[gobolinux-users] open office versus OO.o

[MJ Ray]

"Sean E. Russell" <gobo at ser1.net> wrote:
> And yet OpenOffice does it, really well.  Not only for Word, but for Excel and 
> PowerPoint, and in business these latter two are almost more important than 
> the first.
[...]
> Not well enough for business.

Well enough for my business and I think most PowerPoint users should be
pelted with rotten fruit (and I'm not alone... look on sites like
Presentation Zen).  People who I send documents to are happy with PDF.
People who send me documents are OK using PDF, RTF, CSV and so on.
This has the added benefits that any programs they put in their
documents (intentionally or not) don't hurt me and I'm not hindered
by anyone's love of MS Comic Sans.

> This is unacceptable for casual users.  Bloated or not, OpenOffice is the only 
> thing that allows me to use Linux on my desktop at work. [...]

Then I feel that your work is buggy, rather than anything else. YMMV.

> [...]  If Gobo wants to target more than just hobby 
> hackers, OpenOffice must be included on the CD.  If business users aren't a 
> high priority for Gobo -- and this may be a valid, reasonable assumption -- 
> then OO is not necessary.  I suggest that that is the question that needs to 
> be addressed.

I think OpenOffice should be included on the CD, but it will have
little effect on business acceptance.  I don't think writing
proprietary formats which put your data at risk is the reason to
include it.  I think OpenOffice should be included because it's a
versatile package which is large enough to be a pain to download
and complex enough to be a bit awkward to install perfectly.

KOffice fails for me because it's KDE only, but maybe it would
free up space to include enough other tools to make Compile-ing
another office package quite easy.

Hope that explains,
-- 
MJ Ray - personal email, see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Work: http://www.ttllp.co.uk/  irc.oftc.net/slef  Jabber/SIP ask