[ale] A Real Sad Loss for Open Source in the Atlanta Area

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Thu, 2010-10-14 at 15:11 -0400, Jim Kinney wrote:
> worst issue is fonts - second is default page margins.  Install the
> liberation fonts on Linux and it's a non-issue there. page margins
> require futzing. Apparently the page margins are variable all over
> the .doc. the .docx keeps it's layout better on translation between
> odt and docx.

Eh, most documents are just fine.

The problem that I have with most of them that are not fine are:

  * people not using headers and footers, and instead MANUALLY
    putting "page x of y" or even just "page x" in on the last
    line of the page

  * people using word processors like fscking typewriters, where
    they press ENTER at the end of every stinking line, and
    where they think that "if I hit enter to the top of the next
    page, that'll work" instead of inserting a fscking page break

  * People creating "tables" by using TAB and ENTER instead of
    using a real table, which means that the formatting is so not
    robust

People just don't seem to understand that a word processor is *not* a
typewriter.  Even worse, people learned these behaviors back when the
only purpose of a word processor was to generate a document to be
printed and given to somebody, and so these habits were "okay" because
they had no ramifications.

But somewhere along the way, we started this thing where we use Word
documents for collaboration of documentation and so forth.  What the
bloody hell?  Most of what is done in a word processor should be done
with a true document processing system such as LaTeX, and most of what
is done with Excel has nothing to do with number crunching and nearly
everything to do with databases.

Oy.

	--- Mike