Slashdot Mirror

OpenOffice.org's additional dictionaries are here. English UK is there too.

I'm not suprised you couldn't find it, it's buried quite deep :)

Abiword, Dia, and many KDE applications use gzip compression but openoffice/staroffice use zip compression.

This document explains the rationale behind the ZIP-based package format. The decision was made after an elaborate discussion on the XML dev mailing list, whose archive can be consulted for additional detail.

I feel strongly that files should not be compressed by default to avoid confusion.
Zip does at least allow variable/partial compresion so if they cared to there could be a text comment explaining that it is in fact zip compressed XML and still compress the rest of the document.

from a chinese company called "linux2000". the site is in chinese only, so are the interface and instruction of the installation (the help files are not yet translated tho), but if you can read chinese or are feeling advanturous, here's the rpm package for linux(for redhat) and here's the zip version for windoze.

I do not see source code packages anywhere on the site, which bothers me a little, so I went to read the license agreements on openoffice. There're two licenses you can choose, LGPL and SISSL. It seems that SISSL doesn't require the vendor to opensource their mods as long as the files produced remains fully compatible with what openoffice produces. If my understanding is wrong, I'd appreciate it if somebody could clear it up for me. As much as I would like openoffice based products to succeed in China, I would hate it if there's foul play here.

I should also point out that these programs are said to be "trial versions" which should expire on June 30, 2002, but later version should be available (for free, I suppose?) before then.

Everyone please note: This is not the real CmdrTaco, notice the (editor) in his name? Its a fake account. Nice try.

Your post linked in your signature is so retarded.

I am a linux desktop user, and are many many many of my friends. They serve our purpose perfectly. We can play heaps of games, run a very pretty desktop and use a good word-processor.

Linux on the desktop IS a viable solution, why would I go back to an inferior OS such as windows?

You claim that I should try Mac? Why would I bother spending 3 times more on an equally fast PC that I can't upgrade or customize? Why would I want to goto a platform that has a limited amount of software? Why would I want to goto an inferior platform?

You sir, are retarded.

I think we have to build this middle layer, this XML layer, and everybody exports to that and imports from that. In the short term it always feels good to keep making your current filters just a little bit better, but I think if you take like a three-year view, then I think StarOffice and us and KOffice and GNOME Office, if we all worked on the same thing, then we'd all be much better off in a couple years.

. The point is, you've got 4 main groups (Star/OpenOffice, Hancom, KDE, GNOME) all developing filters for e.g. MS Office, RTF, Lotus 123, WordPerfect etc. And then each group has its own native format as well, so for full interoperability, you've got a lot of filters. It would make more sense in the longer term to have a common intermediate format. Maybe we should just use OpenOffice as the standard format(s), and turn the OpenOffice filters into a library. Then if Kword wants to read MS Word it just uses the OpenOffice filters. Of course there are some plans along these lines already - just look at the DTD - 200K! There are also a lot of good links on this page (scroll down)

I know, I can't think of a single solitary application that's installed as a binary, easily.

Just do a compatible word processor? What a great idea! I can't believe that nobody though of that before.

Do you think that 100% compatibility will be hard to achieve?

Well, gotta go. I just had an idea . . . why don't I just invent an engine that runs on water and gives off cotton candy as exhaust?

By the way, KWord uses gzipped XML as its file format.

-Peter

OpenOffice: The power of Unix, but still able to open/write the *.doc files for mother/boss sends you.

Apparently, a Flash export for OpenOffice is planned.

Well, lessee... How about Open office? or (looking back) their contributions of NIS/NFS? (originally called YP or Yellow Pages by Sun and distributed today with most distros)

Oh, and don't forget JXTA , which provides very .NET-like P2P connectivity between any two devices.

Is Sun out to help Open Source? Not really, they, like ANYBODY TRYING TO MAKE A LIVING, are out to promote themselves, but at the very least, they don't seem to have any problem co-existing with OSS initiatives, having founded quite a few.

Oh, and openoffice.org, which consumes massive bandwidth (Open Office is 50+ MB per download) is primarily funded by Sun...

Love 'em or hate 'em, but don't spread FUD...

Considering their current ambivalence towards Bugzilla's voting feature, how exactly is this voting supposed to be done?

