Slashdot Mirror
Special Edition Using Star Office 6.0
First, PC makers rarely have financial inducements to preinstall open source applications, especially when it eats into their upsell margins. Second, people have a misconception that documents produced in MS Office can only be read by MS Office (a fact which leads Richard Stallman to call for an end to all Microsoft Word attachments ). Third, subsidized prices and the wide availability of instructional material ensure that teachers use these commercial products for class and give assignments requiring them. Finally, consumers switching to an open source product need confidence that the open source application has equivalent functionality and adequate documentation to reduce the learning curve.
Fortunately, a first-class user guide on OpenOffice.org/StarOffice has been written, and that book is Michael Koch's Special Edition Using StarOffice 6.0. This book, actually a second edition, covers the new version and gives fuller treatment to StarOffice writer and the HTML editor. Despite the use of "StarOffice" in the title, this book actually covers both StarOffice and OpenOffice.org in depth.
An an aside, let me compliment Que editions for the legibility and usability of layout. (Que also produced the excellent Ed Bott's Special Edition Using Microsoft Office XP). Nice readable texts, lots of boxes, tips and cautions. Every chapter finishes with a helpful troubleshooting section.
Two immediate reactions: 1) Gosh, I didn't know OpenOffice/StarOffice could do all that! I was pleasantly surprised, for example, to learn the number of graphic capabilities the program has. 2) This book covers functionality in considerable depth, with enough content to satisfy the newbie as well as the advanced user. In addition to documenting the office software, the book also includes reference sections on StarOffice Basic, using data sources, building forms and macros. It also includes a chapter on Adabas, the database that comes as part of the StarOffice package (but not with OpenOffice.org).
Koch benefits from the fact that users already start with a good conceptual framework of what MS Office products are supposed to do. The biggest conceptual challenge in moving from MS Office to Star/OpenOffice is getting used to the idea of applying styles to text instead of just clicking on an icon for formatting. MS Office actually has terrific styling capabilities (and a usable interface for managing styles),but Microsoft's friendly GUI discourages users from thinking about document structure. Contrast that to OpenOffice.org, which nudges the user more firmly towards styles. Managing the different layers of styles in OpenOffice.org can be tricky and confusing, so Koch spends a considerable amount of time and space on that. Another chapter on sharing and exchanging information with MS Office users goes into exquisite detail about compatibility and formatting losses when converting documents, as well as the StarOffice XML file format.
Cordelia of Buffy the Vampire Slayer once said, "There are books about computers? Isn't that the point of computers, to replace books?" Perhaps I am just cheap, but when evaluating a user guide, I often ask whether the online help isn't good enough. Or whether newgroups/websites/forums are adequate. Or whether the user interface is intuitive or allows you to discover a solution by just playing around. Dozens of heavy thousand-page books clutter my apartment, leading me to wonder whether the convenience of a gigantic dead-tree reference guide outweighs the increase in clutter. Every time I move to another apartment, I keep lugging those gigantic SQL and C++ books I haven't consulted for years, but feel compelled to keep around. (Contrast that with the very portable and handy Oreilly's Linux Server Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools, (reviewed on Slashdot), which covers most sysadmin tasks AND can be stashed in a backpack without causing whiplash).
For the last two months (in which I used OpenOffice.org thoroughly), I performed a little experiment. Where was the best place to find answers to my OpenOffice.org questions? I tried consulting the online help, then the book, then the newsgroups and openoffice websites. Here are the results:
- Adding page numbers. The book had the best information, though what do you look under in the index? I eventually found it under "Numbers, Writer" (?!). Online help was useless. (The answer is to insert a footer and then insert a page number field in the footer).
- I just created a hyperlink in the HTML editor. But the underlined style is bleeding to the text after the link. How do I stop that? Neither the book nor online help provided the answer, although the newsgroup did after 24 hours. (The answer is to press the End key or to select Format >> Default)
- How do I create an HTML style with the stylist which specifies the background color of a table cell? (No answer from anywhere, although Koch admits that that the StarOffice HTML editor is "temperamental").
- While drawing a flowchart on the Draw program, how do I save the entire image as a jpeg and not just the highlighted part? (By grouping the components together, the book helpfully advises. The online help offers nothing).
- On a spreadsheet, what is the keyboard shortcut for bringing the cursor back to the left column? (Keyboard shortcuts are easy to find in the book. Couldn't find it in the online help).
