Subject: Re: [open-source] Sun to start charging for Star Office
To: netbsd-users <netbsd-users@netbsd.org>
From: paul beard <paulbeard@mac.com>
List: netbsd-users
Date: 03/21/2002 22:29:27
David Friggens wrote:
 >
 > Surely there are several wps that write to RTF. KWord (from
 > KOffice does). (Well I've just had a look and it says it does
 > - I don't know how good it is.)

rtf seems to be one of those standards with a bit of leeway to it:
not everyone's rtf plays well with others. And there's always the
issue of someone double-clicking on a icon and nothing happening.
Akin to my old tech support memories of users deducing "I can't
get my email, therefore the internet must be down" one can only
imagine the aggravation of getting a new document<->application
association to work.

 >
 >>> BTW Even if you have to use Windows you can pay
 >>> significantly less (or nothing, for the shareware) for
 >>> Rising Sun's Atlantis (www.rssol.com), which reads
 >>> M$-Word (including 2000) and saves to RTF.
 >>>
you could use applixware on *nix and windows for (the last version 
I bought: 4.x) $100. Pretty reasonable but not all the usable as I 
recall.

 >
 > As a bonus, it's only about 2.5MB. The winword.exe alone is
 > over 5MB.

hah! I just tried installing openoffice and it filled the 200 Mb I
had in  / without completing.

What are we really after here? If MSFT were broken up into Apps
and OSes, two separate entities, and MSApps released Office or the
component apps for *nix, would you buy it? Or is this all about 
not using any MSFT products no matter how much sense it might 
make? And understand, I'm aware of the predatory actions and all 
the rest: I think the state of the art has been set back 5-10 
years as a result of it all. But if you could just use the apps 
and they were reliable and reasonably priced, would you use them?

-- 
Paul Beard
8040 27th Ave NE
Seattle WA 98115
206 529 8400

The Killer Ducks are coming!!!