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Is StarOffice Ready To Take On Office?
A reader writes "CNET has an article about: Is StarOffice ready to take on MS Office? A quote: "Bottom line for Sun and StarOffice: If you keep aiming where Microsoft has already been, then your opportunities will be in China. A better tactic is to take aim at where the IT market is going to be and your opportunities will be much wider.""
StarOffice never even *had* a paperclip. How's that for innovation and wisdom?
Got Rhinos?
First off, is being behind in feature creep really that bad of a thing?
The ace in the hole for StarOffice is that it is free. Who cares if it lacks some whiz-bang feature that most people hardly use, if it costs nothing?
That in itself makes it competitive.
Do you see a parallel to windows vs. linux?
The biggest point he's made is the user familiarity. Something difficult to overcome. Something that Linux has been working on to try and grab the Windows population.
Say what you must, but everytime I show KDE to Windows only users, they look puzzled. The minute I pop up a terminal, they're gone. Its the familiarity that's the hardest wall to scale. People don't like change.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Star Office is positioned to move forward, but they have not released anything for quite awhile. I have been waiting for something beyond the 5.2 release so that I can show our management that we can duplicate the current office app for less money.
.NET) crowd from finding another alternative.
StarOffice needs to get something out quick to keep the off-line (not
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Is StarOffice still a full suite only or can I download and use individual components?
Internet Radio!!!!
UltraRadio
Before Star Office talks about taking on Microsoft Office, they should get the spreadsheet to give correct results. As it is now, I'd rather use Visicalc with an Apple ][ emulator.
A group of developers at my company has tried converting to StarOffice. That attempt has lasted for a couple of weeks, when people were trying to get the needed functionality out of the SO (something to do with spreadsheets). Bottom line is: we are still using MS Office, and no matter which way you look at it, it's simply allowing better functionality. Office 2000 may not be the best app bundle in the world, but it certainly does the job better than SO.
My feeling is that Sun StarOffice exists because Microsoft is poking a stick in Sun's eye (big servers), so Sun is poking them back (office suites). If big name vendors such as IBM/Lotus and Corel/WordPerfect could field full featured suites and utterly fail to compete on price with Microsoft, it won't be any different with Sun.
That, and as an eat-your-own-dogfood shop, Sun probably felt having a piece of essential internal infrastructure under the control of a small company teetering on the edge of existence was probably a bad idea.
Now, when Microsoft's OEM licence practices are altered by the courts, StarOffice may well become a standard OEM freebie. However, that doesn't mean that many corporate users will or could switch.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
"A better tactic is to take aim at where the IT market is going to be and your opportunities will be much wider."
Considering much of the IT market has been laid off in the last 12 months I'd say that giving it away is keeping pace with that. The only way they could do it any better would be to provide CD's of StarOffice at the local soup kitchens.
Does StarOffice have tracking of revisions yet? That was one of the features that I noticed it lacked last time I looked at it (a while ago, admittedly). Without that feature, they might as well well forget any serious usage.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Is StatOffice Ready To Take On Office?
Note that you don't have to state MS Office, because everyone already knows what you mean. No, StarOffice is not ready to take on Office.
Cunning linguists
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
What it really needs to make it is perfect file compatibility with Office. When you multiply the cost of Office by thousands of employees it's a serious chunk of change, and in a recession some smaller companies might finally be willing to try it.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
1) Better word filters, it's beaten up a couple of my .docs
/home, a /usr/bin, and all that already, I don't need /usr/share/local/staroffice/home & bin & multiple layers of symbolic links
2) Better gui integration, I don't need it to take over my desktop, it should just sit in there like every other program. I HATE primadonna projects that add self importance by taking up desktop real estate (what the hell do I want some video game adding hundreds of desk icons and taskbar AND everything else it can under windows).
3) Drop in support. You gotta add this to your path and add this and add this, for functionality that is ALREADY in your directory hierarchy. Why can't they just use the same directories everyone else does? I have a
I would think that with the coming economic downturn, being able to offer an alternative to Microsoft's draconian (not to mention expensive) licensing scheme would be attractive, particularily to the bean-counters who are likely going to be calling the shots. I just installed Mandrake 8 and it was pretty much painless and as far as what the average user does...clicks on their e-mail, clicks on their word processor, and browses the net, there isn't a whole hell of a lot of difference.
