[Wolves] Kevan's MS Word alternative format question

[Kevanf1]

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 13:21:41 +0000, Andy Wootton
<andy.wootton at wyrley.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Kevanf1 wrote:
> 
> >Huh, I came across that a couple of days ago.  I'm a committee member
> >for our village appraisal (Cheslyn Hay).  We all have reports to write
> >out concerning different aspects of village life - mine is policing in
> >C/H :-))))  It seemed the whole room were in agreement that they would
> >submit in M$ Word format.  Then I piped up :-)  I suggested saving in
> >RTF so that anybody could read the document irrelevant of OS (I am
> >correct in that assumption aren't I?)  They all looked at me as if I
> >was a bloody Martian.  I carefully explained to them that M$ is not
> >the be all and end all of OS's and that I use Linux most of the time.
> >I was careful this time not to mention WINE and M$ Office - which I
> >don't use anyway preferring OOo.  Couldn't convinve them though.  Mine
> >is being submitted in RTF and stuff them.  It will also have a footer
> >stating that it has been created on a PC running OOo on Linux.
> >
> >;-)
> >
> Kevan,
> 
> I used Abiword for the first time recently to see why it is still chosen
> as the default WP by Gnome. It is so fast compared to OOo and will still
> run on a 486. However, I chose RTF as the output format and tested that
> it worked in OOo. No problem. I then sent it to a Wintel PC. Word
> couldn't cope with it. Wordpad showed it perfectly on screen but
> couldn't print it. Aren't standards a wonderfull thing?
> 
> I've had more success using OOo and saving in MS Word .doc format. I
> just have to be a bit careful about what fonts I use but I could
> probably sort that out with a bit of effort.
> 
> Have you considered using PDFs for final documents? If you want to scare
> the MS fans, dig out the story about when the edit history of a Labour
> Government document was extracted from the hiden information in a Word file.
> 
> HTML is another possibility then you could publish on the community web
> site.
> 
> http://website.lineone.net/~web_presence/FRAMES.HTM
> 
> Woo
> 
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> 
Sorry it has taken a couple of days or so to reply to this.  Xmas got
in the way :-)  I've thought of PDF but this is Windo$e and the people
using it are stuck with either MS Office or Works.  I know that they
could save in PDF with OOo but that means doing scary stuff like
installing programs.  You should have seen the looks when I tried to
explain that they don't have to save in MS Word format and that there
are alternatives.  Horror struck springs to mind :-)))

Personally I'd say PDF would best as it doesn't then matter if a
particular (read obscure) font has been used.  Which is unlikely as
these reports are semi business like and are probably going to be
Arial or Times Roman.

Thanks for the input though.

-- 
Take care.
Kevan Farmer

34 Hill Street
Cheslyn Hay
Staffordshire
WS6 7HR