Linux Office Suites

Cowculator writes: "Sun Microsystems will release the beta version of StarOffice 6.0 in October, with the development version already available. This ZDNet article has some more details, including a link to the development version..." Other submitters sent in notes about Gobe Productive and Hancom Office 2.0, not to mention KOffice and the Gnome office applications. As far as I know all of these are lacking the single most important thing, a robust and complete set of import filters for Word, Wordperfect, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.

Comments

Just as important

[alanjstr]

Just as important, the lack of EXPORT filters! If you're going to send a document to other people, they need to read it too.

Re:Just as important

[Anonymous Coward]

XML is little use if it's along the lines of
<msword2003>
<encodedbody>
<CDATA[[
klgfwe;lgn;4wp39 orweo;info;we23oih23hgolwerngfwoe;rlig
ew;rokwe;lrkjnwelk;rj
wperitjwelrkt
]]>
</encodebody>
<msword2003>

Which is perfectly valid XML. XML is not a magic panacea that fixes all ills. It's way, way overrated - you still need a description of what the hell the tags actually mean. (And, with MS, usually another 3rd party document describing the differences between what they say they mean and what they actually mean)

(And XML is just an annoyingly verbose form of certain Lisp S-Expressions, anyway. )

Re:Just as important

[PhotoGuy]

I think it's important to state that both important *and* exporting are as important as each other. Being able to send word-compable documents to business colleagues is every bit as important as viewing incoming ones properly.

As far as MS changing the formats to force incompatability goes (which they will undoubtedly continue to do, as per normal course of business), the one thing the industry has working in their advantage, is that they end up creating incompatability for their earlier products, as well. That's why we see as "Save-as Word95/97" option in Office. They create their own incompatabilities in the process. That works to the advantage of the industry, against this monopolistic behaviour.

Anytime someone saves something in the latest office format, they break Word 95, 97, as much as they'd break StarOffice. And StarOffice has historically tracked the import formats closely enough (at least for Word) to keep up with the previous gen of office products. If they fall behind a couple of revs, the race will be over.

-me-

How about intermediate formats?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

It's obviously pretty essential for users to be able to transfer between the office suites in question and MS Office, if the others are to gain any kind of mainstream acceptance. However, most MS Office users don't actually use something like 90% of the functionality. It's the other 10% that's important.

Further, the only really important Microsoft Office applications are Word, Excel and Access. There isn't the same volume of existing data that must be readily accessible for the other applications.

Now, suppose you could get a solid intermediate format covering those basics (something XML-based, perhaps) adopted as some sort of standard by the free software/open source guys, and have all these office suites using it. It then just needs someone to write a single filter for, say, MS Word docs, to convert to and from the intermediate format, and then all the other Office suites can do it.

I can't believe no-one's thought of or attempted this before, but I don't know of any actual examples. Does anyone else? It must be technically possible; at least, if it's not, you haven't got a hope of converting to the format used by any individual free/open source office suite either.

Re:How about intermediate formats?

[Error27]

>>Do you wonder why people don't leave outlook after numerous virus attacks? It's that useful, that's why.

I think you give people too much credit. They use it because it's the default.

Most people don't even change their home page so how are they going to figure out what other email programs are out there, download/buy it, install it and configure it to download mail from their isp?

And in a business then it's even harder because someone has to go around to each computer and install a new email program and set it up. Then he/she has to teach users how it works. And there are _always_ problems with new software so that is more work...

If Eudora was the default instead of Outlook it would be just as popular.

Re; Why OpenOffice?

[Bodero]

Personnaly I don't like to see every two days in my mailbox those "where is the Desktop?", "it was better before!", "Companies need professional Scheduling management tools!" postings.

My biggest concern (having implemented Star Schedule server for 30 people so far in a 50-employee company) is that no regard at all has been given to the groupware functionality in OpenOffice. I have very few gripes with Star Schedule, but will need to explain why the newest verions of Star Office cannot be used with the Schedule Server.

If someone were to start a project to make a newer better groupware tool for open office (or some other open-source cross-platform tool), I would find a way to contribute (as I think quite a few others would).

Unfortunately it seems as if ogsproject has died.

Maybe if someone took action and said "All groupware discussions will take place on groupware@openoffice.org" or similar, then at least it wouldn't appear on discuss.

Does Sun not care that there are customers of their software who will be left stranded with data in an obsolete server and egg on their face. I hope not.

Don't try to do too much, though!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Tip to the folks working on it: cool object oriented design is neat, but it's usability, stability, and compatability that will make StarOffice a success. Don't try to do things beyond MS Office, just match it on all fronts! Anything else is an esoteric waste of time.

