Edited By David Clark 1 on 15/02/2012 11:30:03

Edited By Sid Herbage on 15/02/2012 22:44:08

Edited By John McNamara on 16/02/2012 00:26:10

Edited By Ady1 on 16/02/2012 01:45:03

Edited By John McNamara on 16/02/2012 10:20:42

Hi Diane
You have not been sacked.
Can you think of a better headline to make people read this thread?
No, I thought not.
regards David

John McNamara,

The only reason why Word is the word processor of choice is simply due to Microsoft's policies. Often, you will find a new machine may well have Works or a limited version of Office included. Furthermore, schools use Office - don't know why, but wouldn't be surprised to find that there has been some sort of financial deal done. In any event, Microsoft offer price reductions to any person who has a student, or student to be (pre-school child) in the house. Similarly, a lot of businesses use Office - again I would not be surprised to find a financial inducement based on quantity of licences bought.

But, what about those individuals like myself who on a personal basis have no possibility of obtaining a price reduction. Are we to fork out large amounts of money for something of which we would probably only ever use a small subset of the facilities offered? Frankly, the answer is no - especially when there are alternatives available which are just as good.

Frankly, it is high time that people like you accept and understand that there are good alternatives available. I have used Lotus Smartsuite in the past. I now use Open Office. I have even used a DOS based program which did everything that I needed, and more besides. Someone here has mentioned Libre - I have no experience, but I do know that people do use it.

John, Microsoft is NOT the be all and end all of the computing world, and on a personal basis, the sooner that is realised the better.

In respect of cut and paste, I have never had to do it yet - and I have produced some long posts. It simply is not necessary.

Regards,

Peter G. Shaw

ps. Whilst on about it, why on earth do all those users of Word assume that everyone else uses Word and thus issue documents on the .doc format which again is NOT an international standard. It IS a Microsoft proprietory standard. What would Word users do if I sent them a document writen in the Open Office propretory standard, eg .odt? I rather imagine that they would not be able to open it.

Hello all.

Not having English as my mother tongue, sometimes I find is better to be shut up even if I feel I should intervene.

This time I feel I must intervene and because of the above reason and also because Mr. Peter G. Shaw says eloquently the same I could say, I beg him permission to make mine his words.

Dias Costa

I made some tests pasting a few lines of text from Word 2003, Word 2007 and Open Office to this post as You'll see below.

The only difference I found is only the text coming from Open Ofiice brought information on font.  The extra space between the lines was inserted by this new editor.

The pasted lines are were extracted from Jethro Tull's Thick as a brick

pasted from MS Word 2007

See there, a son is born

And we pronounce him fit to fight

pasted from MS Word 2003

There are blackheads on his shoulders

And there he pees himself in the night

pasted from MS Word 2003

We'll make a man of him

Put him to trade

Teach him to play Monopoly

And how to sing in the rain

Is this a too simple teste or am I missing something?

Edited By dcosta on 16/02/2012 12:13:22

Hi Peter

I knew when I posted a suggestion that the site be made completely compatible with MS word that I would ignite the inevitable. As I said. " I hope this post does not start discussion of (off topic) Microsoft monopoly issues. We are talking about ease of use here for this website for the majority of users; not politics."

I stand strongly supporting my suggestion that the site be made compatible with MS Word as a priority. This will fit the needs of the many.... It is your choice to use whatever software you choose. However do you really believe the Word users be punished.... A totally unreasonable concept.

I hark back to the title of this thread

New website editor

It needs to be compatible with Word. Discussion of the rightness or wrongness of using Microsoft product is off topic.

I intend to make no further comment on this subject unless it points directly to the thread heading.

Cheers

John

Edited By John McNamara on 16/02/2012 12:39:39