Comments

• David Gerard

  2011-01-30 22:10:18

  In fact, the most annoying thing for me is that OOo or variants do not know how to read Word 5 for Mac (or, indeed, any Word format before Word 6) - as I had a pile of old documents in Word 5 for Mac which I wanted to convert, and had to use MSO :-(

• Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  2011-01-30 22:43:15

  That's importing though, the controversy is about exporting.

• David Gerard

  2011-01-30 22:47:36

  No, export is a necessary part of displacing the incumbent. If LibreOffice does what MSO 2007 does, but users like it more, it can slide into place in an environment where MSO 2007 is presumed; if it can't, it won't.

• Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  2011-01-30 23:09:14

  No, export is a necessary part of displacing the incumbent.

  
  
  But how so (if exporting as OOXML)? The rest of the claim does not back the beginning, IMHO.

• David Gerard

  2011-01-30 23:11:21

  So that a LO user can participate in an MSO office environment without being told to stop using the software.

• Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  2011-01-30 23:17:54

  But Office users can handle .DOC.

• David Gerard

  2011-01-30 23:41:03

  But they get shirty if what they get isn't exactly what they expect.
  
  I'm talking entirely from practical experience of using Ubuntu in a Windows/MSO environment. Two-way conversion is necessary for me to be allowed to keep doing this. It is, in point of fact, the expectation.
  
  You appear to be talking in terms of how a more ideal, sensible world would work - but if the world was ideal and sensible, then we'd be using Linux on the desktop already. In this bitter and imperfect world, for LO to be an effective cuckoo it's got to imitate the incumbent very well indeed in interoperation.

• Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  2011-01-31 05:48:58

  The question it, will colleagues strictly require OOXML is sent to them?

• Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  2011-01-31 05:49:14

  /it/is/

• David Gerard

  2011-01-30 22:09:09

  The idea of interoperating with every file format under the sun is a fundamentally good one. MS Office 2007 is standard in my workplace, and the OOo with Ubuntu 10.04 does fine with its binary file blobs. Two way file fidelity is essential to be a drop-in replacement for the incumbent and is necessary to OOo superseding MSO.