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ZDNet Reviews KOffice
Spotted over at dot.kde.org -- this review of KOffice. The review isn't overwhelmingly positive or negative -- seems like a rather balanced picture of both what's up to par, and what's still missing, for mainstream acceptance in the Normal Workplaces of the world.
Unfortunately, I can't get the latest Koffice to run, cause libkprint or something isn't right. A botched kde2.2 upgrade has left my linux box moderately unusable. However, I've used previous Koffice in the past, as well as StarOffice.
StarOffice kinda sucked with the whole 'desktop' thing, and I was much more eager to use Koffice day to day when necessary. But I've noticed that StarOffice seems further along functionality-wise, and the latest OpenOffice downloads seem to be coming along nicely. They've lost that 'desktop' thing, and the components will all be 'single app' programs - definitely a good move, imo.
Given that the OpenOffice/StarOffice platform seem to be much more cross platform than the KOffice stuff, could we not see some merging of the projects, if only complementary filters to import/export each others' file formats? Maybe this is being planned, but it's not something I've seen touted. What I like about StarOffice the most is the promise of cross-platformness. I can work on my Windows OR Linux machines (maybe Mac too, haven't checked) without worrying about learning new interfaces or file format problems.
creation science book
...KOffice/Kword to make a big hit with users:
1) Allow reading/saving of documents as *.rtf
Rich text format seems to be the preferred document format among open-source word processors, yet KWord still lacks this feature. Heck, even MS-Word can read and save RTF! Supporting a common document format--instead of just *.kwd and *.txt--is going to be important for interoperability with other OSS office suites and the MS-Office world. Same goes for spreadsheet and presentation graphics file formats.
2) KOffice needs to have provisions for English measurement parameters in KWord and its other products. Yes, the geeks out there can convert to mm, but if you wanna get users off MS-Office, simple features like this will be important.
Actually, a lot of linux apps would proabably get more acceptance from the business community if they actually cost something. Business people know you don't get something for nothing; there are almost always strings attached. That makes them a little cautious about Linux.
Also, productivity could be a more important issue. Even though KOffice functions a lot like it's counterparts in the non-open source world, there are definite differences. Just getting copy and paste to work right is a chore. And any time you use different software, you need training. Training costs money, so biz people would probably defer to something they know does exactly what they need, even though it costs way too much.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Im still locked into m$ office for exchange server. Until someone comes out with an Exchange klone, m$ will dominate the market.
We had to install citrix clients so our NOC (running solaris on ultra 10's) could access the exchange servers. Even thou we don't use m$ products for our NOC, m$ infiltrated it via exchange.
E-Mail is at least 25% of my job, working on projects around the country, email is my ball and chain to the m$ platform. All documents open fine under StarOffice, but I still have to go back to exchange for my email. So I just run win2k on my laptop, use x-win32 for display, and samba to mount my solaris box and ssh to encrypt it. Basically Merge the two OS's into 1 via network tools.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Many of the issues addressed should be easy to fix. The lack of an automatic spelling checker and a thesauris in KWord, for instance, should be easy fixes. Likewise the case sensitivity in the spreadsheet program, though most UNIX people won't tend to view that sort of issue as a bug. The customer is always right and all that.
On a quick side note, I still prefer TeX/LaTeX over any GUI word processor I've ever run across. I believe our documentation people 'round these parts still use SGML. Not something a normal user will ever look at due to the learning curve, but once you get a set of styles down, you can rattle off any old document you deal with on a regular basis with almost no effort devoted to the formatting of the document -- you just work on the content.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I've just started using kde again after not seeing it for almost two years. I'm quite impressed with the way it has developed, but have a few feature related questions.
I've never really been one to use a file manager, but after setting my desktop to be my home directory, i've started using the desktop, something i've never done with any wm. The problem is that in order to get into any of the directories, you have to start a file manager konqueror session. Is there a way that the desktop itself could be a simple file manager that would changer directories. An extention to this would be embeding a term in the desktop that would let the desktop be the current directory.
Now that we have gotten a very easy to use gui, i think we should try and move it towards the 'unix way' of doing things. This would appeal the the 'power users' as well as the beginners.
No...
They're reviewing it from the point of view of the typical user.
I'm as pro-unix and pro-case-sensitive a guy as they come, and even I wasn't expecting that to be case sensitive. It makes absolutely no sense, unless there are cell rows called 'a' and 'A' (hint: there aren't).
The fact that this is no longer true in current Kspread builds attests to it's pointlessness.
As Ghoser777 pointed out in a response to your post: companies just know there is a catch... and (for now) there is:
;-)
- No Support desk (in the traditional way)
- No books (Koffice in 24 hours, Koffice for dummies etc). How is their secretary ever going to learn this thing ???
- No courses. As with the books... How are their employees going to learn ? Want to take classes on MS-Word ? Open the yellow pages and take your pick.
- Every time a new employee comes to work for the company they have to train that person. Using MS-Office in the company ? 95% of the new employees will know how it works allready... that will save them heaps of money.
