Fishing License

[David Fletcher]

At 11:36 12/05/2006, you wrote:

>On 5/12/06, David Fletcher <fc at fletchersweb.net> wrote:
>>At 03:57 12/05/2006, you wrote:
>>
>> >On Thu, 2006-05-11 at 14:52 -0300, Jacques B. wrote:
>> > > It's unreasonable to expect parents to have access to PowerPoint for
>> > > school projects.
>> >
>> >I think it's unreasonable that parents should have to stump with $1000+
>> >worth of machinery (a PC), plus proprietary lock-in software, for
>> >homework purposes.  And what are you going to do with it?  Use it as a
>>
>>My son just uses Open Office. It works fine with any files he brings
>>home from school.
>Yes, OO does a great job bringing in MS Office files.  My problem is
>I've created a few OO Impress presentations with animation (bringing
>in images in sequence).  But when I save it to PPT format and then try
>it out with the view, the animation sequence is lost and everything
>comes in at once.  Doesn't matter if it's OO for Linux or Windows.
>Actually I've had better success with the one for Linux to be honest,
>but still not 100%.  Bugzilla?  Perhaps.  But my issue is that the
>schools should support open source format to allow parents/students to
>use non MS products which will save in an open source format (having
>said that I just realized that I assumed MS PPT will not open OO
>Impress, but did not try it - has anyone tried to already?  I will now
>that I've mentioned it).

What I found to be very amusing indeed is that

1) $soft is not going to support ODF in $soft Office, presumably to 
force people with existing office format files to continue paying tribute.

2) Now that ODF has been ratified as an ISO standard, $soft has 
submitted it's own XML format to ISO. How the hell do they think they 
can justify a double standard for document formats? We don't have 
multiple standards for the kilogram, metre or second for example. 
That, I think, is what standards are all about.

3) The ODF Alliance has apparently produced a plug-in that works with 
all 32 bit issues of $soft Office, that enables Word, Excel and 
PowerPoint to do File-Load and File-SaveAs with ODF. Which nicely 
negates whatever $soft is trying to achieve in 1). I wish I could 
have seen Bill's face when he heard about that one!