Re: [tlug] Stand Up for OpenOffice!!

[Darren Cook <darren@example.com>]

> My biggest gripe with MS Office is that it doesn't want to let me format
> things the way I want them formatted.  It makes assumptions about how
> things are meant to be done, based on how "they are usually done" by whatever
> group they use for their research.

OpenOffice is just as bad. E.g. in the spreadsheet I format a column as
a datestamp with YYYY-MM-DD. But when I click it to edit it jumbles up
the numbers into some other date format. I posted this as a bug a couple
of years back and got it dismissed as not a bug, with the claim that
this is a feature: it uses the locale!

Considering I have had to set the locale of my whole system to en_GB
just to get open office to default to A4 paper size I find that a rather
poor response: obviously specific column formatting should override
locale, and even Excel doesn't have this bug. (Recent versions of open
office still have this problem.)

The slow start up of open office is another minor frustration.

But going back to the subject line, I find open office good enough for
my modest needs, and haven't had any trouble exchanging documents with
Microsoft Office users.

Darren