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mmmna
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Joined: 21 Apr 2024
Posts: 7224
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 Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2024 2:18 am Post subject: Space savings efforts drop Open Office on install media. |
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Seems that I am looking at an interesting trend with Open Office, and as I realized that trend, I also realized there is a need for some points to be covered about Open Office, as of recent versions.
Trend: distributions are no longer including the actual packages which contain Open Office. I saw this in Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop for 64 bit, and I see the same situation right now on PCLinuxOS 2024 beta1. In place of large packages, each distribution is including a much smaller script which installs and configures Open Office for you. This makes the installation media considerably smaller (thus allowing other packages to get bigger), and adds the side benefit of installing the latest version available on the day you run the script (ISO9660 images of distributions could be a year old!).
Next, some related points.
File formats are getting to be an issue, so lets look at the situation.
A] Personally, I used to keep my resume in Rich Text Format, because that one format had been in use on all major computer platforms and had been available on those platforms for a decade, and virtually unchanged. Open Office software development has gradually lost grip of supporting RTF, and I used Open Office for editing my resume. Personally, knowing only a little of the details of the next bullet item helps enlighten my view of RTF support.
B] Chasing the Microsoft dominated 'file format' is eating development resources. Microsoft clearly wishes to make file format changes for whatever reason it chooses, that means Open Office development has to make new guesses with every Microsoft format change.
Yes, Open Office must guess what Microsoft has created, because Microsoft selects the 'tell no one' option. Yes, the nature of 'closed source software' allows Microsoft to keep the new format as its own secret. Is the Microsoft closed source file format helping anyone to select Open Office? Should Microsoft comply with user demands for supporting open document formats? Should Microsoft comply without adding their own modifications? Those points are yours to decide.
So, for now, there you have it.
If you want an alternative Office suite, be prepared to pick a side, and, should you elect to use Open Office, then, for your own benefit be prepared to educate your Office suite users about the difficulties Microsoft places before software openness. I'd suggest you might want to show your users this: | Quote: | | On October 28th 2024, the one hundred millionth person clicked on the Download OpenOffice.org button since version 3.0 of the software was announced just over one year ago. |
Maybe the rest of the office computing world can help you convince your users to think about making choices.
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masinick
Linux Guru
Joined: 03 Apr 2024
Posts: 8615
Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2024 4:12 pm Post subject: |
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Instead of rtf format, which I occasionally save, I keep copies in classic doc format, HTML, and pdf. One of those three will be readable and accessible to almost everyone, and I create text in plain text as well, which makes copying it into forms and Web pages easy.
Office 2024, Office 2024 (or whatever it is) and even Office 2024 might have a FEW features that are desirable, but let's face it, anything in Office 97 or 98 format on is just fine. If you are going to use any other format, why not just use a modern, Web based format instead? Open Office odf or odt format is good too, but most people outside of technology have no idea what it is, so even though it is great in the open world, just setting Open Office to default to doc for word processing, xls for spreadsheets, ppt for presentations, and pdf for anything that I want to make read only. I've been able to send stuff pretty much anywhere for the past decade by using those conventions. Open Office can read them, Microsoft Office can read them, and so can other alternatives, such as Word Perfect Office and lately, Google Docs as well, so even though they are vendor standards, at this point they are over a decade old, pretty easy to translate, and everything now seems to be able to handle their formats. |
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JP
Linux Guru
Joined: 07 Jul 2024
Posts: 6670
Location: Central Montana
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mmmna
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Joined: 21 Apr 2024
Posts: 7224
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| Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2024 8:43 pm Post subject: |
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| masinick wrote: | | Instead of rtf format, which I occasionally save, I keep copies in classic doc format, HTML, and pdf. |
I selected RTF for my resume because I personally verified the RTF format support in 1995 or 1996. RTF demonstrated itself to be supported on Unix (Applixware Words), Windows (Word & Wordpad), and Macintosh platforms (Teach Text, Nisus). I've re-verified RTF support several times since then, and of course Linux came along and supported RTF as well.
We all know that the whole Microsoft Office file format scheme changes with every release of Microsoft Office. Does the reader see a very common hazard there? I might save my resume as a Microsoft .doc format which some office worker cannot open, yet, Windows PC has Wordpad which can open RTF!
Resumes are a more problematic document - if the reader cannot open it immediately, on the first click, the resume probably gets ignored completely, since the resume reader has a pile of other applicants to review (this statement comes loosely quoted from NH Employment counselors, they tell me that they hear about this unreadable document problem from human resource people - this is not an invention). Hence, I selected a document format that was supported on each platform.
Until Open Office botched the quality of the outgoing RTF file! Now, with the popularity of Open Office, I run the risk of 100,000,000 people not being able to read my RTF formatted resume (Open Office website last night says their download button was clicked 1000,000,000 times since 3.0 was released). I'll bet there are a lot of HR people in that list. I am now in the same situation as if I had a newer version of Microsoft Word - my document won't look right when the reader opens it! There is no longer any advantage for me to use RTF format when other Open Office users can't open it properly.
Am I discussing only ONE document? No, not really. I am discussing a dozen versions of one document that currently seems to not be 100% readable in XP64's Wordpad, and I created these versions using Open Office versions from 2.1 to 3.1; for that matter, I can't even have Open Office reload the same output RTF file tomorrow and have it look the same way as it was saved the night before - proof that anyone with Open Office can't reliably read my RTF formatted resume!
| masinick wrote: | | Open Office odf or odt format is good too, but most people outside of technology have no idea what it is, so even though it is great in the open world, just setting Open Office to default to doc for word processing, xls for spreadsheets, ppt for presentations, and pdf for anything that I want to make read only. |
Good time to bring this up: I have been talking about RTF files as created by Open Office. Today, Open Office 3.2 just botched importing a .doc file - an employment counselor edited my resume and sent me her edited document - it had very simple elements: a header region, several bulleted lists, 3 or 4 font sizes and bold in some areas. That is all there was.
RTF used to do most of those features except headers (I lived with a one page resume for many reasons, RTF not supporting headers was one such reason). The document she sent me had no tricky tables, no weblinks, no embedded content, no collaboration elements, no colored text, no rotated elements, no embedded graphics. Nothing that could exceed RTF, if you were to delete the header regions. But this was an import from something saved using a Microsoft program.
Clearly, Open Office is having problems handling non-native word processor document formats, readers need to be aware if they aren't already informed. The Open Office user forums have discussed the conversion problems, for both direct format discussions (e.g. specific discussion of RTF handling problems or table translation issues) as well as indirect concerns such as how Open Office can really only give a good faith developer effort at adding the ability for reading Microsoft formats and thus leaving the user to decide if the results are acceptable.
As you are implying, masinick, in many, many instances, the document conversion/translation results are acceptable (and I'm adding: with some likely reduction in our expectations of the translation process). This thread is my view on Open Office and the possible reasons why it is not included on distro installation media.
As a side note, I've gravitated to distributing my resume as an edit-restricted PDF file, but I save the file in ODT format now. Yes, I personally use Open Office even though I gripe about support for non-native formats. I feel I need to be fair and warn the uninitiated about what could happen if they select Open Office. I feel that Open Office is resorting to using Microsoft's usual response: ignore the problem, people will have to learn what to do about it.
JP: Yeah. Well, that was a direct quote from Open Office's website, I can't add words to a direct quote. I appreciate that Open Office is free, but I am unable to correct the defective support with my current programming skills.
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