[Leaplist] OpenOffice class @ Knowledge Shop

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Fri, 2008-02-08 at 06:20 -0500, Fred Moore wrote: 
> Correcting all of the current word users misuse, and misunderstandings
> takes longer.. ie not using styles may take longer..  Thousands of
> different font faces per document etc..

Agreed.  Everyone thinks they're an expert on word processing and, more
specifically, they haven't touched on anything outside of MS Word.  It's
bad enough when you just try to correct their usage and learn how to do
things better in a word processor.

[ God help you if you're pig-headed enough like myself and try to think
they should use desktop publishing (DTP).  Even worse are the ones that
think DTP is only MS Publisher and "can't do things Word can do." ]

> find out he has created a document using  abcxubsacst font  he stole
> about 5 years form some custom font site.

The Red Hat Liberation fonts are what I've been trying to proliferate,
and heavily.  Getting users to stick with Sans (Arial/Helvetica), Serif
(Times) and Mono (Courier) is a good, first step.  And having them just
use the Liberation fonts is nice.

Red Hat's older, less hinted versions are on their promo page:  
  http://www.redhat.com/promo/fonts/  

There is a Zip to the new, more fully hinted versions here:  
  http://bugzilla.redhat.com/attachment.cgi?id=295106  

I have a "normal.dot" template I've been passing around with these fonts
as the default.  When I have more time, I'm going to boot old MS Word
8.0 (97) so I can have a "base" DOC 8.0 (97) "normal.dot" template that
should work for any version.

> Ask you self three question before you send out a document..
> 1)... Do they need to edit the document I send them.  
>     yes -- if you don't know what they use for word processing send a
> doc file.
>     no-- send them a PDF file..
> 2).. Do they need to copy parts of my document..
>     yes or no..  send them a PDF file.
> 3).  Do we need to collaborate on the document.. 
>     no --- PDF
>     yes..  you all need to discuss the requirements..

PDF is also a crapload smaller than any DOC version.

> Now anytime a new person is  hired they get a copy OpenOffice already
> installed..   Slowly the conversion is taking place..   Fred

Keep up the good work!  I'm glad people like yourself and Patrick are
around.  There are just some user segments I avoid on purpose, I don't
have it in me.  It's just one of my many flaws.  ;)


-- 
Bryan J  Smith              Professional, Technical Annoyance
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org  http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith
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