Re: [tlug] OpenOffice.org/MS-Word

["Jonathan Q" <jq@example.com>]

On 2/7/2003, "Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon" <ronfaxon@example.com> wrote:

>The only thing I've found that will consistently, reliably get rid of
the
>garbage in an MS-Word file is to save it as a .txt file.  That
obliterates
>formatting of course, but then you have clean text to work with and can
usually
>just reformat a new (clean) sheet more easily than try to work with the
monster
>mutated MS file.

Sadly, this is often the best approach, and it's more or less what I wound
up doing in the end.  However, you can imagine what any of our customers'
staff (or any end user at all) would say if I told them "Sure, you can get
away from MS Office."  All you have to do is save all of the graphics from
your Word files separately, save the file as a plain text document, then
open that document in Open Office and reconstruct it.  No problem!"  I'm
willing to do that from time to time, but I'm very committed to this
platform, and like many Linux users, a computer is more than just a tool
for me, in the same way that a car was more than just a means of
transportation back in my hotrodding days.  For people who want their
computer to "just work" (which is most people), anything that will replace
MS Office on their desktop will have to seamlessly import their files, and
make them nearly perfect (word processing) and 100% (spreadsheet and
database stuff).  Sadly, I think we're a long way from there.

>particularly mucked up, making an RTF file actually makes it bigger! 

In my case, it was nearly the same size, but when you have a 20 megabyte
one-page file, how much bigger can you get? :"-P

Jonathan