tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8839412.post3294893710493762152..comments2024-03-19T07:48:54.021-06:00Comments on Gus Van Horn: Friday FourGus Van Hornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05126749051688217781noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8839412.post-20838406906078783482016-09-17T03:43:16.555-06:002016-09-17T03:43:16.555-06:00Snedcat,
My main use for Word is in the final sta...Snedcat,<br /><br />My main use for Word is in the final stages of editing documents, often that I have written in Libre Office or as HTML. (Interestingly, the author of that piece recommends HTML as a work-around for composing in Word.) Primarily, this is so I can exchange comments during editing.<br /><br />GusGus Van Hornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05126749051688217781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8839412.post-61621829097925619802016-09-16T19:51:47.058-06:002016-09-16T19:51:47.058-06:00For a while I used a similar free Word-compatible ...For a while I used a similar free Word-compatible software package, LibreOffice. It worked 99% of the time fairly well, but it could not handle tables at all; any files with tables in them that I edited and saved as a doc or docx file were unreadable and unopenable by Word. It also could not delete empty comments, no matter how many times and ways I tried to delete them. Since avoiding any trace of this nonsense was necessary for work, I had to give in and get the latest Microsoft product. Hello, tax deduction.Snedcatnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8839412.post-8378230768722267872016-09-16T09:25:03.306-06:002016-09-16T09:25:03.306-06:00You remind me of an amusing comment by a long-ago ...You remind me of an amusing comment by a long-ago colleague in a Lab That Shall Remain Nameless. Upon seeing me improvise something, she told me, "You would do well on a desert island." <br /><br />That said, I think the complement might better apply to the researcher you mention.Gus Van Hornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05126749051688217781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8839412.post-55119047776725963812016-09-16T06:38:00.597-06:002016-09-16T06:38:00.597-06:00#1 reminded me of something that happened in gradu...#1 reminded me of something that happened in graduate school. My professor got an email from a researcher in a former Soviet country, which he could not open. He sent it to me, I opened it in OpenOffice (free open-source equivalent to Microsoft Office), and sent it back to him as a Word file. Turns out many paleontologists in former Soviet countries use OpenOffice because it's free, and (if you remember to save the document as a .doc document) it's compatible enough with Word and Excel that for the overwhelming majority of users the differences are not noticeable. This was the same researcher who once shipped me a set of fossil casts in a box made out of scrap cardboard from food containers. It always struck me as a sign of the strength of the human spirit: these people don't have the funds to purchase what, in the USA, was considered standard equipment, but they did their research anyway! Dinwarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06138006602385020048noreply@blogger.com