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List:       koffice
Subject:    Re: Question about your KPresenter's review
From:       Vadim Plessky <lucy-ples () mtu-net ! ru>
Date:       2002-03-04 12:52:23
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On Wednesday 27 February 2002 08:32, Catherine Olanich Raymond wrote:
|   On Tuesday 26 February 2002 06:54 am, Vadim Plessky wrote:
|   >
|   > 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.  :-(

Well, having Windows partition doesn't hurt.
If you use Linux on the same machine - Windows installed on another partition 
won't slow your operations.
[sorry for off-topic for this mailing list, but I guess this needed 
clarification]
But indeed you would like to use Lunux for e-mails, web, etc. - any 
network-related operation.
I can give you another example. My wife recently bought for her office 
operations new notebook, HP Omnibook 6100 (933Mhz) - in contrast to our 
home's Compaq Presario/Pentium III/600Mhz.
She likes Linux, and uses it almost all th etime at home, but said that she 
doesn't want it to be installed at her computer at office.
Ok, after 2 weeks of working in Win98SE, she askes me:
* why Windows (on her computer) loads so slow
* why MS Internet Explorer hangs
* and why her computer, with faster processor, is slower than our home one?

While answer to last question is related to different computer brands, and 
some kind of religious, first 2 Q's are easy to answer.
We now agreed that I will install for her Linux on second partition, so she 
will use it for e-mails, web browsing, etc.

It still lefts me wondering why Windows installed on newer computers is 
*slower* than on previous ones?
It's really not the first time when I hear this.
Ok, it's known that Windows NT and Windows 2000 is much slower when installed 
on the same typical office computer (128MB of RAM or less, non-SCSI disk, 
etc.) But why the same Win98SE is getting slower after "computer upgrade"?
Can it be that Microsoft puts some "slowdon cycle" code inside recent builds 
of *old* Windows 98?

|
|   > 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?

PDF == Portable Document Format
Also known as a format which Adobe Acrobat understand
PDF is some kind of modified PostScript language, with some kind of 
enhancement, and often used for dicument distribution.

|
|   > 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).

Indeed, it's very good - especially KWord 1.2 from KDE CVS.
It has true WYSIWIG.

I believe MS Word is used, in 95% of cases, just for very simple tasks.
For example, couple of years ago I was using it just for printing out faxes, 
which is usually 1 or 2 pages.
Requirements for such faxes - one image on page (company logo), plus some 
text formatted with one or two fonts.
Pretty simple, but you don't need usually more.
KPresenter vs. PowerPoint issue is much more complex.
I have quite complex and quite big presentations (sometimes, over 100 
slides), and sometimes people include into presentations even movies.
So, it's a pity that we don't have working PowerPoint -> KPresenter import, 
as it could simpolify life a lot.
  
|
|   > 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.

Yep.
Especially when many commercial tools (Adobe, Macromedia) fail to generate 
good PDFs.
Don't ask me why...

|
|   > 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.  :-)

well, PDFs are not very common here.
People usually tend to exchange MS Word's .doc files with each other.
So, working Word filter (with support of all MS *features*) is more critical 
for me than PDF support.
But, I can assure you that English-speaking people will love PDF generation 
feature of KWord as well.
 
|
|   > 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.

Wel, imagine you get 1000 messages, each with 30K Word attachement.
In total, you will get 30K x 1000 = 30MB in your mail folder.
If you get 1000 messages with KWord attachement of 5K, you will download only 
5MB.
And this gives you a huge difference on *dial-up* connection.
It will take you about 3 hours to download 30MB via dial-up, and just 
30minutes to download 5MB.
Of course, you will not notice this diffeerence if you are on T1 (2Mbit) 
broadband connection.
But, believe me, it a HUGE difference on dialup (and htere is a lot of 
dial-up users in the world, even in US)

|   > 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.

ok, I see.
I just wanted to make clear that we are aware about issues with filters, and 
fixing them will make many users happy.

|
|   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.  :-(

may be, you should wait a little bit StarOffice6 release.
I was not able to donload it from Sun site (download process always stalls 
"in between"), but hope that final version will be betetr distributed, so I 
will get it.
StarOffice 5.2 is rather old, and I know (for sure) that it lacks Cyrillic 
support.
I know this is not very important for you, but somewhat critical for me, at 
least at daily time :-)

|
|   Thanks for your comments, Vadim.  Take care.

Welcome!
It was nice to hear your comments, too!
-- 

Vadim Plessky
http://kde2.newmail.ru  (English)
33 Window Decorations and 6 Widget Styles for KDE
http://kde2.newmail.ru/kde_themes.html
KDE mini-Themes
http://kde2.newmail.ru/themes/
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