The future of Ubuntu Linux.... Will it make Micro$oft go bankrupt?

[Dotan Cohen]

> However, there ARE issues. Anyone embarking on a changeover, or who has
> relationships that depend on the exchange of word processing documents
> would be well advised to carefully check that there is sufficient
> interoperability for what they want to do.
>

Thank you for mentioning this, Karl. This point is often overlooked by
the FOSS zealots.

> My own office has both Ubuntu+OOO and Windows+Office, and we find that
> while the vast majority of short documents exchange flawlessly, longer
> documents and documents using more advanced features sometimes don't
> exchange properly. The differences range from very slight to very major.
> Numbering is particularly sensitive (so watch out if you work with
> contracts and other legal documents). Pagination is also a common
> victim, mostly because font metrics can be subtly different. We have
> standardised on a set of fonts that work well for us. Frames and images
> are also a bugbear, alignment is often out.
>

You may want to look at Red Hat's Liberation fonts, which were
designed to handle these situations by replicating the size of common
MS fonts:
http://press.redhat.com/2007/05/09/liberation-fonts/

-- 
Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il