[KLUG Members] OO.o's handling of Word documents

[Eric Beversluis]

On Tue, 2006-02-07 at 23:55 -0500, greenproc wrote:
> 
> Eric Beversluis wrote:
> > Some information re ability of OpenOffice to handle Word documents:
> > 
> > I recently received a Word document from my wife to print. As it came
> > first to Evolution I tried printing in in OpenOffice.org 2.0.
> 
> Can we assume that the document was created in m$ word?
Yes
> 
> > Then to check I forwarded it to Windows and opened and printed it in Word. When
> > I opened it in Word I discovered that there was a full page flow chart
> > (looked like it was created in Word, not imported from something like
> > Visio) that simply disappeared from the document when opened in
> > OpenOffice, with no indication even that something was missing.
> 
> Not all features of OO2 Writer and m$ word are translated when
> converting document formats -- this can happen in either direction (word
> -> OO and OO to word)
This is the point. 

BUT OO CANNOT BE SOLD AS A GOOD SUBSTITUTE FOR MS WORD AS LONG AS THESE
PROBLEMS CONTINUE.

One may not like French, but in Quebec one had better be able to speak
French; one may not like English, but in the US one had better be able
to speak English. One may not like MS Word, but given the way the world
is, one needs to be able to communicate with it.
> 
> > 
> > When sent to Linux and opened in Writer (OO.o2.0),
> > --the solid square bullets became hollow, vertical rectangular bullets
> > --line spacing was increased (single spacing) from ca 3/16" to ca 1/4",
> > resulting in 7 1/9 pp becoming a bit over 8 1/2 pages.
> 
> This sounds like a font problem?  Just a wild guess -- did the font
> change or just the "sizes".  There could be default document settings at
> work here.
Same font (Times New Roman, 12 pt) in all cases.  The line spacing
problem is one I learned about with OO1.x the hard way, when things I
was printing came out with wrong pagination. One needs to go to Format
-> paragraph -> line spacing and set "Fixed" to about 0.17" to match
Word's line spacing. I haven't seen anywhere in OO writer that one can
change its default line spacing height.  But you would think, when OO
Writer opens a doc as doc it would retain the doc's line spacing.
> 
> > --the quality of the printed page in Linux was significantly worse (same
> > laser printer). 
> 
> Does the quality of the printed image in Linux *always* look much worse?
>  Or just for that particular document?  Or only for specific applications?
I don't know
> 
> > --When the document was saved (in Windows) as rtf and sent back to Linux
> > and OO.o, the flowchart still disappeared
> 
> Did the flowchart disappear in rtf format?  Or can you open the "Save
> As" rtf document in windows and still see the flow-chow chart?
Yes
> 
> Use a pdf document format if it is available to you -- save in windows
> as a pdf, and that should solve your viewing/printing problems on the
> linux side.  It looks like I assumed the document originated in word :)
See earlier thread dealing with this. (a) Many people do not have access
to converting their documents to pdf, especially at work, where they may
well be prohibited from installing such a program themselves (the latest
Word Perfect has a converter, but WP is also banned from many work
places); (b) people want to be able to just send a document without
having to mess with converting it first, especially if (c) they need to
be working on the document together, so it can't be in pdf format. My
wife and I pass documents back and forth to work on all the time; I have
to be sure to have them sent to an email address that only opens in
Windows, so I don't end up having to forward them myself.
> 
> > 
> > EB
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> > 
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