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One Year Of OpenOffice
no parity writes "Last year on October 13, much of the source to Sun's StarOffice was released as the OpenOffice project. They have set up a birthday page to celebrate what they have achieved in that one year - yes, it prints, spellchecks and has online help. Keep up the good work, guys!" Yep - and my installation still spits up, too. *grin*
I just checked out news.com - Guess what one of the headlines are?
Anthrax found in Microsoft office
Can the DOJ show that MS does harm consumers now?
Wishful thinking...
-CT
I'm using 6 beta, and it's better than
5.x and less buggy: the only things I
can break are broken in 5.2 as well.
davecb@spamcop.net
It doesn't print with CUPS. I've tried for ages but it can't see my printer even though all my KDE apps do. Anyone know if there are any moves in this direction?
David
Anthrax was in Microsoft Office for a long time. But most people called it "The Clippy..."
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Congrats to all involved!
... it was over. Microsoft ruled.
What will it take for the stranglehold on Microsoft Office to be overcome?
Many people have suggested that the "new" offices have to have complete file compatibility with Office, but I don't think that's it.
Others have said that it is necessary for businesses to adopt the suites.
What do other think?
I am really interested in this because for three years or so there were four office products you could choose from: Lotus SmartSuite, WordPerfect Office, Microsoft Office and Microsoft Works.
Then boom
Ok, so they had a good start. Still, the rewrite is fairly large and Staroffice 6.0 beta feels like a champ. Sure, I know people would like this and that, more speed, less space and so on. But face it, staroffice will never start as fast under linux as word does under Windows. The linux OS is to heterogenous for that. This is the price we pay for choice and at least I am happy to pay it.
I hope it works OK on windows too, because there's a lot of users there and
we don't need them feeding you know who.
Go Sun
Last year at ComDex I got a freed disk with StarOffice on it. I gave it a chance and it was ok, but I still use M$ office for most of my file massaging, and yes that's where I point the kids when it's report time. I will have to give version 6 a download and see if it everything that /. people say it is. Maybe I'll install it on one or two of the kids computers.
My Doctor prescribed daily nasal saline irrigation, hehe
I realize this statement was tongue in cheek but please keep in mind these people are trying to create an office suite that is comparable in functionality with Microsoft Office, currently the best office suite period, that is not only free for download, but also open source. Give the developers some credit for even attempting such a Herculean project.
I just downloaded this yesterday, as I was unable to provide Micro$oft with the pound of flesh to use Office XP. I just used it to do a paper for school. I LOVE this program. Keep up the good work, Sun!
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
Since StarOffice dropped official support for MacOS X, OpenOffice needs more MacOS X programmers. Microsoft is going to make a huge marketing push for Office X, but if we had working OpenOffice versions, their monopolistic push could be thwarted. But it's too late for now. We need help!
That 75 Microsoft employees came in contact with the envelope... which contained porn ;)
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
I've look at the features list, and tried it too, and I must say that it's a really good start! And I hope that it will continue like it.
.doc format. I'm not saying that this format is better than anything else (an empty .doc file is far from 0k in size, and I've never understand what it can have in it to take that much space on my hard drive...!), but in my case, I have contacts with many people that use Microsoft Office, and I need to share files with them, and read there works and show them mine. Without the support for .doc, this thing become more hard to do; some people don't want to use other things than .doc format. So by now, I use Star Office and KOffice, but I've have trouble with both of them with .doc sometimes. So, if Open Office support this format one day, and handle them good, I'll be very happy to use it!
But, even if I know that a lot of you doesn't like Microsoft (and I understand it!), an office suite for Linux can only be complete if it can read/write in
So, everybody that work on Open Office, continue your good work!
Does the word processor have an automated way to build a table of contents? That's the only advanced feature I use is MS Word and I can't switch without it.
Aside from that, I don't see a high "cost" in moving from word to Open Office. (I don't really use the rest of the suite)
That which does not kill me only makes me whinier
...due to the file compatibility issue you have mentioned.
Not that I speak for everyone in a similar situation, but when you work in an enviroment that is 99% msoffice, usually the main stumbling block is "Yeah linux sounds cool but can I read everyone's files under linux? What about Word?"