The clincher for many businesses however, will be not so much (Lin)ux/ Star office's functionality or having to accustom users to a different way of doing things, but rather the must-have app that only runs on Windows. THATS why Microsoft has the lion's share of the desktop market.
You're using her as bait, Master!
I'm sorry to say, I actually like it. I have even encouraged people to install it.
Yes, it may not have all of Office 2000's functionality, but it is close, and there are several benefits.
1. It's free(as in beer, but not as in speech (read on, however).
2. It's cross-platform. There are linux binaries (and solaris, I believe) on sun's website. This may just be the office suite of choice for linux (at least beginning linux users) users, as it does not require much to get it working.
3. 6.0 looks really sweet.
Plus, come one, people. It has 98% the functionality of office 2000. That is good enough for at least 75% of people out there, because most people don't use the bloated features avaliable in office. Yes, you have to do things slightly differently. But generally, whatever you wanted to do in office, can be done in staroffice.
While my third point is kind of irrelevant (it makes me hopeful, though), I think the first two are serious advantages that IBM/Lotus/Corel don't have. Sure, you could get Corel's Java Wordperfect, but it kind of sucked, and it didn't have all the features of star office, and the full version cost money.
Finally, StarOffice is forming the core of OpenOffice, which has (IMHO) the potential to become fantastic. In fact, the first full featured beta is avaliable, I may just switch.
As it is, however, even if StarOffice falls off the face of the earth, methink the project is a success. There are a substantial number of users (maybe not compared to Office 2000, but a fair number nevertheless), it's free as in beer, it forms the core of an office suite that is free as in speech, and is cross-platform.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
As much as I hate to admit it, StarOffice is a classic example of the schism between commercial software developers and open source advocates. The latter love to tout free alternatives to commercial software: "Star office!" "The Gimp!" But then realistically, when you try to use the free clone in an real environment, it quickly becomes obvious that it is not nearly as ready for prime time as its proponents claim it to be. This is not to put down all open source development, but it is a small cry for realism and restraint among zealots. Look a it this way: who knows more about office suites, college students who write two papers a year, or people who work 40 hours a week in a business?
It is also regrettable that Star Office tried so hard to be like Microsoft Office. It would have been better to develop a simpler, more rock solid, legitimate _alternative_, rather than what comes across as a wannabe clone that misses the mark.
This whole "if it's not M$, I can't use it" mentality-- it's nuts. I have a difficult time believing that people are that rigid or unable/unwilling to think.
How much more could StarDivision (isn't that who Sun bought it from?) have done to make it easy to use? F7 is spellcheck for both M$-office and StarOffice (or as the corporate hacks here called it, "TarOffice."). The different buttons look the same: "B" for bold, "I" for italics.
I don't understand the trepidation and fear that people have. Can someone explain it to me? Productivity software are tools. Like hammers. Nobody shows fear at using a peening hammer when all they've seen before is a claw hammer. They're both hammers, and as such work about the same way. M$ Word and StarWord are both WYSIWYG word processors; they work very similarly.
The car analogy works-- do people tremble in fear at the mention of driving a Honda simply because they've only ever driven Fords? Or are Pontiacs so different from Lexus that their respective owners couldn't drive the other ones?
1. Make a presentation software that's not completely limited to the slide show format. The metaphor should be a stage, and allow for notes on slides, multiple projectors, speakers, etc. Imagine a networked display system between three laptops (two for display, one to control/syncronize, an have your notes on it).
2. Combine word with CVS and give complete modification histories, and keep all undos in files. Sure, they grow large, but you could also show precise branches and replay changes done by one person on another file.
3. A Spreadsheet program that has HUGE libraries of functions, and allows other functions to be written in any language under the sun, compiled, and then used nicely. Also, allowing spreadsheets to use scripts from the command line would be nice.
4. Speaking about the command line, how about a nifty little piping interface that allows for a tool setup with all sorts of little switches on each icon (representing the different switches on the command line) and then drag pipes from one command to another, then let the data flow in.
Just my 2 cents.
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
Show me some real life expamples where starcalc fails to give a correct answer when calculating. I mean real life.Show me a link to a site that shows the failure of starcalc and then I'll accept your argument.
