Greg Thomas
On Sun, 5 Mar 2000, Avi Schwartz wrote:
Sorry, but the ability to read a document or relay it back is different then doing collaborative work on some very large an complex documents. When I talk about complex documents I am talking about documents with embedded graphics, tables, Visio diagrams, VB macros, etc. Anyone that tells me that StarOffice does a very good job with Word/Excell 97 documents didn't use it in the above mentioned scenarios. Sorry.
It seems to me you are saying Linux is not ready for 1) complex electronic publishing scenarios, and 2) it's not ready to interoperate with MS products. It takes a big stretch of the imagination to then say that it is flat out not ready for the desktop. If normal people are using Linux on the desktop then is it not ready for the desktop? I mean, come one, one could easily say that Windows isn't ready for the internet because of it's lack of or poor implementation of common utilities but does that mean nobody is using Windows to access the internet? No. Also, I've worked for small, medium, large, and very large companies in a couple of different industries and at none of them were the documents as complex as you mention above (I'm not saying that they aren't elswhere).
I have to agree with Avi. I just changed jobs within our company. I got
among other things, an office and a new NT box to play with. It was an eye
opener. I am fast discovering the possibilites inherent in 300 people
sharing Outlook and an Exchange server. It's all fairly new to most of the
people in the company, so I'm not alone on the learning curve of how to
share calendars and task lists and so on. And as more and more people get
engaged in the process there is a kind of critical mass phenomenon going
on. I don't know of anything even close to that for Linux. Staroffice
will do most of what M$ Office will do. There is even a calendar server I
think. But AFAIK there is nothing even close to the collaborative
possibilities of Outlook/Exchange.
It does no good to talk about what you can do with Latex or Koffice or
anything else. Corporate America is not going to drop what they're doing
and learn Latex. They're going to ask if it can import/export Word files
and Excel files and can they share documents on the Exchange server.
Is Linux ready for the desktop? Yes, it's ready for my desktop and yours.
But it will never be ready for Corporate America's desktops until we can do
everything the M$ boxes are doing already. Including but not limited to
seamlessly and painlessly sharing M$ format documents
And even that will not be enough. There is no incentive to change to
something just as good. We will have to embrace and extend everything M$
is doing and make it better. That is the only way to break the strangle
hold M$ has on Corporate America.
--
Bud Rogers