It sucks but it seems to be the case in my experience. In fact, that is what kept me strictly a windows user for so long (until recently) was the one or two programs I needed at the time, which we unavailable under linux.
I'm not saying its right. I'm defending the laziness of the average computer user but it seems that is one of the major issues, and most likely be solved by an open source office suite (which I am impressed with by the way).
The linux users just have to change the world one user at a time, I can't imagine one single piece of software making that happen.
"It's comin' back around again..." -RATM
I want a e-mail program with the same features of Outlook 2000/XP. I'm a college student and I love the Outlook Today feature, which displays your calender, task list, and what new messages you have in your mail folders. It's perfect for me, since reminders always pop-up at the time I set them to and I can, at a quick glance, tell exactly what is going on in the next 7 days + what assignments I need to do. I've switched to Mozilla for browsing, and I am testing StarOffice 6 Beta with my hundreds of Word Documents. But I won't switch e-mail programs until someone offers a program on Windows that offers an Outlook Today-like feature. Until then, I pray that Norton AntiVirus will pick up any viruses that come through the e-mail.
Does Sun use StarOffice exclusively within Sun? Maybe I just haven't seen all the press releases of them touting how much money they save and the huge success it has been, but isn't a little funny that they don't make a huge deal of Sun being "100% pure StarOffice -- Microsoft free?"
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
others probably do too, but i know that lyx does.
I have to say OpenOffice despite all its greatness has introduced a very annoying new behavior that can't be turned off. It uses extended windows style quotes/etc even when authoring on linux in html. I use Open/Star office, but there is a lack of attention to detail in certain areas that kind of annoys me. That being said, I never am tempted to go back to M$.
With each release of Star/OpenOffice we're seeing something that more and more resembles MS Windows/Office. Most people here keep on saying that its a bad thing. I think otherwise.
You'll Microsoft and Apple are slowly tending towards very similar UIs, case in point being Aqua and Luna - they're really similar now. This is because both companies are spending millions of R&D dollars to find out what the best user interface is for their users, and, surprise-surprise, this doesn't differ across platforms.
That's why I see this trend in SO/OO as a good thing. It's tending towards a much more usable state now. Though, it still has to play catch-up with MS Office. In Office, even if I don't know how to do something, I can easily find out by clicking as few buttons or even some guesswork based on looking at icons/tooltips. SO/OO still has quite a ways to go before it reaches this kinda ease-of-use.
I just hope that people understand why these office apps are all tending towards a similar UI. It's not Microsoft's UI, or anyone elses for that matter, its just the one that works, and that's what's important.
Is a nice package, and it definetly runs better than OpenOffice/Star Office.
I guess I don't care if it is open or not, but free is great.
On the Windows side of the fence, software602 makes a nice, small, free office suite.
You have something above your lip.
OK, presumably they're talking about the wait-time for the damned thing to load. Has anyone actually gotten around to using it yet?
I wonder if everyone would be yucking it up and joking so much if this letter was sent to the FSF? I dislike MS as much as the next geek but making wise cracks about this is pretty low and tasteless. I wonder if you would mind telling that joke in front of the affected people's familes? If the thought of that makes you uncomfortable then you know you shouldn't say it in the first place. If it doesn't bother you then any words would be air better used elsewhere than talking to you...
-Pato
G. Washington on Government "it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
I made fun of a certain poster who's to stupid to spell `way of life' correctly. What have YOU done?
What was the reason for dropping mac support, does anyone know?
/. in a way).
I, for one was looking forward to Star/Open Office 6 for the mac. (drooling for it more like it).
It just seems a trifle silly, really, if you think about it.
Everyone that wants an alternative to Microsoft's Office products, but still need the compatability with it.
I'll concede that the Mac has a smaller market share, but, you gotta admit that it has a more "vocal minority" (kind of reminds me of
Add to the above thought, that, it is NO secret that Sun's CEO released S.O. free to tweak Microsoft's CEO's nose. (figurativly, of course).
So, If you see where I am coming from it does not make sense.
heck, I platform hop enough not only to keep up with the tech, but sometimes the politics of distros, tools and apps.
