mailmerge question

[Derek Neighbors]

Mark Phillips said:
> I think a Linux/Open Source as a solution is totally inappropriate. As I
>  understand the problem, this friend wants to do a mail merge. He/She

You asked not to flame so I wont, but please understand the frustration
with your comment above.  You seem to hard link "Linux/Open Source" as one
entity.  There is plenty of Free/Open Source Software available for
kernels other than Linux including Windows.  Conversely, there is plenty
of proprietary software that runs on the Linux kernel.

> uses  MS Word, (I assume for other mail merges as well), and now wants
> to add  some graphic images to the document. Why give them a new server
> using a new  OS and an application they know nothing about and probably
> can't support,  when all they want to do is create a mailing? In this

My particular solution suggestion was to use GNU Enterprise, which is Free
Software, but if you bothered to do your homework you would see that it
runs on Windows (and not through a kludge like installing Cygwin).  In
fact, in the case of GNU Enterprise reports they could even still use MS
Word to process/view the documents.

> case, why not just  use (horrors!!!) VB or even a MSWord macro to write
> a small merge  application that adds the pictures to the MS Word
> documents? This person  can throw away the app/macro when done, or use
> it again if needed. The  impact to his/her business is minimal and
> he/she can focus on the value of  the business instead of a neat new
> technology.

Enabling "macros" in MS Office is always a tremendously exciting venture. 
I won't even go into the ramifications of doing so (view your favorite
vulnerability report site for more details).  Without knowing the full
background it would be hard to tell this persons dependence on MS Office
suite and how logical it would be to switch.  Certainly forcing someone to
move to another operating system for such a simple task seems
'aggressive'.  However, not necessarily uncalled for.  I wont go into the
reasons why, but in short, MS lock in can do very few people, except for
Microsoft good in a long term proposition.

> I am sure I am missing something, but to add a server with an operating
> system that the user (probably) cannot support just to merge some
> documents  into a mailing seems a little overkill.

Depends on the process and what exactly the users other needs are.  I
assume if there is a large need to mail merge, likely this is a business
environment of some kind.   Microsoft as much as people claim is easy to
learn, but hard to use and highly unproductive for business environments. 
Unix on the other hand is hard to learn but easy to use.  It is on the
whole far more productive once the initial learning curve is breached.

> Again, this is just my opinion. If you have to flame me, then at least
> do  it off the list!

The above is my opinion.  Flame if you like.

-d