I can't say I've read very much about 641D though, so it may be obvious...

Cheers //Johan

They don't seem to be entirely /.'d. I was able to navigate their site enough to find this URL for mirror sites, and load the page of mirrors.

Now I'm downloading a copy from Mexico.

Notice that the build642 directory was last touched Mar 9, while the build641d was last touched Mar 29, so it isn't entirely clear which version to get. However, if you are getting the source you should plan to do a cvs update anyway, so it doesn't matter that much.

Try http://whiteboard.openoffice.org/screenshots/index .html. A bit outdated, though.

Well, there's still that other platform that most open source projects tend to neglect.

How long will it be until the port is finished?
Progress on the Mac OS X port has been slow. At this time it's not feasible to estimate the amount of time it will take to complete the port.

How long will it be until the port is finished?
Progress on the Mac OS X port has been slow. At this time it's not feasible to estimate the amount of time it will take to complete the port.

I'm a little confused. I've been using OpenOffice for a couple of months now, and it's all the "Office killer" that I need. Cross-OS, full Office compatability, and free.

It looks like the article is more of a "i came, I saw, I wrote" stuff than a properly well researched article. The major (only?) things the article keeps pointing out is the "Lack of applications" and "No company pushing it"

Linux for the desktop is another matter. Its wide-scale adoption is still treated with skepticism by experts, who say that for consumer-level users, simply configuring Linux to dial into an ISP (Internet service provider) is a challenge.
What about KDE and GNOME diallers? Both work great.

But what hampers Linux the most, according to analysts, is a lack of applications that can run on the open source operating system.
I think what they mean is a lack of Microsoft Office Compatible applications. However, what about OpenOffice and StarOffice 6 (though there is a very brief mention)

"All the system vendors are pushing Linux on the server side, [but] there's really no large company that is ... pushing Linux on the desktop," Claybrook said.
Looks like Mandrake , RedHat et al. have been forgotten?

OpenOffice is the open-source equivalent to StarOffice (I'd say 'version' but I suspect that they will start to follow divergent paths from now on).

Sun is attempting to make StarOffice into an attractive alternative to people who would not otherwise even consider it ("It's free? Then it must be junk!!"). Sun can also include proprietary additions that cannot, for legal reasons, be made available as part of OpenOffice.

Saying that this was long-planned is probably true, but that doesn't change the fact that Sun only announced it recently. Mandrake, at least through the ZDNet story, claims that the decision to release StarOffice as proprietary was unexpected, which could be true (unlikely, but certainly possible). They also state that there are other factors to be considered that are why StarOffice is only available to Silver level or better members. Details are available on MandrakeClub. It's interesting that the ZDNet story and the MandrakeClub explanation don't jibe on several important points, so take that as you will.

Finally, OpenOffice is freely available in the standard Mandrake 8.2 release (it's on CD3 of the download edition, as somebody has already pointed out), and there's no requirement whatsoever that a user needs to acquire StarOffice 6.0, unless they specifically require the caapbilities offered in the proprietary release that are not available in OpenOffice. And really, how many home users need the database functionality? Some of the additonal file filters would be nice, but I'd hardly say essential. Now for a business ...

Personally, I feel that this is actually a fairly minor thing that has been blown out of proportion by an over-enthusiastic media. But that's just my opinion ...

StarOffice 6.0 and OpenOffice is basicly the same product, much like Netscape 6 and Mozilla, where the product is just rebadged. How can MandrakeClub be the "first and only place in the world where you can get StarOffice 6.0" if OpenOffice has always been available for download at its homepage. I would also expect OpenOffice to feature the latest updates and improvements so why would anyone even bother with StarOffice. For those MandrakeClub members complaining that you're not getting StarOffice, just go download OpenOffice.

But for purposes of general intelligibility, and to accommodate a general expectation of how an Open Source project should number its public releases, an "X.Y.Z" numbering scheme will be adopted around the time of the release of StarOffice 6.0 this spring. Instead of referring to OpenOffice.org by its internal number (e.g., 64x), people will be able to refer to it by the new numeration.

[...]

The first version number will be "1.0.0".

So, for the time being, I'm using MSWord2k in VMware. If SO/OO can reproduce most of the functionality I need (which, for the most part, it does... I was using SO6b happily until I discovered articles going to print with typos because Word's spellchecker ignored them) then I'll happily switch.

