On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 6:24 PM, Phillip Zadro <ricaza1...@hotmail.com.au>wrote:
> > > > > hi Is there any likelihood that OpenOffice will one day include a desktop > publisher? You can use Draw as a DTP application without much problem, combined with the OpenClipart extension it's quite useful, not at the level of Scribus but useful nonetheless > There is only one thing that is stopping me from migrating completely from > Microsoft Office to either OpenOffice or LibreOffice and it is their lack > of a Desktop Publisher comparable with MS Publisher. I have used Publisher > for over 15 years and love its practicality, particularly with paginating > of booklets. Even a separate program like Serif PagePlus cannot save in MS > format either, so I am obliged to stay with MS Office. Pity.. I'm afraid you'll have to blame Microsoft for that. No-one else uses or exports or imports .pub files for a number of good reasons: First MS don't tell anyone the specification of the file format so it would have to be back engineered. Secondly and more importantly nobody wants to use it. It's a rubbish file format for a purpose that is covered by far better formats that have an open specification. Publishers and printers use it under protest and some (read most) refuse to accept anything in .pub format. Think about it, a printer/publisher has to pay for an instance of MS Publisher if they are going to work with MS Publisher files, because no other progamme reads the format, whereas there a numerous programmes that work with PDF and the reader is free to download and there are any number of programmes that will do this. OpenOffice will edit them with the right extension. The likliehood is that the projects, both Libre and AOO will continue to develop the PDF capabilities of OO to produce high quality publishable documents, but I doubt that there is the necessity or in fact the will to attempt to back engineer a deadend format. If Publisher suits you then stick with it, but there's a reason the professionals use anything but. Cheers GL Thanks Phil
