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Based on the adverts I've seen for this service, it looks like it is first-and-foremost a browser-based keylogger anyway, with the copy editing features just being the hook to get people to install (and pay?) for the 'service'.

Yup, I find it personally disturbing that people will let some shady 3rd party unknown server somewhere in Ukraine access (for "proof reading") every single thing they type online.

You're better off using some technology that can be installed locally (or on your own-controlled servers):

e.g.: LanguageTool
- it has a webextension
- it can be downloaded as a stand-alone version.
(- and of course, you can point the extension to the URL of your stand-alone server)

(both of the above are Free/Libre OpenSource Software, so auditable against nefarious code)

Based on the adverts I've seen for this service, it looks like it is first-and-foremost a browser-based keylogger anyway, with the copy editing features just being the hook to get people to install (and pay?) for the 'service'.

Yup, I find it personally disturbing that people will let some shady 3rd party unknown server somewhere in Ukraine access (for "proof reading") every single thing they type online.

You're better off using some technology that can be installed locally (or on your own-controlled servers):

e.g.: LanguageTool
- it has a webextension
- it can be downloaded as a stand-alone version.
(- and of course, you can point the extension to the URL of your stand-alone server)

(both of the above are Free/Libre OpenSource Software, so auditable against nefarious code)

Amen. Another reason to bemoan the fact that MS Office (with its inferior grammar stuff which never has really been improved) took over the world.

Just in the last few years faint glimmers of innovation in grammar checking started to appear after a 15-year hiatus. For instance, LanguageTool, the Link grammar being used as a checker, and a few commercial tools with hints of new ideas.

Maybe within a few years some of these tools will actually deliver major improvements.

"uh, office word has language specific grammar checking and spell checking."

It doesn't, it only has primitive spellchecking which doesn't understand Russian wordforms, it tries to cope by listing _all_ possible wordforms in its dictionary (and quite often fails, of course).

There's http://www.languagetool.org/ plugin which is promising, but right now it's an unusable crap.

"Log in to your Google Docs account (see Resources link). At the top left, click "Upload," and follow the prompts to upload the spreadsheet you just created. It will open in a new window or tab, where you can view or modify it. Verify that everything looks and works correctly."

That's a joke, sorry. Google Docs is nowhere close in functionality even to OO.org. And there's also no possibility to connect to backend DB.

I do respect Open Office and have used it at certain times in my life, but for school reports, Open Office did not have the TOC

OpenWriter Window : "Insert" -> "Indexes and Tables" ->"Indexes and Tables..."
Insert Table/Index Window: "Index/Table" tab -> "Type" dropdown -> "Table of Content" (selected by default)

Then just use the correct styles ("Title 1", "Title 2", etc...) when writing and the table will auto-magically work.
You have a couple of default layouts. Then, if you want you can customise it by editing style and selecting them (which *show up as entry* in the index, as well as which *are used to write* the index).

The only difference, it that you can't directly edit or write the index, it's a read-only object, that you manipulate through styles (but I find that behaviour more logical to the one I've seen in the last version of Word I've tested).

TOF

Same window (... ->"Indexes and Tables...")
Insert Table/Index Window: "Index/Table" tab -> "Type" dropdown -> "Table of Objects"
or ... -> "Illustration Index" (depending on what you need to achieve)
(Illustration is for pictures-only, Object is for pretty much anything embeded)

Same customisations as with other tables.

page numbering

"Insert" -> "Header" or ... -> "Footer".
Then
"Insert" -> "Fields" -> "Page number" ... and other fields, to your liking.

You can have separate left/right right pages by editing Page's style if you want :
- The "Default" style has a single layout.
- For more elaborate solution you could use "First page" (no header/footer) for your title, then "Left page" and "Right page" set up to chain to each other in an alternate manner. Each with page number on the outer lower corner, title in top left on left page, author name on top-right on right page.

section break

"Insert" -> and either "Manual break" or "Section" depending on what you want to achieve.

formatting options that worked well enough for those reports.

I don't really see what wasn't "well enough" for you.
For me this basic level of formating turned out to be more than enough through university for myself and my brother.

Not only that, but it came with a varied array of advantages: 100% gratis (whereas even the most recent arrangement with Microsoft only covers MSO for employees like teaching-assistants), 100% open, with an embed PDF exporter since ages (MSO didn't have one back then), and using an open format which could easily be implemented by other software and turned later as an ISO-approved open standard (as opposed to Microsoft's offering whose latest iteration still isn't 100% compatible with their own ECMA-approved standard).

The only point where I find OOo lacking is that the grammar module is an external java plugin, and doesn't support yet the "as-you-type-squiggly-line" correction as the spell-checker does.

