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KOffice 1.1.1 Ships
Dre writes: "The KOffice team has announced the release of KOffice 1.1.1. It's mainly a performance, printing fixes (particularly in KWord) and stability release, but see the ChangeLog for the full scoop. Lots of binary packages are listed in the announcement this time. The dot
is suggesting this might be the last KOffice release before KDE 3.0, which is almost on track for a late-February stable release (the first beta is being released this week)."
It would be nice if KOffice and StarOffice and all the other free Office platforms had some standard document formats that were interoperable. Maybe if they got more popular, we would see something strange like the latest version of MicroSoft Office trumpeting "Compatible with StarOffice and KOffice" as their latest marketing bullet-point.
I sincerely hope that KOffice (and other alternatives) severely push MS-Office from being dominant...
Compatability with other Office Suites is #1 in my point of view.
Especially file format (and even bug) compatibility *sigh*.
I receive far too many documents in M$ Word format for work, and there is no choice but to use Word on Windows if I want to see it as the sender intended. When you're dealing with layouts of forms that have been printed and are in the field, you need to have the exact same form in front of your for data entry system design - and in many other fields it's exactly the same.
To replace Word and Excel you really need something that can handle 99% of all files from those applications, and a way to deal with the others that doesn't leave people who've stored a lot of things in those formats out in the cold.
You just draw frames where you want to have text and type in them (if you use frames, you can also use KWord without them like a normal word processor). You can connect frames so that text flows between them, and they are automatically extended to subsequent pages.
.PDF format. This is despite the fact that I have yet to find one single reason why .DOC would be a better choice than .PDF.
This is how any good page layout program does things; Quark Express, InDesign, FrameMaker. After using any decent layout application I find it an absolute chore to do anything besides memos in Word. It's really unfortunate that most people don't realize that there are vastly superior alternatives.
I always knew Word was bad at anything but the absolute basics, but it was made blatantly obvious to me when I did my my latest resume in InDesign. When it comes to layout, Word is quite possibly the worst program for the job, but only a handful of companies will accept my resume in
Oh well, that's nothing new. The world is full of frustrating inefficiencies because of the Microsoft monopoly.
- j
I would never work for a company that expected my resume in electronic format ONLY.
EVER.
Every job I have ever landed, has been landed with a professionally laid out resume, on high quality paper.
There are resume services that will take your resume, in electronic format, and then put it onto paper. I have received several complements from employers on my resume, and heard comments about how very rarely others take their resume as serious.
My resume is ALWAYS handed to the employer in a nice folder. The only goal with your resume is to differentiate you from the other applicants. If you were not qualified, you should have never even gotten inside the door.
Yes, I am talking about employment that requires pre-screening... not some job off of www.monster.com where you send your resume via their 'click here to apply' link, and pray for the best.
Those types of services are excellent for actually finding the job, but do NOT ever apply with that route.
Employers want people who are willing to go out of their way, take the extra step, etc... Remember that, and you will succeed.
I hope the 'resume futility count' guy actually reads this... Maybe the reason he hasn't been hired is that employers aren't impressed with a 'plain text format' resume.
Yours Truly,
David Fishinghawk
CCIE #1076
Boston, Mass.
So you paid for Windows and now you feel like they're all yours and nobody else's, eh? :-)
on my zoomin' fast 700mhz box crapped and I'm sitting here with a copy of windows 2k, xp, rh 7.1, caldera 2.3.. Interesting dilemma.
Well, I can tell you what I would do. But you already know what I would do. This is Slashdot, after all. Answer: Install Debian.
Seriously, I think you'd get a lot more out of RH 7.1 than 2K or XP. Why? I've used Linux as a desktop OS for years now, and I made the complete switch last May. I haven't been to Fry's once. So I've saved lots of money. My machine has been up continuously since then, BTW. And I play Tribes2 and RtCW quite a bit. (But I also use Star Office a lot). Now, I've had to ssh into it from another machine in my office to kill -9 a game or whatever, but I never reboot.
As far as the Caldera - RH argument, it's a matter of choice really. RH might be more "dynamic" maybe. It's certainly being updated more. Quite a few RPMs out there too. Go with what you know. Of course, real men use a Linux with apt-get, yada yada yada... (They make you say good things about Debian on /. regardless of the fact that it's all Linux and all good. :-)
(writing this on my 486 laptop running win95 WOOT!)
