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StarOffice 6.0 Beta Available
Lumpish Scholar and 753 other people wrote in to let us know that Sun has released its beta of Star Office 6. CNET has a blurb about the release as well. I was hoping that Sun's site might be unclogged enough to try it out myself, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards today.
from the article: The new version of StarOffice is simplified to make file exchange easier. The software has support for XML file formats; more robust Microsoft Office import and export filters, including support for Office XP; and redesigned dialog boxes, new templates and graphics.
:)
:)
will the "more robust support" actually be decent enough for serious transfers between my Word documents? Also an important feature would be importing WordPerfect8 files. I have 100's of papers written in WP8 and for me to switch over would require filters for that. Anyone know anything about that?
I am going to try it as soon as I see some more information (the website was lacking what I really wanted to know).
I really hope I can ditch WP8 (although it is still the best for what I need) and run something more up-to-date
Enjoy the download
One thing I couldn't see -- and I can't get at the downloads to check -- is to see if their Presentation software, Impress, can play movies in slides now. This is actually a big thing; in the hard sciences, where a lot of people use non-Windows and give presentations, one of the major problems for people who want to switch to Linux is that if you have results you want to show in movie form, you're pretty much stuck with using PowerPoint, or exiting your presentation and starting up xanim or something...
Any idea of we'll be seeing a compatible implementation of something that can do everything Outlook can do (including connecting to an Exchange server)? I don't mean just email, but I mean Calendar, Tasks, Contacts booking meetings etc.
As soon as I can get something that would replace this one last piece, then I can switch away from Windows in my company (as I have at home). Unfortunately, the company relies very much on Outlook's functionality, and will not move away from Exchange server, so if I want to move it's up to me to find and install a compatible alternative, but so compatible that the REST of the users can stay on Outlook if they choose to.
In my opinion, this is one thing that any true Office suite needs before MS-Office can be truly replaced. As buggy and insecure as Outlook is, it organizes the company that I work for, and it can not be removed from my desktop until a fully compatible replacement is available. It's the one last thing that ties me to Windows.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Would you expect Microsoft to do anything less
How hard is it REALLY to parse out Word Documents and have it work????
Parsing isn't that hard most of the difficulty comes in getting all the different OLE objects embedded in the document to work. Star/Openoffice, Koffice, AbiWord can all format the fonts, layouts, etc, quite well. The problem comes when you have an Excel Spreadsheet embedded in the word document as a table. Then each cell of the excel table is a word document. Then you gotta think about Macros, VB, etc.
Getting these things to work right is hard even for microsoft. Where I work now I have an Access database (I should've demanded they use something else, but they already had it installed everywhere) deployed to over 20 sites. I wrote the database in Access 97, but making it work in Access 2000 can be very tricky. Not only that, but at some places some of the Visual Basic Modules won't work in 97... welcome to my hell...
Anyway the point being, Microsoft has trouble in making THEIR office read previous MS Office files. I can only imagine how difficult it must be for someone who doesn't have the specs to make an app capable of reading them.
How often has it been said that the first MS Office user in an office eventually "forces" the whole office to upgrade, simply by passing around files in the latest default format.
:(
I remember one computer our office got last year, it installed 2000 by default and when I tried to remove it and install a site licensed copy of 97 it installed, but told me I had an invalid license whenever I tried to run any of its programs. I later tried to reinstall with a win98 disk. But I couldn't get the device drivers out of the install disk as it was locked to only be used as a reinstall everything disc from boot. Tried many things, never could get it working perfectly without just letting it be on office 2000. So as our site licenses offered us 2000 Prof for less then 50 dollars a peice I went ahead with the upgrade. I do like office 2000, but still embarrased that I let MS get the best of me
Here's Microsoft's Plans for XML. I think it's very interesting how they word things:
m /xmloffice.htm
.. People have been able to export Access & Excel documents to tab deliminated files for years now. Thats why they're not worried about XLM for those apps. People can already do whatever they want to spreadsheet files, etc..
Customers need to be more pissed off at Microsoft so they force Word to use XML.
http://www.microsoft.com/Office/developer/platfor
Because of the many benefits associated with the use of XML, customers have demanded easy, robust support for XML, and Microsoft has answered them. Currently, Microsoft is concentrating on Microsoft Access and Excel--the applications in which XML can have the biggest impact.
Access and EXCEL? They just want to keep Word as proprietary as possible. Word is the one people can't get in or out of. Of course they don't want to focus on XML for Word. Jeash
Tell you what...do what I did a few years ago, when I wanted to know why my nice beefy NT workstation was eating most of my memory, with no services running:
Install NT4. Note the available memory on bootup, before doing anything.
Install Office. Note the available memory after bootup, but before doing anything.
Do the math and wonder why JUST installing Office significantly decreased the available memory on bootup.
Start Office. Wonder why the used memory doesn't increase much at all. Hmmmmm.
A black box approach to be sure, but still very interesting.
jf
Personally, I wouldn't even say bundling is the issue with me - for me it is their shoddy business practices (rolls back to 1994 or so):
1. The internet is slowly being brought to the masses. Windows 3.1 exists, but need the WinSock TCP/IP stack to get in the net - fortunately, a free version is available, and is included by ISPs. Mosaic is also included...
2. Netscape builds and releases a much improved "Mosaic", called Navigator. Microsoft yawns, sees it all as a "fad", that the consumer won't embrace.
3. 1995 rolls around, and the consumer is raving mad for the net - Bill looks around and screams WTF!? Netscape is raking in money from sales of Navigator, creates Communicator which adds email, news, and web site creation tools.
4. In a mad dash, Bill throws out Windows 95, which had been worked on for a while, but had no internet capability (AFAIK). Rushes to make a TCP/IP stack (probably bought WinSock, knowing him).
5. Bill then sees that the internet explosion isn't a fad, and that he must "posess" it - rapidly IE is created, and is released for free to the masses.
At this point, things go crazy - because while Netscape isn't free - it is, sorta - but people for some reason are too stupid (or honest?) to figure it out: Netscape is "free" for students - simply check the student box on the download form, and you can download it for free - no authentication or anything required. Still, most people see it as expensive, and the marketing/FUD is done for IE to point out how expensive Netscape was (which it really wasn't that expensive - $70.00 or so for the deluxe version).
6. MS then "bundles" IE with later copies of 95, then fully integrates it into 98 - thus sealing the fate of Netscape, which went on to become a footnote (yes, I know it still exists, etc - but in the whole scheme of things, Netscape is just the tool, and not the company it was any longer).
It is this major undercutting that is a bad business practice - they saw that such software was cheap and easy to make, and thus had no "real" value, unlike an office package. But that doing so would leverage them into a whole new market, a much larger possible market - to market that office software to.
Now, Sun is doing the same thing - who knows if it is for revenge over Java or what - or if _they_ have some ulterior motive (which they probably do), which would allow them to leverage into another market...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
The problem is, if you're trying to move away from needing MS Office because you want to switch platforms or save $$, you can't use Word for translation. ----> Sure you can. Set it up as a server app. "MS Word Translating Server". One Winders box sitting off in the dusty corner. Got a Word file? Just tell your box to blast it over to the translating server, The translating server will send it back to you in a moment and off you go.
Net cost: One Windows computer, one copy of Office-whatever. And a few hours/days of fiddling around with Word macros.
Everyone in your office can be running whatever you want.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!