Slashdot Mirror
Crossover Office 2.0 Released
freakyfreak2 writes "Crossover Office 2.0.0 was just released. Finally can get Office XP apps to run. Here's from the announcement. "The changes in this release are as follows:
Support was added for Photoshop 7, Access 2000, Word XP, Excel XP, and
Powerpoint XP. glibc 2.3 issues were fixed. The setup GUI was
dramatically improved. Tablet support for Photoshop was added. File
locking and file change notification support were added. Scripts were
added so that the technically inclined can have Windows applications
open specific file types using Unix applications, for instance,
opening PDF fies with the Unix Acrobat Reader. Many other cleanups
and bug fixes were made. "
Here's the homepage and here's the change log. I'm still waiting on getting Dreamweaver MX to run."
You can install other things under CrossOver Office fairly easily, and a lot of them actually work, but in this case "support" is thorough testing and hacking the WINE codebase to make sure everything works with whatever the application is.
:-)
For instance, Photoshop 7 doesn't run under current versions of WINE, WineX, or CrossOver Office 1.2. I'm happy about this.
Not exactly. In principle, Wine is being used a general tool that can run Windows apps. In practice, there's little things that go wrong and keep say Publisher from running correctly. If Codeweavers has a lot of demand for Publisher to work, then they concentrate on fixes that allow that app to run. Fixes that allow that supported app to run will probably help out some other apps too. Of course, what fixes Publisher may well break something else...hopefully something that isn't too popular.
Basically, it's your second idea. They're claiming to have fixed up Wine so it will run particular apps. They make no claims about other apps that may or may not run.
There is a review here.
regular wine supports dreamweaver mx with some native windows dlls thrown in.
Havent tried it myself dont have mx but it worked fine with dreakweaver 4
http://www.frankscorner.org/dreamweavermx.html
theres the url for mx, frankly lot of apps work in generic wine with just some win32 dlls tossed in. The above parent url has a list of howto's for various apps.
Seriously, a stock wine install (03-2003 here) should work fine. In my case I'm using Office 2000 under FreeBSD. Yes, it even runs the installer fine (make sure it doesn't use built-in CAB extractor but the one on the O2k CD), you do NOT need any "native" Windows partition/system binaries/DLLs to get most functionality. Exceptions are OLE stuff for Word saving, which needs native DLLs, and Access/IE is pretty much broke (but Crossover before version 2 didn't officially support either anyway).
Ghostview doesn't work on all pdfs. Like, pdfs which are actually a big collection jpg files instead of text. Talk about annoying. xpdf handles them ok, though.
I strongly disagree. There were two big hurdles to getting VFP working. First was a mouse click bug. Duane Clark (IIRC, can't seem to reach the arcives) fixed that. The second was file locking. File locking is a BIG issue for any program that wants to be multi-user friendly (such as FoxPro or Access). Alexandre Julliard did that work, and is DIRECTLY related to Codeweavers being able to say they support MS Access.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
It may not be fully supported by Codeweavers [yet?], but you can already install and run Dreamweaver MX in earlier versions of Crossover Office/Wine.
You just need to add a simple script that gets over the "required resources" warning by moving the user into the same directory as the executable before running it.
At least, it works for me. I do database hookups, PHP coding, etc.
--- Man hands on misery to man....until http://www.samsource.com/
I love Dreamweaver 4. It is the best. I must admit, Dreamweaver MX is not an improvement; the idea was cool. "Hey, look, Homesite and Dreamweaver, all in one!!" I really like Homesite, since it was very much like Bluefish (hey, I use bluefish so...), but when they put it in Dreamweaver, I feel it wasn't as good as it could have been.
My experiences with dreamweaver have been nice (i.e. Tables...PHEW, so much easier than by hand!), I haven't had much experience with using other people's javascript, I tend to use my own... I think it depends a lot on who's using the app. It's nice because newbies can get the job done (OK sloppily, but at least they can do it!) and pros can get what they want with minimum hassle. I like being able to see what I'm coding at the same time. Just my personal preference.
I'm so happy they were able to do this with wine (Office XP that is). Whatever anyone says, MSoffice is still dominant for various reasons, and making it usable on any number of operating systems is as it should be. Now, we just gotta make sure MS doesn't take credit for making MSoffice work on unix operating systems.... =P
Well, I won't touch anything with the letters "XP" voluntarily, but if I might substitute Office 2000, then it's simply because, overall, it's better than OO *now*. No, this isn't a flame or a troll...simply the result of struggling and fighting with OO for months before deciding that it gave me more headaches than MS.
