Re: Crossover / Wine cannot install Office

From: Joe (joe_at_jretrading.com)
Date: 05/16/04 

Date: Sun, 16 May 2004 12:38:38 +0100

In message <slrncadr04.6t6.postmaster@cardinal.haucks.org>, Bob Hauck
<postmaster@localhost.localdomain> writes
>On Sun, 16 May 2004 00:34:36 +0100, Joe <joe@jretrading.com> wrote:
>> In message <HxLuJD.82r@ozemail.com.au>, Jack Strangio
>><jvstrangio@ozemail.com.au> writes
>
>>> Probably not quite the answer you were seeking, but what particular
>>> feature is in MSOffice that Star Office or Open Office would not also
>>> cater for?
>>>
>> Access. There will never be a Linux equivalent of Access, and Crossover
>> Office doesn't run it (Access 2000 specifically) very well.
>
>Ok, that's fine. If you've got Access databases you rely on that's a
>problem. In more ways than one, but I digress. So why are you using
>Linux then? You've purposely tied yourself to the monopoly, so go with
>that.
>
I'm in business. I have customers. They use MS. How will avoiding MS
products help me do business?
>
>> Indeed, but the issue is always compatibility with other businesses
>> which use MS Office.
>
>But nobody exchanges Access databases. I thought that was the issue.

No, that's just the showstopper. Most exchange of working documents
involves Excel. There's good exchange with OO, but it's certainly not
perfect.
>
>
>> It will never be certain that an arbitrary document created by
>> Open/Star Office will open correctly in the MS equivalent. We are not
>> just talking about data here, the formatting is just as important.
>
>Ok, I see where this is going. You're a typical Windows victim whining
>about how he can't escape. I have some news for you. The documents you
>send out to people *do not* look exactly the same to them as they do to
>you. You just think they do because you assume that having the same
>software makes it all work.

No. I've used various MS data formats over the years, and I'm aware of
compatibility issues, between machines that use the same software but a
different default printer, for example. There are techniques to minimise
these problems.
>
>The fact is that you usually don't have exactly the same software.
>Brand names don't equal code. Even if you have the same versions of the
>same software, you don't have the same environment.
>
>It will never be certain that an arbitrary document created by version X
>of Office will open correctly in version Y of Office on another machine.
>The formatting might not be exactly right, or the fonts might be off.
>Hell, you even get problems when the two people invovled have different
>printers.
>
>For example, those niftly little Word Draw diagrams turn all to ***
>when you go from one computer to the next. Pagination changes between
>printers, font differences cauase all kinds of formatting problems. You
>know this because every day you receive Word documents that look odd but
>you just dismiss it as a "quirk".
>
>Yet you want us to take seriously the argument that since OpenOffice.org
>might not correctly format every random Word document you throw at it
>this is a terrible problem that must be solved? That might work on your
>fellow brainwash victims but it doesn't play here.

No. The issue is whether 'Word' documents created by OO will open
*intelligibly* in a recent MS Word. Nobody's bothered about exact
formatting, but if someone who hopes to sell you something sends you a
document that doesn't work at all, are you likely to buy from him?
>
>Or, you could quit the deluding yourself and realize that Office is
>about as compatible with itself as it is with OO.org and that it is a
>major virus vector to boot. You could think for two seconds and realize
>that if the formatting is really important then you need to send a PDF.
>Between those two things you pretty much ought to always send text or a
>PDF.
>
>
>> I am aware of PDF and make use of it, but it is often necessary to
>> exchange working documents, not just visual images.
>
>Well, then I guess you're stuck. You're going to have to buy exactly
>whatever it is that your collaborators are using, including the printer
>and probably the display and font-packs. Otherwise your formatting will
>not ever be exactly the same and you will all die.
>
>Of course, you could just give OpenOffice.org to everybody. It is,
>after all, *free* as in beer. Or you could work out some system to
>coordinate changes through a central person. Or exchange the documents
>in a mutually compatible format.

So you work for A. Multinational Corp and one of your smaller
contractors asks you to switch from MS Office to OOo so he can send you
documents accurately. What exactly do you tell him? Are you serious?
>
>There are a million ways to do this without everyone having to have the
>same software, but that would take *thinking*. Thinking is frowned upon
>in Corporate America these days, so I can see how you're stuck. There
>is just no choice but to shell out hundreds of dollars to Microsoft so
>you can collaborate.

There are many ways to do most things, but there's no way at all to do
everything. Information doesn't have to be exchanged usefully most of
the time, it has to be *all* of the time. While a company will accept
the occasional non-working document internally, and sort things out
eventually, this is not an acceptable working method between companies
where one is a buyer and the other a seller.
>
>
>> I would also be dubious about arbitrary PDF documents created under
>> Linux opening correctly in the current Acrobat Reader.
>
>That's just your own paranoia. It has never happened, but someone told
>you that he heard about someone who read an article that was not written
>by an MS-MVP (honest injun) about how it might have happened once to a
>guy in Outer Mongolia back in '93. That's risk and you don't want risk,
>never mind how remote it might be or how trivial the consequences or how
>much greater other risks are.
>
>I know having to pay extra to create PDF's is comforting, but it _is_ a
>published standard. Adobe actually does not lie about how PDF works, as
>hard as that might be to believe accustomed to as you are to corporate
>lying.

No, I haven't seen a problem yet, but I expect to. Practically everyone
in the business world uses one or other version of Acrobat Reader to
display PDFs, and while Adobe produces good quality software, to expect
that none of these have any bugs is unrealistically optimistic. When
Open Source software has an incompatibility with the originator of a
given format, it isn't always the OS software that's at fault.
>
>
>> I begrudge the Evil Empire every penny that I give them
>
>Now that is a blatant lie. This is demonstrated by the way you keep
>thinking up excuses to keep doing it. No matter what happens, no matter
>how compatible Linux apps might be, you will find that one thing that
>isn't compatible and make it into the most important thing in the world.
>
No, it isn't a lie. I own the minimum possible set of MS software and
use evaluation versions for simulating my clients' problems on the more
exotic OSes. I use free (both ways) software where possible, for obvious
reasons.

>I've heard all of these arguments before. You whine that Bill Gates is
>evil and hate him but just can't do anything about it. You whine about
>how your hands are tied by "compatibilty" with "others". It's mostly
>bull***, FUD, or self-inflicted, but you still feel entitled to whine
>about it and come here to express your fervent hope that someday Linux
>will be *just like Windows* so you can escape the clutches of Bill
>Gates. Linux is not just like Windows and that is exactly why it does
>not suffer from the same maladies.

I'm not keen on paying the oil empires for petrol for my car, either,
but I accept that it won't run on anything else.
>
>I know your kind. Go the hell away until you grow a backbone, and in
>the meantime quit asking me to fix your screwed-up Windows computers.
>
>
There's no need to be offensive, this isn't an advocacy group. I'm not
asking you to fix anything, I'm explaining why a Microsoft program
running on an emulated Windows will solve problems that a native Linux
program never will. 

-- 
Joe