Yeah yeah.. I know.. learn through experience, helpfiles, irc etc etc... That is not how businesses work people ! Learning 'the hard way' really is the hard way... It takes a lot of time, and time is money.
A good way is for people to get used to it at home and when a lot of people use it at home, they want to use it at their job as well, which will be less of a problem because they don't have to be trained.
Staroffice/OpenOffice has a better chance than Koffice IMHO, because of the big SUN behind it (which will be trusted by companies more easily) and because it is multi-platform. That way people can use it more easily at home, because most of them will probably run a MS-OS....
But I guess there is a place for both of the suits... Choice is good, and should be encouraged... It will keep office-creators from getting lazy
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I kinda like KOffice. It's way faster than StarOffice and it's extremely simple to produce a simple document.
So basically the programming team has created apps that's not all that complicated but still advanced enough for more than text handling. The article says it's between WordPad and MS Word (I'd say between Kate and StarOffice) and that's a good thing. As Rimbo points out, it's far from comleted. I just hope there will be a simple WYSIWYG office suite around when KOffice becomes more mature.
We all like the freedoom of choice Linux offers and we need more than one application of each type.
StarOffice 5.2 is so resource-hungry and slow that it might as well have been written in Java 1.1. Waiting a solid minute or so for it to fire up on a P2/300 with 192MB RAM, and running into its native widget set, it's easy to unserstand why someone might think it was written in Java. Less easy to understand is why ZDNet seems to have fired all of its fact-checkers.
The OpenOffice development snapshots are definitely peppier, so StarOffice 6.0 should be fine in this regard.. but 5.2.. eek.
Where Java does enter the StarOffice picture is that 5.2 has an open interface that lets you pick a JVM--or install one--to use as yet another macro language. This is a nice touch for all the Unix shops and others that have Java programmers on hand more readily than VBA people. You can use a nice, fast 1.3.x JVM with it, and develop with your existing tools and components. The other nice "Java" feature is SO 5.2's ability to use JDBC throughout for database access instead of native drivers or ODBC. Very useful and very elegantly cross-platform on Sun's part.
And incidentially, the "other" major SO5.2 scripting language is a VB clone, both in syntax and coding environment. SO has a different document object model, so MS Office macros won't run unmodified, but at least VBA skills can carry over. KOffice's use of DCOP for automation allows the use of any available language, potentially doing things one better--but without integration with a development tool as one gets with VBA and StarBasic, it remains at a disadvantage. Maybe bidirectional KOffice-to-KDevelop hooks (for C++) and KOffice-to-Netbeans/Forte (for Java) are a way to go.
The alternative -- an open office product -- will require training 99% of users at a cost of 1,000 to 2,000 per user for the class plus 2 to 5 working days (add another 1,000 for a low estimate. On this model -- the free product cost about 2,000 to 3,000. Sounds like $600 or so for full MS Office is cheap.
Take it out further -- if you are a 100 person company (user base for office product suite) this means MS Office costs 100 x 600 -- $60,000 plus 5 users out to training (those not already trained) $15,000 -- which means that MS Office cost you $75,000 -- not a small chunk of change. Of course the alternative will cost you $297,000 and the skills are not usefull for your workers in later life.
Of course this all assumes that you will be able to find the training -- not an easy task.
What about the savings in hardware? I'd argue their is little to none now-adays. A business would be foolish to buy less than 500mhz machines which are more than adequate for W2K/XP today. I'm writing this from a 350mhz box and it flies quite nicely with W2K. Kinda slow when running StarOffice under a default X install though (Redhat).
The OS install price and support price are arguably not an issue today either -- most 100 user offices will have at least one mission critical application requiring a windows system -- so your on the hook for licensing anyway (read it carefully...).
Choose an open office product? Risk your job for what appears to be a negative payback in the business world? Why are we advocating this again?
It used to. Now Microsoft is going after small to medium sized businesses in a very threatening way - they are routinely able to get settlements that are big enough to damage a company financially. A hearsay comment from a disgruntled employee is enough to bring MS and the BSA down on you full force - even for smallish family owned businesses. That can't be good for their public relations, and I bet this practice has a negative impact on the economy.
Case in point. The company I work for grosses less than 10 million a year, with about 80 employees. Its not that we can't afford software, we just can't afford very much in the way of tech help. Because of this situation, people who used PC's were largely left to their own devices. This resulted in some software being installed that shouldn't have. Notably copies of MS Office were passed around that shouldn't have.
Based on nothing more than an anonymous tip, the BSA has told has that we cannot make any changes to the software on our PC's(meaning uninstall before they raid) until they conclude their investigation. They sent a letter threatening up to $150,000 per violation, but said if we tried to
get compliant ourselves we would just get in more trouble.
Well fuck off MS and the BSA. Like that anonymous tip is going to fly in court. When you do come raid our company, you're going to find lots of machines running Linux and pretty much everything running StarOffice. If you were nice about it we would have loved to make sure we were compliant. But since you have taken this tack, well, I doubt my company will ever buy Microsoft software again.