[Coco] Re: [Long] [OT] That Big Shadow Over Your Shoulder, Part 1,

[John E. Malmberg]

Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote:
> 
> I think my question is whether these other programs can be used for
> collaboration, as businesses do with MSWord.

> When I get an MSWord document as a co-author or editor, it contains the
> owner and document information, the list of previous editors by initials,
> attributed corrections, editorial notes, and marginal notes ('post it'
> comments). It has various password protections to keep the original editing
> visible as it makes the route through contributors. And probably other
> features I've forgotten.

The ability to peek in the undelete buffer and find out that it started 
as a letter detailing all the gossip in the office? :-)

> It's more than merely reading and writing the format, it's maintaining all
> the contents, present and previous, that's just as important. Lose those
> and my head is on the platter of my editor, just before I'm fired. :)

I would expect that Open Office and the current Word Perfect can do 
this, but it is out side of my field, so I really do not know.

 From what I have picked up from other newsgroups, Word Perfect is the 
format of choice in the legal professions and a few other niches.


My background has been in the industrial applications of computers, not 
the consumer or office applications.

But the bottom line is that the applications drive the platform choice, 
and for most people, it will lock them in.

And for the consumer desktop, that really points you to Microsoft first, 
followed by Mac and LINUX in some order.

But what started this was the assertion if the other platforms were as 
widely deployed as Microsoft Windows, that there would be more exploits 
found in them from technical flaws.

But I do not think that assertion is true.  There are enough of the 
other systems out there and are in "hostile" environments that someone 
would have tried them.

There might be more social engineering and configuration error exploits 
though.

Right now, OpenVMS is paying my bills, and my plans are for it to do so 
for the foreseeable future, so you can see my bias. :-)

Windows and LINUX are so dominant in the industry in general, that 
anyone that is doing programming for a living should be familiar with 
both, and have an honest evaluation of what they can and can not do.

In some cases though it is the quality of the tool.  The quality that is 
good enough for one application is not good enough for another.

I am sure that you can find cases in your fields of expertise where you 
would not be happy with the mass-market version of a tool / instrument, 
and would have to get better grade one, but the majority of the people 
would not.


-John
wb8tyw at qsl.net
Personal Opinion Only