Boston Linux Conference December 3-4

[Travis Roy]

> When openoffice saves as .doc, you won't have all that hidden data in 
> the file.  I bet abiword does this too.  If it's not in the native 
> format, it won't get saved.  I hope any lawyer I word with a) doesn't 
> give out electronic copies of its files and b) doesn't use word.

Open/StarOffice still have issues with .doc format. I did my resume in
OpenOffice and sent it out to some people only to get it back and find
out that the bullet came out wacky in Word (they were bigger and all had
the number 10 in the bullet, very lame looking). I then only sent it out
in RTF and everybody would ask for it in DOC, I'm assuming the same will
happen with PDF. I don't see PDF being much better since windows users
will still have to go get something like Adobe Acrobat. On a Mac however
PDF rocks since it's built in.

> 
> >data).  I was amazed at how many people said they needed Word
> >format.  Excel is another one -- I am amazed by how much data is

I get all kinds of wacky stuff working at mailways (junkmail place)
people sending us .csv files that are really excel files, .xls files
that are really CSV files.. People send us tons of wacky formats.. Our
two biggest customers still send us lists on 1/2" mag reel tape. Of
course we do all our work on very old AS/400 (we're getting a new one
next week). Actually, anybody know much about the whole AS/400 stuff?
I'd love to make some kind of auto converter thing, because right now I
get something, clean it up in excel, save it as fixed width (sometimes I
have to do this in dBase, and that's a pain) then upload it to the
AS/400 thru client access.