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Date:      Mon, 18 Feb 2002 16:43:30 -0600
From:      "Mike Meyer" <mwm-dated-1014504211.35ab10@mired.org>
To:        dmmcf@uiuc.edu (D. Michael McFarland)
Cc:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Advice sought re MS Office compatibility
Message-ID:  <15473.33682.353887.609959@guru.mired.org>
In-Reply-To: <34125683@toto.iv>

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D. Michael McFarland <dmmcf@uiuc.edu> types:
> "Mike Meyer" <mwm-dated-1014449929.13fb95@mired.org> writes:
> > If the only reason you're running it is to read documents from people
> > who are to lazy to convert them to a non-proprietary format,
> They're not lazy or unwilling to cooperate, they're just convinced
> that MS Word has won the document file format wars and we'd all be
> better off saving and exchanging all our work as .doc files.  They
> readily admit Word's inferiority--in fact, they often lament it.

Ok, I replied once, but I want to add a word. And more information.

MS Word has won the desktop document production war. It hasn't won the
file format war - because it isn't a fixed file format. I'm sure even
*they* have been bitten by having someone using a newer version send
them a document that they then couldn't read.

D. Michael McFarland <dmmcf@uiuc.edu> types:
> Cliff Sarginson <csfbsd@raggedclown.net> writes:
> > Is Wordperfect the answer ?
> > I don't know if the Linux version of it runs on FreeBSD, but I guess it
> > should (I didn't check the ports). Unlike Word, WP doesn't change it's
> > internal structure every 5 minutes, I believe it handles Word
> > documents...just a thought.
> Good idea.  I'll look into it.

WordPerfect 7 ran on FreeBSD. It was even in the ports tree for a
while. StarOffice generally dealt with Word documents better than
WordPerfect. If you've got to deal with powerpoint files, I don't
think there's any other choice than StarOffice, though I haven't
looked at the office suite built around WordPerfect.

	<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

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