Virgil,I have not seen that commercial. Maybe different cable companies or different areas of the country have different commercials.
I hate companies who state if you do not use their product then you are not a "real user or consumer, American, serious business, etc., etc.. I have seen to many of these in print and on TV.
Yes, Word for word processing, like Kleenex for facial tissues, is something that is hard to fight in the market. Once it gets started, you have a difficult time to get people to think that your "word" represents your product. I like "LibreOffice for liberate your office from expensive license fees". I think I just made that up. Or "LibreOffice - Always Free. No Fees Attached"
I finally got one lady to send our .doc files instead of .docx ones. She got the point that not everyone has the "latest and greatest" version[s] of MS Office or their cloud version[s].
Yes, the UK needs to think "ODF" first and then choose the best software that supports it. LO is the best for ODF, as far as I have seen and read in the tech articles. But ODF vs. OOXML is a totally different discussion/argument than MS Office vs. LibreOffice or AOO.
I started with mainframes, then with IBM PCs and "compatible to IBM PCs". My first "compatible to" system I built from a kit of parts/boards back when PC-XT came out. Then 386, 486, etc. etc.. DOS [MS and PC] to Windows. Windows to Linux or Mac. Yes over the years there was no real standard for file formats. Now there is, though. The International Standards people choose ODF. So now we can start asking people to use the International Standard for office suite file formats - ODF. Sure MS really needs to get their act together and read/write ODF properly so they to will offer "THE standard" - ODF.
As for office personal that do not know how to put page numbers or use bullets correctly, well every industry has their "lowest common denominator" that cannot do the simple things. But they are offset by the people who can do things that you thought was impossible with the product. We just have to be patient with these under achievers and over achievers.
I had a lady give me a "broken" desktop. I saw the drive had only Linux installed as the operating system. I asked her what type of of Linux she was using, since the drive was "half dead" and would not keep mounted. She asked me what Linux was. She was using some version of Linux and never knew that she was. The guy who gave her the desktop did not tell her it had Linux installed instead of Windows. She just used it and did not know what she was using. Actually, I read some articles a few years ago telling you how to make Ubuntu 10.xx and/or 11.xx look like Windows XP or Vista. Get them using the system and not tell them that they are not using Windows. They do not seem to notice. She did not.
Yes, learning a new office suite can be challenging. But how many have you had to learn over the years? PC-Write [DOS], WordStar, WordPerfect, Word 95 MSO 97-2003. MSO and its Ribbon menu system. How many more did you have to learn to support people in you office/work/college/etc.? Every time a new version of MSO comes out, you might have to learn some new feature. LO is not immune to needing to learn how to use the new features and any menu system changes. That is what is expected if you keep your software up-to-date. Yes, people do not like giving up their favorite packages to comply to the new office/work-place standards, but they do learn. Give them a free office suite and guide them through using both to start with. Then ween off the users from MSO while helping them use LO instead. Later, the user will stop using MSO for most things and you can remove it from their desktop. Well I used MSO 2003 and OOo back and forth for a bit, till I was comfortable with OOo. Then I stopped using MSO. I still had it as a backup for about a year, though. In the spring of 2010, I went to a Ubuntu desktop so I could not use MSO at all. Of course, LO came out and I went to being a LO user for both Ubuntu and Windows systems. It will take time for the UK and the rest of Europe to move to ODF, if they have not done so already. The same is true with the switch from MSO to LO or AOO. More and more people, businesses, government agencies, are going to FOSS packages to do their "business". I think it will take many more years to get a good market share of the Windows office suite market, but we are slowly increasing our share and taking it away from MSO on the desktop and laptop Windows market. Now once we have LO for Android and Mac "i" devices, then we will slowly build a market share there.