/. , I just read the headlines now and follow the links, since discussions seemingly lead to nowhere nowadays. And it didn't get beter with the moderation system, but I won't start on that since my adrenalin is already at an all time high now.
;)
Please, I'm not trying to start a war here, but I hear this kind of thing all the time "we tried this and that and application xyz didn't do it correctly". When these kind of things are stated by M$, we call that FUD, when Slashdot users post them we think it's a valid argument.
Sorry about the rant but it's the lack of nuance that drives me further and further away from the comments on
Can you tell?
(relax now, ease back, easy... easy... phew that was close)
mod me down i don't care, just had a BAD day
As long as people can say Office, and everyone knows they're referring to what is actually called Microsoft Office, no, StarOffice doesn't have a big change.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
1) Perfect (or nearly so) compatibility with the .doc, .xls, and .ppt formats. Too much stuff out there in these formats to not have it.
2) Make it available everywhere. People use AOL because they made getting their software easy. They put CD's everywhere. Downloading it from the internet is not good enough. Very few people have a fast network connection at home and even if they did they wouldn't likely download it. Sun needs to provide it to all OEMs, carpet bomb the US with CD's containing StarOffice From Sun, etc. Yes this costs money but it won't hurt Office unless it is done.
3) Make it as close to Office as possible in look and feel, at least for a while. If people feel they know how to use it already, they will be much more inclined to switch. It doesn't matter if the interface to Office stinks, it is what people are used to.
4) Do a cost analysis and trumpet it everywhere. If StarOffice is even close in features and is highly compatible, you'll get the attention of IT managers and CFOs. Businesses only care about saving money. Make their jobs easier/cheaper and they'll migrate in droves.
Unfortunately I think Sun doesn't want to do any of this. Unless they do, StarOffice is going to be an also-ran for at least several more years.
There's something else at play here. I have noticed that many secretary types, my wife included, stubbornly cling to Office. There's the perception that other software doesn't work the same and isn't fully compatible. They are afraid their work will somehow be "lost". This isn't just about Office, it applies more broadly to Windows. To sell some other kind of productivity software to my mother-in-law, you have to get past this objection. Many rank and file clerical type employees do not want to learn some new software. This goes beyond familiarity. It's irrational. But that is what Star Office is up against.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
The biggest Office XP competitor is Office 97. IT departments tend to take an all-or-none approach to upgrades, and the law of the convoy tends to win out - slowest ship.
.NET... the competition is with Office 97. When there is a technical innovation or a IT shop just has to upgrade for the sake of upgrading, I think SO has to be a consideration. Hopefully the OS and total cost of ownership get considered at the same time.
That said, Office 2000 and XP seem to offer no real advantages/features what-so-ever over good old '97.
So, in the context of the article, I don't think Sun's competition is the current incarnation of Office or even with
As far as guessing where the market is going to be, well who the hell knows that? Besides, who wants to rent software? It's sort of like leasing a car - you do it because you want the latest status symbol - the guy who paid cash for the '88 civic gets from point A to B with the lowest cost of ownership. There's so status symbol with software - some works better than others, so you go with what works best, and there we're back to Office '97. If you own it, why change?
"People don't like change."
Very true. At my high school, the teachers scream if someone changes the layout of their desktop. We recently upgraded to win2k - they still haven't stopped sending angry emails.
I'm the stranger...posting to
Setting up decent-looking fonts under Linux is still difficult. I think that this is the major
issue blocking the use of SO as a serious alternative to Office.
90% of my documents fail grammar checking, despite being correct. Grammar checkers expect a certain audience, which usually is not technical or academic.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
A lot of people, probably a good 33%, would rather steal a copy of Msft Office than buy an inexpensive workalike that has 95% of the features. Just like Msft turning buggy software to an upgrade incentive, they probably put up with the piracy rate to maintain a huge mindshare and user base.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I have been using star office and openoffice pretty intensively over the past few weeks. Here are some things I have found:
1. star/open have lousy support for hyperlinks. It's hard to use, confusing and often produces errors (such as attaching "http://" before relative url's.
