Jeff Vian wrote:
On Sat, 2005-10-01 at 23:16 -0400, Nancy Merckle wrote:
On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Tom Pangborn wrote:
"... and word was no
longer available ; How would ..."
Wouldn't you just install the old version of Word, the one the file(s)
were created with? Wait a minute, we're pretending aren't we.
We weren't pretending when higher ups decided that we would now all be on
a Word standard. This required all official documents for our office to
be produced in Word format. After 18 years of a Word Perfect standard,
there were a lot of legacy documents to be converted to Word. Neither
Word nor Word Perfect was able to convert complex documents from one
format to the other. Many hours were spent (by others) converting
documentation from WP to Word. There are now less than a dozen licenses
for WP in the division, so finding someone to convert a legacy document
can be difficult.
When OOo announced its upgraded Word Perfect filter about 18 months ago, I
was experimenting with it and a co-worker mentioned a document with tables
that he had tried to convert with no success. He e-mailed me the
document, I opened it in OOo, saved it in Word format and e-mailed it
back. It may not have been perfect, but he was very happy.
With OOo, I'm no longer concerned about loosing access to my Word Perfect
Documents. Also, I can read Word docs, without having to send $ to M$ for
the privilege. (It is provided at work, but I don't even have to use it
there.)
My point is that sometimes old versions of the software are not available,
having been removed for security purposes, non-renewal of the license, or
the only remaining copy of the software died on a dead hard drive.
Nancy
And that scenario IMHO is what using an open document format is expected
to eliminate. Using one proprietary format (WP) and having to convert
to another (M$) is a nightmare. If the format were open then it would
not matter which work processing tool you were using. They all could
read/write it.
We are working on a new archival system for our work. Not only
documentation but data files and many other file types. I pushed from
day one that all saved and archived formats must be open formats for
just the reason you post.
-
Robin Laing
