[H-GEN] OpenOffice being pushed in the sub-$1000 PC market

[Benjamin]

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Please accept my apologies if this comes out as HTML email. I've yet to 
find the setting in Mozilla composer to send text email by default! :-/

Robert Brockway wrote:

> I use OpenOffice from time to time, and always
>
>save in the native format.  In my personal life I have no need to pass
>MS-Word docs to anyone so I rarely use the compatability mode (which I
>agree needs work due to the obfuscation of the standard employed by MS).
>
>I've never had a native format doc have a problem (not would I expect it
>to).  The problem is (of course) that OO is behind the 8-ball while MS has
>a monopoly on the "office apps" and obfuscates their formats.  This is of
>course news to no one.  I avoid propriatory formats for reasons well
>explained on this list and others (hint: I want to be able to read my docs
>in the future without having to panic about getting a contemporary version
>of the application in question).
>
>Propriatory formats are dangerous.  I consider them unacceptable for long
>term storage.
>  
>
My company has been having to deal with this issue of late. We've been 
revamping our policies on documentation for the project I've been 
working on and have been trialling straight html as our primary 
documentation format. The basis for this trial is the question: Which 
format will we most likely be able to read in ten years time given that 
even if we had today's software it's likely that it won't run on the 
hardware available in the future? In our minds HTML looks like the most 
durable documentation format available.

Since the documents we are producing have fairly basic formatting and 
graphical requirements the trial is going fairly well at the moment. The 
documents are basically a series of hierarchical headers and 
corresponding text with the occasional graphic thrown in for good 
measure. The tools for working with HTML are fairly good and 
ubiqudiously cheap[1]. We've even been considering hacking in some kind 
of custom tag system do allow us to do tracing between documents for 
requirements, etc[2].

Ultimately we don't have much faith in the future of ms office 
application formats, nor do we really put much stock in the current 
saved forms of freer office suite formats. I'm hoping openoffice or one 
of its rivals is able to establish enough of a market-hold and do enough 
future-proofing in file formats to be able to change our minds and give 
us the extra functionality an office suite can provide.

Andrew Duncan wrote:

> Also, in composition openoffice is lacking.  When MSoffice > is only $250,
> why bother with openoffice at all?

As you can see I have a preference for documentation formats that are durable, so I lean away from Microsoft solutions in this area by default... but I suspect that in the sub-$1000 PC market there's another factor. If you blow $600 on the operating system and office suite it doesn't leave you with much to play with for hardware ;)


Benjamin.
[1] Yes, TEX and LaTEX are fairly durable, but the tools don't seem 
as... well... secretary friendly?
[2] We've been trailling the "Doors" 7 for this purpose but the trials 
have not gone well. It regularly corrupts its database, the user 
interface sucks eggs, and the package costs about $10k per seat. 
Suggestions for alternatives are welcome, especially if the alternatives 
play well with configuration management suites :)



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