[Athen] Microsoft Word versus Open Office

[Kestrell]

As a screenreader user who often has to edit very large documents, I have to 
say I am discontented with both MS Office and Open Office. I have found when 
using MS Word to edit large docs (as in books I am proofreading or in 
writing chapters of my own work), MS Word has a tendency to hang, and when I 
try to down arrow to the next line of the document, the line does not appear 
as the doc seems to be having trouble updating itself. The RTF format is 
particularly problematical in this regard, and I have heard other 
screenreader users complain of the same issue, although it does not seem to 
be an issue with every screenreader user.

I check out Open Office every so often, and, while I love their Power Point 
application, I am not entirely happy with using their word processor app. I 
seem to recall that this was for some reason involving formatting issues, 
but then, this could be impatience on my part, as I have not found a doc 
that discusses OO for screenreader users (a doc which, I think, could do a 
lot for getting more screenreader users to at least try OO).

Kes

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Beach" <rbeach at kckcc.edu>
To: "Access Technologists in Higher Education Network" <athen at athenpro.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 11:12 AM
Subject: Re: [Athen] Microsoft Word versus Open Office



> Hi Dan,

>

> Thanks for sharing this.  Interesting article, but I would disagree with a 

> few of the points.  One big reason I have no plans to switch to Open 

> Office Writer is because I've had no success in accessing it with a screen 

> reader.

>

> The author states that MS Office cannot reliably handle documents more 

> than 40 pages long.  I find this an interesting statement since we 

> constantly have documents that exceed this and have never had a crash.  In 

> fact, I'm working on a document at home that is around 200 pages long and 

> it has not crashed on me yet.  I know I worked on a document recently that 

> was 243 pages long and had no problems.

>

> As far as styles go, I too do not like what my workers are telling me 

> about Office 07's style system.  However, I really like the Office 03 

> styling system.  It has worked beautifully for us, even page numbers for 

> going to Ease-Publisher.  Granted, you do have to do a quick edit on 

> NotePad between Office and Publisher, but the files my student did in 

> Office Writer had to have more changes than that for the page numbers to 

> come through.

>

> Over all, I'll stick with Ms Office 03 for now.  The macros, templates and 

> styles we use there are working great for us.

>

>

>

>

>

> Robert Lee Beach

> Assistive Technology Specialist

> Kansas City Kansas Community College

> 7250 State Avenue

> Kansas City, KS  66112

> Phone:  (913) 288-7671

> Fax: (913) 288-7678

> E-mail:  rbeach at kckcc.edu

>

>>>> "Berkowitz, Daniel J" <djbrky at bu.edu> 9/12/2007 8:47 AM >>>

> Over the years (has it been years) I have espoused the superiority of

> Open Office versus Microsoft Word -- especially as concerns their usage

> in the work we do with digital textbooks creation and dissemination.

>

> This article from Linux.com just adds fuel to my ire...

> http://www.linux.com/feature/118986

>

>

>

> =========================

> Daniel Berkowitz - Assistant Director

> Boston University Office of Disability Services

> 19 Deerfield Street, 2nd floor

> Boston, MA 02215

>

> (617) 353-3658 (office)

> (617) 353-9646 (fax)

> djbrky at bu.edu (eMail)

> www.bu.edu/disability

>

>

>

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