Don't even try to match it on all fronts, IMHO. As much as MS would have it otherwise, most Office users are only using a very small subset of the functionality available.

If you can support bulletproof import/export of simple Word documents, with basic things like the formatting, cross-references, tables and so on working reliably, you've got 99% of the portability problems solved. The big issue is the number of documents that already exist in Word format, which people will continue to need to read/edit in whatever new format they're stored. Most of those documents don't use super-advanced VBA scripts, half a million text boxes and WordArt.

Now, if you can go one better, and fix the terminally annoying bugs in Word -- cross-references not updating properly and woefully broken bullets and numbering spring to mind -- then you've also got a technically superior product that solves real problems that MS Word doesn't. Add in the silly omissions -- genuine three-part headers and footers, as used by many, many business documents, for example -- and you're clearly winning.

Of course, similar arguments apply to other Office applications, particularly Excel and Access. I'm simply highlighting Word because the issues are likely to be more widely understood.

StarOffice

[mindstrm]

I must say.. I recently switched to using StarOffice even in windows, just for consistency.

Everyone says 'it's not the same as office'. no. It's not. And it doesnt' have every last feature, but it has it's own unique features, and is a deadly office suite nontheless.

The only real hurdles I've come across so far, that prevent me from converting the entire office, are a) embedded VB (important in some sheets... very important) and b) I can't figure out how to open Password-protected Excel sheets.

Gobe has great filters

[loosifer]

Gobe actually has great import/export filters, but they're even better: They actually developed an API that anyone can write to, so if they port the API and the filters over to linux (which they are apparently doing), then any application can choose to just write to that API and will immediately be able to save or write in any of the M$ formats that Gobe supports.

BTW, this functionality is based on how BeOS does translation for other formats, too, mainly graphics. Linux could really use to take a lesson from this, because it was one of the coolest and best functionalities of BeOS. Hopefully Gobe will port the full API over, not just the filters themselves.

of course

[bcrowell]

It's true that you'll never convince someone to switch away from Word if the feature they need isn't supported. The problem is that

1. MS can add features indefinitely and let open-source developers play catch-up.
   
2. It leads to open-source bloatware. The whole monolithic application thing is a disaster. It would be much better to have functionality like spell checking, etc., split off into separate applications.

The problem with open-source bloatware seems to be even more severe than with closed-source bloatware. Look at how slow Mozilla is compared to IE. (Okay, YMMV, let's not start a flamewar -- that's just what I found recently when I compared performances on my system.) And complexity is the enemy of open-source projects -- it raises the barrier to entry for people who want to contribute.

I also don't know what you do about lusers who send one-page text e-mails as Word attachments. Even if a certain version of Star Office can read Word 98, it'll be broken when Word 2004 comes out. Are the same lusers really going to be clueful enough to realize they need to convert back to Word 98 before they send it?

Probably a better solution is to convince everyone who currently e-mails Word attachments to start e-mailing PDF attachments. It could still be used inappropriately, but at least everyone could read it with open-source software.

Open File Formats!

[phatvibez]

Filters (importing/exporting) are only a temporary solution. If only maybe for the sole reason that MS will break it's format to make them useless again.

But for the reason that we need to create an open file format. I know there is some work going on with the OpenOffice project to do so, but it needs to have the support of all office suites and applications.

I greatly applaud, and welcome, the Gobe production suite, but all we need are more proprietary file formats.

If we could get everyone...WordPerfect, StarOffice, Hancom, Gobe, KOffice, Gnome, etc. to band together to create an "Open File Foundation" to create a standard to which each could build file formats that could be shared accross platforms and applications suites the magnatude of such a collaboration would be huge!

It would be(or is) my dream that one day an office could theoretically have each of it's employee's using their office suite of choice and be able to seemlessly share documents amoung co-workers and others outside the office!

This could be the very straw that broke the camels back, so to say. If MS did not want to comply with the Open Standards it faces incompatability with the rest of the world. In this day and age of the internet, p2p infrastructure, and the like, it's a common compatibilty, not only across platforms but across applications, that is going to be needed. People will eventually see this and if MS dosn't want to play...so be it, alternatives abound!

This not only goes for File formats but also to other formats such as audio, video, and other streaming media. Ogg is a nice place to start and I pray it takes hold.

The days of closed formats and single platform narrow mindedness are coming to and end!

So for the time being...and unfortunatly a requirement to even get into the door to create such standards...yes we do need decent filters! but only for a temporary solution!

Document format isn't everything.

