbish (ime) so stick with the older MS formats 
(for MS Office Xp, 2000, 2003, 98 etc) because everyone can read them.  

ODF usage is spreading and becoming more common-place but many people still stick with the 
whimsical nature of the MS formats that change unpredictably and never quite work the same way on 
any 2 machines due to random changes of a single company.  


The "therefore" in e-letters post is patently absurd.  Again.  Instead try 

c)  Give people a link so they can download LibreOffice, perhaps the portable version
d)  Use ODF for yourself, for your own use, for your main copy of the file and then share by first 
taking a snapshot of your file in MS format = "Save as MS Xp format"

Regards from
Tom :)  





> ________________________________
> From: e-letter <inpost@gmail.com>
> To: dennis.hamilton@acm.org 
> Cc: James Knott <james.knott@rogers.com>; LibreOffice <users@global.libreoffice.org> 
> Sent: Thursday, 24 January 2013, 9:02
> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] how to tell m$ about ods formula behaviour failure
>
> On 23/01/2013, Dennis E. Hamilton <dennis.hamilton@acm.org> wrote:
> > ODF 1.0/1.1 did not specify a standard for spreadsheet formulas.  Formulas
> > were left implementation-specific.  Microsoft did not support the
> > OpenOffice.org-specific formulas.  Instead, they used Excel-specific
> > formulas in ODF 1.1. On input of a not-supported formula expression, Excel
> > in Office 2007 and 2010 drops the formula and preserves the last-calculated
> > value.  Whether a wise choice or not, that is what's done.
> >
> > As Regina says, Office 2013 supports ODF 1.2, including its OpenFormula
> > specification.  OpenFormula is also used by current implementations of
> > LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice when their documents are saved as ODF 1.2,
> > so there is interoperability of formulas shared between ODF 1.2 implementing
> > software.
>
> To clarify (without m$ 2013 to view), when a spreadsheet in LO is
> created in the (default) version 12, a user with m$2013 will be able
> to see formulae, whereas earlier versions e.g. m$2012 will shown only
> the results of the formulae calculations.
>
> Therefore, users should be encouraged to create new spreadsheets in
> the native LO odf and encourage recipients to either: (a) use LO or
> buy m$2013 in order to view openformula formulae or (b) view formulae
> results _only_ in earlier legacy m$ software.
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