Look at the screenshots and tell me that this would not look good under aqua, and run under osX.1 really nice.
I suppose I understood a little in the 10.0.X days becuse a lot of developers and programmers were griping (rightfully so) about the APIs not being coherent and up to spec/snuff.
But now, seems silly.
Help me understand.
Moose.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
BS. you can select a JDK (not 1.3.1 per se) if you want but it'll run happily without one. It's just extra functionality.
Although it's not free, I use ApplixWare 5.0 as my main office suite. My experience with StarOffice is that it tries to be too much like M$ Office. I just want a simple, intuitive app. to do word processing, spreadsheeting, drawing, etc. Unfortunately I still haven't seen anything with perfect M$ Office compatibility, so once in a while I've still got to use a Windoze machine.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Wow! Open Office has a Marketing project too!
Even though open source projects don't try to make money, there is still a marketing function. Marketing is creating communication between the project and prospective users. Most projects ignore this requirement; some die as a result of not communicating.
Secrecy corrupts democracy: What should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
No reason not to shorten it into one command: a simple 'strings wordDoc.doc | less' will do it.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I was looking at the what still needs to be done page for Mac OS X One thing it talked about was getting the setup program to work. I have a simple solution for that, don't have the setup program on the Mac.
Mac users HATE installers, so what do you do instead? Well I download the file unstuff it. What is unstuffed is an OpenOffice folder with all the OpenOffice programs in it ready to go. It is in effect installed I can move that folder anywhere I want. Uninstalling? I just grab that folder and throw it in the trash can and empty trash. There it is uninstalled. I can do this with the Mac version of MS Office.
I am not a programmer but one thing I could do is create the OpenOffice interface on Mac OS X using the Apple's Interface Builder would this help the porting effort at all?
To everybody who thinks I'm an inconsiderate prick for making fun of the situation:
Fuck off.
The whole point of my joke is that the Cnet post makes it sound like Microsoft Office comes with Anthrax. I'm not laughing at the expense of the employees who have contracted it.
As for the number of moderations done to my post so far (13 as of this writing), that's just good shit. I'm glad I could piss off many people, and make others laugh at the same time.
Check out KDE's PIM suite. It's still feature development, but is really shaping up nicely (like much of KDE has been;)
did you read the installation manual (PDF)? Apparently not.
Page 9, installation types, network installation.
Considering how they're working to oppose Microsoft in platform (Java) and office suite (StarOffice/OpenOffice) dominance, it's just crazy that they don't support the only other currently viable desktop platform. They can't expect everyone to use Solaris, after having put next to no work into improving its usability (CDE? GNOME? uh, no, certainly not in their current state.).
Sun just fired Lee Ann Rucker, who worked for Sun at Apple on the OS X Java implementation, in particular the Aqua Look & Feel for Swing, and was doing an incredible job. Check out recent messages on Apple's java-dev mailing list for more. I'm still stunned - I hope Apple is able to hire Lee Ann directly.
Don't you hate it when you embarrass yourself and all someone can say is RTFM? I'm doing this from memory, so I might be wrong about a few details. You have to do a "network" installation: as root, execute the downloaded binary with -net option (...or was it \net) and put it, e.g., in /usr/local/staroffice. Then, as a user, run /usr/local/staroffice/soffice and it will do a user installation (it uses about a megabyte or so.)
Some friends and I compiled OpenOffice many months ago on a PII-450. As I recall, the actual compile time (not including the hours spent collecting required libraries, etc) was over 20 hours and required mad amounts of ram and disk.
That said, how is compile time with OpenOffice these days and with modern 1-2 GHz CPUs?
How often is it built?
heh, i dislike linux too... The screenshots on the website don't look to appetizing. I think i'll stick to my Microsoft Office, at least its visually appealing AND works. Why would you deviate from a standard product that uh, 90% of the world uses?
Elan Hasson
-----------------
Visit the Programmer's Resource at http://www.compiled.org
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
Sorry for being macho but....
:)
> yes, it prints, spellchecks and has online help.
...But it doesn't SUCK, so why do you think everybody is still all over MS Office?
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
"Spits up" might happen at the end of "sucks"?