Ugh. Maybe Linux there as well? RH 5.0 runs fine on my P100 laptop. XMMS streams to the stereo. I tried WinAMP and Win95 on it and it wouldn't even run.
So... What should I go to? I got a better box for games, and I really don't like playing around with linux on a 200mhz 64mb ram machine with a 2 mb vid card.
Oddly enough, you have a machine which is almost perfect for Linux. It's not powerful enough to run the latest MS (or other) apps, yet you could run a minimal Linux install and get added life out of that box as a word processor. Since the box is old, there should be very little wrestling with drivers. As far as GUIs bringing you down, try Blackbox. It's very minimal (yet very full-featured) and should serve you well.
From those who have - how is koffice compared to the standard MS suite?
Well, I use Star Office 6 even at work now. Guy says he wants "powerpoint", I give him slides. Need to look at Excel sheets, I open scalc. As far as KOffice, I don't know. I've had more than once experience where KWord just quit on me. Vanished. No core file, no syslog error, nothing. Just gone. I save a lot when using either it or KWrite (which is worse; KWrite goes down more than a White House intern). I'm using older versions, sure, but I was not too impressed with the stability. Now Kate... wow. There's an editor. Sure, it's plain text, but it's a real good example of a stable app. At least in my experience these last few months. Does syntax highlighting fo0r Perl, C and SQL, too, so that's a big plus. Of course, I've turned in memos/meeting notes, whatever printed two-to-a-sheet with enscript or with line numbers before, so...
What about file compatibility problems (can I take stuff to school?)
You should be able to move files between home and school. Make sure to save in native format (Star Office will ask what format you want to save it in). I've exchanged Word 2000 docs with Star Office 6 and back again. Every once in a while I get a document that saves to like 8MB (when it should be like 400K). A resave helps sometimes.
I haven't been able to get simple Word or Excel macros running. I haven't tried, though. I don't want to run macros if I can help it.
Speed - how is star offices speed - I'm assuming x is a lot faster on this box than on the 200, but are there any issues?
Star Office 5 is about as fast as a wounded prawn. It will literally suck the life force out through your face. One should be paid to use it. The Star Office Beta 6, however, rocks. Worlds better. It has warts, sure, but it's beta. (Do you really think any software -- which had a ship date -- that came out of either Redmond or Mountain View had anything like the QA it should have had?) I've been using beta 6 since it came out and haven't noticed anything overly weird (except a deep-seated and possibly misguided reliance on Java). Me and a few other gus use it for work, so it's good enough I guess.
Any "major psycotic hatreds"?
Visio. I hate Visio. And sometimes I hate project managers, too.
Any comments / advice from people who have done the switch?
I've been using nothing but Linux for months now -- like I said -- and I wouldn't go back. Hell, I couldn't. Deal with XP and it's sugary GUI and nasty licensing/copy "protection"? Not a chance. Pay for Apple hardware? I'll save for my kids college funds instead and run Linux on older hardware. And why not? Linux runs great for me. I love being able to right-click on the desktop and get an xterm where I can write a shell script that goes into cron. Networking works, I have every compiler I'd ever want, a choice of GUIs, lots of customizing, I use ssh tunnels, scp is fine, samba keeps me and the wife in sync, games are fine and I just don't spend any more time or money on the upgrade mill. And BTW, check out Opera for Linux. I've paid for the Win32 and Linux versions of Opera. Everyone who's taken time to look at Opera has loved it, at least in my experience (which is predominantly IE users).
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Well, given the discussion about KWord's use of frames, I can't see that it will be that simple to import KWord into a non frame aware package.
Where things should be better is where there's a closer overlap in functionality between different packages. The first step - where we are now - is to have office packages working on *published* file formats. Following on, a degree of component sharing would make sense (as with the Gecko engine).
At this point the benefit of using free software kicks in with a vengeance, as interoperability issues are of interest to *both* parties rather than a cat and mouse game based around reverse engineering. Extending Bob Young's analogy, you would then find Ford helping BMW to transplant in their engine, rather than suing them for cutting through the welds which hold the bonnet (hood) shut.
Right now Microsoft's most valuable asset is probably the huge and growing base of documents in proprietary file formats, a pernicious form of enslavement. Our blow for freedom must be the use of open formats such as plain text and comma separated lists.
Dunstan
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
I used lyx, and found an existing isu.sty program. My time? Less than 10 minutes . . .
hawk