Preparing to convince to shift to non-propriety documents formats

[geoffrey mendelson]

On Feb 5, 2012, at 9:50 AM, Etzion Bar-Noy wrote:

> Because most households in israel do not buy their office...
>
> It would be stupid to assume they do. Moreover - the school  
> headmaster does not assume that either. He/she knows most people  
> just "have" their office installed, and they care nothing about it.
>

It depends. I can't speak to it directly, my Hebrew level is such that  
a crayon would be enough, but my son who is in high school was told by  
the school to use Microsoft Office for Windows because there were  
capabilities that he needed that Open Office (for Windows) did not  
provide for Hebrew.

I asked him about it, and he assured me that was the case. Granted he  
is a special student in a special school, but I am sure he is not  
unique.

I do know from users on the various Macintosh groups that both  
Microsoft Office for the Mac (a stripped down version without good  
Hebrew support) and OpenOffice do not do a very good job of Hebrew  
formatting. Mac users have to buy "niche" packages which do, but they  
do not run on any other platform.

On the other hand, my youngest son who is a different student in a  
different school, who does much less sophisticated writing, has been  
using OpenOffice since elementary school, and almost, if not all,  
public schools in Jerusalem have been using it for at least 5 years.

Geoff.


-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson,  N3OWJ/4X1GM
My high blood pressure medicine reduces my midichlorian count. :-(