I may just do that, particularly as I can't find the install disk of my legal copy of MS Office (which I reluctantly bought back when I was job-hunting and everyone wanted "experience of Word and Outlook" as part of the job requirements). SmartSuite has a large range of import/export filters, but a current iteration of Lotus filters that can read modern M$ files would be useful. And better to poke at it occasionally now to see if I can get used to it than have to do so in a hurry come next machine. I do actually appreciate the suggestion, as I'd forgotten that there was a Lotus-flavoured OO fork.
I need to use electronic post-its. They are standard at my publisher for scribbling editing/copy-editing/proofing notes. (My editor sends rtf files rather than doc, and I think this is standard but couldn't swear to it.) When I seriously looked at using OO, it was on a version number that did not display them, and more importantly, did not say that they would not be displayed. Editor: "Why didn't you comment on the longer stuff in the stickies?" Me: "What stickies?" [opens file in Word pro] "Oh. Those stickies. WTF?"
The only acknowledgment that they were not displayed was buried somewhere deep in the bug tracker, where people kept asking when they were going to be implemented, and would get the very occasional reply that can be summarised as "you're the tenth person I've told today, there's no call for that feature" and/or "we're not wasting resources implementing a stupid toy that real users don't need". Both the undocumented lack of said feature and the attitude displayed to those who wanted at least a less obscure documentation of the non-functioning put me off OO. They were pushing OO at the time on the grounds of its intercompatibility with the Spawn of Redmond, and that was a *major* feature used in collaborative working. I had to wonder in what other ways it was rather a lot less compatible than claimed.
I generally work in Word Pro's native file format, but save regular backups as RTF and less regular backups as TXT. I'll also work in RTF file format if I'm doing manuscript rather than something that needs dtp tools. I like the tools in Word Pro, but I also like human-readable raw files that I can manually extract my 7 bit ASCII text from if the file glitches. It's *tedious* stripping the control codes out of an RTF that's borked, but at least it's something I can copy-type from if necessary. And of course the final submission file is either RTF, or Word format for those editors who don't know any better.
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Date: 2011-05-14 02:57 pm (UTC)I need to use electronic post-its. They are standard at my publisher for scribbling editing/copy-editing/proofing notes. (My editor sends rtf files rather than doc, and I think this is standard but couldn't swear to it.) When I seriously looked at using OO, it was on a version number that did not display them, and more importantly, did not say that they would not be displayed. Editor: "Why didn't you comment on the longer stuff in the stickies?" Me: "What stickies?" [opens file in Word pro] "Oh. Those stickies. WTF?"
The only acknowledgment that they were not displayed was buried somewhere deep in the bug tracker, where people kept asking when they were going to be implemented, and would get the very occasional reply that can be summarised as "you're the tenth person I've told today, there's no call for that feature" and/or "we're not wasting resources implementing a stupid toy that real users don't need". Both the undocumented lack of said feature and the attitude displayed to those who wanted at least a less obscure documentation of the non-functioning put me off OO. They were pushing OO at the time on the grounds of its intercompatibility with the Spawn of Redmond, and that was a *major* feature used in collaborative working. I had to wonder in what other ways it was rather a lot less compatible than claimed.
I generally work in Word Pro's native file format, but save regular backups as RTF and less regular backups as TXT. I'll also work in RTF file format if I'm doing manuscript rather than something that needs dtp tools. I like the tools in Word Pro, but I also like human-readable raw files that I can manually extract my 7 bit ASCII text from if the file glitches. It's *tedious* stripping the
control codes out of an RTF that's borked, but at least it's something I can copy-type from if necessary. And of course the final submission file is either RTF, or Word format for those editors who don't know any better.