The Harbour Pilot

Software Choices and Decisions

Earlier, we pointed to a series of questions that needed to be addressed before making a software decision.

1. product criteria establishment – determining the decision criteria for selection
2. product acceptance - testing to ensure criteria are met
3. product decision and selection
4. time to convert all of your documents and other files,

When it comes to productivity suites ( Microsoft Office and alternatives to it), the product criteria have long been established. There is a list of tasks that most people need to accomplish, and that list is satisfied (more or less) by Microsoft Office. So any alternative that provides the same capabilities as MS Office (plus a couple more, just for bonus points) will satisfy those criteria. Similarly, formal product acceptance is also not necessary, although having the chance to kick the tires will provide some comfort. Did we mention that you can do that for free, probably in about an hour or so?

Cost Components

The product decision at this point really turns on the overall cost of the alternatives. While MS Office costs some money, and Open Office is free, other components of cost might change the overall picture. Which brings us to the cost components of conversion – and this turns on the issues of compatibility.

Now consider this situation: You go out and get Open Office to replace your old and outdated copy of Microsoft Office. It works fine and all things considered, you are happy with your decision, but there’s one tiny little problem. The rest of your business still runs MS Office and so do other operations with which you exchange files – your accountant, perhaps a customer or a vendor… In addition, all your old files are in MS Office formats! Can Open Office read them and save them so that your co-workers who still run MS Office can use them?

The answer is yes – to perhaps a 98% level. Open Office can both save and open files in MS Office formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt, etc.). Unless you knew this beforehand, this could cause some complications and wasted time searching out answers.

For a discussion of the minor variances in cross-platform conversion (for example Word to Writer, Excel to Calc…), you can review this migration guide.

File Structure Compatibility

Of the issues, be aware that there are likely to be some minor formatting and layout differences between any given document in Word and in writer. In part, this is driven by the different underlying file format or structure used by the two word processors. Writer uses a format called ODF Open Document Format, and the specification for that has been published. Word uses a format that is proprietary, and not fully disclosed. It has now adopted a new format for Office 2007, that is based on a standard called OXML – a highly formalised information structure. Conversion between ODF and OXML is emerging, and may be superior to the previous conversion process. It is worth noting that there is more reliability converting between Word 97/2003/XP and Writer, than there has ever been converting between Word97 and Word XP – which is strange.

Font Compatibility and Presentation

A second layer of conversion difference will arise from the use of proprietary fonts in your Word documents. The identical font may not implemented in Writer, and so an alternative is substituted. This will result in slightly different pagination, and some minor tweaking if you are using very complicated graphic layouts. If your Word document conforms to long held best practices in document design, such as the use of styles for formatting, you should not have any significant problems.

Macros

A third layer of conversion and compatibility difference arise from the use of macros. This is more likely to arise in Excel-to-Calc than Word-to-Writer. A macro, for those who have not dealt with them, are tiny code snippets that users themselves can write, to provide enhanced functionality within an application. Macros cannot be transferred between the two applications, and will have to rewrittten in Calc. If you do not write macros in your spreadsheets, then there is no issue. (For a reminder, Harbour Forum’s business models contain no macros for this reason).

We routinely convert between Microsoft Office and Open Office, since some of the open Office tools are more effective and valuable. Amongst these, is the ability to generate PDF format files (Portable Document Format) which are the de-facto standard for distribution to any third party, particularly over the internet.

For greater comfort take a look at the migration guide as linked above.

Operating Systems Compatibility

How about a situation where you download Open Office for your business desktop, but your home computer is a Mac? Can you use Open Office on your home computer?

The answer is also yes, although it runs within a program that can emulate a Windows-like appearance (One of the most common is X11, which is used by both Unix, Mac OS X, and some versions of Linux). But once again, unless you knew this beforehand or had access to a person who was very familiar with computers, this could cost you time and/or money.

Support for Open Office running on the Mac can be found here.

In fact, Open Office is the top cross-operating system productivity suite available. If your environment runs Windows XP on three machines, Linux on two others, FreeBSD on two servers, Windows 2003 on another, and Mac OS X on two graphics design machines – Open Office will run on all of them, and seamlessly exchange files from one system to the next.

Functional Compatibility and Training Hurdles

The main actual costs associated with open source software is in becoming familiarised with the software and integrating it into your environment. This is true of a lot of programs but it becomes more apparent with OSS, which is designed to run on Windows, Mac OS X, and Unix/Linux with as few changes as possible.

Fortunately, the investment that you have made, and that your co-workers and staff have made in learning Microsoft platforms will mean that the learning curve will be very short and shallow. There are not only user guides, but there is a knowledgebase Wiki, and a user forum for discussion and advice

We will examine this at more length in the next post.