Re: [Fsfe-uk] open office in schools (was Microsoft 'hoovers millions)

[jimvin]

> That's an interesting point - I've run into a similar problem with the
> government's Housing Corporation quango. Perhaps a campaign is needed
to
> make the government use only open, documented standards for government

> documents.

I noticed the same problem when I was looking for information in Luton Borough
Council's web site. They have copies of forms on there in word format. What's
more they cannot be read using Word 95, which in itself should be used to
point out that such document formats exclude a significant proportion of
the intended audience.

I believe that one of the chief problems here is that the powers that be
assume that most computers users have Word, and a little deeper thought
on the subject would lead me to suggest that this is only the case because
so many people are using unlicensed copies of MS Office. The conspiracy
theorists out there can fill in the rest of the blanks ;-)

I'd like to create a draft letter to fire off to offending information providers
to explain the problems that word documents cause. Does anyone have a simple
solution that could be presented to the agencies involved? AFAIK exporting
a document from Word to PDF requires that you purchase a copy of an Adobe
product to obtain the PDF file printer driver.

Cheers,
Jim Halfpenny