[wplug] wplug Digest, Vol 51, Issue 16 Using Linux at college.

Patrick Wagstrom patrick at wagstrom.net
Tue May 20 21:45:05 EDT 2008


shawnzier at gmail.com wrote:
> On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 05:48:21PM -0400, Lee wrote:
>> Hello,
>> My nephew went to Slippery Rock. He couldn't use Linux because he needed 
>> to use Power Point. He didn't have any other problems because everything 
>>
> I don't see any reason that the professors should require the student to
> use powerpoint. Openoffice can make presentations just as well and you
> can save them in .ppt format if there is a presentation machine that is
> used for the entire class and it doesn't have openoffice on it or
> whatever.

I think that's a missing point from the message you replied to.  In most 
cases, you can make OK powerpoint slides using OpenOffice -- there's even 
somethings that it does better, like font smoothing and antialiasing.  The 
support for styles is really nice too and something that PowerPoint can't 
really compare to.  However, when you get complex, you have the same 
problem that PowerPoint users have -- something gets jacked up somewhere. 
If you're not doing animations or embedded video, PDF and CTRL-L are your 
friends.

> I'm pretty sure there's even a version of openoffice that runs from a
> usb stick. I would think this would be ideal. You could then use the
> native openoffice format so you dont have those weird conversion
> problems from saving documents made by openoffice into microsoft
> formats.

When I'm running a class, the last thing I want some student doing is 
running some other piece of software from a USB stick.  Sorry, that idea 
doesn't fly.

> You would think colleges would be the first to adopt open formats. Do
> you think they really dont know these alternatives exist?

They probably know they exist, they probably just don't care.  In most 
cases professors are overworked and don't have time to worry about some new 
program from some company that may or may not do something nifty.

--Patrick


More information about the wplug mailing list