keith said:
>   The smiley was directed to you rants towards
>   Lee and Don! Just a small poke in the side.

yeah, i got that.  except what i said wasn't a "rant"...
it's a straightforward fair evaluation of the situation.

open-office is an admitted effort to clone ms-word,
with most liabilities of ms-word, and very little else,
and thus there is almost no reason to recommend it.

and as for ms-word itself, even its biggest fans today
consider the latest versions to be grotesque monsters,
bloated by featureitis and burdened by complexity, its
everyday functionalities constantly being hidden under
some new and totally confusing interface-of-the-day.

the _only_ reason it continues to have any presence is
because workplace administrators are afraid of change,
so keep using what they've used for the last 2 decades.

and then because people are forced to use ms-word at
work, they know it, and "choose" to use it at home too.

but yes, absolutely, if ms-word is your wordprocessor,
your crescent-wrench, then i'll recommend you use it
for your own personal workflow, with no reservations.
you might as well be comfortable, use what you know.
heck, i still talk to people who use wordperfect.  fine!

but if you suggest that _other_ people use ms-word,
or that it be made integral to a _digitization_system_,
i will ridicule your suggestion, because it deserves it.

-bowerbird