For me, the only substantial difference between SO6 and OO641C (last time I checked) was fonts... SO6 came bundled with a few extra fonts that made it easier to interact with MSWord users. If that's the only major difference, I'm happy to use OO and rip my own fonts...

Yes, I know that Red Hat isn't _primarily_ marketing to desktops, but even system administrators and and others need to read and edit Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files. For example, there are FAR too many documents (including technical material) that are only available in those formats. KWord is quite ineffective at importing Word, and Abiword can only handle very simple Word documents. Gnumeric does a good job with Excel spreadsheets, but I know of no other open source program that can handle powerpoint files. If you don't want it to use up space on your hard drive, don't install Open Office, but for many it would be a BIG help to have Open Office ready-to-install on the CD's.

Err, that's basically what they do. OpenOffice has the core functionality of StarOffice, and for me and others I know, it is more than sufficient for work, term papers, etc. If you want to do fancy corporate collaboration and all that nonsense, then yes paying for StarOffice is probably a good way to go (hey, still cheaper than MS Office...).

People, please stop bitching about it and go help out the OpenOffice project. If you don't like what Sun's doing, fine. OpenOffice works well, and because it's open source (wow!) it can be extended and improved. Put those keystrokes to good use. :)

<TWOCENTS>FWIW, I do think it's pretty lame that Sun is obviously using the free StarOffice to try to get people to use its OS... But that's business. It's better than a lot of the BS that Microsoft pulls. </TWOCENTS>

And of course they are going to charge for StarOffice. That's why they've made the investment of their time and resources in it in the first place. Did you think Sun is paying their programmers with bugfixes received from the community? - Nope, you need £$ for that. There's nothing wrong in trying to make a living.

StarOffice is (almost) free as in speech (since you can get almost the same code distributed with OpenOffice), not free as in beer. I respect Sun for trying to make money with OSS, despite freeloaders such as yourself.

or the could put Open Office in it, which is actually not bad, and if I recall rightly is vaguely related to Star Office.

I wonder if their is some sort of contractual obligation to include Star, or were blinsided by the announcement that 6.0 is going to be charged for.

OpenOffice.org is the Open Source base code used in StarOffice.

OpenOffice.org 1.0 is due to be released in April and is the same base code as StarOffice 6.0

Cheers

Vikingbrad

As long as the applications that people want to run (office, quicken, etc.) REQUIRE windows to be installed

They want to run office, but do they need to run Microsoft Office® brand office as opposed to OpenOffice.org brand office? They want to run personal finance, but do they need to run Quicken® brand personal finance as opposed to GnuCash brand personal finance?

The choice is not adding another operating system to my computer. The choice is choosing NOT to buy a second operating system.

Well, LindowsOS ($100) is less than one-third the price of Windows XP Professional retail ($300), which is important to those building PCs for their friends and family either from parts or from a $400 naked PC from Wal*Mart.

I seriously wonder what people (the nine states included) would do if MS stripped Windows down until it was just the OS itself. Bye-bye, calc,

Google search lists dozens of freeware calculators, many of them promoted as 'Windows Calculator Replacements'.

notepad,

http://www.textpad.com Not freeware, but damn close to being worth the money. There are dozens of freeware 'Notetab Replacements' out there.

wordpad,

http://www.openoffice.org/

solitaire,

http://www.fdepot.com/sol.asp

ftp, telnet,

Both blatantly ripped BSD code. The original BSD code is in active use and can be ported to Win32 or compiled for use with Cygwin

minesweeper,

http://freewarejava.com/applets/games.shtml

icons, windows, menus...

It's arguable that these are part of the operating system, just like the windowing systems on Linux are part of a 'usuable' Linux Distro. That said...

There are many Windows UI and File Manager interface replacement projects, many of which are open source.

If MS distributed just a kernel, a process scheduler, IO and Memory managers, You could have a 'usuable' Windows distro made entirely of freeware or Open Source software.

openoffice remains free.

in my experience many companies don't like to get "free" software, since they

1. don't understand how to value/account for it
2. and/or
3. want to know the developer is going to be around in a few years when they need a refresh

hopefully you'll find that sun is responding to these two, rather than some evil plot.

