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Israel Suspends MS Office Purchases For Now
case_igl writes "The Seattle Times is reporting 'that in an apparent showdown over price, Israel's government has suspended purchases of Microsoft Office software and is encouraging the development of an open-source alternative.' The Finance Ministry has cooperated with Sun Microsystems and IBM in designing the Hebrew-language version of OpenOffice software, a freely distributed open-source alternative to Microsoft Office. The spokeswoman said the government was unhappy with Microsoft's refusal to sell individual programs from its standard Office package, which includes e-mail, spreadsheet and word-processing applications. Microsoft representatives in Israel did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment." The Associated Press article is carried on many other sites as well.
Hebrew isnt the easiest language to work with on computers seeing it is read from right to left, which would make for interesting programming.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
What if 1 out of 100 /.ers got invovled with their local school/ school system technology group... I don't know what our school system (town of ~ 90,000 people, dont know fraction in school) pays for software, but we must have close to a thousand seats, even at academic prices, thats a lot..not to mention the educational value of having High school students forced to learn something about software
What version of OpenOffice are you using? In my version (1.1), you can insert a hyperlink by clicking Insert, Hyperlink on the menubar. Transistions and effects are handled by the Slideshow menu.
I think it can help quite a lot. The Israeli government has a lot of interaction with other governments and businesses. They have huge military contracts locally and abroad. They also contribute much government money to scientific research, so it may spread there as well. Since their government has so much interaction with so many different organizations I think it will help spread the word.
Developers: We can use your help.
Use the free powerpoint viewer for employees that aren't writing the presentations. Buying office is a waste, especially if you're only using it to view ppt files.
Better, stop using powerpoint (or open office) and start presenting in HTML instead...no worries about compatibility issues, hyperlink as much as you want, easy bulleted and numbered lists, etc.
FIVAs an Israeli computer technician, I see what everyone uses here. 95% (maybe more) windows. almost 100% office. now Israel's government is in a major budget crunch, and is cutting corners everywhere. Other corners cut: Handicapped support (not enough to live on now), public health benefits and so on.
as for the claims that MS office doesn't support hebrew, it depends which version. Every copy you can find in Israel will be "Hebrew Enabled" which provides FULL Hebrew support, including great help files and even the interface.
Recently I did some freelance translation work for Microsoft. Actually some brochures highlighting the benefits of using licenced software versus pirated sw. The files I was sent were in rtf format and I did the job successfully using Open Office 1.1 in Linux.
If the documents from Microsoft (although I don't really know if they were from Microsoft because my direct client was not Microsoft) can be used on Open Office then why not in the Israel government, provided that the language support is there. My experience is that government clerks are not the brightest users anyway and they tend to use a limited range of features they have been tought. With some planning Open Office can be more than adequate for all real tasks in the government.
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Not to mention that OOffice comes out of the "box" with full language support. Last I checked MSOffice need seperate copies to handle each language. Not even taking Hebrew as a special issue, you have to consider that Israel is very diverse linguisticly. In addition to Hebrew you have English (the official language of business in Israel), Russian (20% of the population), Arabic (another 20%), Tai, Farsi (Irainian Jews), Bedoiun (not kidding), Ethiopian, Hindi, and more.
Your typical Israeli office has native speakers of at least 5-6 languages.
The ability to nativize a desktop/office suite on the fly is tremendously important here.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
"Iran has made it clear that aid from everywhere would be accepted, except from its sworn enemy, Israel" right at the bottom of the article.
Allergy advice: Contains eggs.