[kwlug-disc] Google to finally support Open Docs format

[B.S.]

On 12/19/2014 10:06 AM, CrankyOldBugger wrote:
> Now if we could just MS to play along, I could finally wipe MS Office
> from my computers...
>
> http://www.itworld.com/article/2860764/google-delivers-an-early-christmas-gift-google-drive-support-for-odf.html

But in their minds they've adhered to and been the standard everyone is 
supposed to use, for years.

You'll never be able to get away from MS Office. Unless you're willing 
to batch convert all your prior documents and trust that the conversion 
will get everything just perfect. Try opening up a PowerPoint 
presentation in Impress - it won't take long before you give up. (And go 
back to PDFs! A good thing.)

I once thought as you do, and have concluded it will never happen. The 
problem turns out not to be the format, its that recipients don't 
understand the incoming file, and it takes too much energy to convince 
them to try LibreOffice - which most won't. (Same reason why webmail has 
probably exceeded Thunderbird and/or Outlook use.) Since your purpose is 
to communicate, not endlessly advocate, eventually you give up trying to 
change the world.

Which is why I find myself using Google Docs more and more. Never mind 
google is evil. Let google provide the material to get them over the 
learning curve - they can download an office version as suits them, or 
like webmail, just beat on it within google docs. Let alone docs offers 
astonishing convenience for commentary and collaboration that makes 
schlepping attachments back and forth problematic.

And if you're just publishing, pdf it and get on with one's day.

I suspect things won't be resolved by MS or LibreOffice, but by Android 
/ Chrome / Google being the ubiquitous device / presentation presenter.

Curious you brought this up at this time - just beginning to dip my toes 
in e-books (wpl and public sites are amazing!). I would have thought the 
ebook thing was a done deal, but I keep being surprised at how 
ununiversal document formatting still is - such that some things are 
quite unusable. e.g. Things still only being published as pdf that don't 
represent well in an e-reader. I would have thought this was all a 
solved problem. Guess not. How hard can <h1> or <p> be, after all?