Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Should LibreOffice even support Microsoft secret formats?

Hi
On Sun, 2011-09-11 at 14:32 -0400, Don Myers wrote: 

> This is a general replay to
> > Should LibreOffice even support Microsoft secret formats?
> illustrating my personal situation, and why my answer is *yes*.
>
> I moved from Microsoft Office Professional to Word Perfect Office 
> Professional probably 12 to 13 years ago. The reason for the 
> professional versions is that I needed a database as well as an office 
> suite. When Open Office first came out, I moved to it, starting with 
> version .9 something. I needed to keep Paradox as my database at that 
> time. Once Base became available with Open Office, I was able to move to 
> Base and drop proprietary software for an office suite completely. Once 
> I had everything in Open Office, I had one major step forward for 
> someday moving to Linux instead of Windows. I made that transition 2 1/2 
> years ago. I get many attachments from co-workers and other 
> organizations that are sent in Microsoft format. Most of these documents 
> are relatively simple. I've not had anyone send me anything in docx 
> format I couldn't read. Generally I will need to adjust margins, or 
> something like that. I'm 97% Windows free. I only use it for video 
> editing and for a forms program which will not work with Wine in Linux. 
> Most of the people who send me these attachments are using what they are 
> required to use, which is Microsoft. If I could not be somewhat 
> compatible with them, Open Office or LibreOffice now, would be of no 
> value to me at all.
>
> If we could get back to the big push of several years for governments to 
> adopt odf standards for all of their documents, we would all be a lot 
> better off. But that push would never work if there wasn't some backward 
> compatibility for the former Microsoft users to be able to open previous 
> documents.
>
> Don
> -- 
>
> ***
> *

How many e-documents are essentially lost because no one converted them
from their original format to another and now almost no one has a
program that can read the original files. Having backward compatibility
is important. LO does support many older formats.


-- 
Jay Lozier
jslozier@gmail.com

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