User friendly Free Software Desktops

[Josef Dalcolmo]

I said:
>> As a user I am also forced to use MS Word files, 
>> because my colleagues use it. 

bernhard at intevation.de said:
> What about Abiword and several other applications? 

Abiword is insufficent for now (I tried). I need to be able to send a .doc to 
some colleagues, who edit them, get it back and continue with the editing, 
seeing where the changes came from etc.

Since they all know Word, I can't force them to use something else (perhaps I 
could try if a free package had all the features we needed, but even 
StarOffice did not yet work out for us).

Had we a great XML based document setting software (in the spirit of Lyx), 
with good MS Word input and output filters, and an easy way to create new 
document styles, right now, it might have a chance. I am afraid OpenOffice may 
be too late and too little innovation. I did not see that Staroffice makes 
much effort to separate content from form. On the other hand, that is probably 
one of the reasons why MS file filters won't work well.

- Josef