[ale] A Real Sad Loss for Open Source in the Atlanta Area

[Lightner, Jeff]

I have trouble maintaining margins in MS Word itself.   Any time I write a document of more than a page it seems that MS Word goes out of its way to "help" me by randomly deciding where margins are, where to indent, where numbers and bullets go and a host of other things.   Unfortunately the company requires me to write docs in MS Word for our Sharepoint site.   

 

________________________________

From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Jim Kinney
Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2010 3:12 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!
Subject: Re: [ale] A Real Sad Loss for Open Source in the Atlanta Area

 

 

On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 3:03 PM, Michael B. Trausch <mike at trausch.us> wrote:

On Thu, 2010-10-14 at 14:53 -0400, Rich DeMARS wrote:
> Having worked for the government myself in the past, I can see and
> conclude that same point stated below as being one of the issues here.
> Which also leads me to consider just how committed the County was
> truly to success of the switch.  I just wonder why there was not more
> training involved and why open source groups (like the ALE) where not
> engaged for assistance.
> But the other issue that really shines out to me here is the power of
> document formats and many of their closed nature.  As much as open
> source is important, so is open formats.  And I see the lack of open
> and inter-changeable formats in environments today being a great
> reason as to the failure of such endeavorers.

I get DOC and XLS documents from people who use Word and Excel all the
time.

I have yet to receive a document that required more than a minute or two
of touch-up before being æsthetic, and all of them were functional.


worst issue is fonts - second is default page margins.  Install the liberation fonts on Linux and it's a non-issue there. page margins require futzing. Apparently the page margins are variable all over the .doc. the .docx keeps it's layout better on translation between odt and docx.

	
	       --- Mike

	
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
I would rather stumble along in freedom than walk effortlessly in chains.
 
Proud partner. Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
 
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