Generally, the book had the most reliable and in-depth information. That was especially helpful when trying to perform a complex action (like creating a table of contents). But the majority of my inquiries had to do with using the interface, not functionality. Often the sheer size of the book made daunting the simple task of finding a function on a dialog or a keyboard shortcut.
That is the paradox of super-sized application manuals. Surely one doesn't read them from cover to cover. But after an application reaches a certain level of complexity, the software interface is no longer intuitive, and you pretty much need a book just to find things in the interface. As one who does technical writing, it may sound funny to say, but often my favorite thing about these super-size manuals are the screenshots. I can't tell you how many times I've browsed through a book and come across a dialog box I never knew existed. On the other hand, when application manuals reach a certain size, navigating through "book interfaces" becomes almost as difficult as navigating through the software interface or help system.
Online help is good when you know what you're looking for (i.e., when you have a specific search term to look for). Books are good when you don't know what you're looking for. With books, the reader can flip through pages in the general vicinity of a topic and randomly stumble upon the right information. Books allow the user to bypass the outlined hierarchy of online help and learn the appropriate terminology for describing the task (which then makes it easier to find things in the online help).
A recent visit to a technical bookstore and a large chain bookstores showed no books on the shelf for StarOffice, but dozens of books on Microsoft Office, That is too bad, because Using StarOffice 6.0 provides much-needed in-depth coverage on an application whose user base will grow as tight budgets cause companies and public sector agencies to examine open source alternatives.
* PDF conversion (as well as docbook and Flash) export are available on the OpenOffice.org 1.1 Beta 2 build.
Other OpenOffice.org Resources:
Kaaredyret has the best English language OpenOffice links page . ooodocs.org has a lively Forum for OO users. Or if you want, you can look at a PDF of the official Staroffice Documentation (400 pages)
ROBERT NAGLE (aka idiotprogrammer )is a technical writer, trainer who doesn't think that open source documentation sucks . He works for Texas Instruments in Houston, Texas. You can purchase the Special Edition Using StarOffice 6.0 from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
1. Get Star Office.
2. Open your old MS Office files, see they're all screwed up.
3. Finally get tired of the sllllloooooowwwwwww buggy office suite that makes it difficult to even put a stupid picture and resize it easily on a page, and go buy MS Office.
I've tried, I really have. Have since 5.x days, it still sucks.
I've been using exclusively OO.o for a number of months. I recently installed MS Office 2003 b2 and took it for a run, and while tight and very modern, it's full of many crazy features and the XML is writes is hopelessly unreadable.
Most people take open source apps for granted, but this is one app that is DEFINITELY worth your cash. Ifd you really want to be part of a free software community, buy StarOffice 6 from Sun.
one of these
I will say that in my experience StarOffice does mangle a good percentage of Word files...but the plain-jane files that high school students make are usually done just fine. I'm in the process of piloting about 25 machines with SO instead of Office. We'll see what the kids and teachers think...
From the post...Many educated people have still not heard of it. Why?...
I know it exists, I don't use it though. Several reasons:
(1) I use AmiPro (back, way back before it was bought out) and I am *comfortable* with it.
(2) Don't like the bloat
(3) If it ain't broke, don't switch.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
This has been going on for a decade now. Same with "Learn [xyz] in 21 days", "Teach yourself [abc] in 7 days", "The /Idiot/Dummy/s Guide To [abc]".
MS office is so prevalent because companies require shared calendaring; thus pretty much Outlook. Everything else comes with outlook, and is thus readily available for use.
No offense to the various free options; but they're just not there yet. At least not there enough to get people [who by nature resist change] to change.
I've been doing PDF conversion from Word without Acrobat for ages. Its very simple:
.prn by default, but rename it to .ps if you like.. its just postscript. Then run it through ps2pdf (available on cygwin, I believe), part of the Ghostscript package. Bingo, you have your brand-spankin new PDF.
Add a new printer that uses postscript, and have it use the "FILE:" port. That way whenever you print to it, it will print to a file in postscript. Windows will name it
Yes, it does lack some of the more advanced PDF features, such as clickable table of contents, or fill-in forms.. but it gets you a viewable PDF.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
I find the authors attitude towards people who don't use open source programs disgusting.
By now people hip to the open source concept use OpenOffice.org for everyday applications, yet MS Office is still the predominant application in the home and workplace.
I am hip to open source but I don't use open office. I don't like it.
Many educated people have still not heard of it. Why?" This is just the kind of thinking we need. WE ARE SMARTER THAT IS WHY WE USE SUPERIOR SOFTWARE. IF YOU DO NOT USE IT YOU ARE NOT SMART OR EDUCATED. Get a life buddy.
