http:--www.e-laws.gov.on.ca:81- (fwd)

[Fraser Campbell]

On August 27, 2003 12:23 pm, Max Blanco wrote:

> I was looking for the Ontario government law which deals with Deadstock
> Disposal, and found to my dismay that the government of Ontario
> provides laws in a format readable only to Microsoft users.

Not sure if we're looking at the same thing, I can read this just fine:

    http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/DBLaws/Statutes/English/90d03_e.htm

A .doc is also provided (see 
http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/download2_E.asp?lang=en&docFile=Statutes/English/90d03_e.doc).  

Although .doc might be a Microsoft format it generally isn't that difficult 
for non-Microsoft users to read.  I've been able to read .doc's on Linux for 
a long time.  As far as I remember there was a free version of Wordperfect 
that could read it just fine (at that time) probably over 6 years ago, it 
might have run under iBCS but it still ran.

Currently you have loads of options to choose from, these are the ones that I 
have installed:

  - abiword
  - kword
  - openoffice.org
  - strings (ok not too practival)
  - wv (converts directly to pdf, dvi, html, and more)
 
If the .doc is what you find objectionable what is your preference, pdf?

If they went with pdf then they would almost certainly run out and pay the big 
bucks to Adobe for PDF generation software, we might prefer Adobe over MS but 
what's the win.  When 90% of us (if you believe the statistics) have wordview 
and the rest of us have options as I mentioned above I don't see a problem 
... especially since they are providing html (I assume that you didn't notice 
it).

-- 
Fraser Campbell <fraser-Txk5XLRqZ6CsTnJN9+BGXg at public.gmane.org>                 http://www.wehave.net/
Halton Hills, Ontario, Canada                             Debian GNU/Linux

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