Misc. Ramblings

Speaking of late anniversaries yesterday, OpenOffice turned four on 13 October 2004. OpenOffice is now in version 1.1.3 with work progressing towards version 2.0 (According to the roadmap v2 will be released RealSoonNow. Just like Firefox... - ed.).

I hope OpenOffice is successful in becoming the "free productivity suite compatible with all major office suites." The problem is OO is not not compatible with WordPerfect, which is still used by many offices in the legal profession. Over the years, people have become expert in and comfortable with WP.

Hence, even if I were to switch to OpenOffice (or StarOffice for that matter), I would have problems opening, editing, and saving documents in WP format.

Let me list some examples:

• OO can't open WP documents without the help of something called WriterPerfect.

• OO can't save in the WP format regardless of installing WriterPerfect.

• WP documents, opened in OO have at least the following problems:

  • Bullet lists are not imported.
  • Formatting of text directly after bullet lists is lost.
  • Parts of paragraphs after bullet lists disappear.
  • Numbered footnotes are shown twice and in different font sizes.
  • Indent formatting is lost.
  • Headings disappear.
  • Hard page returns before tables disappear.
  • Table formatting is lost.

These are not minor problems nor are these rarely used WP features. Particularly worrisome are the problems where text is not imported. If you didn't know what the original WP document looked like you would probably not know text was missing. To me, this is a show stopping incompatibility.

In any case, while OO has a long way to go if it wants to meet its goal of being compatible with all major office suites, I hope it gets there because I would love to switch to something else other than Word or WP.

Speaking of belated anniversaries, Happy Birthday to fellow Daynoter John Doucette!

Aloha!