A dorky low-end database with a really quick learning curve and good reporting capabilities.
Yes, Access sucks horribly - but walk into any mid-size office and I bet you'll find at least one 'mission critical' Access database or (worse yet), applications written with a VB frontend and Access backend. IMHO, this is what's missing to make it really competitive.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
The main problem (from a print shop's perspective) with Word is that it is printer dependent. People compose a document, print it out on their inkjet and expect it to print out exactly the same on any other printer. (It almost never does.)
Is OO any better at this? Or does it mimic this "feature" for compatibility?
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
It's constantly trying to trick me into using its proprietary format! "Saving in external file formats will result in a loss of data. Would you like to save as Open office" Their format isn't compatible with any other word processor so it's a pain in the butt because sometimes I mess up and do save it as that, but I guess that's my own fault
NJ Local Music Scene
I read the GNU-site articles and the encourage PDF. What is the status of PDF? Is it open or is it just that everybody managed to invert the Adobe's work?
When StarOffice told me to find some files, install a newer compiler, then compile the program, they lost me. And I'm part of their target market, a CS major, working for a linux friendly company. I could have spent more time, but if they don't care to make it easier for me, I don't care to use their product.
Because education is not necessarily to do with computing. I know some highly educated people who would stare at me blankly if I showed them a regexp, for example. Why? Because it's not their domain of knowledge. They, in turn, could perform the same trick on me.
My then-girlfriend-now-wife put herself back through college a few years ago, to become a qualified dispensing optician. The first year I could keep up with her courswork easily without going to the classes - fairly simple algebra/geometry plus a bit of jargon learning to do. The second year, I had to study the books carefully to give her any help. The third year? Forget it, I was way out of my depth.
Being highly educated doesn't necessarily equate to being interested in computing.
Cheers,
Ian
I have had to educate some on why we don't take them anymore. Here's the mail I sent out:
As we use many different programs to layout, archive, and read files, we require file formats that do not depend on any one program.
Please send all documents saved as .RTF (rich text format). This is an open standard, and one that all word processors can read. It also saves to a smaller file size, and is better for archiving as it contains no proprietary code.
In MS Word, Your .DOC files can be saved as .RTF as follows.
1. Open your document
2. Go to the 'File' menu
3. Select 'Save As'
4. In the dialog box, type a new name for your document if desired, then in the 'Save As Type' drop down menu, choose '.RTF Rich Text Format'.
5. Click 'Save'
6. You're done!
You may also click the 'Options' button in the 'Save As' dialog box and choose '.RTF Rich Text Format' for the drop down menu "Save Word files as". This reminds you to save them as .RTF files.
In other word processors and page layout programs, you may be able to 'Export' your open file as .RTF.
So far, no complaints. I hold the cards in this situation (do it this way or no publishing), and the computer stuff is completely up to me, so YMMV.
It does feel good to kill the .doc files one by one, and if my explanation has a little FUD in it, oh well.
I learned alot from MS.
Ummm...my guess is that most individual Office users are using it in the office. That means the boss paid for it and the PC it lives on. Most folks won't be incentivized to switch from one piece of "free" software to something else that mimics it.
If the boss intends to upgrade existing software, that's a window to preach about OOo. Best shot, though, is try to introduce it to people launching a new operation and staffing up, with no investment in legacy software.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
There's no such thing as a stupid question, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.
OpenOffice has basically no visibility. If you don't read one of a few technical websites, where the hell are you going to hear about it? Educated people don't necessarily read NewsForge, and they aren't going to see advertising for OpenOffice in Time or whatever they are reading. Word of mouth works, but it is slow to start.
When OpenOffice comes preloaded on the PC Aunt Bettie and Uncle Lou buys from Dell (educated people buy from Dell, you know), or it gets advertising during Friends, then people will hear of it.
As to why people who have heard it aren't using it... Well, sorry, but it does -not- read all MS Office docs correctly. I blame OOo for that no more than I blame Mozilla for not supporting ActiveX, but it's still true. As long as people are still sending MSOffice files around and expecting you to be able to read them and/or modify them, then Open Office is going to have a big hurdle to overcome.
