Russell L. Harris wrote: > As a writer and programmer, it appears to me that it is OpenOffice -- > rather than SVN -- which is unsuited for the application which is the > basis for this thread.
While I do agree that OOo seems to be the culprit here I do not follow you
down the same path of reasoning.
> I use XEMacs daily to produce LaTeX documents. I have frequent need
> to search my archives of material I have written in the past, and I
> use grep for this purpose. It is difficult for me to imagine an
> advantage offered by OpenOffice which would compensate for the
> inability to make use of grep in searching my archives.
Not having to learn LaTeX would be the head of my list. While I am sure
it is a fine and dandy language for what it does and I know there are people
who have produced some nice text using it I do not wish to learn a third
computer language just to write fiction in my native language. What
OpenOffice offers is convenience of visually representing what I want with a
low barrier to entry.
> Moreover, I learned the hard way the potential cost of a proprietary
> file system for document storage, when, as the calendar rolled over
> from A.D 1999 to A.D. 2000, M$ Word 5.0 for DOS began writing garbage
> to document files (one of the few genuine Y2K bugs). It was that
> experience which prompted my rapid migration to GNU/Linux and EMacs.
This is where you and I diverge wildly. You do realize that the document
format we're talking about is an OASIS open document standard, right?
http://www.oasis-open.org/home/index.php
Specifically the OpenDocument specification as described here:
http://www.oasis-open.org/specs/index.php#opendocumentv1.1
So I am not, nor have I ever, been dealing with a proprietary document
format. Any more than LaTeX. Now, OOo's implementation of that standard
being hostile to the task at hand... that is a different matter which we agree
upon. ;)
--
Steve C. Lamb | But who decides what they dream?
PGP Key: 8B6E99C5 | And dream I do...
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