[H-GEN] Software Freedom Day (new thread)

[Greg Black]

On 2005-09-08, Tony Bilbrough wrote:

> I use OO as my word processor, so I too would like to know what 
> alternative writing programme he recommends :-]

I don't recommend an alternative, certainly not for people who
find Word or OO to be satisfactory.  As I've said, I think both
Word and OO suck -- they're bloated, buggy, hard-to-use; they
get in your face instead of getting out of the way; and they
produce quite disgusting print output.  But if what they do and
the way they do it meets your needs, then use whichever one you
prefer.  I happen to think that Microsoft is evil and that any
free software is to be preferred on political grounds, so my
vote would be with OO; but technically they are equivalent.

And I have also said that I use OO myself, for all those cases
where Word users send me documents that I decide to read.  It
does a fair job of that.

If people really are interested in the way I solve the problem
of creating documents, then I could cover that some other day; I
don't have the time to do it justice tonight.  But I should add
that the solutions I use have worked for my wife and my kids in
the studies and work and that none of them have ever used Word
or OO while I was providing their computer environment.

> And Please..........
> Lets not wander into arcane stuff like ed, vi, xedit [or GNU's nano, 
> heaven forbid], that the binary elite have teethed on.

I really don't understand this comment.  I have never suggested
that any of the above are appropriate tools to replace Word or
OO.  Any I never would make such a suggestion because it would
be plain silly.

> On this particular day, we are trying to win friends to an alternative 
> operating system for computers.

No we're not.  We are supposed to be winning mind share for free
software -- whether it be in the form of operating systems,
office applications, browsers, databases, or whatever.

> Much as I admire it, grandstanding geek here is really out of order, on 
> this particular occasion.

I don't see any grandstanding geeks here.  Maybe I need new
glasses?

Cheers, Greg