2. Starwriter has a pretty sophisticated stylist, and a good GUI for figuring out the hierarchy of styles. However, applying styles is not always easy, and often two different styles conflict with one another, causing bad results.
3. Using starwriter as a wysiwig html editor is a real disappointment. You can't add css easily, and often the styles in the stylist don't appear in the code as a style (a la css) but rather as a inline style (with font tags and things like that). If you add custom css in html source, when you change to wysiwig mode, it demolishes the code additions.
4. 5.2 crashes an awful lot, especially in Windows.
5. People who use Star/Open to create documents are forced into using styles rather than doing direct formatting (which is good).
6. The filters (MS Office, etc) work perfectly. Easiest thing to do is to save all documents in rtf format.
7. Open Office in Linux lacks a lot of proprietary filters and spell checkers and fonts. Apparently the plan is for staroffice to incorporate them, but openoffice never to include them.
8. I've been coming to the conclusion that for simple web page editing and creating, the Mozilla composer editor is a much better alternative. Except for the fact that Mozilla doesn't provide any ability to work with css stylesheets, its 4 different views and its ability to display css styles and make simple tables make it a clear pick for simple web pages.
9. Star/Open haven't had good readymade web templates.
I am a real fan of star office and open office. But these days, I find that I'm making more web pages than word processed documents. So why is openoffice focused on the traditional word processor functions?
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
I reviewed StarOffice about a year ago for my Web Site. Some of you might be interested in reading it, since its an independent review written by someone not working for a major media Web site. Or maybe you wouldn't... Either way, here it is.
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
Final writer on my amiga (I know softwood published a windows version but unfortunately their page seems dead), did everything I needed for 98% of the Word processing I need.
Star office should swallow every bit of technology it can, and be more stable, it would surely gain market share.
I can't beleive that people drool over powerpoint, Scala does such a better job for presentation... oh well.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
> Many rank and file clerical type employees do > not want to learn some new software.
Just curious, how often do you use Office applications? How advanced of a user are you? Is it possible that those "rank and file" clerical workers are actually right? That switching to a new office suite will cost them many hours of productivity?
It is for programmers to talk about switching office suites, because most of us don't use them very often. I use office for maybe 2 or 3 hours per week. But if you spend eight hours a day in Word and Excel, those small differences matter a lot.
Think of it this way: Say I decided to take away your vi and replace it with emacs (or vice versa). Simple enough, right? They are both text editors and you will figure out the differences, quickly enough. Besides, you're probably already marginally familiar with the other one anyway.
The reality is, that if you're a veteran programmer, you are probably intimately familiar with your text editor, and replacing it with a new one would cost you many hours. If you are a veteran "rank and file" clerical worker, you are probably intimately familiar with Word or Excel and changing office suites would cost you a lot of lost hours.
Switching Office suites in a corporation is an extremely expensive proposition. Even if the software is free (hell, even if Sun paid you), for most companies it is a bad deal.
I first tried SO 5.2 as an alternative to MS Office shortly before Sun bought it. I fired it up, started writing, wanted to do some simple, repetitive task (I forget exactly what). Since SO looked very similar to MSO I tried the same simple feature that would do it for me there. It didn't work. After fifteen minutes of digging through the documentation I discovered that there was no automation for that feature in SO. I quickly nuked it, booted up Windows, and used the Microsoft product instead.
Since time is money I just found Star Office to be more expensive, even though technically it could do everything I wanted it to do. As long as Microsoft keeps improving the user experience it will have the better product. The product should be an enabler for the functionality it contains, and Microsoft did a much better job of that than Star Division did, even though both had all of the needed functionality.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
actually its proof SUN will do anything it can to stick a shiv in MS's back.
Same with IBM. why do you think IBM really put (lifts pinky to mouth)ONE BILLION DOLLARS!!! into Linux "research"?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Readability
____________________________________
Passive Sentences 0%
Flesch Reading Ease 51.1
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level 11.0
Yeah, those are some mighty fine capabilities. A Word upgrade somehow changes the readability of the sentence. :)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Oh bother.
