openoffice problems
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| salparadise Nov 30, 2006 12:59 AM EDT |
So I'm trying to put together a survey to find out what peoples software usage is at the place where I work. I put together a brief series of questions in OpenOffice 2.0.4. Rather than keep running across the building and back I thought I'd send it to management via email. This means saving the document as a .doc - the paper has two pages, a table that is 5 columns by 20 rows and three further boxes to isolate questions and answers. The resultant .doc was 58 pages long with one row of the table at the top of each page and the last three blocks of text on page 58!
Is this a joke?
Each time a new version of OpenOffice comes out we seem to find new rendering problems that weren't there on the previous build. We had to recall the best part of 12
laptops to upgrade OO from 2.0.2 to 2.0.3 because calc was adding the sums up wrong.
Is this a joke? I love Linux, I really do. The whole OpenSource ideology I find to be hard to resist, but this is a farce. So I stand there in front of management trying to get them to take OpenSource seriously and I can't convert a two page document into .doc without it all going horribly pear shaped. I feel like throwing the towel in. And that's without going into the nobbled network printing in Ubuntu, failure of wireless connections that have been told to start on boot, starting on boot (Fedora 6), floppies not unmounting properly (Suse), USB sticks not un/mounting properly (Slackware, suse) and so on. I'm starting to have serious doubts about the ability of OpenSource to be able to replace existing products and if you're talking about mixing the two in an organisation and receiving e-government forms and documents then forget it. (I know this has as much to do with government's reliance on MS and poorly designed e-forms as it does on OO). I'd welcome any feedback anyone has on this issue. Has anyone else "out there" come across similar problems? And how did you get round it? |
| Sander_Marechal Nov 30, 2006 1:09 AM EDT |
I've only come across one problem with OOo so far: selecting a table from a website in firefox to copy/paste it in OOo Calc doesn't work. OOo just freezes. It works fine in Excel. A question: If you document uses so many tables, why not do it in Calc and export it as xls instead of using a doc? |
| swbrown Nov 30, 2006 3:03 AM EDT |
"So I stand there in front of management trying to get them to take OpenSource seriously and I can't convert a two page document into .doc without it all going horribly pear shaped. I feel like throwing the towel in." So what happens if you try and get Microsoft Office to save in ODF format? |
| salparadise Nov 30, 2006 5:31 AM EDT |
So what happens if you try and get Microsoft Office to save in ODF format? Absolutely nothing. On other hand, management doesn't care about odf, they care about work done. My post was mostly just me going AAARRRGGGGGHHHHHHH! A few days ago I put a short document together in KWord, saved it as odt and mailed it to someone who uses Linux across town. OpenOffice wouldn't open it. We were much better off, and by and large, more usefully employed, when pencil and paper were the order of the day. Sal goes into corner to take cynical head off and put normal head back on. Right, up and at 'em! |
| helios Nov 30, 2006 2:19 PM EDT |
Hey Sal...Let me give you the name of my online pharmacist...she has made my life sooooo much easier. OK, before I go and stroke any sensibllities against the grain, let me correct my above statement so as you should not draw the wrong conclusion about me. My Pharmacist is actually a He. LOL Now, weak attempt at humor is stopped. As some know, I was successful in implementing an entire FOSS/Linux environment in a corporate environment and obtained full time employment with that company for doing so. There was only one driving factor that allowed this to happen. The owner of the company would rather chew busted windshield glass than give Bill Gates another dollar. We have experienced a few of the things you mentioned and a few you did not. Through it all, I have been told: "Work it out the best you can and we'll just have to adjust." I will venture a guess that this attitude is not prevelant in American Corporate Management. Yes, the ODF thing is a nightmare and I also found the upgrades in Open Office and Koffice nightmarish to say the least. We have retro-graded back to a pre-2.0 install of Open Office and everything works fine. Again, I can only suggest and do this because my boss will do anything in order to keep Microsoft Software off the premises. You are right...in fact, you deliver the same tone I am currently vibrating in an article that fires on the Anaconda installer. THIS is the best the Linux Community can do for it's new users? Lots of luck finding the bootloader option...Countless people have lambasted me for "kernel panic" boots when their reboot into their new FC6 install fails. No...amid the calls stating "LINUX IS READY FOR THE DESKTOP...it is not ready for the average users desktop, your mileage may vary depending on distro. helios |
