Hi Everyone. I have a quick question that's probably not U&L worthy. What is LC_TELEPHONE locale? I see it listed at gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/autoconf-2.61/html_node/…, but it is not obvious to me what is does. Does it provide a coallate/sort order for "0-9, *, #" keys?

@jww It's collation order for telephone books, for the cases where it differs from dictionary order (e.g. German)

@EvanCarroll with HDDs you have some warning before they go bad. SSDs just stop working.

Back at the time with SLCs: Yes, you're absolutely right. Nowadays with TLCs and MLCs???

What free programs exist in (say) Debian to read Microsoft Word? And to convert text to MS Word, for that matter? I just used Libreoffice to convert from text to Word. But is there some other program I can use to test whether the Word conversion is ok?

Meh, call me an old fart, but Mammoth tapes are the most reliable ever invented (shelf MTBF of 100 years)

@FaheemMitha I use LibreOffice as well.

Gotta go.

Driving 1000Km today.

@Fabby That's a lot of driving.

:-)

Better than walking!

There was some old program that could read Microsoft files. But I'm blanking on the name. I think it started with A.

Ah, abiword

And is docx a good conversion choice to go for right now?

@FaheemMitha that's probably not a very good test.

@EvanCarroll What isn't?

Using Abiword to test LibreOffice export functionality

@EvanCarroll Oh. Alternatives suggestions are most welcome.

Good Docs

Pardon?

docs.google.com

upload the doc, and see how Google renders it

@EvanCarroll Oh, I see.

If Google gets it right, then you're working with likely a small subset of permitted features and it's likely to work.

If Abiword messes it up, it seems more likely to me to just be a random bug in a relatively untested and unused piece of software, I used to use Abiword. It was never known for doing anything right.

Even lightweight distros ditched it because it was horrible.

@EvanCarroll I see. Well, it's still in Debian.

Everything is still in Debian. (thankfully)

I suppose the bigger question is - does LibreOffice export files reliably to docx format?

Yes, very reliably in my experience.

docx is ton easier to support than .doc though, so it's not nearly as bad as it used to be

Good to know. Does MS provide a specification for docx?

docx is (mostly) ziped xml and css.

yep

Ok. I recall hearing that they were now providing a spec, though I also heard it was not 100%.

It's hard to imagine MS opening their Office formats, but I suppose things change.

I'm sure it leaves a lot to be desired, but in practice it seems to work well enough.

Well, MS has gone from "Linux is a cancer" (Ballmer) to "we love Linux!" (Nadella).

So there has been a transition.

hi everyone. does anyone have any thought on this?