[Klug-general] University Of Kent (Canterbury)

[Graham Todd]

On Tue, 2 Feb 2010 17:09:59 +0000
Colin McCarthy <binarysignal at gmail.com> uttered these words:

> It is terrible that people are forced to use/submit work in .doc
> format and not even be given the option to use .odt. It's not like it
> costs anything for OpenOffice or the Sun plugins for OpenOffice
> formats in MS Office.

The reason given is that all work has to be submitted in written format
and also electronic format, so that it can be checked for plagiarism.
The software runs on Windows and can check only on .doc and .docx files.

If it is a reason that holds water, why don't they give this as a
project to the Computing Laboratory?  Or offer a research grant?

Personally, I think its got more to do with the fact that the
University spends thousands of pounds in licensing fees for proprietary
software and they have to justify that expenditure......

> We currently don't have a meeting place scheduled for May which you
> are happy to host if you want? That would give enough time for talks
> to be planned and it advertised around the Uni.
> 
> Colin

Well, that confirms it!  I don't think its a problem for most, but I'll
email the group and see if we can organise it for May.  Advertising it
will be no problem, but I'll contact Spode and see if we can get an
Open Lecture sorted for May.  If not, one of the lecture theatres
sounds good!

-- 
Graham Todd