Last week, you missed the meeting... ;)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
For anyone out there reading who can't imagine StarOffice competing with much of anything, I urge you to go to openoffice.org and download the latest build. (The StarOffice/OpenOffice situation is much like Netscape/Mozilla)
It really is a completely different experience. No more desktop, normal individual apps. While the the apps are rather memory hungry (so what, memory is $.15/MB), it's instantly responsive on my 700mhz machine. Everything I do with Word/Excel is there, with an interface that was quite familiar. It's more than ready for prime time.
I don't work in a role which supports Office apps (thank god) but I do know that in our firm (one of the big boys Sun would LOVE to win back from microsoft) there would be no way we could convert to SO until there was support for Excel/VBA macros in spreadsheets. It's a sad (and scary) fact that a fair chunk of our business relies on arcane and complex spreadsheets written ages ago by someone who's since left. It's bad enough when we have to upgrade MS Office and test everything, but converitng to whatever language SO uses for macros? No thankyouverymuch!
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Last Thursday. Didn't you get the memo?
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
Word 5.1 for the Mac was the last, and perhaps only, good version of Word. It did everything real humans needed in a word processor, and everyone else used RageMaker, TeX, etc.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I've read many comments that claim that there are too many MSWord documents to have anything less than 100% compatibility.
Rubbish.
MS never offered 100% compatibility between SmartSuite, WordPerfect, or anything else. The filters in MS products were about the same quality as the ones in StarOffice.
For that matter, WordPerfect never offered serious quality import capability from WordStar, and certainly little import capability for Wang wordprocessor systems. Import/export is not the issue.
What's missing from the Linux desktop is a clear direction from the community about a common scripting language, and object embedding.
I'm not a zealot, but I've worked almost exclusively with Gnome for quite a while. It's getting there. If it could offer a scripting language similar to VBA, that would be helpful. Bonobo offers the possibility of object linking within applications.
The scripting language wouldn't be that tough - Linux offers a zillion languages and realistically we're talking about GUI wrappers for some of those languages.
SOffice is not as easy for printing, clipart, and labels as MSOffice. It doesn't have a GUI DB component, (Adabas is not included with the distributions that I've grabbed from Sun.)
MS is opening themselves up to a real kick in the pants. They keep raising license fees for their software, and free software keeps getting better.
It's just a matter of time before American businesses catch on. My company spends millions a year for MS products, and it looks like that number is only going to get bigger.
In the mean time, let's figure out how to herd cats so we can get the free software geeks to converge on a standard platform. Let's pick Gnome or KDE and be done with it. American business doesn't want to be bothered with a million choices. That's why MS has done so well. Let's come together so we can offer a limited set of viable choices to the business community. MS will be hoisted on their own petard.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
FREEDOM.
Freedom is the reason you should check out OpenOffice, K Office, Evolution, Gnumeric etc.. Remember: Sun has GPL'd Star Office's source code. That means that everyone can peek at it and change it -- that means you don't have to worry that the next version of the product will fuck with you because if it will, enough developers will be pissed off enough to fork and fix it. You don't have to worry about Passport, .NET, talking paperclips, proprietary file formats or "Smart Tags", or whatever Microsoft's current strategy of becoming Big Brother is.
This is relevant not only for individuals and for corporations. Choosing OpenOffice now is reasonable long term thinking, something most individuals seem incapable of. Yes, Sun would behave just as badly as Microsoft in Microsoft's shoes, but with OpenOffice under the GPL, there's not really much that can go wrong. The file format is also open, XML-based and documented and can be legally implemented by anyone.
Freedom is not just an ideological point. If you trust all your critical documents to a closed source software corporation, you are dependent on them and on their decisions, which will hurt your bottom line -- and, in the long term, hurt you much more than training your personnel to use an alternative.
The bottom line is that if you care about freedom, you shouldn't have to go to China -- you have to look at the alternatives. If you don't do that, you have no right whatsoever to complain that you have none later.
Now that businesses are utterly dependent on Office, Microsoft feels that they can safely tighten down the screws. They can raise the per-seat cost of Office, because people would rather pay than have to learn something new. They can crack down on illegal copies because there is less (percieved) hassle to pay them off then it is to switch office suites.
