Open Office & Word

[Domino]

Just found This

a guide on getting openoffice's writer and word to play nice together.

Had a quick smoosh through, and it looks quite useful - some things to set up I hadn't really thought of before.

Hope someone finds it as useful

[CyberNerd]

Default save to .doc. Seems the wrong way around IMO because you'll get better compatibility if word saves to odf. There is no guesswork involved with word saving to ODF because the format is documented, but OOO saving to .doc is more likely to be inconsistent, plus you get to use all the features of ODF.
http://www.sun.com/software/star/odf_plugin/index.jsp

[elsiegee40]

Thank you for this. I've just installed Open Office on the HT's home machine and this is just what I need to keep her under control!

[Domino]

Isn't word more likely to pitch a fit about NOT saving to .doc though?

[ZeroHour]

I thought OO was "fully" word doc compatible. If this is true then there should be no missing features?

[CyberNerd]

Isn't word more likely to pitch a fit about NOT saving to .doc though?

I've not noticed problems with the MSOffice2k3 and Sun 1.1 plugin other than time taken to convert the file. .doc/docx doesn't do anything that odt can already do.

OOO isn't "fully" .doc compatible - it won't read VBA for example. .doc/docx are not standard and keep changing. There are lots of .doc versions, OOO is more compatible with some and less compatible with others.

[elsiegee40]

Definitely not fully compatible.

From my tests this morning:
I opened a Word 2003 document containing a word table which
- has some lines formatted as dots (not solid)
- was password protected.
-The document also used Protection, so that only certain fields could be edited.
- Font in the editable table cells was Arial 10

On opening the document, the layout was great, but:
- OO doesn't honour the protection.
- OO substituted solid lines for all dotted lines
- The arial font became Comic Sans (?!)
- On saving as .doc (OO says it is Woprd 97/2000/XP format - doesn't do Word 2003), it said it could not save the document password.

I admit this document is fairly complex, but it was helpful to see what OO did with it.

[CyberNerd]

@elsiegee40

and if you use the .odf plugin?

[elsiegee40]

@elsiegee40

and if you use the .odf plugin?

Tell me more please - I'm new to OO

[CyberNerd]

http://www.sun.com/software/star/odf_plugin/index.jsp

This bit installs onto MS office, documents written on OOO are then converted by the plugin to run in MSOFFice. Documents written in MSOffice can be saved as opendocument and opened in any other wordprocessor. This way you get out of the problem of MS constantly changing their document format, any your reliance on MS in general.

[elsiegee40]

Thanks for that. I'm not wildly keen on installing that at school when the only OO user is the HT. In most cases, the minor changes are not going to matter. There will just be one or two documents created at school in Word 2k3 that may not return to school in the format that they left.

I'll see how it goes!

[ZeroHour]

I think I am missing something in regards to this ODF stuff. How is it really futureproof?
If OO v3 introduces new features wont old versions simply not render these features as it does not understand them?
Yes you will be able to save in ODF and any ODF reader will open it but if it does not support said effect what will it do?
I cant see how you wont have similar issues?

I personally love office 2007 and office file formats, although annoying with some issues, its not really been a problem as new versions generally always open older versions.

[elsiegee40]

I have no issues with M$ Office either. It's just the HT doesn't want to pay for Office on her home PC. Personally, I think she will soon.

[CyberNerd]

I think I am missing something in regards to this ODF stuff. How is it really futureproof?
If OO v3 introduces new features wont old versions simply not render these features as it does not understand them?

There have been several upgrades to ODF. They are all backwards compatible. The document format is controlled by OASIS, a consortium of companies so nobody has complete control, thus everyone can implement changes once the new spec is released, as new features are introduced the software upgrades for free or just doesn't use the new features.

One of the differences is that MS have complete control over docx - so it can never be completely compatible with other products, to such an extent that Office 2007 does not even conform to the current MOOXML specification, neutral vendors cannot implement MOOXML because it references MS only technology, furthermore the MOOXML specification is due to be changed again as the ISO scrutiny committee recommends it be changed because so many complaints were made about it when MS tried to rush it through ISO.

I personally love office 2007 and office file formats, although annoying with some issues, its not really been a problem as new versions generally always open older versions.

Thats fine on a personal, company or internal school level, but if government departments are saving formats that the general public cannot read then that is unacceptable, it could even be regarded as illegal state sponsorship (I must buy ms to read a public document!).
It's interoperability thats the problem here, not MSOffice vs OpenOffice.

Some further reading:
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/i...51216153153504