[big.ears]

Many people here are saying that Star Office is doomed if it doesn't have good import/export filters. Although this would be a good feature to convince hesitant managers, I think that this feature is overrated somewhat, at least compared to some other considerations. "We must be able to read external documents" is the usual defense, but this probably comes up less frequently than one might think, and star office handles most of those situations fairly well already. I've even used it to import--nearly flawlessly--powerpoint with Equation editor inserts.

What I mean is, if format was so important, Microsoft word would have never caught on, because its wordperfect->word filters were terrible. Even its word 5-> word 95 -> word 97 -> word on mac filters were terrible. Everytime I would look at a document in a new version, things would move around. Same goes for Lotus/Quattro->Excel. They even changed fundamental syntax for the spreadsheet! (in quattro, functions begin with an @ sign, whereas in excel, an =; a number of the function names are different as well, I believe.)

My point is that compatability isn't everything. Platform can be even more important. One of the major reason's MS Office is a 'standard' is because Microsoft moved the industry to Windows with 3.1, and the industry leaders (WP, Lotus, etc.) on the dos-based platform understood only too late that slow adaption to Windows meant their death.

So, StarOffice might stand a chance, even if they are not 100% compatable, because other considerations can be more powerful. For instance, with Microsoft pushing increasingly restrictive licensing, and the emminent maturing of many linux desktop and business apps, this may give enough of a toehold for real market penetration. By the same logic, even if the conversion filters are flawless, they might not capture the attention of the business world, many of whom won't likely even consider Star Office as an alternative.

Two things...

[cr0sh]

Two things prevent most people and businesses from moving from Microsoft products to other products:

1. Application Lock-In, and
2. FUD

1. Application Lock-In

Everybody and their brother, nearly every business, and all of their strategic partners, not to mention schools and government - all of them use to some extent Microsoft tools, day in, and day out. People have had YEARS to learn the nuances and problems, how to get around them, and what the applications can do. All of them know that they can email a .DOC or .XLS file to a business partner's secretary, and s/he will be able to load it effortlessly, and it will look the same.

A Linux Office suite? How are these people to be certain that it will work - plus how are they to cope with the differences that are sure to be in place between the Linux Office Suite and the MS Office Suite? How do they know they will be able to send this exported XLS file to their friend, and it will open in MS Excel properly?

2. FUD

Which leads us to the second issue, that of FUD - if they don't know, they will be full of fear, uncertainty, and doubt as to whether to use the office suite for Linux, because these files they are trading down the hall or across the city may represent a potential deal - if the presentation software doesn't go a smoothly as Microsoft's, it may mean loss of money - maybe a job! If the XLS or DOC file is mangled (either by the Linux Office Suite, or by the MS Office Suite reading the Linux version), time and money will be lost trying to figure out what happened, or at least getting it loaded and converted using "standard" MS Office.

These are the two problems a Linux Office Suite has to overcome (actually, two problems any MS Office competitor has to overcome). Because MS has such a huge lock-in, and the FUD is raging - companies won't switch - because their partners aren't switching (and their partner's partners aren't, etc).

It is a tough situation, and will be hard to overcome. Education to override the FUD will help, but even if you had perfect compatibility, all MS would have to do is introduce a "new" format that Office would default to, and you will end up holding up and vindicating the FUD. People will then be doubly uncertain to try the Linux stuff, even though it would be MS who broke the compatibility! I don't know what the answer to this is, but if Linux is ever to really gain on the desktop, those two issues will have to be addressed...

Chicken In the Egg

[Lethyos]

As far as I know all of these are lacking the single most important thing, a robust and complete set of import filters for Word, Wordperfect, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.

There's a real good reason we haven't seen this yet. It's the chicken in the egg problem. Before you can have fully capable import filters, you must first impliment the feature set of the app you're inputing from. For example, Microsoft Word has a bunch of features that do not yet appear in most other "word processors". If your word processor doesn't impliment these features, a filter that does is quite useless for your application (except in regards of ignoring things your application doesn't understand).

Unfortunately, before those features are implimented in your own application, you're going to need some more acceptance (to bring more developers on the project). Unless you can say you do what the mainstream needs/wants, you're still an obscur project. *sigh*

Off this topic, one other thing that kind of bothers me is the massive ammount of reinventing the wheel. Now while having many options is good, there are just far too many open source projects that are each trying to create their own robust, fully-featured office suite. Why is the community wasting so much time?

Some of these really should merge and share code more. Or at least, there should be one organization that is dedicated to creating a unified set of the features found in all open source office suite projects. That way, they could create a big set of libraries that do these things... so when the next guy has this reckless desire to make his own office suite... well, you get the idea.