Re: It makes no sense

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Re: It makes no sense
by yxxcvsdfbnfgnds on Sunday 04/Nov/2007, @13:59

"Office 2007 doesn't have the huge market share that Office 2003 does, because most businesses aren't making that jump yet. MS Office does have a huge market share lead, but a bigger priority should be on importing and exporting Office 2003 .doc and .xls formats first, before worrying about the huge mess that is OOXML."

Yes, you are right, but fully supporting old MS Office formats is hard. For OOXML files there already is a stand-alone converter that converts OOXML files to ODF files. Just executing this converter shouldn't be so hard.

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"Furthermore, now that there are .odf converters for Office 2007, you can convince Office 2007 users to send documents in .odf format to ensure compatibility with them."

Um, it's sadly a bit more complicated than that. As Windows users don't have a nice package management system, they have to resolve all dependencies by themselves, because they have to install the Office Compatibility Pack, install the .NET Framework, activate .NET Programmability Support, and then install the ODF converter. And that's only when they want to send their documents to someone else. What if those Windows users like to switch to KOffice 2? Why should they first need to convert all existing files they have on the hard drive? If KOffice supported them right away it would be a lot easier for them.

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"KOffice couldn't compete with OOo because it wasn't a multiplatform product, but it is about to be."

AbiWord has always been multi-platform. It boots faster and uses less resources while having all features common users want to have. Yet almost no Windows or Mac user uses AbiWord. Why? Because its MS Office file supports sucks as much as KOffice's.

Related Links

·   Articles on KDE Office Suite
·   Also by yxxcvsdfbnfgnds
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