The enemies of Democracy are
We used OOo to write a 1,000+ page software documentation. It worked very well, except for a few bugs that caused crashes or being unable to edit tables at the tops of pages. But that was in the 1.0.1 days. I think these bugs are fixed now. The thing was, when we tried to convert it to Word it went to total, unreadable shit. In fact, every time I have tried to save anything but the most trivial OOo doc in word format, it has failed horribly. It made files that hung Word upon opening. So, in our experience, OOo is great as long as you never have to share your documents with someone using MS office.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I'll start by saying that MS Office is just plain easier to use than anything anyone else has to offer, IMHO.
But that's not to say that it has to be that way. The majority of today's workforce wasn't raised on computer technology. We shouldn't rush to overthrow the tried-and-true in today's corporate market. Open source, Linux, etc., should be implemented in the schools. Today's students will grow up having the means with which to understand the open-sorce movement and perhaps grow it to be a true option in their workforce of tomorrow.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -Douglas Adams, THHGTTG
On Mac OS X, you just print and select "Save as PDF..." in any application-- after OS X changed from Display PostScript (the original Mac OS X Server) to PDF (Mac OS X 1.0) for graphics, PDF conversion became quite easy.
I don't know what the status of OpenOffice is right now, but for those looking at StarOffice, I say wait!
6.1 is in its second beta refresh, which from Sun generally means that the next release will be final.
6.1 has two features that make it VASTLY better than 6.0: antialiased fonts (no more disappearing text in a window!!!) and substantial speed/performance gains. There are, of course tons of other features--much better MS office support, export to PDF, etc. etc.
6.0 has been my office package for the last year or so, out of necessity. 6.1 will be my package out of choice.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Seriously, has anyone actually kept count of how many office alternatives are available to the unix world.
I think I tried openoffice and corel word and a couple other alternatives myself. I need 1 solution that's monopolistically better than anything else on the plaform. Not 10 solutions that are the same.
Regardless of what anyone thinks of StarOffice (or cousin OpenOffice), having a "Using" series book about it is almost like free advertising. The series has sold umpteen million copies (I own about 65 "Using" volumes myself) and is just about guaranteed to be on major bookstore shelves as well as at office supply stores and some warehouse clubs. So a lot of people will see the book who didn't know SO existed, or hadn't paid it any attention.
And as always, choice is good, and more useful when you're aware of your choices.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
... when they build in the "reveal codes" feature that WordPerfect has. I think that the market share that WordPerfect lost to Word is one of the greatest tragedies of the computer world; WP is a far superior product, and the "reveal codes" feature is a big reason why. And it looks like OO.o has a sub-project going to build in this ability, although the link to give more information on its status seemed to be broken so I can't say how far along it is.
This post is dedicated to all of those
This article nicely summed up a talking point:
"Did you know that Open Office can convert word files to PDF for free?" is a great one.
Another would be:
"Did you know that that program Mozilla gets rid of pop up ads?", or;
"Did you know that Google, the largest search engine, uses that open source Linux?"
The more these are posted and said, the more managers and decision makers will notice. They are simple and memorable (and as Microsoft has noticed, they don't even have to be true.) For good fun, use Microsoft's techniques against them.
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
PC manufacturers are leaving cash on the table by not offering OpenOffice as an alternative office suite.
Regardless of its zero-cost to the manufacturer, any PC maker could easily include an 'installation fee' to add a small - but significant - margin to the MSRP of their product. FWIW, a PC manufacturer who installed OO and charged a small fee (which would still be much less expensive than office suites by Corel, MS, etc) could theoretically make better margins on the open-source office than their proprietary counterparts. They would also be able to offer an even more cost-effective PC solution for their clientele. I can see Dell jumping on this in a heartbeat.
Plus, if the PC maker is really savvy, they could also sell support contracts for OO, thus increasing their revenue even more.
I was interested to read this article as I thought I would have a quick browse of Slashdot while taking a break from writing a huge system design document, which for the first time I am attemption to do in Open Office on Linux rather than Microsoft office. My observations are as follows;
The different components have different strengths. I rate Star / Open Office Writer very highly, it does allow you to structure documents well and it's support for tables is excellent, one of the few areas where it betters Microsoft office.
The Excel replacement I don't think is nearly as mature. I generally use it to open other peoples Excel docuemnts on my Linux box and for this it works very well. However, when it comes to usability features for display, such as ease of splitting into panes, adding autosort or even easily hiding rows or columns it doesn't compare. All the advanced features, such as pivot tables, work much better in Excel.
Presenter and Draw are a mixed bag. I find Presenter now opens most powerpoint documents well enough to read on LInux but authoring is a different story. I tried to use draw this morning to produce a simple flowchart and it simply wasn't very intuative, doing tasks which are simple in Powerpoint such as adding text inside a shape wern't easy. Powerpoint (and all of MS office, for that matter) is very good at presenting the correct context sensative menu options when you right click on something, Star Office has some way to go in this regard.
