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List:       koffice
Subject:    Re: Question about your KPresenter's review
From:       Catherine Olanich Raymond <cathy () thyrsus ! com>
Date:       2002-02-27 5:32:09
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On Tuesday 26 February 2002 06:54 am, Vadim Plessky wrote:
> Hello Eric, Cathy, people on Koffice list!
>
> On Thursday 21 February 2002 04:21, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> |   Reflected because Cathy has DNS troubles.

Eric told me that he's been in touch with the tech at VA who's responsible 
for the relevant server and was told the problem's being fixed.

I'm sorry I didn't answer this sooner, but I've been working very late at the 
office and didn't see this message until too late last night.



> |   > > Why Cathy bother to use KDE in this case?
> |   >
> |   > Two reasons:  1.  I share Eric's dream of wanting to see genuine
> |   > Linux/open source alternatives to MS Office and related closed source
> |   > products.
>
> Great!
> So we have common goal, and should work together fullfilling it. :-)

Exactly.  That's why I've been answering e-mails from you guys. :-)


>
> |   > 2.  My law office still uses Windows.  Because I sometimes work at
> |   > home, any machine I use at home must be able to understand and edit
> |   > MS Word documents. Neither Eric nor I know much about Mac software.
> |   > Neither of us knows whether there are any Mac programs that can edit
> |   > Word documents, let alone would be able to troubleshoot Mac programs
> |   > that claimed they could edit Word documents.
>
> As it was said in answer to your mail, MS Office for Mac, for sure, can
> open files from MS Office/Windows.
> I understand quite often your problem, as I (silently) started using Linux
> at office, and from time to time colleague of me sends me as an attachement
> .doc or .ppt, comes to my desk and says: "ok, let's look at it together.
> Open my attachement"
> At a moment, I have no choice but tell "wait a minute. I will save your
> attachment to my disk and reload Windows".
> It looks _stupid_, and I feel myself quite uncomfortable in such situation.

Thanks.  In my case, my personal machine at home is not dual-boot, so I 
couldn't even do that much.  We have a dual boot machine, but it's so slow I 
have hesitated even to attempt to use Windows on it.  :-(



> Anyway, I see positive moments even in such bad situation:
> * few colleagus of me learned that there is something different existing in
> the world, comparing to Windows.
> * one of them started using ftp :-))
> Ok, he is using now CuteFTP(Windows) but may be one day he will switch to
> Konqueror.
> * good motivation to promote PDF usage inside your office or with partners.

What does "PDF" mean?


>
> Despite all problems with WYSIWIG KWord 1.1 has, it's still great tool for
> PDF generation.

Is it? I have had very little time to experiment with KWord.  I have found it 
very good for documents that are essentially straight text, but somewhat 
frustrating if I need to format something like an outline, where different 
blocks of text are indented differently.  I have to post those comments to 
this group (and I apologize for not having done so yet).


> Treat it in this way for now - commercial software generating PDF costs a
> lot of money, and in many cases produces PDFs of not very high quality. In
> particular, that software has problems with National Languages support
> (Cyrillic, for example).
> KWord uses Unicode, embeds fonts, etc., and so far (it's version for KDE3)
> is free of font embedding/encoding problems with Cyrillic.

That's good to know.  
>
> If I was in Publishing / Graphics Arts industry - this could be a good
> reason to install at least one Linux workstation.

At least if the publisher makes extensive use of Cyrillic.  :-)



> BTW: I am now re-working several Product Datasheets from MS Word format to
> KWord and/or HTML.
> So far, process is going ok.
> If you are interested - I can send you off-list original MS Word .doc file.
> Just moving from Word to KWord reduced disk consumption from 31K to 5K,
> which can be a HUGE disk space saving (and network BANDWIDTH saving) in
> case you mail those datasheets to partners, and have a lot of them (both
> datasheets and partners).

Er, Vadim, I'm sure that's true.  But I don't understand how that is likely 
to affect me as a user.


> |   > > |   About 70% of KPresenter is unusable to Cathy because it's not
> |   > > | documented. The remaining 30% is much harder to use than it ought
> |   > > | to be because it's not documented.
> |   > >
> |   > > May be Cathy should improove her Learning Skills in this case?..
> |   > > No offense, just an advise.
> |   >
> |   > However, I wasn't the only one who had problems with KPresenter; both
> |   > Rob Landley and Eric encountered difficulties in using it.
>
> Ironically, but documentation is not the biggest problem withg KWord or
> KPresenter . At least in my opinion.
> FILTERS, *FILTERS* - that's what killing KOffice at a moment.
> Well, problem is known, every month someone is asking "when Kword will have
> MS Word Export filter" - but, as KDE/KOffice is a volunteer project, we
> need either wait or submit patches. Or provide funding :-)

Please note that I have not criticized KWord on this basis.  The criticisms 
that began this thread are all based solely on my use of KPresenter, in which 
I began a new slide show that did not attempt to incorporate information from 
*any* Windows-based or Microsoft program.

I did not attempt to use KWord for opening MS Word documents from my office 
based on reports from Rob Landley and because I had already found Star Office 
usable for that purpose (see below).


> Cathy, Eric: may be you should give a try to StarOffice/OpenOffice?
> It's not available in "Download" version of my favourite Linux distro, and
> I don't have it installed, but I guess you can download binaries from
> OpenOffice.org.

I *am* using Star Office (5.2).  I use it for word processing, because it's 
the only Linux app I've found so far that does an acceptable job of *editing* 
documents written in MS Word without ruining the formatting.  The process by 
which it allows me to handle documents from my office is a bit cumbersome, 
but usable.  I really must get Eric to put my comments about the other Linux 
apps I tried on his Web site with the Drag.net stuff...  :-)

We tried to download OpenOffice, but it broke each time I tried even to 
create a new document in it.  :-(

Thanks for your comments, Vadim.  Take care.

-- 
Cathy Raymond <cathy@thyrsus.com>

"The meeting of personalities is like the contact of chemical substances; 
if there is any reaction, both are transformed."  Carl Jung
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