With their profit margins sagging, MS is under pressure from investors to keep profits up at the accustomed levels. The market for office suites is saturated -- everyone who needs/wants MS office already has a copy (legal or otherwise). The only way they can continue to bring in mountains of money is to force unlicenced users to become licenced ones, and to extort more money out of their existing users. However, they are operating under the faulty assumption that every unlicenced user is willing to pay to be legal. Many people use a pirated copy of MS office because they are unable or unwilling to fork over the $$$ that MS wants. Many shops will bite the bullet and switch to a free alternative rather than risk being mauled by MS's attack dog, the BSA. As more companies switch, awareness of Free software will grow, creating momentum and giving the Free alternatives legitimacy in the eyes of the PHBs. Bean counters will see the bottom-line savings that comes from not paying Danegeld to Redmond.
The best thing we can do for Free Software is to hype it as a management fad -- reduce your IT spending by n% in one easy step! Free software's current target market is the technical elite -- in effect, preaching to the choir. The people who the FS movement needs to seduce are the MBAs of the world -- middle managers, people who have to watch the bottom line of expense sheets.
I've rambled enough now. Time to go home and eat dinner
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
It sounds nice like a nice tack: provide minimal Microsoft compatibility, while focusing on some vaguely suggested (notice how he avoids any specific discussion of what Sun should do with StarOffice) need that Microsoft doesn't address. What he doesn't get is that there is no such thing as "minimal Microsoft compatibility". This is why the life of an alternative office suite is so miserable.
Let's start with what most people agree on by now: you need to be able to read Office documents that people send you. (Forget for now about creating your own documents, and editing documents that people send you.) According to the article, you just say the magic words "open XML format", wave your wand, and your need for MS Office vanishes in a puff of smoke.
People who say that seem to think you can represent a Word document in a souped-up version of DocBook. Not even close. For starters, there's OLE. This alone is an extremely complicated data model that must be entirely replicated. Not to mention that you have to support every data format that is commonly embedded into Word documents; "just a Word viewer" is an oxymoron. Next, people put formulas in their embedded Excel documents, so you have to clone the scripting language, along with all of the zillions of functions provided. People put macros in their Word documents too, which require in addition to the scripting language a document model that is exactly like Word's. Plus any feature that can be accessed by macros (which I'm guessing is most of them). Oh, these macros might alter the document, so don't think you were going to get away with a read-only model. Compared to all this, emulating the UI is child's play, so to write a Word viewer, you may as well write MS Office.
Basically, Microsoft adds tons of features to Office, and people find the craziest ways to use them, so you have to support every damn one in order to provide "minimal Microsoft compatibility". Anyone who doesn't think it's that bad, probably hasn't worked in a typical business environment.
The alternate notion that people can keep using MS Office for "the full range of functionality in Office", and use StarOffice for the vaguely suggested something else, is just as broken for an even simpler reason: most people don't want to learn more programs.
So maybe China (plus some smaller markets here, like students) is the best Sun can hope for. In a few decades, that may not look like such a bad thing.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
First of all, stating that Star Office needs better filters is an exceptionally unoriginal thought. 99% of all posters say it, and it should be moderated as "Duuuh!".
The hypocrisy part is because lots of the people that post this, are the same that blast the Wine-project because "emulation takes away the incentive to port games or applications".
Why isn't this used here? If absolutely everyone could read Word-files, why should anyone bother using a different format? And using a proprietary format is to be at the mercy of the maintainers of that format.
Besides, saying that can never succeed before their import-filters are perfect, is like giving up already. The filters will NEVER be perfect. There is always quirks and added features from MS Office that breaks compatibility.
Finally I would like people to think about the quality of Word Perfect (was market leader at this time), was when MS Word arrived. Were they perfect? Were they even perfect when MS Word took over?
PS! I'm not against import-filters in any way, it is just focused far too much on.
Must apologize for drifting away from the topic, but speaking of features that "no one" uses, I'd like to vote for a new feature for StarOffice that, to my limited knowledge, MS Office lacks:
You can not imagine the horrors of being forced to use MS Office for some administrivial task but having the emacs default key mapping hardwired into the brain/hand circuit!
Control F to quickly move forward? No! You get some silly font changing window! You can imagine the process of discovery on my part when Control K and Control D and Control E do not function like I am accustomed to. Every application should allow the user to choose whatever mapping makes them happiest.
Sorry to vent, but it was a nightmarish experience for me!