We are doing exactly this same thing. We run an after-school program for kids without computers at home where they build up a computer from parts, install the operating system, Open Office and as many games as fit on the CD. We get the hardware from a computer recycling company ( Cascade Asset Management) Pentium 200+, the Win98 licences from CompuMentor (now at the less apealing name DiscountTech) and Open Office from http://www.openoffice.org/" of course. We do the class in two weeks using 8 afterschool sessions.

I undoubtably have a bias (but one formed from working in a similar environment) that 6.0 is WAY better than 5.2. I liked that the 5.2 photo editor was by itself (to the extent anything was by itself in 5.2) rather than included in drawing. But I think that 6.0 (either Star or Open) is generaly much better and we also install GIMP when we have enough time.

One limitation of OpenOffice vs StarOffice that I have not seen discussed is that the templates are curtailed in OpenOffice - maybe Sun licenced them as well or maybe they were just not in 641 and will be in 1.0

B. Differences between StarOffice and OpenOffice.org

The source code available at OpenOffice.org does not consist of all of the StarOffice code. Usually, the reason for this is that Sun pays to license third party code to include in StarOffice that which it does not have permission to make available in OpenOffice.org. Those things which are or will be present in StarOffice but are not available on OpenOffice.org include:

- Certain fonts (including, especially, Asian language fonts)

- The database component (Adabas D)

- Some templates

- Extensive Clip Art Gallery

- Some sorting functionality (Asian versions)

- Certain file filters

Regards, Ralph.

There already is OpenOffice, which is dual-licensed under the GPL and Sun SISSL licenses. So it is Free Software, which I think meets your request for "open sourced under the GPL". This is the code base that StarOffice 6 is based on, so Sun deciding to charge money for their release is no big deal.

There are other Free Software office applications and suites available.

... but it works:

"First, let's clear up some major misunderstandings: OpenOffice.org build 638C does print, does save to PDF (*) , does have online help, and does have a working spellchecker. Having said that, let's see now in detail some of the major features."

Its on the Features page. Im downloading it now to check it out, and because i figured id try to prolong the slashdot effect.

Probably the biggest difference will be the lack of support for the Sun ONE WebTop(whatever, exactly, that is) in OpenOffice.

Read the FAQ entry. :)

I think the removal of the "desktop" is the biggest difference between StarOffice 5.2 and the OpenOffice builds I have used. The import filters in OpenOffice also seem to work better in some cases.

cbd.

Actually, this is a bit of a disappointment. While the general idea of setting a goal of getting to 1.0 is all good - witness what happened to the quality of Mozilla when they stopped feature creeping - I can't help but feel the Open Office crew are letting the side down a bit by admitting that their 1.0 release will really be about an 0.8.5 level release and will still contain bugs. It's all a bit, well, Microsofty.

Still, I can see some interesting projects about to kick off - The Open Office wordprocessor as a KPart, for example :)

Dave

OpenOffice.org does have spellchecking.

What are the major differences currently between OpenOffice and StarOffice?

I remember a DoD procurement elated to StarOffice, has the price remained the same? (Are they running it on Solaris anyway?)

.. OpenOffice is LGPL. StarOffice is the proprietary version of OpenOffice. Are there any differences between StarOffice and OpenOffice (applications)?

Open Office will remain free though.

Regarding StarOffice, I think Sun probably plans on supporting it for a while still, if only to annoy Microsoft...but in any case, they have released the source code which is now a open-source project known as OpenOffice. I have tried OpenOffice and it is virtually identical to StarOffice 6.0. However, their home page is not very newbie-friendly as of yet, but perhaps when version 1.0 comes out they'll work a bit more on the "marketing" aspect of the project. In any case that's not going away, and at the current rate of progress it will surpass MS Office in a matter of months.

I haven't tried Gobe Productive yet, though I've heard of it. How is it when dealing with Microsoft Files (i.e. Word and Excel)? Unfortunately, no office suite will survive if it can't open and save Microsoft-type files...

This is a great book just waiting to happen! The APIs and Object Model are well documented, but not documented well. They are cryptic as hell to read and you have to jump through about 12 pages to find any concrete info. Please write this book!

