Surviving in a DOC infested world

[Michael James]

How do you experienced Linux desktoppers deal with Word documents?

I haven't had a particularly brilliant introduction.

Word document arrives on my brand new linux desktop in with orders,
 "Review this and sign off by 2".

The word that generated it was recent, Office 2000 or XP.

Fired up OpenOffice,
 didn't think running off the net would work for a standalone workstation,
 couldn't figure why I needed 200Meg of files dumped in my home dir either
 but what the heck, loaded them up.
Opened doc, OO declairs an irremedial error
 and segfaults itself out of existence.
Try again, same problem. Don't have another (gentler) doc.

Found abiword, it fires up much more calmly and open the document.
Prints it even, but munges the tables to contents-of-1-cell-per-line.

So give abiword a point.

Score 2 points for being able to see it and print it as it appears on Windows.

Score 3 for being able to edit it and get it back readable to windows.

Score -1 for crashing out of existence. (OpenOffice)

Score -1 and a bent paperclip if it takes out your Mac with it.
Which is what I'm used to with Office 98.

I hate DOCs
michaelj

-- 
A right not exercised is a privilege
a privilege not exercised is illegal.

Michael James			michael at james.st
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