At 11:36 12/05/2006, you wrote:
On 5/12/06, David Fletcher <fc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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!
