[oclug] MS Office on Linux

[Milan Budimirovic]

Dan Cardamore wrote:
> 
> If you forget the activist view on things you'll agree that 90%+ of word
> processing is done with Word formats.  There is a real world
> significance to this.

Yes. But that doesn't make it a standard. And telling it like it is does
not make one an "activist".
 
> Like I previously said, the IBM PC is the same idea.  Everyone has one
> now and its widely used, life is good.  If you want an ms word
> filter, go grab open office's.
> 
> Complaining only gets you so far in life.

It's the squeaky wheel that gets oiled. A year ago my employer and I
filed a complaint against the Library of Parliament in a procurement
issue, where the major bone of contention was what constitutes a
standard. The Trade Tribunal agreed with us. See:

  http://www.citt.gc.ca/procure/Determin/pr2a073e/pr2a073e.htm
  
 
> This whole thread is about CodeWeavers' work.  I think they're doing an
> excellent job and should be commended on that.  Anyone who has had to
> interact with MS Windows users on a daily basis will benefit from their
> work.  In the end, this will only make it easier to make the transition
> to linux for some users... sure beats VMWare.
> 
> Dan

Yes. People need to interact with Microsoft products. But the word
"standard" implies some legal and ethical imperative to follow it. I
maintain that no such imperative exists with MS Word. On the contrary,
we should be weaning people off it. The only thing magical about Word is
that it reads and writes Word files. The entire point of its existence
appears to be to encrypt files in a format that no other application can
handle.