Does anyone use open office that I could send some files to so that I can test what is happening?

Does anyone know enough about open office to tell me why it would garble .rtf files or why someone who has open office wouldn't get the native file type properly?

Thanks.<runs around in panic mode some more>

Edit: Jeff, I emailed you an .rtf file. It's the same one that someone else receives garbled. So hopefully if you could test it, we may be able to figure out where the problem is.

Thanks much.

It re-formats my documents every time I open them. It became a daily ritual to re-tab all of my paragraphs and so forth. Complete garbage. So I decided to buy a real word processor, like word perfect, or word. Hell, even notepad is better than open office.

Afterall you get what you pay for.

Edit: I may be forced to go back to the old MS Office bloat, but I'll be sad.

On the get what you pay for comment -- don't necessarily say that to a supporter of Open Source much of which is free.

The biggest annoyance is always having to change to the compatible format from the native .docx format.

I also do snail mail submission. In that case Wordpad does not have the resources you need for formatting. You need the ability to put headers in your book mss, for example. You cannot do that with Wordpad. I wouldn't care to have to go through my entire 400 page novel mss and put my name and the page number on each page one by one. Like MS Word, as you know Open Office will do that for you.

I agree that Open Office has issues, however, I never ran into one that keeps it from being unusable before.

I own MS Office. I can re-install it, I just would rather not be forced to. <sighs>

Edit: And Matt, the coders (actually programmers) I know who work on Open Source do so because they believe in it -- passionately -- not because someone is forcing them to in some "coding sweatshop."

I paid a bundle for the MS Office that sits gathering dust on a shelf because it is a bloated piece of (I'm editing out a cuss word that is my exact opinion of MS Office and I've used it for years at the office). You want to tell me how that applies to your TANSTAFL philosophy? By your philosophy it should be the just the best thing around in lunches, and I assure you it ain't.

Its not truly "free ware" because it takes blood, sweat and carpal tunnel afflictions to put good open source software together.

If however the software is buggy, limited products (like some though definitely not all open source products) or all round crappy (like most of MSoft's wares), then the price demanded by TANSTAFL is paid by the end user.

I see as a general libertarian philosophy that makes one realize that for everything that is "free" someone or something is paying for it along the line.

quote:

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Also your words leads me to assume that you see TANSTAFL as a free market laz-e-faire money before service philosophy.

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Since I didn't mention money or service, I would say you are assuming what you want to assume because of your personal dislike of me. That obviously has nothing to do with anything I have said.

I don't totally agree with the Open Source philosophy. I do, however, have a very close relationship with a few members of the Open Source community. I have great respect for them and am not fond of seeing you expressing such disrespect for them and their work.

My using Open Office has to do with my intense dislike of MS Office and having found other word processing applications such as Word Perfect less than satisfactory as well.

However, it looks like the much disliked MS Office gets reinstalled tonight until I find another alternative.

Perhaps I made an @$$ out of u and me when I assume so for that I apologize.

TANSTAFL is to me what I've explained it too be. You objected to my application of the axiom but provided no grounds for objection other than how my use didn't seem to apply.

My use of Open Source (which is not always free as you probably know) has more to do with convenience or preference in software than conviction.

Dad's a Linuxite; and he might be able to help me figure out how to help you.

I do know that sometimes you need to just remove formatting stuff before sending it.

RoughDraft also has features specifically for the writer who must send a submittal via snail mail.