Dinesh Joshi wrote:
On Sun, 2007-09-09 at 20:57 +0530, Rony wrote:
It is not hilarious when M$ Office multi-user license will be procured, in the new machines that will be supplied, due to the critical nature of the work. I don't expect buggy packages to be available on repos even after newer versions are out.
BTW, most M$ users who use non-licensed copies, are using software copies that are quite some years old, they have no access to updates, yet they hardly find any problems or bugs in their software and are happily using them.
I'm neither defending Microsoft and nor am I criticising Linux. Rony, Linux isn't really ready for the mission critical desktop applications. I know exactly what you mean when you say the above statements.
OOo can't be a replacement to M$ Office, just yet. It has a long way to go before it matures into a real competitor. Till then I dont think we can truly pitch Linux for the desktops / workstations where such work is to be carried out.
What I do is tell the client about libre software and in many cases they are willing to give it a shot. I don't interfere too much with their choices as they have to use it ultimately for all their daily work, not I. My purpose is to introduce them to freedom, not drag them to it. And I do it single handedly. When I had put up the problem on the list, there was not much help in terms of a workaround. It was only when the pin was pricked in the sensitive spot that everyone jumped up and responded.
To put it on record, I tried out the sorting of colours test at HBCSE today and Krish and Patwardhan are witness to it that it did not work on both their machines using OO. When the same was tried on a visitor's lappy with M$ Office, it worked.
I request those who tried it out successfully to please send the file off the list to Krish as he and Patwardhan want to study its properties. It appears to be some problem with merging of cell attributes.