Those of us who understand why .doc is not an appropriate format for data interchange are in the distinct minority. If we demand that others burden themselves with extra steps in order to communicate with us, we will be perceived as handicapped and possibly excluded from some discussions. Like it or not, .doc is dominant in the business world. To succeed in that world, we have to deal gracefully with .doc.
Another area where MS still has an advantage is support of more foreign languages.
StarOffice has taken a great step forward with Asian language support, but the small-medium markets (such as Hebrew, Portugese, Finnish, etc.) will still belong to MS until {Star,Open}Office supports these as well...
Ubi dubium ibi libertas: Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
You contact the authors at openoffice.org, report a bug and tell them that this behaviour is crap and that it should be corrected.
Bring it to their attention! I also reported some bugs to them and the Stardivision/Sun folks are nice and responsive.
There are two ways:
You don't have to be a programmer to contribute!
Moritz
"yes, it prints, spellchecks and has online help"
.docs, crashes and instability.
Yes, but it doesn't work. Formatting errors, major failures showing/printing imported
The MS file format thing *is* an issue if a SO user is trying to thrive in a MS office based organisation. That's me. We have template documents for MS Word and Excel for basic business functions. They use macros. They won't work with SO.
But we don't send Word documents out of the organisation, we convert them to PDF so they can't (easily) be changed. If the organisation were to have SO as its primary platform, then all the interchange of internal documents would be in SO. Dealing with MS Office would *only* be an issue for documents coming from outside. In this case they would need to have access to a few machines with MS word for the peripheral stuff, with the capability to change it to a more portable format before they proceed into the organisation. Hey presto, you've removed your vulnerability to Word macro viruses.
Sending documents outside your organisation in a format where the reader is also an editing tool strikes me as foolish. Yes, digital signatures are the proper answer, but even a PHB ought to understand that anything which doesn't need to be in a modifiable format needs to not be in a modifiable format.
Dunstan
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
I don't know why this reply got modded down, especially if there is some element of truth to it (seems like there is) even from an AC.
./configure, make, make install and dump a folder on the users desktop, sorta a unix/mac ease of use melding).
StarOffice actualy uses a proprietary widget system. This would need to be modified to provide Aqua look-n-feel, which is a load of additional work, or it would end up looking just like Windows.
I don't see this as being too much of a problem.
Did "we" or did "we" not just go thru this with Netscape 6? Using an Aqua "skin" (a no-no, IIRC) vs using the actual UI elements, calls and API's?
It seems like Apple would actually *help* if there were a similar incident...use the same tactic, make an aqua skin, get griped at and then accept an offer for help...help us help ourselves in a rather tactical way.
Unix users might forgive a Windows-clone interface, but Mac users would just refuse unless there was a gun to their head.
Humm, I see your point. However if the above "skin" implementation were tried, I/"we" might have to put up with it for a while, if at all.
The transition from os9's interface to aqua brought about griping, change, redesign or outright tossing of elements of all kinds.
(I *liked* the single window mode, kept the annoying popups out of sight and kept my occasional pr0n/risquee picture surfing hidden from view of kid/whoever was watching)
And, as I said before, I platform hop quite a lot, so, I would notice, but it would bother me less than most, IMO. Look at the Virtual PC users, for instance. As soon as VPC is out of beta for X, the best (and worst, mebbe) of 3 worlds will be there. (OS X/9 and win9X/2k/xp?).
There's also supposedly some huge issues with Apple's GCC compiler.
Ok, this I could see (always surprises with compilers that have had heavy mods/tweaks to run and interface well with the OS and apps).
But even the source code can be tweaked or the makefile. Take the ffmpeg.component (works great, BTW, picture is perfect...sound is off, tho... go to divx.jamby.net, have a peek. OS X.1 recommended). As I understand it the cc calls had to be replaced with the gcc calls...worked perfect after that. Agreed, it is an issue, but one that is easily taken care of (ok, I'm a unix geek, mac/pc/*nix user on a daily basis, so I am a bad example compared to the X neophyte... I'm sure there is a way to pass these things to the terminal to run a scrips of the
Appreciate the replys.
Thanks,
Moose
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
You know, i posted this BEFORE the KDE topic was posted..