[SWLUG] Open Office problems & recovering files?

[Justin Mitchell]

On Wed, 2003-03-05 at 10:47, Dave Cridland [Home] wrote:
> I solved the problem by rebooting W2K and typing it
> in all over again using Word. A rather unsatisfactory conclusion to
> the exercise, but 100% reliable. Unlike OO.
I can remember when that very much was not the case, and have tried to
avoid the ms office range ever since because of it.
On far too many occasions in my student days did I and my friends loose
documents because word decided to lock up and destory the saved copy at
the same time. and then there was the times when it managed to write
something guff into its own files and all you can do to fix it was to
cut and paste all the text to a new one.

> There's only one application I use regaularly that crashes, and that's
> Evolution. I don't care too much, since I keep my email on IMAP, so even
> if Evolution dies completely, I've got plenty of alternatives.
I use evolution on a daily basis, seems to handle several sets of POP3
and IMAP mailboxes reasonably well, and even syncs with my Palm.

Doesnt crash anywhere near as often as mozilla does.

> It's doubtful, though - Publisher is designed for the likes of mere
> mortals who want to knock out a newsletter or similar. TeX and LaTeX and
> lyx are all really designed for people who want to do professional level
> typesetting.
I feel that LaTeX was rather designed for those that DONT want to deal
with all that tedious type setting and layout.

If you want to knock out letters, articles, books, or papers in a
simple, clear, pretty* style without twiddling with bits of layout then
its quite easy. 

Fundamentally ts a layout language, in the same was as html was intended
to be, you just declare when new chapters, titles, paragraphs etc start,
and it sorts out all the formatting for you, and deals with table of
contents, footnotes, bibliographies and other stuff for you.

but im sure others can rant on the subject much better than i can.

* LaTeX is pretty in that it draws things properly, like 66 99 quote
marks, and ellipsis and other stuff.