The future of Ubuntu Linux.... Will it make Micro$oft go bankrupt?

[Karl F. Larsen]

Christopher Chan wrote:
> anthony baldwin wrote:
>   
>> Karl Auer wrote:
>>   
>>     
>>> On Mon, 2009-05-11 at 03:23 -0400, anthony baldwin wrote:
>>>     
>>>       
>>>> In fact, I run a very successfull translation agency from my home 
>>>> office,and we're 100% FOSS, and use OpenOffice.
>>>> We handle M$Orifice files every day, without issue.
>>>>       
>>>>         
>>> However, there ARE issues. Anyone embarking on a changeover, or who has
>>> relationships that depend on the exchange of word processing documents
>>> would be well advised to carefully check that there is sufficient
>>> interoperability for what they want to do.
>>>
>>> My own office has both Ubuntu+OOO and Windows+Office, and we find that
>>> while the vast majority of short documents exchange flawlessly, longer
>>> documents and documents using more advanced features sometimes don't
>>> exchange properly. The differences range from very slight to very major.
>>> Numbering is particularly sensitive (so watch out if you work with
>>> contracts and other legal documents). Pagination is also a common
>>> victim, mostly because font metrics can be subtly different. We have
>>> standardised on a set of fonts that work well for us. Frames and images
>>> are also a bugbear, alignment is often out.
>>>
>>> Regards, K.
>>>
>>>
>>>     
>>>       
>> I work extensively with contracts and other legal documents.
>> That's most of what I do.
>>
>>   
>>     
> So? Karl is right. Things have gotten much better but OOW is perhaps 95% 
> compatible at best with MSW and don't get me started on PowerPoint.
>
> Somebody really needs to sink that ISO fiasco and hope governments will 
> not consider OOXML an open standard.
>
>
> Now if Ubuntu will get itself into a position where businesses will 
> consider it...
>
>   
    I get power point files all the time from Windows users, and OO 
picks them up and displays them very good. I did use OO to show a number 
of slides to a large group of people and had no problems of any sort. 
This was version about 1.2 because it had just come out.

Karl