On Sun, 14 Jun 2009 12:12:44 +0100
Phillip Chandler <phillip.chandler@???> wrote:
> If you are just writing a standard letter to Aunty Mildred in South
> Australia, then why use a computer ? Why not use pen and paper, that
> surely isnt as bloated as an office suite. In fact whats wrong with
> gedit or a text editor ?
In my case it is for the sake of legibility, I have been using
computers so much that my writing has deteriorated over the
years and I actually find it hard to use a pen and paper.
Using Open Office does mean it will print out looking like I want it
to whereas with text editors it may not.
I started off by buying a licence for StarOffice when it was first
released by Sun, previously I'd been using WordPerfect on dos & OS/2
and on early versions of Linux when there was little else available. I
used LaTeX for a while but it was too 'geeky' for my basic needs.
I have also tried abiword but gave up on it because that really was
unstable at the time, it may be usable now but can't be bothered
trying it out (or Kword and the like).
So all in all Open Office write and occasional use of calc* are fine
with me. I don't do any thing complicated enough to make either crash.
*Many years ago I was a Supercalc power user and wrote a budget
analysis and control system using it, for an office employing 300 plus
staff and an annual budget running into the millions.
I have never used M$Office but my wife has Office2000 and it causes her
no end of grief because it won't 'allow' her to do things the way she
wants but has a will of its own. She would have preferred to go on using
WordPerfect which like me she had got used to using at work back in the
days when it was _the_ word processor of choice for many businesses and
Word was just a "johnny come lately"
Nowadays when she complains about Word I tell her she could use
OpenOffice instead as it is on her system (she has the
'cloned' version).
--
John Lewis
using Debian Sid with windowmaker for a nicer desktop
