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Description
My girlfriend had a really hard time giving her presentation to her class mates in college and if M$ save formats were default that would not have happened.
I am sure this is not the only case of this and it would be a real convenience for compatibilities sake if we simply changed the default install to office formats.
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oblique63 wrote on the 14 May 08 at 07:42
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I believe the reason they aren't default is because they are proprietary formats, and the open document format is a bit better... but the option to save documents in MS formats is available, so your title is a bit misleading...
it's not hard to simply choose '.doc' from the menu in the save dialog, but I could see many people not noticing that, nor knowing what the difference between '.doc' and '.odt' is, so I guess something along the lines of a simple 1st save dialog warning that the format people are saving their document in 'might not be compatible with MS Office', and then prompt them if they want to change the format to .doc or something if they wish to retain compatibility (and also have like a checkbox option to leave that as the default format), which sounds to me like a pretty reasonable solution, seeing as how we really shouldnt make those MS formats the 'default'...
Im not going to lie, I still use '.doc' for all my work just in case, but I still think we should support open document formats more...
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steve196 wrote on the 14 May 08 at 09:10
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You can make them, or any other supported format, the default saving format.
I personally always prefer using an applications native format, until i am finished with a document and only then converting it to something others can read. I just usually get less tiny annoyances that way
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jdennis_99 wrote on the 14 May 08 at 09:52
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OpenOffice.org 2.4 (current version) supports document standards for up to Microsoft Office 2003, but they are by no means the default format, for a couple of reasons:
a) They're proprietary formats - they're effectively owned by Microsoft, and therefore shouldn't be promoted 'cos they're not open source, unlike the Open formats;
b) They're big and bloated. The .doc format in particular sticks a load of crap in the file that isn't really necessary. OpenDocument formats are a lot more efficient.
You can still save files in the Microsoft formats for compatibility purposes - Save As type drop down menu in the Save As dialog box.
OpenOffice.org 3.0 (expected in Intrepid Ibex) will support document standards for up to Microsoft Office 2007. I think OpenOffice.org is compatible enough with Microsoft standards to make it a serviceable alternative, but we certainly shouldn't be promoting the use of their formats.
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vexorian wrote on the 14 May 08 at 14:42
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hmnn, I noticed some mistakes in your post.
- You accidentally posted this in the ubuntu brainstorm site. I think you probably intended MS' tech support forum or msdn?
- You accidentally made a wrong title, it should have been "Make microsoft office compatible with ISO standard ODF"
Openoffice can already save in lame office compatible formats, it is just not the default and never will be.
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chmoder wrote on the 14 May 08 at 16:32
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I know it can save in .doc, etc.
Its just that she could not figure out how to save or change the default over the phone and she lives kind of far away so I think it should be easier for non techies to change the default so that the rest of the world can use her work.
Either that or complain that M$ does not use open formats...
which one do you think would be easier to change?
so yea i agree with vexorian and the rest of you. Open is better just want it to be able to change easier since microsoft is so proprietary sometimes.
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steve196 wrote on the 14 May 08 at 21:44
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At the minute i am on a Windows machine, but here i can open writer, go tools/options, expand the "load/save" tree, select "general" and there is a dropdown menu, where i can choose the default format for saving.
@vexorian: This gets truly annoying. Stop it.
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vexorian wrote on the 15 May 08 at 02:03
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chmoder: Well, actually, I think the safest bet (saving in pps may not work totally well) is to export the document to PDF, it is unlikely the projection computer wouldn't have a PDF reader. Yep, PDFs can be used for slide shows.
Another good idea would be to take ubuntu live CD with you, that's risky though in that lightning strike could hit and the computer cannot boot in ubuntu...
The final silver bullet is to include OpenOffice portable (portableapps.com) in the USB disk you got the presentation on) !
Anyways, I think this is usually a problem on our end, we install Ubuntu on people's computer without considering these things might happen, it is good that people remember this little issue and teach people about how to mess with MSOffice formats after installing ubuntu on their machines.
steve196: But really, there are things that don't depend on canonical as much as people think.
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