If you really want something more powerful, maybe you should get time to investigate some "What You See Is What You Mean" editor that separates structure/content from appearance/layout, like the LaTeX based LyX. This isn't such a big jump if you've correctly learned to use "styles" when formatting your documents.

Don't bother saying anything about KOffice or any other Office product becoming popular until it can be installed on Windows with a setup.exe or an MSI.

- First as you said yourself in your follow-up : KOffice is part of the KDE software that can be installed on Windows with their package manager.

- OpenOffice.org
Installs on Windows with a very standard installer.
The only minor problem in my opinion is getting the plugins. It uses the kind of plugin manager as the older versions of FireFox (you can't directly search and browse the installable plugins from there, you have to go to a website first). Also the plugin manager doesn't help you to restart the "quicklaunch" if a restart is needed.
It cool be great if I could install LanguageTool with a simple click from within the manager, the same way as AdBlock+ in recent versions of Firefox. But I'm nit-picking. Back to the subject.

- Gnome Office :
It's not an actual suite, its a lose collection of separate software that cover the needs of an Office suit. All use the same library underneath (GTK+) which has been ported to windows since ages (back at the begining of the GIMP on Windows port). As such you can find installers for :
- AbiWord (word processing)
- Gnumeric (spreadsheet whose accurate statistic formula are done in collaboration with R projet)
(and probably other GTK stuff if you need them).
In fact, as they are small separate software with a very small footprint (compared to behemoths like OO.o), they are quite popular and often recommended for people wanting to build for free small lightweight Windows installation on underpowered hardware.

- For the VI vs. Emacs flamewar combatant out there (the kind who'll immediately scream that they don't need an actual office suite as every needed function and even more is available in some Emacs mode/Vim plugin), both softwares are also available for Windows, if that's your kick. (And yes, I'm not sarcastic. I'm definitely sure that here on /. you'll find at least a dozen of people who can be more productive with a complex emacs-based stack).

So as we can see, the three major players of Linux/BSD's office suites (and the two editors behind most holy wars) are installable on Windows (and on Mac OS X for that matters too).
Yes they are indeed cross-platform.

KOffice was more of a problem until recently the whole KDE switched to Qt4 during is 4.x branch and took opportunity of the major overhaul to be rebuilt with cross-platfrom portability in mind.

Investigated on an Ubuntu box with OO 3.01 and a grammar checker does not appear to be installed by default. When installed the interface is a deceptive - you need to press F7 twice to get the spell check and then the grammar check.

An OO grammar checker is LanguageTool. Tried it, didn't pick up your example though it has a long list of rules including your/you're and did pick up some other grammar mistakes like doubled words and doubtful phrases. I suspect the "your" rule is buggy.

This is why some cross-platform projects that start on Linux generally end up being pretty weak on other platforms.

Depends what you're after, a consistent interface on the same platform for different applications or a consistent interface for the same application on different platforms. Choose your poison.

They limit themselves to whatever the least common denominator OS can handle.

Yes and no. Packages often replace OS provided functionality with they're own so it's easily possible for an application to have superior functionality to that provided by a particular OS. Doesn't always happen of course.

---

The USA is <5% of the world's population. It is statistically insignificant.

In particular, Sun Microsystems licensed information about the format of Office files from Microsoft, to gain better compatibility.

No. Both Open- and Star- Office use their own MS-Office readers. (I was under the impression that some of the work on wvWare has helped developing OOo's but I'm not sure. I might be confusing with antiword). Nothing licensed from Microsoft.

3rd party non-OSS code was used to provide a reader for WordPerfect's Office suite.
StarOffice uses a 3rd party closed source reader.
Whereas OOo has more recently incorporated the function thank to a separate opensource project (libwpd if my memory still works).

Given the fact that WordPerfect had an important share in some specific markets (international organisations), and that in the beginning OOo still lacked official support for it, it might have made more sense to Google to opt for StarOffice instead.

Note:
In a similar fashion, StarOffice feature 3rd party proprietary support for Grammar check.
Whereas Language Tool is developed for OOo.
Given that LanguageTool still isn't part of stock OOo, this too may have weighted in favor of StarOffice.

Language Tool is an OpenOffice extension which is already able to do (on demand) grammar corrections.

Sadly, for now, it's only a Java module which only works for OpenOffice.

With luck, maybe it will evolve into something with a more standard interface like the various *-spell libraries used all-over Linux application.
Or maybe it'll end up in the core components of some of the environment (Kpart, Gnome plugins, etc.)

So that such service can easily be made available to any software which requires corrections, and can easily be implemented in "on the fly" mode too.

Up until OO 2 I was mostly with you. IMHO, the latest versions of OO are pretty damn good, and certainly a suitable replacement.