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gamerChad
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Joined: 15 Mar 2006
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 Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 1:04 am Post subject: Right Click -> New -> Word Document on Windows XP desk |
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I have a fairly fresh winXP install and rather than bust out the old office 2000, I decided to try out OpenOffice. It worked really well for the most part. This one annoyance hit me though: normally I can right click on the desktop, click "new", then select microsoft word document. Now when I do that, it brings up a bunch of open office formats. I really don't want that, as everyone and their brother still uses MS word .doc format. It makes the "right click -> new -> document" combo rather useless to me. I actually tried to change this in the registry, with no success, because, well, I really didn't know what I was doing when I got to the correct key  Anyhow, how do I change this behavior so that it only brings up MS office formats? |
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9point9
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| Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 3:30 am Post subject: |
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You do not need a registry key change. The New file menu used takes it's files from directory called Templates. Forgotten where it is now as I have no working Windows set up but it will be in your personal settings.
Personally I would not work with .doc files by default. Saving in a format that the program does not have a complete understanding of by default is a bit dangerous.
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Gabor
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Joined: 21 Sep 2003
Posts: 610
Location: Hungary (E-Europe)
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| Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 4:45 am Post subject: 2 ways to do |
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Either download Powertoys for Windows XP TweakUI and set it up
or, rather, use the quickstarter from the tray: right-click>Text document |
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gamerChad
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| Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 11:20 am Post subject: |
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Thanks! TweakUI did it.
| Quote: | | Personally I would not work with .doc files by default. Saving in a format that the program does not have a complete understanding of by default is a bit dangerous. |
Well, working in anything besides .doc is simply unacceptable. I do not write stuff so that I can read it. I write so that others can read. Those others usually use .doc and have never seen openoffice docs before. .doc is pretty much the standard out on the net. That said, I will keep an eye open for OOo features that .doc does not support.
That brings a suggestion to mind. It would be awesome if there was some kind of MS office replacement mode that OOo could run in. While in this mode, OOo would always default to using MS office format. It would also restrict the user to features that OOo knows MS office formats support. The whole objective being to create an MS office replacement with no snags, save maybe a missing MS office format feature or two, which would be fine. |
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9point9
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| Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 11:40 am Post subject: |
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| gamerChad wrote: | | I do not write stuff so that I can read it. I write so that others can read. |
If they only need to read it, convert to PDF. Does every file need to be read by someone else? Using a foreign file format by default puts everything at risk. Just convert a single file to send to them in their propreitary format.
| gamerChad wrote: | | .doc is pretty much the standard out on the net. |
.doc is NOT a standard. It is a closed specification file format and hence is not a standard.
| gamerChad wrote: | | That said, I will keep an eye open for OOo features that .doc does not support. |
1. OpenDocument does not descriminate against users not using one vendors software. OpenDocument is openly specified and only software author can implement it into their software. It is not just OOo that uses it.
2. .doc's track changes storing does not work well between versions. Also, if someone knows what they're doing it is possible for them to view changes that you have made to the file that you don't want them to see.
3. .doc's password protection is a joke. OOo can see straight through it and will open it normally since the data is not encrypted. OpenDocument uses proper encryption so unless someone is going to brute-force the password (lots of computer time), they can't see anything.
4. OpenDocument files are simply a ZIP'd set of XML, metadata and images. This makes low-level manipulation possible inclusing recovery of content in case of corruption and modification of files by simple tools. I have used this to reduce sizes by up to 43%.
| gamerChad wrote: | | It would be awesome if there was some kind of MS office replacement mode that OOo could run in. While in this mode, OOo would always default to using MS office format. It would also restrict the user to features that OOo knows MS office formats support. The whole objective being to create an MS office replacement with no snags, save maybe a missing MS office format feature or two, which would be fine. |
That's not going to happen. OOo is not meant to be an MS clone. If you want a clone look at ThinkFree Office. It's not any good though.
OOo does not 'know' what features .doc supports, it can only guess as the file filters are reverse engineered due to the closed nature of .doc.
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gamerChad
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| Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 1:01 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Does every file need to be read by someone else? |
No. But about 90% of the stuff I write does. Sure I could use OpenDocument for the 10%, but that still leaves the 90% unhandled.
| Quote: | | If they only need to read it, convert to PDF. |
Good call. I might just do that, especially if I can just do my work in that format instead of .doc. It would be a bummer though in those few cases when I want someone else to be able to edit my doc. I could probably just save as .doc for those.
Is working in .pdf format as dangerous as .doc?
One thing I'm getting at - converting is kind of a pain. I don't like having to write my files in one format and then convert to another. It's a convenience thing. Especially for trivial documents.
| Quote: | | .doc is NOT a standard. It is a closed specification file format and hence is not a standard. |
Sorry, I didn't mean "standard" by its strict definition. I meant that most people use it. |
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9point9
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| Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 1:10 pm Post subject: |
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| gamerChad wrote: | | Is working in .pdf format as dangerous as .doc? |
No. PDF is a standardised format so any PDF reader will display it. PDF also has the advantage that it encapsulates font information. This means taht you can use any font you want and it can be displayed on any computer as you intended. Dont incompatibilities do affect OpenDocument too, but to less of an extent than .doc as OpenDocument specifies font substitutions if it can't find the correct font.
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gamerChad
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| Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 2:41 pm Post subject: |
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| OK. Thanks for the suggestion! PDF looks like the way to go in most cases then. |
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tchuyev
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