Subj : Re: How much should I charge for fixed-price software contract? To : comp.programming From : blmblm Date : Fri Aug 19 2005 03:17 pm In article <0001HW.BF2B2E0E005E5443F0386550@news.verizon.net>, Randy Howard wrote: >Richard Heathfield wrote >(in article >): > >> Randy Howard wrote: >> >>> Richard Heathfield wrote: >>> [ snip ] >> BTW I was talking to a soil expert last night at a meeting in London >> regarding so-called Third World development, and it became evident that we >> would need to communicate further in the near future. She specifically >> asked me (without any prompting!) not to send her any Word docs, since she >> was a Linux user and thus, whilst reading Word docs was usually (but not >> always) /possible/, it was a bit of a nuisance. > >Strange. If she knows enough to run Linux, then she should be >capable of opening a word doc. :-) "It's a bit of a nuisance" != "I can't do it", no? You do need a tool that claims to open MS Word files. There are many, and they differ in how well they cope with files produced by Genuine MS Word. In my experience, none of them copes perfectly (where "perfectly" includes "shows documents with exactly the same appearance MS Word does"). Yes, I have tried OpenOffice. Yes, it does a pretty good job, and I'm grateful that it exists. I don't have extensive experience with the most recent version, but previous versions .... Well, over the past few years I have often had occasion to compare the results of me using OpenOffice to print a particular Word document with the results of someone else using MS Word to print the same document. They're never exactly the same, and sometimes the differences are not subtle (misnumbered lists, e.g.). >I, unlike you apparently, would prefer a PDF or plain text to >HTML. I'm officially sworn off of Microsoft anything from here >on out. However, if someone wants a .doc file, I'll be happy to >send them one, without using any MS product in the process. Do you ever compare the appearance of the .doc files you send, as rendered by whatever tool you use, with their appearance as rendered by MS Word? (I'm not being snarky here -- I'm curious about whether the problems I mentioned earlier apply in reverse as well.) -- | B. L. Massingill | ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor. .