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I agree, StarOffice is no where near MS Office. But then again MS Office was no where near WordPerfect Suite until Office 95. Frankly, having used MS Office 2000, 97, 95, StarOffice 5.2, WordPerfect Suites 2000, 8, 7, 6, and WordPerfect 5 I prefer the new WordPerfect Suite 2000 over everything else that I have tried. QuattroPro has finally mostly recovered from being down ever since Suite 6 vs Office 95. Of course one definate advantage for me is that WordPerfect Suite 2000 runs on Linux.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
It's not. He was using HTTP 1.0, and server pretended that it supports HTTP 1.0, yet demanded an authentication method that exists only in HTTP 1.1.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Well, if you really need an office suite that is at professional level Linux does have one, but it does cost money. I use Corel WordPerfect 2000 for Linux with no problems right now. WordPerfect is as good, if not better then MS Office and cheaper. It is faster than StarOffice, not as buggy as the other office suites, and has decent filters. Downside, Corel is selling its Linux division so support might dissapear. Oh, and it was built for KDE. Just a thought.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Yes, but then your domain ID and password would be sent across the network in cleartext.
Over HTTPS? Or you still believe marketdroids that told you that Basic authentication is insecure because it doesn't use some proprietary bullshit, yet Windows-specific authentication is secure even without HTTPS, EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE PASSING PASSWORD IN THE FORM?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I don't like office. If I want to write something for myself I write it in plain text. If I want it to look pretty I write HTML. If I want to do a presentation I use HTML. If I want to calculate something I write a program to do it (I have never used Excel of my own volition, I have to use it sometimes because clients insist on "importing" csv files into Excel). If I want a database I'll use a real one, not a toy one. The only one I use on a daily basis is Outlook - because it's a company standard.
As much as I'd love to see my company embrace something like Star Office in lieu of MS Office during the downturn, I know that it just won't happen. It's far easier for people to stay in their comfort zones than to invest some energy in something that can truly save corporate IT real dollars.
That said, I think it's important that people not allow reviewers to make up their minds for them. Download it and make up your own mind after trying it out. You might be surprised at how much work you can accomplish with Star Office, and it will only cost you a bit of time.
Slashdot needs more moderation options:
Score:-1 Not Likely to Have a Girlfriend
Your sentence literally means: "Until it has grammar checking capabilities like those of Word, and also has WordPerfect, it will not replace Word on my computer."
I doubt that you want StarOffice to include WordPerfect; I'd bet that you intended to say "Until it has grammar checking capabilities like those of Word and WordPerfect, it will not replace Word on my computer." Your sentence doesn't say what you mean, but a grammar checker won't flag it because it is a valid, grammatical sentence.
Posted by Hemos on Wednesday September 05, @04:45PM
from the ain't-this-the-truth dept.
Some Guy writes: "Why are slashdot geeks in increasing numbers claiming that they have girlfriends? I remember when slashdot first started, a man's penis extension was the fact that he had a dual processor pentium pro running linux. Now it seems that 85% of slashdot "geeks" visit the page with Internet Explorer and claim that they have girlfriends." I dont know about you, but I want the old slashdot back.
Why are they calling what is now OpenOffice? Why are they speaking of what is now an Open Source program as if it is a program Sun makes money off of? Why are they speaking as if Sun is doing all the work or is the only party involved?
I work for Computer Associates (ca) who has 18,000 employees. We use Unicenter TNG/Unicenter BNG/Unicenter/or whatever we are calling it this week to do keep a constent inventory of applications installed on everybodies machines. I dont' have the numbers in front of me right now, but the last time I looked the count was 2.15 computers per employee. Of course some people do not have a machine, most have just one, but developers have more, like 2 or 3 I keep 4 :)
That is ~39,000 pc's not including build machines, or file servers. out of that, almost 8,000 X86 machines have Linux, BSD, or Solaris installed. of those, ~4,500 have star office installed, while ~3,500 have Koffice installed. While a machine with an app installed, is not a machine with someone using that app, queries that I ran show SO saves files extentions on >4,000 machines, and >2,100 users saving files with Koffice.
Another way that I know that we have an active NON-MS Office movement going on, is we had enough support calles to the help desk that we now support KOffice, and Star Office. Just my $.02, but might be relevent to the topic...
