Re: [Sheflug] Re: Office apps

[Simon Brown <xxxxx [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

> > We aint secretaries.  I know you'll all hate me for saying it but
> > Excel is a good thing.  NHS IT departments seem to be getting less
> > and less interested in looking at anything thats not made by
> > micro$oft.  Physicists here (mostly me) have developed a whole
> > suite of VB macros for Excel and Word which are absolutely mission
> 
> Never come across an engineer or a scientist who wants to lock himself 
> into doom and gloom forever more :)

It all depends on your point of view. Back when Office 97 was current,
free software office apps weren't exactly in great shape. I imagine
back then, that Office 97 probably was the best tool for the job, it
may even still be. The main evil of MS software is the never ending
upgardes dictated by amongst other things file formats. If you can
side step the upgrade cycle, that means the costs are one off and a
large part of the "evilness" is avoided. I'd love to be able to remove
the non-free line from my apt sources list, but sadly I live in the
real world.     
     If I had to choose between 2 pieces of software for the same
function that were equally good, obviously the free choice would
win. You have to choose the best tool for the job don't you?

> Lot like VB.  But, as I understand it and it has has been demonstrated 
> to me by Sheffield University engineering department Open Office and 
> Star Office can be quickly changed to the kind of thing that you 
> might want to do. All you have to do is read something for a while.

GTK is a widget set, like qt like motif, It's used for tasks like
menus buttons scroll bars, in conjuntion with programs like glade it
can be very Visual Basic like, (application development). I am no MS
expert but we're talking about VBS where S means script, an entirely
different kettle of fish. GTK can not help you with Gnumeric automation. 

Jose will be more upto date on this but as far as I know Electric +
Electron eng at shef is very MS Office centric, I've never seen any
thing else in use.  

> to the point where their own patients suffer ?  I get the feeling 

how are the patients suffering? Okay Office 97 is not new, but it
doesn't mean it's not adequate, if it ain't broke ..........

> that even though - as you say - you are stuck with office97 that you 
> will still have to spend large amounts of money on licences that 

was the license not a one off cost or have large customers been on
subscriptions for a long time?

> shouldn't be used by the NHS and in fact are not suitable for a 
> medical envrinonment due to cost considerations.  Patient care is 
> more important than expensive toys that blue screen a lot. Why is the 
> tax payer being asked to pay for this ?

For the NHS as a whole, or practically any government department, not
using Free software (with todays free software) is folly. Just look at
the peruvian example.

However back then isn't now, and you can't blame a man for chosing the
best tool for a job.

My two Euro cents

Simon

-- 
Simon Brown                         simon [at] cliffestones.demon.co.uk
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