Slow and Steady. Eat Away the MSO hold on the office suite market.Desktops and Laptops are a "dead growth market" according to the "pad" and tablet industry [Kindle and Nook included], but they are not dead. Business still NEED them for operating their businesses, since they can do more than tablets. I have a printer that will allow tablets to print to it, but need a Windows system to run the needed software. I have a 16 GB [or is it 32 GB] Nook. Yet, it cannot handle the 6 TB drive space that I have on this desktop I am typing from, plus the 6 TB worth of USB backup drives. AND NO, cloud storage will not work for "everyone". I think it is not a "safe" place to store your private and secure business documents/files. There are too many articles about how un-safe they can be.
oh well, I think I am rambling again in the wee hours of the morning. Tim L. 3:11 am - it is time for bed.... On 02/25/2014 01:21 PM, Virgil Arrington wrote:
I haven't followed the entirety of this thread, but I live in a world which is (sadly perhaps) dominated by M$.Here in the U.S., Asus is running commercials about how good their netbooks are because they run "Office" (as opposed to Google Apps online with a Chromebook). In other words, they portray *real* computer users as using *real* programs like M$ Office. Now, I don't particularly like the commercials, but they indicate to me how mainstream M$ Office has become, almost to the point of blending brand names with product times (Word is to word processing as "Kleenex" is to facial tissues.) Again, I don't like it, but it's a reality I live with.I often have to write documents that are sent to colleagues who are using M$. What I write *must* be readable by their chosen program. They are not going to listen to an LO evangelist proclaiming the gospel of ODF. Heck, half of them can't even figure out how to put page numbers on the bottom of their pages, let alone learn an entirely new office suite with totally new concepts (page styles anyone?).For most of my word processing work, I save my documents as .ODT. When I need to share with an M$ colleague, I convert it to .DOC (rather than insisting that they use LO, which they simply won't do). It *generally* works okay, but numbered lists and bulleted lists get messed up a bit, just because of the different ways the two programs deal with those things.Having used PCs since my first Commodore 64 thirty years ago, I have long given up on any hope of seeing a true "standard" file format. Different programs perform tasks differently, and those differences are reflected in the information that gets stored in the native file formats. So, I don't see any hope of a true standard until all programs work the same way. I had great hope for RTF, but that bombed. Load an RTF file into four different word processors, and you'll see four different documents.Virgil -----Original Message----- From: Pedro Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2014 11:26 AM To: users@global.libreoffice.org Subject: [libreoffice-users] Re: Defending ODF against OOXML in the UK nabbler wroteGood summary, worth more than 2 ยข! :);) nabbler wroteThe problem here, as I see it, is that ODF is still in it's infancy. E.g.only recently ODF (under LibreOffice 4.1) started supporting font embedding which is an essential feature for anyone working with vector graphics, custom presentations or simply elegant text documents. MS supports font embedding since Word 6.0 (back in 1993!!!) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/188324Isn't this issue affected by the fact that different operating systems have different default fonts? If so, it would explain the relative ease that the mono-platform m$ can solve this "problem".Not really. PDF which is an ubiquitous file format also has had support forfont embedding for years. All modern OSes support TrueType and OpenTypefonts. I think this is mostly related to the copyright licenses of the fontswhich is more problematic in editable files than in fundamentally non-editable files (like PDF) nabbler wroteand ignoring m$ fans (some paid by m$ perhaps?) would help by reducing that evolution time...It's complicated :) If you want to attract large companies who want tomigrate, at least the Import filter needs to be nearly perfect. I think the developers are wise enough to know when to ignore cheap CEOs who just want areplacement for their Office suite for free while still demanding to have perfect MS format Export...In any case LO (or any ODF based suite) can not afford to become an island. Not even Microsoft can :) That is why they pretend to support ODF (while atthe same time most ODF files not created/modified in MS Office are either "corrupted" or will be "missing features"...) At the end of the day: it's better not to be a fundamentalist ;) Take care! --View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Defending-ODF-against-OOXML-in-the-UK-tp4098594p4098967.htmlSent from the Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
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