To disclose, I'm not a Stallman disciple - I would prefer an Open alternative, but really I'm going to use the best tool for the job. Right now (and yes, I'm obviously talking 1.0) OO isn't it. Open anything reasonably complicated (things embedded, complicated formatting, etc) and OO pukes. The UI is a joke, even compared to MS, and that's hard to do. Opening ASCII datafiles is a pain in the ass. It's way too bloated (easily rivals if not beats MSOffice), and actually too integrated for it's own good. I could go on...
Now, I would rather have Office running on linux than on a separate box (I can't dual boot my linux box, I use it as a server too). I tried xoveroffice 1.0, and found it to be exceptionally buggy. Things would occasionally hang, and worse, sometimes the hanging would necessitate a complete reinstall of xover. Not good! Then I tried vmware, and had some issues there too (it doesn't like slackware's startup scripts, so I had issues getting modules to restart on reboot).
So far, my solution is to avoid Offices of all kinds. I use Matlab for my data analysis, and I do as much in that as possible to avoid excel. I can do a lot in that, but I would like a decent spreadsheet too, and one that doesn't hang at inopportune times.
So, bottom line, 1) OO is a mess, and 2) I haven't found a great way to run MS Office on linux yet. So, at the office, we have a linux box, a mac(OSX), and a windows box. Between them, at least one does any job reasonably.
I've been using Dreamweaver since 2.0 and I dont understand why people think it' creates bloated code? It's HTML as simple as you can get. It's javascript is rather bloated but you dont have to use that at all. I write my own javascript and just use those snippets. MX is highly customizable and very powerful. I use it everyday for my job. I've yet to find something that can replace it. I do alot of hand coding in it too and I do know quite a bit.
Well, transvestites by strict definition simply like wearing clothing of the opposite sex. Individual transvestites come in all sexual orientations, including straight. Transsexuals, by contrast, have minds of the sex that differs from their bodies, though they too come in all sexual orientations. Transvestitism is more of a clothing and behavioral tendency while transexualism is more of a medical condition known as gender dysphoria that can be corrected by altering the body to become the opposite sex.
:-). (though, during the transition, it's a bit apparent for a year or so, at least with M-to-F).
:-).
Chances are that you already know people in your office who are transsexual even if you don't know that they are transsexual. After the transition, it's very difficult to tell the difference
It's naive to classify everyone as male versus female and gay versus straight. There's a lot in between, and it's likely that most people fall somewhere in the middle
ever tried xpdf ?
New things are always on the horizon
There is something that I cannot understand.
Doesn't Crossover Office use Wine?
Yes.
Isn't Wine GPL?
No. It's LGPL.
Then, how come Wine still struggles to run the same apps?
It does? Takes some work to get them installed, but it works pretty much the same as Crossover after that.
I should be able to download their source code, shouldn't I?
You can. At least the changes to wine. Here.
Can I do this? I'd like to use their improvements made to Wine, as stated in the GPL and run it for free.
After all, they have used a huge amount of code developed by people who wanted to make their code free.
Am I missing anything?
Yes. A clue. There are proprietary bits in Crossover. Ie, thier simple installer/configuration tool. It makes installation a snap and integration with your desktop just as easy.
It's a very useful product. If you need it, pay for it. There really is nothing wrong with paying for good software. I promise. The world will not hate you for it. Sure, some over zealous geeks might poke fun at you.
This is the reason F/OSS will never dominate MS. Too many think EVERYTHING must be free. As in free ride.
And it is not emulation -- it is an alternate API implentation. WINE on x86 requires no virtualization or emulation of machine instructions. WINE loads the EXEs directly into RAM and locates the various DLLs so that the machine can properly run the Windoze program. This is not emulation.
Karma whorin' since 1999
Interoperable, so long as you don't share the same documents that you edited back to those using MS Office.
I have yet to see OO do Viso or Lotus Notes, which I require to do my job. OO is coming along, but are still a long way from the brass ring.
Even if I could get every desktop in my company changed over to OO, we would spend more time fixing shit so our partners/customers/vendors could share data in a meaningful way.
Until then, I have happily forked out my $54 (and got my free upgrade to 2.0.0.) and can work with the documents for work, create my network/workflow diagrams and do email (and I hate Notes!). All from the comfort of my Linux system.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear to be bright. Until you hear them speak.