Personally, I just do not understand why there is a need for a complex document format as Word's in most corporations. Every single Word document I've seen produced within my company could easily be formatted in flat text, or a very simple text format with light formatting such as bold and color, like RTF.
I've talked about this with various people in the company, and they all agree. So why do we license it? Because the corporations we work with use it, and we need to be able to view their files.
In my opinion, you can get by with minimal formatting and features such as spell check, but to abandon office, you must have a way to convert other people's Word files into a usable format.
Our intranet is written in PHP and runs on Linux. We wanted to be able to cache contents of files posted to the intranet in a search engine. I use the strings command or wvWare for this, depending on the case. I can get what I need out of it.
The only thing I need on my Linux desktop now is Photoshop, or an equivalent (GIMP is not there yet), and life is complete.
And on the Mac I still use WordPerfect. It does what I need to use so I use it.
Feature-itis amd software bloat is something I avoid.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I think I'm a little disappointed in a move away from prioritizing web-based office functionality. I can't say I love Star Office, but I certainly don't love Office2k. The only useful piece is FrontPage to manage Apache FrontPage servers. If Word2k worked buglessly, it would be great but after 17 years; it still doesn't. And, it seems to corrupt your docs at the worst possible times (crashed 5 times before printing my set list and notes before a gig I was playing the boards at on Saturday: more than irritating).
I've been using a web-based application for about 3 years that I wrote myself to keep my most important stuff in one application. Time-Tracking; knowledge-base; invoicing; journal and it's taken a while to get it to do what it needs, but it's written browser-independent and I can get at it anywhere.
I like those types of applications. It's also mirrored to several other servers in case of failure or network problems. I hope this is the way of the future 'cause I only want one application: browser.
It's been said before, but bears repeating: "Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it."
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
I've been using SO since 3.1 (back when it was, *gasp*, seperate programs!). Now I use it on Windows, and I don't even have MS Office installed. My college has even installed SO on all the lab computers because it handles foreign languages better.
;)
All that and the fact that it's FREAKING FREE, yeah I'd say it's "ready"
I have never seen an organization as clueless as M$. The whole point of the 'Net (and of .NET I would guess,) is a create a collaborative work environment,
.NET.
.NET-3 for them to see what its really about.
MyNotebook, MyCalendar, MyPrep-H are all obvious rehash of the isolationist, PC-centric, lone-gunman, divide-and-conquer mentality we're evolving past.
This is absolutely NOT the purpose of the 'net, the Web not should it be the paradigm for
They will screw themselves with this the same way as they have with everything else. It will take until
But maybe by then we'll all be using Itaniums and G4 & G5 PowerPCs and the entire problem will disappear as M$ finally implodes.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
One way to get past the user learning curve issues is to work inside your organization to build up a community of clueful users who can be available to coach and train their colleagues.
This is a deliberate parallel to the development mode employed by Linux: Self-selection of the self-motivated, rewarded by recognition and tangible rewards. Encourage your power users to communicate and share tips and techniques, with each other first, then with other users. How about a tip o' the month award (cheesy but fun)? Develop programs to encourage and reward them for sharing their skills, especially public recognition and feedback at performance review time ($$$$$$$$$) for those who take the time and effort to share their skills and make the cube-dwelling troglo...err..co-workers... around them more productive.
Yeah, it's not hacking. There's not one line of code in all of that. But it needs to be done.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball
2) Make it available everywhere. People use AOL because they made getting their software easy. They put CD's everywhere. Downloading it from the internet is not good enough. Very few people have a fast network connection at home and even if they did they wouldn't likely download it. Sun needs to provide it to all OEMs, carpet bomb the US with CD's containing StarOffice From Sun, etc. Yes this costs money but it won't hurt Office unless it is done.
They should have done the same with Java, instead of relying on browsers and others to distribute their software (JRE) for them - or relying on people to download and install it.
creation science book
Office 2000 has a massive advantage over 97 -- it has the first version of Powerpoint in which OLE actually works the way you think it's going to. You can paste Excel tables into a slide and then resize them without it looking like shit.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Actually, most large companies in Japan actually buy licenses for MS products.
My company is not one of them, but oh well.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
It mangles the word doc as it appears on screen, not printed.