Re: [tlug] Poll: OpenOffice or LibreOffice?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Benjamin Tayehanpour writes:
 > On Sat, 17 May 2014 21:43:11 +0900
 > "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com> wrote:

 > > What software do you suggest for filling in PDFs?
 > 
 > As I don't have the same criteria you do, I wouldn't know. I use
 > evince, and to my knowledge it certainly didn't pull in 4.5GB of
 > anything.

Taking a look at the Gentoo dependencies, it seems remarkably clean
for a GNOME application.  I've tried it, didn't like it (don't
remember why, any more).  Maybe this summer I'll try it again.

 > > Are any viewers at all capable of DTRTing with multiline text
 > > boxes that accept up to 500 Japanese characters?[1]
 > 
 > I haven't a clue, sorry.

Well, most of the forms I have to deal with do have such text boxes
(student recommendations, thesis defense reports, etc).

 > Well, I'd rather have a thing which did one thing well than ten
 > things poorly. It's debatable whether PDF is either,

PDF certainly is good for producing reliably reproducible printed
output, and for previewing that is extremely close to WYSIWYG.

I suspect it degrades quickly outside of that realm.  But I don't have
much experience with using it for input.  I don't think it would be
very good at dealing with things like multiline text boxes.  I'd have
to see it in action, but I don't have any apps that I know how to
produce such a thing.  (And thank Heaven, my employer doesn't either!)

 > > Mathematics.  Diagrams.  In-progress tables (OLE spreadsheets can
 > > be convenient).
 > 
 > So basically, interoperability breaks when best practices aren't
 > respected?

Yes.  It's a big problem to even get agreement on what best practices
are, unfortunately.  Most people live by "nobody ever got fired for
buying IBM" (or Microsoft, as the case might be).

 > I haven't had much need to do word processing whatsoever.

Ouch.  That sounds more like the Japanese educational system than a
European one....