Why use Open Source when Microsoft products are so cheap... 10011

ws

I wonder if SlowO.org has done any usability studies and surveyed people about their atbreastudes and experiences with SlowOpenOffice vs. MS Office.

Probably not; the OSS world isn't customer-driven, after all.

Actually, yes, they are, based on what you earlier described (you snipped it).

I didn't say active objects.

I'm sorry, but you're just wrong.

If you've embedded the live Project object, he says "I don't have MS Project. Can you send me a .pdf or a screenprint?" Problem solved. Happened to me Thursday, matter of fact.

It's not a sidestep. It's a truism. Kelsey's point is moot.

How about you, WS, whoever you are: Can you find me an OO document anywhere on the web?

Good. Converters make their product less valuable.

The punch line is: I don't get problems. Few people do.

I don't have Excel 2003 to prove you wrong, but I'm pretty sure there's an option to save the document in '97 format. I know for a fact the 2000-XP-2003 file formats are interchangeable, if not identical. If not, so what? Upgrade. Downgrade. Save As. Just get on with your work and life, instead of worrying about it.

You're not the arbiter of 'basic'.

You speak, WS, but you say nothing.

So if you absolutely have to read the data outside of Word, use the XML format available in MS Office 2003 and later. Save to Text. Save to rich text. etc etc.

Not any worse an idea than surrounding your supposedly "open" OO formats with so much XML crap that it's nearly impossible to reconstruct even the simplest spreadsheet. Publishing a file format spec is useless to almost everybody in the world. It's not nearly worth the time to figure out how to reverse engineer a Word .doc when you can spend $50 and buy Word and open the file and move on.

Your energy seems to be spent finding non-existent problems.

Who could? A veritable handful of people in the world could, and that's it. For the rest of us, a 'published' disk format is useless. Is Hans Reiser available to extract my data when I need it?

Have you ever read the source code for ReiserFS? I have. I downloaded it one night and spent time poking through it. It's totally and completely indecipherable to everyone except C gurus. And even among them, only a few have the talent to code such a program.

ftp:--ftp.namesys.com-pub-reiserfsprogs-reiserfsprogs-3.6.19.tar.gz

I have plenty of control over my data. It's just never been an issue.

Here's the contents of a schema admin file created when I generated a new schema in a so-called "open source" database (PostGreSQL 8.0 for Windows):

~Ò 4 ÿé ~Yé é 0Yé ~z( z(é hÿ(

I opened the file with Notepad. The name of this file is 16672. There is no extension. There is no file named 16671 or 16673. The only reason I know it's related to my new PostGreSQL schema is because of the date on the file, and it's found in C:-Program Files-PostgreSQL-8.0-data-base.

Is that what you mean by 'open formats'? Where is it documented that file 16672 contains schema information related to my PostGreSQL system?

OK.

Depends on the Word versions.

I've told you several times: .docs with tables, bullets, embedded objects and screenprints, headers, footers, etc.

I just opened up one such document from a client. Slow-O did a pretty good job, though one small ERD diagram was screwed up.

www.angelfire.com-linux-dfslinux-DBStandards.JPG

It's not unpleasant womaning; it's stating the facts.

They are doing a good job, by the way. While OO won't perfectly read large, complex Word docs, it would almost definitely suffice for creating most of the types of docs I personally do. And like Word, it has advanced features I probably wouldn't ever use.

The format I desire is the format that allows me to bold and shade and bullet point and embed screenprints and objects and tables.

Why should MS help a compebreastor? Their customers are fine with the options available for saving Office data.

You OSS oddjobs with the socialist mindsets and the wish for 'open formats' are in the extreme minority in the world. In 10 years of corporate work I've NEVER had a client or a co-worker say "I sure wish my Excel data was in an open format, so I could read it without Excel."

You need to get out more. 90% or so of companies using office suites use MS Office, and in my experience they use MS Office Pro (which comes with Access), not MS Office Standard which doesn't.

The db engine itself will probably be superior to Jet, but not the development-querying-reporting-scripting-data access-manipulation tools that also make up the Access environment. I recommend you educate yourself with a nifty trial version of Access 2003: few dollars for shipping.

Install and use Access 2003 for a while. Maybe use a sample db, or connect to one of your own. Build some reports and forms. Try some VB coding if you want. If you have any questions at all I can help.

Then open up Slow-O Base and get a hearty chuckle.

Why are you putting solutions in quotes? That's exactly what I provide: solutions to business needs. If Access can be used to solve the need and I think it's appropriate, I use it. If not, I don't. I often use Access with Oracle databases, or SQL Server, or DB2. I often export data and results to Excel, or to Word, or to text, or to XML, or to Outlook.

Snipping something then referring to it is not subtle; it's obviously stupid.

I retract my statement that Slow-O sucks. I like it better on Windows than on Linux. It's very good for a free app, and with a usable database system it will be a decent alternative for some organizations.