Subj : Re: How much should I charge for fixed-price software contract?
To   : comp.programming
From : Randy Howard
Date : Fri Aug 19 2005 11:19 pm

blmblm@myrealbox.com wrote
(in article <3mm80hF17go82U3@individual.net>):

>> 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?

Perhaps, I find that a lot of people, especially as we get 
older, have an exceedingly low tolerance for even what would 
have been termed a "very minor nuisance" 20 years earlier, and 
perhaps not even worth considering, much less arguing about on 
Usenet.  Some rule along the lines of "As net worth approaches 
MAGIC_RETIRMENT_NUMBER, TOLERANCE_FOR_BULLSHIT asymptotically 
approaches zero."  :-)

> 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").  

Probably true in general.

> 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 ....

It's gotten a lot better over the last year or so, but it is 
still imperfect.  The powerpoint part of it is especially weak 
compared to its MS counterpart, but thankfully I don't care much 
about that anymore.

> 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.).

True, yet another argument for exporting to PDF and sending that 
instead.  

>> 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?  

Yes.

> (I'm not being snarky here -- I'm curious about whether
> the problems I mentioned earlier apply in reverse as well.)

Understood.  I think the key thing is that if you use a lot of 
non-standard fonts, or funky advanced features, macros, and 
custom bullet styles, then the results can be suboptimal (at 
best).  If you stick to conventional fonts and take the default 
bullet types, it seems to work pretty well.  I don't personally 
do much that depends on some magical exact layout when printed, 
but if I do, I send a PDF instead, unless they have to be able 
to edit it and send it back.

But, operating under the rule postulated above, anyone that 
can't deal with any alternate formats other than word at all 
probably won't make it through my tolerance cutoff filter.

:-)

-- 
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)

.