| rijelkentaurus Nov 30, 2006 3:44 PM EDT |
>On other hand, management doesn't care about odf, they care about work done. True, and while it's somewhat understandable, it's also despicable and one of the reasons the world, and America in particular, finds itself enslaved in corporate bondage. Yeah, I know it sounds a little melodramatic, but we've chosen our masters and now find ourselves having difficulty escaping them. If you need to share documents among various clients, perhaps you should do what I do and try using RTF files. KOffice and OOo seem to handle those well. I usually send documents to the bosses in that format...and they make changes and send them back to me a DOC files...that's annoying. They've cast their lot with MS and don't see a problem with saving in the DOC format. I find that attitude pathetic and cowardly. While I might understand if they excuse it for business reasons, they just don't care about it at all. Oh, sweet ramblings. I think I had a point somewhere. Just don't lose sight of the fact that the DOC problems are caused by Microsoft...but the ODF problems can be blamed on the various OS projects not communicating well enough. |
| dinotrac Nov 30, 2006 6:21 PM EDT |
>So what happens if you try and get Microsoft Office to save in ODF format? Of all the things that hold free software back, this attitude is one of the biggest. The most important free software advocates in the world are not RMS or Linus or anybody whose name you know. They're us. We're the people who have a chance to make free software fly. Trouble is, you can't convince many people to try something new if you can't bring yourself to see it honestly, warts and all. Lots of people will put up with lots of things if they are forewarned. You can make workaround plans if you recognize the problems. You can leave some machines alone if you have to. But...if you can't be honest, you're not likely to fail because you're less likely to be trusted enough for that to happen. Mr. Ken got a great opportunity. From what he's written, it's clear that he gave a lot of thought to the conversion and has made adjustments as needed -- in other words, he's put his clients wants and needs before his own ego. As a result, much good is done. Most of us don't have the benefit of somebody so Hell-bent on tossing Redmond out the door. It is even more important to use our ears and to use our brains and to remember that spreading the free software gospel means bringing in people who haven't yet caught the fever. |
| salparadise Dec 01, 2006 2:34 AM EDT |
There's some wisdom in some of these replies. I was kind of hoping for some.Thanks.
It helps a lot to know I'm not alone in these difficulties. And it helps a lot that what I got wasn't a load of "why didn't you do A,B or C you jerk?" type replies. I suspect I need to sit down with a Linux box and a Windows box and play around with the word processors on both to see if there's a way of more or less guaranteeing inter-operability. I printed the software survey off from KWord and distributed hardcopies. Now I have two problems. Peoples handwriting (are we forgetting how to write due to overuse of IT?) and the fact that so far, every one returned to me contains the words "yes I'd be happy to try OpenSource/Free software as long as it doesn't disrupt my workflow". |
| rijelkentaurus Dec 01, 2006 3:09 AM EDT |
>"yes I'd be happy to try OpenSource/Free software as long as it doesn't disrupt my workflow". That's encouraging. >are we forgetting how to write due to overuse of IT? Yes, and because of all of the nettiquette shorthand we're losing our ability to write long and complicated sent...um...huh? |
| swbrown Dec 01, 2006 6:48 AM EDT |
">So what happens if you try and get Microsoft Office to save in ODF format? Of all the things that hold free software back, this attitude is one of the biggest." The whole "Let's just make something really amazing and skip trying to cooperate with people that don't want cooperated with" seemed to work really well for Apple. Why are you so afraid of it with GNU/Linux? Make something really amazing, and it will be Microsoft that finds they have to start cooperating. If your strategy is to just follow everyone else, you'll never be in the lead. |
| dinotrac Dec 01, 2006 6:58 AM EDT |
>Why are you so afraid of it with GNU/Linux? Huh? I have no idea what you're referring to. Have you gotten crossed between threads? |
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