Decent spell checkers?

—- getting on soapbox —-
As for the remarks of some about geek elitism…

First of all, it’s l33t! Get it right.

I am so tired of the arrogant attitude of some other “professionals” who think they’re god’s gift and that using the obscure jargon of their chosen trade makes them smarter than the rest of us; it’s quite enjoyable when they need tech support because they get a virus from an Office email attachment on their pathetic WinDoze box.

When I am dealing with humble, respectful people, I respond in kind and try to solve their tech troubles while providing a little education. But I love it when some smarmy lawyer, doctor, or CXX has the ‘deer in the headlights’ look on his/her face while I explain basic firewall setup.
—- getting off soapbox —-

Personally, I use OO.o to read and write Office formats when I must. My everyday editor is vi and LyX is nice for publishing.

Peace.

I feel like you’re mixing freedoms and assume that software freedom and open formats imply other freedoms (i.e., I can submit my slides in any way I want). Conference organizers have been telling people what format to submit material in for ages, the new thing is that it is an open format that gives you much more freedom in the software you use to create your presentation. You can also often convert between open formats. Simply put, your software freedom has nothing to do with some mythical “freedom” conference organizers are restricting. It’s nice to be able to submit things in any format but I don’t see any freedom that’s being restricted if I can’t.

“If someone out there can tell me why I should use a fancy (read:bloated) Word processor instead of vim…”

It must be some kind of joke…

Do you imagine someone writing books or technical reports (forget IT and engeneering) on vim, vi or gedit?

or taking to a costumer a presentation made in html?
Do you imagine any psychologist, teacher, administrator or marketeer writing html? (with css, javascript??!!)

If you have a firm, would you be confident in store your documents in Google’s servers (instead of yours)?

My friend, we still need “fancy” word processors. Not everyone think and work like geeks… they dedicate their lives to their specializations in order to let other people dedicate to other specializations.

If everybody could learn html, C++, python, keyboard-shortcuts or whatever we wouldn’t need programmers or IT professionals. Each one use his knowledge to make community’s life easier, that’s the way the society works.

A frequent fail of lots of IT professionals is the lack of empathy. They must think like the final user would think.

You can, others might not. If you had to do it for tens or hundreds of slidepackages all in their own format other as well as you don’t want to do it. It’s simply a matter of time. Using one format makes it easy to handle and reduces the time needed to process them and a lot of the risks involved.

“If someone out there can tell me why I should use a fancy (read:bloated) Word processor instead of vim, or can tell me why I should use Impress instead of the web I’m open to suggestions.”

The users are accustomed to MS Word, you sure don’t want them to spend several years to learn vi/emacs. they wouldn’t do it anyway. If you want them to use open source software you have to give them something that feels a bit like what they already know. Also you know the thought about the right tool for the right job? HTML is not – not for word processing. LaTeX has it’s benefits as well as it’s drawbacks.
You don’t want to use the web because in a lot of cases the information you are trying to communicate is classified or sensitive or private.

Btw google docs is bloated as well, it just bloats their servers load and your internet traffic. To use it, you need a modern browser most of which are bloated too.

Open standards formats are still the best to have when you’re trying to ensure accessibility years down the line. But in the present, yes, they can be just as bothersome if not moreso.

Typical elitism. I have no desire to use something as complex and keyboard-shortcut-laden as vi or emacs. Most users also do not.

I use Linux, and have been using it since 1999. However, I reserve my brain space for more relevant information, not 500 irrelevant and mutually incompatible keyboard shortcuts for marginal programmer’s tools that are mostly worthless to me.

Most regular users, and even power users, have no interest in the bloat of vi or emacs (in brainspace terms), when they could be getting work done faster in a non-programmer’s tool.

And anyway, formatting is important. Plain text is not always the answer. Typical programmer/techie narrow-field view.

I see a lot of utility in being able to store your information on a system accessible to the internet. Running your own server, though, is not something most people want to hassle with. That leaves storing on somebody else’s computers in order to get that utility.

I guess it’s a matter of trust, both for your programs and your documents. Do you trust the program to act in only the ways you want it to? Do you trust the machines holding your data?

Also, I appreciated Quentin Hartman saying, “any time you join a group (including OSS groups) you give up some amount of freedom for the health of the group.”