Re: Crossover / Wine cannot install Office

From: Bob Hauck (postmaster_at_localhost.localdomain)
Date: 05/16/04 

Date: Sun, 16 May 2004 12:37:57 -0400

On Sun, 16 May 2004 12:38:38 +0100, Joe <joe@jretrading.com> wrote:
> 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:

>>> Access. There will never be a Linux equivalent of Access, and Crossover
>>> Office doesn't run it (Access 2000 specifically) very well.

>> 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?

How does using Access have anything to do with what your customers use?
You made a decision to use Access to store some data. That had nothing
whatever to do with what your customers use. So you can't blame this
"show stopper" on them.

As for how avoiding MS products will help your business, I assume that
you know the answer to this or you wouldn't be here looking for an
alternative.

>> 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.

Few things are ever perfect. If you are serious about finding an
alternative you learn how to work around the problems. Insisting that
everything must be 100% perfect just isn't realistic. I take that as a
sign that you aren't really serious. It isn't 100% perfect _now_ with
everyone using all-MS.

>> 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.
>
> 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.

And those techniques are, what? Stick to certain fonts, don't use
certain features, do things in a particular way. So why do those
techniques not work with OpenOffice.org? My experience is that they do
but the specifics are probably different than what you do now.

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt has American business by the balls.

>> 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?
>
> No. The issue is whether 'Word' documents created by OO will open
> *intelligibly* in a recent MS Word.

That will virtually always be the case if you simply adjust your
existing list of workarounds to the new software. But you are afraid
that you will be ostracized, unable to buy or sell, without Microsoft
software. Microsoft has made sure of that.

> 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?

That's exactly why Adobe made PDF. So your document will really and
truly look like you intended it to look. Purists will complain that PDF
isn't a "real" standard, but it is a hell of a lot closer than Office
and almost as widespread.

>>> I am aware of PDF and make use of it, but it is often necessary to
>>> exchange working documents, not just visual images.

>> Of course, you could just give OpenOffice.org to everybody. It is,
>> after all, *free* as in beer.

> 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.

Did I say that he had to switch all operations to OOo? No. I said that
if he and you are collaboratively working on a document then you have to
agree on how that will be done. Since OOo is free, and runs on Windows,
it does not cost him anything to use it for this one job.

Now, if your customers are assholes who won't accomodate anybody, well
then I guess you're stuck. There certainly are plenty of those. There
isn't anything that can be done in that case. You're going to have to
buy the specified suite of software and live with it, at least for those
people who are doing this kind of thing on a regular basis. I hope you
bid that into the contract price.

> 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.

Which is exactly why you should not be sending around Word or Excel docs
unless it is absolutely necessary. You don't want to give your business
partners a virus and you do want things to look right. Sending around
Office docs does not meet either goal.

The fact is that MS-Office produces non-working documents all the time
and you all just live with it. But bring in a non-MS program and
suddenly you want to blame the new program. I'd say this is a symptom
of being brainwashed by marketing.

>>> 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.

> No, I haven't seen a problem yet, but I expect to.

Of course you do. And you _don't_ expect there to be a problem with
Adobe's software even though critical thinking says the probabilities
are about the same. There are how many versions of Acrobat and
Distiller in the wild? They aren't all identical or written by the same
people. Adobe programmers aren't any smarter than the rest of us just
because they have a brand name.

More brainwashing.

>> 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.

> 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.

You only get to whine if you don't drive an SUV. You only get to whine
if you are actually trying to do something about Bill's death grip on
your business.

>> 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.

Sorry, I've just been hearing this same argument over and over and over
for what seems like forever. We're trapped and we have no choice! Yes,
you do have a choice but you are too fearful to take it.

I go to my company's IT department meetings. There I hear the usual
litany of complaints about MS. Complaints about cost, about viruses and
malware, about forced upgrades. All the usual stuff. But don't you
dare bring up an actual solution to those problems! That's not what the
meetings are for! No, we _must_ use Outlook, we have no choice! But we
hate virusues, yes we do!

The last one was about incompatibilities between Office versions and
which one should we standardize on and how much is it going to cost.
The big issue was that Big Customer A had one version of Office and Big
Customers B and C had another while we had a mixture of several. Oh,
the horror! The formats may not be perfect! Oh the cost of two
versions for everyone! Oh the risk that we aren't properly licensed!

So I suggested that we could standardize on OOo for Windows internally.
We could buy a support contract from Sun for a lot less than the MS
upgrade pricing. Then we could give only the program managers who dealt
with Big Customers the correct version of Office for their customers.
We'd save a ton of money not having to upgrade 50 copies of Office and
would still be compatible with our Big Customers.

Blank stares all around. Then they started bringing up all the same
stuff you've been talking about *even though* the compatibility issue is
in fact limited to maybe a half-dozen people out of more than 50 and the
reality of *that* is that cooperative editing with ousiders is in fact a
very rare thing.

Normally there is some back and forth where we write a thing and send it
for comment and then re-write it when we get the comments. Hardly ever
does the customer directly make changes to our document and say "this is
how I want it". PDF's would work fine for how things are really done.
The only reason they aren't used more is because it isn't convenient and
because of the cost of Distiller licensing to make it convenient. It is
very convenient and cost-free to use PDF with OOo.

Businesspeople don't want to be ratonal about this. They want to escape
from Windows but they don't want to have to actually do anything to
accomplish that. They want the code fairy to come and wave a magic wand
over their systems.

It is kind of like one of my kids. He wanted a car. But he wasn't
willing to bring his grades up, quit ditching school, save any money, or
really to do anything at all to get one. And yet he professed to
*really* want a car a whole lot, really for sure he did. I guess he
thought that if he wished hard enough it would happen. He figured it
out a few years later. I think Corporate America will too, eventually. 

-- 
 -| Bob Hauck
 -| To Whom You Are Speaking
 -| http://www.haucks.org/