[PLUG] MS Publisher at School

[Mike De La Mater]

On Mon, 2003-09-22 at 23:50, Kevin Theobald wrote:
> Paul Heinlein writes:
> 
>  > But once the text is in Publisher, afaik, there's no getting it back.

IIRC, this is true. It's the moral equivalent of M$Works spread sheets,
there's no way out.

> 
> Couldn't it be converted back into .doc (and thereupon into OO)?

Nope. It's got all kinds of other formatting stuff in it. If one copied
and pasted the text into word, it will do it.

> Anyway, why is the school demanding work be in some proprietary format
> (and a less common one at that)?  Do lots of people have MS Publisher
> at home?  Why won't they accept PDF, or PS or HTML?  Aren't there any
> Mac users to complain?

I don't know if there are enough mac users or not, but even Win users
should complain. M$Pub is not the right tool to do anything other than
layout existing text in for newspapers and newsletters.

Not only is it a bod tool to teach kids to word process in, it's a
pretty poor tool in it's own right. 

Publisher is avail on it's own, and it's in some of the Office bundles,
(there are several. some include Access, most do not, some include
FrontPage, most do not...) only two of the five I'm aware of.

Some thing is rotten in Denmark, especially if she's not in a yearbook
or newspaper class...

FWIW, I taught M$ Office to 7th through 11th graders. 

My 2 cents.

Mike