These guys are nothing more than SPAMMERS.
So they have a database. Big woop; so do SPAMMERS.
Our company took the path "Oh SHIT. Buy licences for all our software, and QUICK!". Of course I managed to make a 30% saving by installing StarOffice 5.2, and then 6-beta. I suggest everyone else do the same. There are issues; there's no denying that it's 100% compatible etc. But for God's sake, it's sooooooooo close that it doesn't matter. So everyone find a friend who has downloaded StarOffice 6-beta (the beta period / download is over), or better yet have a go at OpenOffice. It rocks. And you'll never have licensing problems again. Still not convinced? How about searching on Google for StarOffice + pdf and following the instructions for setting up your own PDF writer via Ghostscript. It works like a fucking charm! People email us and say "Hey. That must have cost a bit...". And we say "Yes. Actually it was all free." Good stuff.
If someone can't find the PDF instructions, reply to this post and I'll email you the instructions.

The market is there for these applicances, the right one just hasnt hit in my opinion...

Hypothetically, maybe the price could drop to say, $500-$600, and then more of the have-nots in this society would be interested in getting a computer. The disadvantaged people I've met would like a computer, but $800-$1200 is way out of their price range. Then just pre-install a copy of OpenOffice and you've got a winner.

Does HancomOffice have open file formats, so that other office suites (e.g. Star/Open Office, KOffice, GNOME Office) can easily create import/export filters? As a completely side note, it would be nice if the above office-suite projects would get together and form a unified file format spec. That way there would only be one format each suite would be targeting for word-processors, for example. Just a thought...

Now, let's add Windows...$99

full official version of Red Hat 7.2...$70. It's as easy to install as any version of Windows I've tried.

an office suite $150

Even a Windows office suite doesn't cost $150. You can get OpenOffice.org suite for only the cost of downloading 48 MB (three hours over a 56K modem).

anti-virus software, $59...

Don't overpay. Here's Norton AV 2002 for $20.

We've almost immediately doubled the price of the machine by merely adding functionality.

I use Word attachments every day. I couldn't do my job without them.

Is Word the best thing since sliced bread? No.

Is Word worth using? Yes.

The main thing I use Word for, besides all the fancy formatting stuff which is not even strictly necessary, is collaboration/reviewing. I write professionally, and I need to be able to track changes through several review cycles (editors, client, legal, publication). To my knowledge, no other widely-available word processing solution supports these features, at least not the extent the .doc format does.

But it's still not enough to make me use MSWord for all my editing (although I keep a copy in my VMware Win98 just in case). I use StarOffice 6 and love it. I really only have two qualms about it:

1. SO's "notes" aren't quite as useful as MSWord's "comments", since you can't highlight the text you're discussing. But it works well enough.
2. And then there's this bug which thankfully has a fairly simple workaround and looks like it will be fixed in the next version.

When I first switched to using Linux full-time for work, nobody at the office noticed. (I telecommute, so no one could actually see my desktop.) At the time, I was using Mandrake + KMail + StarOffice 5.2 -- the only one who knew about it was the editor directly above me, and he's cool with Linux. (Even he wouldn't have known if I hadn't told him.)

What I mean to say is: the Word .doc format has a number of very useful features I couldn't live without. But that doesn't mean I have to use Word. In Evolution, I can open Word attachments in StarOffice seamlessly -- and since StarOffice doesn't quite support VB, I've yet to find a document which could cause damage to my system.

I do agree, however, that you shouldn't use .doc files when something simpler or lighter (like plain text) would do the job as well. I'm involved with PR, and I've seen embarrassing things happen to clients when someone stupid converts a Word doc to HTML and posts it on their site. One page had internal tracking info in the title which actually referred to a different project which had been used as source material. On the website, this information was paraded across the title bar.

Tangent: why does Word include a "title" field in the document properties which it never displays to the user? Word's titlebar just shows the filename without path -- for me, a completely useless piece of informaiton, since I often have identically-named but very different files in separate sections of my file tree. StarOffice's title bar (which displays the contents of the "title" field) is much, much better... yet another reason to use .doc, and just not use M$Word.

Hey, sorry to ramble on like this.... just my two and a half cents.

OpenOffice

knowing them, they might just screw with StarOffice and give 'Sun' users added goodies

Not likely. OpenOffice.org software is available under the GNU Lesser GPL, and Sun can't take away the freedoms that the LGPL grants.