On Sun, 5 Feb 2012, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote:
Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2012 10:04:07 +0200
From: Oleg Goldshmidt <p...@goldshmidt.org>
To: Nadav Har'El <n...@math.technion.ac.il>
Cc: linux-il <linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il>, Jonathan Ben Avraham <y...@tkos.co.il>
Subject: Re: Preparing to convince to shift to non-propriety documents formats
What are the school's arguments for not accepting a PDF? The unsurmountable
difficulty of installing acroread on the
teachers' computers? Or is acroread so hopelessly behind the times that it does
not allow marking and annotating? If the
latter, then OOO...
It is not reasonable to ask everyone to install Acroread, or anything else
that is not available by default when you buy a computer from Office
Depot. You would have to send out an instruction sheet and call a parents
meeting to explain why this is necessary. You think that they will do this
just for you?
I think the principal should agree that requiring the parents to buy a computer
with Office just for homework is quite
unreasonable. I'd try thos argument before anything else, and maybe instead of
everything else.
No. The principal correctly assumes that most parents have a computer with
MS Office. This is a reasonable assumption. There is absolutely no
requirement to buy something that everyone already has, because you
already have it anyway an no one buys it so it doesn't cost anything in
any event.
- yba
--
Oleg GoldshmidtOn Sun, Feb 05, 2012, Jonathan Ben Avraham wrote about "Re:
Preparing to convince to shift to
non-propriety documents formats":
> Hi Boaz,
> The time is not ripe. Don't waste your energy. Your school principal
> will not know what you are talking about and will dismiss you as a
> hopeless geek.
I am not sure about the time not being ripe.
In the last year, I installed for two non-technical family members a
copy of OpenOffice (one a full fledged Linux, but the other a compromise
Windows+OpenOffice).
They both faced a few hardships when people sent them Microsoft Office
documents and they didn't look exactly as expected, but I was able to
convince them that it was in fact the other person who is behind the
times ;-) And the documents *were* readable, even if didn't look
perfect.
And for users, this is a saving of 500 shekels (last time I checked).
I don't see how this fact can be ignored in Israel after the summer's
protests. This is actually the reason why I installed OpenOffice in
these two cases - it's hard to justify adding 500 shekels to the price
of a computer which cost around 1000 shekels (plus a few hundred more
for the legal Microsoft Windows).
> A slightly more productive line might be to claim that you are no
> longer using desktop computers - only mobile devices, and for these
> you need either PDF or Google docs.
I believe my Android can read Microsoft Office documents out of the
box :( But it's true, with all these non-Microsoft devices around,
Microsoft's stranglehold on the word processor document seems to be
coming to an end.
--
Nadav Har'El | Sunday, Feb 5 2012,
n...@math.technion.ac.il |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |It's fortunate I have bad luck - without
http://nadav.harel.org.il |it I would have no luck at all!
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