< Previous | Contents | Next >
• http://www.koffice.org
• Freshmeat and SourceForge for various other projects.
6.3.3. Remarks
6.3.3.1. General use of office documents
Try to limit the use of office documents for the purposes they were meant for: the office.
An example: it drives most Linux users crazy if you send them a mail that says in the body something like: "Hello, I want to tell you something, see attach", and then the attachement proves to be an MS Word compatible document like: "Hello my friend, how is your new job going and will you have time to have lunch with me tomorrow?" Also a bad idea is the attachment of your signature in such a file, for instance. If you want to sign messages or files, use GPG, the PGP-compatible GNU Privacy Guard or SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificates.
These users are not annoyed because they are unable to read these documents, or because they are worried that these formats typically generate much larger files, but rather because of the implication that they are using MS Windows, and possibly because of the extra work of starting some additional programs.
6.3.3.2. System and user configuration files
In the next chapter, we start configuring our environment, and this might include editing all kinds of files that determine how a program behave.
Don't edit these files with any office component!
The default file format specification would make the program add several lines of code, defining the format of the file and the fonts used. These lines won't be interpreted in the correct way by the programs depending on them, resulting in errors or a crash of the program reading the file. In some cases, you can save the file as plain text, but you'll run into trouble when making this a habit.
6.3.3.3. But I want a graphical text editor!
If you really insist, try gedit, kedit, kwrite or xedit; these programs only do text files, which is what we will be needing. If you plan on doing anything serious, though, stick to a real text mode editor such as vim or emacs.