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KOffice Developers Reply to Yates

Posted by Zonk on from the it's-not-dead-yet dept.

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."

11 of 368 comments (clear)

  1. Open FUD by gwait · · Score: 5, Funny

    Microsoft spreads Fear Uncertainty and Doubt, what a shocker!

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    Bavarian Purity Law of Rice Krispie Squares: Rice Krispies, Marshmallows, Butter, Vanilla.
  2. Why even bother with word processors? by CyricZ · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

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    Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
    1. Re:Why even bother with word processors? by ettlz · · Score: 5, Funny
      LaTeX is more than capable of the vast majority of document typesetting needs

      That's an understatement — TeX is Turing-complete.

    2. Re:Why even bother with word processors? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Why even bother with word processors? by Coryoth · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
    4. Re:Why even bother with word processors? by PeterBrett · · Score: 5, Informative
      You might want to try the 1.3.6 version (latest stable), or, if you're adventuresome, the 1.4.0 in CVS. LyX is NOT designed for short documents, such as very quick notes or things of that nature. But it's phenomenal for long documents (several page letters, technical notes, books, theses, and, with the beamer class, even presentations which knock the crap -- admittedly not a difficult task -- out of PowerPoint).

      I can vouch for the power of Lyx. :) I used it to produce a 105-page technical report a month ago -- it makes section numbering and generating tables of contents & lists of figures/tables effortless, of course, but the best thing is being able to just throw figures and tables at the document and having LaTeX position them in sensible places without having to do anything. It knocks the socks off trying to do the same thing in MS Office/OpenOffice/KOffice/etc.

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      Pirate Party UK
  3. Yay! by Descalzo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wish my organization would switch to some kind of inexpensive standard. We are starting to feel pressure from problems caused by running different versions of Word, or upgrading from OS9 to OSX and wishing they could take their license with them (without running in classic mode), or some people don't think it's worth the money to switch from AppleWorks (which sucks, by the way) to Word, and then we have to try to read documents in ClarisWorks (which also sucks) format in Word and vice-versa, and we are getting SICK OF IT! And I only work in an elementary school!

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    I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
  4. He mentioned Abiword and Gnumeric as well by mrchaotica · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  5. THIS is why I can't stand MS sometimes... by geminidomino · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They say it's "illegal" to standardize on OpenDocument and back that up with the (false) claim that the tools that support it are from a single codebase.

    All so they can convince the Mass. gov't to use their own single codebase "standard."

  6. Word processing != Typesetting by aussersterne · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    STOP . AMERICA . NOW
  7. Hi. Here. Us, too... :-) by martin-k · · Score: 5, Informative
    The upcoming release of TextMaker 2005 -- currently in public beta supports OpenDocument, too. And nobody ever accused us of using any OpenOffice.org or StarOffice code ... :-)

    Martin Kotulla
    SoftMaker Software GmbH

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    SoftMaker Office for Windows|Linux|Android