Preparing to convince to shift to non-propriety documents formats

[Jonathan Ben Avraham]

On Sun, 5 Feb 2012, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote:

> Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2012 10:04:07 +0200
> From: Oleg Goldshmidt <pub at goldshmidt.org>
> To: Nadav Har'El <nyh at math.technion.ac.il>
> Cc: linux-il <linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il>, Jonathan Ben Avraham <yba at tkos.co.il>
> Subject: Re: Preparing to convince to shift to non-propriety documents formats
> 
> 
> What are the school's arguments for not accepting a PDF? The unsurmountable difficulty of installing acroread on the
> teachers' computers? Or is acroread so hopelessly behind the times that it does not allow marking and annotating? If the
> latter, then OOO...

It is not reasonable to ask everyone to install Acroread, or anything else 
that is not available by default when you buy a computer from Office 
Depot. You would have to send out an instruction sheet and call a parents 
meeting to explain why this is necessary. You think that they will do this 
just for you?

> I think the principal should agree that requiring the parents to buy a computer with Office just for homework is quite
> unreasonable. I'd try thos argument before anything else, and maybe instead of everything else.

No. The principal correctly assumes that most parents have a computer with 
MS Office. This is a reasonable assumption. There is absolutely no 
requirement to buy something that everyone already has, because you 
already have it anyway an no one buys it so it doesn't cost anything in 
any event.

  - yba


> --
> Oleg GoldshmidtOn Sun, Feb 05, 2012, Jonathan Ben Avraham wrote about "Re: Preparing to convince to shift to
> non-propriety documents formats":
> > Hi Boaz,
> > The time is not ripe. Don't waste your energy. Your school principal
> > will not know what you are talking about and will dismiss you as a
> > hopeless geek.
> 
> I am not sure about the time not being ripe.
> 
> In the last year, I installed for two non-technical family members a
> copy of OpenOffice (one a full fledged Linux, but the other a compromise
> Windows+OpenOffice).
> 
> They both faced a few hardships when people sent them Microsoft Office
> documents and they didn't look exactly as expected, but I was able to
> convince them that it was in fact the other person who is behind the
> times ;-) And the documents *were* readable, even if didn't look
> perfect.
> 
> And for users, this is a saving of 500 shekels (last time I checked).
> I don't see how this fact can be ignored in Israel after the summer's
> protests. This is actually the reason why I installed OpenOffice in
> these two cases - it's hard to justify adding 500 shekels to the price
> of a computer which cost around 1000 shekels (plus a few hundred more
> for the legal Microsoft Windows).
> 
> > A slightly more productive line might be to claim that you are no
> > longer using desktop computers - only mobile devices, and for these
> > you need either PDF or Google docs.
> 
> I believe my Android can read Microsoft Office documents out of the
> box :( But it's true, with all these non-Microsoft devices around,
> Microsoft's stranglehold on the word processor document seems to be
> coming to an end.
> 
> 
> --
> Nadav Har'El                        |                     Sunday, Feb 5 2012,
> nyh at math.technion.ac.il             |-----------------------------------------
> Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |It's fortunate I have bad luck - without
> http://nadav.harel.org.il           |it I would have no luck at all!
> 
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> 
>

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      - yba at tkos.co.il - tel: +972.2.679.5364, http://www.tkos.co.il -