No subject

as they pick up all kinds of rubbish from whatever happens to be in memory at 
the time. Word tends to store documents as what-I-read-in plus amendments as 
a separate section (basically an OLE2 braindump), so even with revisions 
disabled the errata are often still present. Disabling fast saves helps a 
little.

If you want to collapse the revisions and strip the rubbish out of a specific 
Office document, load it up in StarOffice, then save it out again. It may be 
possible to automate this (virus-scanner style) with a headless version of 
OpenOffice but I don't see anyone ahving done it yet.

> My company has a client, a legal firm, that is currently using WordPerfect,
> and wants to switch completely to MS Word.  The licensing cost doesn't seem
> to bother them.  However, the legal implications of Word might.

Well now, there's a long story... which legal implications?

0. The legal implications of sending out remotely rewindable documents; or

1. the legal implications of sending out random snippets of information
   with every Office document; or

2. the legal implications of using a trackable system (embedded application
   serial numbers in every document); or

3. the legal implications of using software which you don't actually own
   (merely lease) for mission-critical work; or

4. the legal implications of using software on a system which you have
   explicitly agreed to let an unprivileged third party view and modify
   (part of XP's click-though agreement, soon to propagate to other packages
   probably including Office); or

5. the legal implications of using software produced by a known criminal
   entity; or

6. the legal implications of using software which often won't read legacy
   documents, and/or won't produce documents which are IRL readable on
   legacy systems; or

7. the legal implications of storing privileged information on a system
   known to be prone to viruses which broadcast said information, using
   file formats also well known to be prone* to viruses?

Jeremy Malcolm may have something to add or qualify since he's a lawyer IRL.

> My experience with Star Office is limited, can you tell me if it is at
> least as stable as Word?

Yes. Each can do things that the other can't. Office will read a few files 
that StarOffice won't, and vice-versa; StarOffice is better at tables but 
Word has a grammar checker; StarOffice gives you help directly but it is in 
places obviously written by someone for whom English is a second language, 
Office makes you put up with `that sodding paper clip', and so on.

Try it. SO 5.2 is free, and OO is Free. I have a CD with copies of both, 
including for Windows and Linux, that I can crisp you off a copy of if you're 
going to be at the conf meeting at UCC tonight (I'm doing a cameo appearance).

As a side bonus, if you can get the office using OpenOffice for WP/SS stuff, 
and Mozilla for browsing and email, you've just eliminated more than 90% of 
the reasons for sticking with Windows on the desktop.

Cheers; Leon


* Virus scanners help, but your office may be one of the unlucky one which
  cops a virus before your scanner uploads a signature for it; often there
  is a window of several days to several weeks between release of virus
  and release of signature. Now that you've been told this, you are
  unquestionably corporately liable if a virus distributes anything from
  your office. Sorry.