.xls microsoft spreadsheets cannot be uploaded.

Will pdf work with spreadsheets?
Can someone on dial-up realistically download the Openoffice program?
Does your average Joe Soap who has a passing interest in astronomy an a very average knowledge of computers/software really be expected to avoid using Microsoft software?
I could understand Bart that you may want to encourage opensource software, but to place a ban on software which the vast majority of people have, is not lookng at the bigger picture.
BTW, don't get me wrong, the ethics of MS are far from ideal. However, you don't cut off your face to spite your nose.

pdf will work with any document/image/spreadsheet whatever - it's just a print driver. Instead of printing to the printer you print to PDF - and then everyone can read it.

For what it's worth I'm 100% behind voyager here. I use OO.o myself but anything I put up on a website or even email I convert to pdf. It's common sense.

For starters - people have different versions of MSOffice - the doc might appear differently in each. Same goes for printers which also control how the doc appears. With PDF though - what you see is what you get. I think he's right to insist on open formats here even if it's just for this reason.

On the point raised earlier about file sizes - I downloaded a Word doc from DCU earlier this week. A 1 page doc was 250k in size. I opened it in OO and saved it in osd format - 50k! That's an 80% saving. Even in pdf with the overhead that that entails it was only 56k. So why the hell was it 250 in MS Word? Quite simple - bloatware.

He's not banning software either. He's banning proprietary formats. Some people on this site use Linux or Macs - they mightn't be able to (or want to) open MS documents. So by uploading in that format you would be the one excluding people from viewing the document. Bart's restrictions mean that everyone can view any doc that's uploaded regardless of OS or software.

btw - The next version of MS-Office for Windoze will support saving directly to pdf.

Not sure I should stick my snout in here as things look like they could get a little heated. Ah what the hell! Here goes anyway!

For free, anyone can download Excel, Word, Powerpoint etc, viewers from the Microsoft website, the link to the Excel one is here:
www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx...0&displaylang=EN

Does this make it open to everyone?

Now I'll duck!!!

Nope!

Only to MS Windows users and I'm sorry but despite what the MS propaganda machine might have you belive that is NOT the the entire world!

MS go out of their way to keep their documents closed to non-MS people so untill MS see the error of their ways and adopt open formats (and it looks like they may actually do this because of pressure from the American government who must, by law, use open formats) there will be no place for .doc or .xls files on this site.

Not sure I should stick my snout in here as things look like they could get a little heated. Ah what the hell! Here goes anyway!

For free, anyone can download Excel, Word, Powerpoint etc, viewers from the Microsoft website, the link to the Excel one is here:
www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx...0&displaylang=EN

Does this make it open to everyone?

Now I'll duck!!!

I'd run as well if I were you

btw - The next version of MS-Office for Windoze will support saving directly to pdf.

*does a little victory dance*

And about bloody time too!!!

See, when enough people insist that they need to be able to easily share the work they do with MS software with the world even the nasty evil MS listen eventually!

Can someone on dial-up realistically download the Openoffice program?

Nope.

On that note - if anyone on this board without broadband wants me to burn OO to CD and send it to them just pm me. Don't worry about cost - I've shedloads of blank cds here.

On a tangent headding off into the universe...

OpenOffice is a branch of Star Office. Basically at one point they were the same product but Sun went one way with it and OO went another.

Other way around... ish.

All of the code that sun could opensource after it bought staroffice was opened to create openoffice. Staroffice is branch of the OO code with some changes to make staroffice. Its the same code so they are going the same way. Both allow you to save in .doc[1] format, .rtf and export to pdf which is why I brought it up in the first place

Will pdf work with spreadsheets?

It does in staroffice 8 anyway.

Can someone on dial-up realistically download the Openoffice program?

Relaistically, as in is it physically possible -yes. relaistically, as in before the get fed up - no. I'll send copies on CD to people who want it and only have dialup.

Does your average Joe Soap who has a passing interest in astronomy an a very average knowledge of computers/software really be expected to avoid using Microsoft software?

No, but saving documents in a format that makes it easy for the rest of us to read would be nice

Back to what I think Barts issuee is. For example in photoshop the default is to save in their native format .psd, you need to export to save as jpg. If you upload that you require everyone to have photoshop, or have some other tool capable of openin it. Instead we just export as jpg and upload that. Barts point here about text/spreadsheet formats is similar, except they contain more viruses than .psd files Save work in rtf or pdf and upload that, you can create it in wordperfect for all I care!
This is really critical if we actually want to share work. Say someone uploads a doc for a handbook, someone makes changes and saves it in the latest doc. format. Then the next person on windows 98 gets it but the formatting will be different, and then openoffice gets to it and has to try and work out what the hell format its in! At least you know where you stand with rtf.

Cheers,
~Al

[1] For MS current definition of doc anyway...

I wonder how many posts there have been since I strted writing this