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KOffice Developers Reply to Yates
danimo writes "In response to his letter to the Massachusetts administration, the KOffice team has written an open letter to Microsoft manager Alan Yates. It clarifies some false claims that Yates made, such as KOffice, StarOffice and OpenOffice.org being one codebase and that OpenDocument was thus never a real standard. Massachusetts has meanwhile adopted OpenDocument."
So he's not just "trying to save only [his] own face," but is actually pointing out that there are multiple implementations and that OpenDocument really is a standard.
Of course, it wouldn't even be a problem if they were the same codebase, because since they're Free Software they can all share the same code. Certainly, Microsoft could support OpenDocument easily just by copying the same code into Office, right?
...oh, wait.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
c'mon man, this is stupid. I am a power user; I know LaTeX, as i used it to write down my master thesis; I really like typesetting with it, but I would never use LaTeX to write down a curriculum vitae, or a brief letter, or whatever is not larger than few pages. In fact all of these things can be done in few seconds with a quick&dirty WYSIWYG word processor (a.k.a OOWriter, or Word). LaTeX can do everything, but it's mostly suitable for long and structured documents, not for my mum's recipies. And it is not by any means easier to learn.
The reason is simple. Typesetters/formatters are great for generating splendid output. But most people never produce a hardcopy (or any "final" output) for 90% of their documents. Instead, their documents are workplaces for organizing ideas, bascially pseudo-database records in a filing system stored in their "My Documents" folder.
In short, the vast majority of word processor use is for manipulating, organizing, and retrieving text-based data in a format rapidly parsable by human eyes as part of a workflow or thought process.
For such things, LaTeX, troff, or any other text formatter... sucks. In fact, it isn't even appropriate for the task.
But you're right, if you just want nicely structured, rendered output in hardcopy or PDF, you can't beat 'em.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Why even bother with word processors these days when LaTeX is more than capable of the vast majority of document typesetting needs? It does take a bit longer to learn that Word, but everyone I know who has learned it has become far more efficient and can produce documents that are far more professional.
This is, quite simply, a remarkably stupid comment. I use LaTeX. For pretty much all my documents and presentations. I write my own document classes. Previously I have written LaTeX document classes reproducing the format of company Word and Powerpoint templates so I could produce my documents and presentations in LaTeX instead of MS Office - and yes, I did get that cleared with marketing. I am quite intimately familiar with all the power, flexibility and benefits that LaTeX has to offer. The fact remains that word processors are remarkably fast efficient and easy to use and entirely suitable for the majority of users. Most of the real benefits of LaTeX simply aren't of sufficient importance for most casual and business needs to bother - and it's not like word processors these days don't have their on benefits (usually relating to integration with the rest of an "Office Suite" package.
LaTeX is truly wonderful, and if you know how then by all means use it. But don't pretend that it's a replacement for a word processor - they are really filling different niches, and have quite different areas at which they excel, and at which they are weak. The right tool for the job and all that.
Jedidiah.
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