Re: FWD: Open Office experience out there?
I've worked with StarOffice (SO) and Word fairly extensively in anPretty much, but OO has lots of improvements over SO 5.2. First thing, you'll notice that the program no longer has its own desktop. Instead, it starts with a new text document. You can also choose whether to install any of the modules in the office suite.
environment that uses both products. Since OO is the open source version
of SO, I'm basing my comments on the assumption that they're pretty
similar. (crosses fingers)
What follows are some tips I've found helpful:On the whole, conversion is surprisingly good - OO has by far the best MS Word filters that I've ever seen. They're even an improvement on SO 5.2 filters, which were fairly impressive, too.
1. A one-off conversion seems simpler than trying to work with both
products. Converting a Word doc to OO (Open Office) WILL require some
handiwork on your part. Try not to do this work every time you open the
file after the Word user has edited the file. When y'all make the
switch, make it cleanly -- no leaning on the Word crutch after the
cutover date.
One weak point: Windows ANSI characters don't seem to convert, so the converted document will have question marks where apostrophes should be.
4. Embedded images -- yuck. Since SO for Linux doesn't do OLE, theI just checked the help, and OO does support embedded images using OLE/
images won't work if you've copy-pasted them into the original Word
document. Before trying to convert, switch over to linked images saved
in a common format. I like gif and jpg.
5. Bulleted lists. For some reason that seemed odd to me, any lists ofI haven't noticed this problem in OO, but I had experiences in SO 5.2 much like yours.
bullets I had in Word got converted into SO as the ugliest lists I've
ever seen. Don't know why and never investigated it fully to figure it
out. Just something to keep an eye on.
--
Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com
"I could be the story of the man who rode high and fell hard, and had his spirit broken and crawled off into a hole like a dog, to die as soon as he could manage it. Or I could be the story of a man who rode high and fell hard, and then got up defiant and walked away in a new direction. Someone who never looked back, someone who never gave the mob any satisfaction. And that's the story I'm going to make them all eat."
- Kim Stanley Robinson, "The Years of Rice and Salt"
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Free copy of ARTS PDF Tools when you register for the PDF
Conference by May 15. Leading-Edge Practices for Enterprise
& Government, June 3-5, Bethesda,MD. www.PDFConference.com
Check out RoboDemo for tutorials! It makes creating full-motion software
demonstrations and other onscreen support materials easy and intuitive.
Need RoboHelp? Save $100 on RoboHelp Office in May with our mail-in rebate.
Go to http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
Follow-Ups:
- RE: FWD: Open Office experience out there?, Keith Soltys
References:
Re: FWD: Open Office experience out there?: From: Megan Golding
Previous by Author:
Re: FWD: Open Office experience out there?
Next by Author:
Re: FWD: Open Office experience out there?
Previous by Thread:
Re: FWD: Open Office experience out there?
Next by Thread:
RE: FWD: Open Office experience out there?
Search our Technical Writing Archives & Magazine
Visit TechWhirl's Other Sites
Sponsored Ads