Great idea Tony. I wish I would have thought of offering the open standard as a resolution as my caucus too. <br><br>As Brian points out, there is the cost of training involved with any conversion. However, I think this touches on the fundamental issue of how we teach people to use software. This topic was mentioned in another list that I am a member, and the consensus was we teach kids to use MS Word, not word processing software. It would be nice if schools at least touched on alternatives to MS products.<br>
<br>Troy<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Feb 6, 2008 6:52 AM, Brian D. Ropers-Huilman <<a href="mailto:brian@ropers-huilman.net">brian@ropers-huilman.net</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="Ih2E3d">On Feb 6, 2008 12:26 AM, Tony Yarusso <<a href="mailto:tonyyarusso@gmail.com">tonyyarusso@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>> As noted on my blog, I attended my caucus tonight, and decided to present a<br>
> resolution for mandating the use of ISO-approved open standards for all new<br>> government documents and all being newly converted to electronic form,<br>><br></div><div class="Ih2E3d">> I was wondering if anyone else had similar resolutions brought up in their<br>
> precinct, and if so, what was the result? The only concern raised against<br>> mine was wondering what the potential cost would be, although I think we<br>> have a solid argument there in that it would cost essentially nothing to<br>
> implement open formats in a forward-only manner, and the real cost only<br>> comes in with retroactively converting existing documents<br><br></div>I am a strong proponent of open source and have even been accused of<br>
evangelicalizing at times. I pushed my extended family to move to<br>OpenOffice years ago, as I did.<br><br>Having said that, however, we need to be careful when we talk about<br>costs. There certainly will be a cost involved in such a conversion,<br>
not in the cost of the format or of the software to produce documents<br>in that format, but in terms of training. Like it or not, there are<br>differences in the applications that support open formats and those<br>that don't and those differences will have to be trained before users<br>
are fully accepting of the new applications and their new formats.<br><br>I just needed to point that one out.<br><br>We did not stay for our actual caucus last night as our kids would<br>have melted. I'm not aware of any discussion in that regard either,<br>
but I applaud you for bringing it up and am excited that your<br>resolution passed.<br><font color="#888888"><br>--<br>Brian D. Ropers-Huilman<br><br>_______________________________________________<br>TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota<br>
<a href="mailto:tclug-list@mn-linux.org">tclug-list@mn-linux.org</a><br><a href="http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list" target="_blank">http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list</a><br></font></blockquote>
</div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Website of the week: <br><a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/">http://www.ubuntu.com/</a><br><br>The Free Alternative to M$ Office:<br><a href="http://www.openoffice.org">http://www.openoffice.org</a><br>
<br>My Blog: <br><a href="http://troythetechguy.blogspot.com">http://troythetechguy.blogspot.com</a>