When writing the title for my last post, which I just posted, I was reminded of the WITs project that is just next to ours. It advocates the use of OpenOffice.org and open source in general. MINDEF has thousands of Office97 licenses, but 1997 is like so long ago. Using OpenOffice.org instead of upgrading to Office 2003 will save about $15 million, in their projection.
OpenOffice.org is great: it's advanced, using an XML file format and allowing 1-click publishing in PDF format (an open file format), and it also has stuff like bibliography built in (though when I tried it this is still quite raw). The switch from MS Word to OpenOffice.org Writer is practically seamless, because typing up a document is relatively straightforward.
One thing I really like about OpenOffice.org Writer is that there's this "stylist", which greatly encourages and assists structural (rather than just purely cosmetic) markup. You just specify that this line of text is a "title", rather than making the font bigger, making bold, and centering. You get consistency and structure, something that is usually sorely lacking in a WYSIWYG interface. You can change the formatting style for a "heading" and all lines marked "heading" will change in tandem.
Have you made the switch yet? You're otherwise stuck between a rock and a hard place: pay hundreds of dollars for software (and tie yourself to a proprietary file format), or get an illegal, pirated version, which MS is pushing the government to crack down on, and I think if you report a copyright violation that's going on in a business you can collect a nice $20,000 if I remember correctly.
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