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Apparently, though unproven, at 02:17 on Monday 23 May 2011, Bill Kenworthy |
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did opine thusly: |
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> Do any of them actually work acceptably in terms of compatibility with |
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> MSword though? - having a good, lite suit available for the "quick" jobs |
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> would be nice. |
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Well, my usual initial retort to MS suers on that is "MS Office isn't even |
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compatible with itself across versions!" It doesn't help much but makes me |
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feel better :-) |
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koffice does a reasonable job overall as long as you restrict it to simple |
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docs. In general, the more complex the source doc, the greater the chances of |
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failure. This isn't anything to do with Office vs LibreOffice vs KOffice per |
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se, it's just that office suites are complex beasts and 100% compatibility |
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between them is unlikely to happen. It was like that in the days in |
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WordPerfect and not much has changed. |
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Some problems are just unsolveable. Consider how MS Word lays out pages and |
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paragraphs on the page - it is fundamentally incompatible with the model OOo |
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uses internally. Same with anchored images. |
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> The OO/LibreOffice suits are almost compatible, the others barely if at |
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> all. Even simple documents fox abiword for instance, and anything |
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> complex is hopeless. |
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Your average user creates simple docs (regardless of length) without any style |
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sheeting. Headings are big text bold, emphasis is bold or italics and by far |
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the most common font change is to Comic Sans. Most folk avoid bullet/numbered |
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lists like the plaque (mostly because they can't get it to work and have given |
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up on having lists randomly re-number themselves). |
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Spreadsheets for your average user are one big table with columns and rows. |
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For these documents, KOffice manages fine. |
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Corporate users are another story. Any corporate has a go-to team of |
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PowerPoint experts, usually backed up with endless lists of stylesheets and |
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templates. Good luck with compatibility with those, as you have observed. |
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> And unfortunately, working in an MS centric organisation means close to |
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> 100% compatibility is demanded by the other end, especially on documents |
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> being passed back and forward. |
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Yup, the only thing that works in an MS shop is Office. It would be the same |
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in reverse - an Office user would be just as stymied in an OOo/Libre-centric |
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setting. |
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Some battles can be fought and won. |
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Sometimes it's easier to install VirtualBox. |
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-- |
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alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com |
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