However, my biggest problem with Star Office on Linux is font support. It simply dosen't seem to interface nicely with the other fonts installed on my Linux box, and reading all the documentation and newsgroups has helped, but it is still a chore. This is particularly apparent when converting Word or Powerpoint documents, quite frequently it will replace fairly common characters like full stops (periods) or quotes with a question mark, often making the supplied document unreadable. I find it strange that some very sophisticated conversion filters for graphics and embedded objects work well but these fail, if anyone could tell me if the book addresses these issues I would be interested to know. I have always found saving OO documents to Microsoft formats to work well.
So, in summary I am going to use OO on Linux as my primary document editor, which just leaves Windows for the occasional Powerpoint, and this book seems like a useful purchase to help with this.
Outside of the fact thats it's free, OO is nowhere near ready for use in a business setting. Anything more than a simple letter gets screwed up in the word processor, and the WP is the most advanced part of 00. If you have anything embedded in an MS document, you can almost say goodbye upon opening it. When you have a busines, you don't have the option of telling clients "Hey, could you resend that in Word 2.0 format, my word processor is incompatible with any version of Word put out in the last decade." That's just not an option. Hey, I hate MS as much as most of you, but I wouldn't shoot my business in the foot or lose my job over my zealotry, right or wrong.
And don't even think about defending the spreadsheet. It might be OK for balancing your checkbook, but don't try graphing, as it's horrible. Also, even moderately advanced spreadsheet functions (that I use very often) are missing from MS Office. As for compatibility, graphs often lose their axes among other problems.
The presentation software has similar problems - font issues (admittedly, much of the font problems were in Linux, so it's hard to isolate), images getting trahsed, other embedded stuff getting completely lost, etc.
Bottom line is OpenOffice is NOT READY for a business setting. I tried like hell, I really did. It's klunky, it's bloated, slow as hell, and the UI is an absolute joke, and how sad is that considering their competition in the matter is frigging MICROSOFT!
There are other options if your goal is running an office suite under linux (obviously these don't help you if you're trying to avoid MS): codeweavers crossover is a little buggy, but if they've made it more stable since I gave up on it, well, it's better than OO and has no compatibility problems. I would suggest VMware - you'll need a lot of RAM to run it well, but that's cheap, and it's pretty much rock-solid.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
> It also saves to a smaller file size
.doc than as an MS Word-saved .rtf. Go figure.
Not always. My resume, for example, is much smaller as an actual MS Word
Isn't it bad enough that most of MS Office's defects have been faithfully reproduced already? Must we expose innocent people to Access, too?
What did they ever do to you to deserve that?
--Richard
I discard Office attachments. If they're supposed to contain something important, I use strings and read what it is. If they're supposed to contain something really important, I ask somebody else to print off a copy for me. I then politely remind the sender that I don't have a copy of Office on my computer.
Gradually, I have learned that if it's actually important stuff, people will send it to you in some usable format. If they can't be bothered to do that, then it can't be that important.
Try this sometime. You might be surprised.
Has anyone tried exporting documents with bullet points to .doc yet?
Viewing it under word, you would find that the bullet points are plain wrong, sometimes it has embedded numbers in the bullet points.
This is one of those problems that makes it a no-no while exchanging documents with your customers(who use MS Office).
Special Edition Learn to Teach Yourself to Be a Dumb Idiot in 21 Days, The Definitive Guide
I recently provided a service to my clients using the 1.1 OpenOffice Beta and the SDK. They have a custom php/mysql document management system, and I automatically index all doc,xls,ppt, and pdf files for them. This way, they can search through the contents of their "attachments" quite easily.
The way it works is that OpenOffice can run as a server and listen on a port. There are many examples of document conversion given in the SDK, so that you can essentially use OpenOffice as a Web Services platform. When the document is added into their document management system, I run an external process that converts the documents to pdf, then to text, and then imports them into the MySQL database.
It's pretty darn sweet! The conversion works incredibly well for the purposes of getting the text content out of the various formats.
As a side note, I've been using it for my personal use for quite a while. The filters are absolutely outstanding for working with and using Microsoft file formats. I have incredibly complex documents, and it opens them quite well. The PDF conversion is excellent and is really nice to have. Check out the 1.1 Beta, as it's been really stable in my experience.
it doesn't work.
I put it on the new computer I built a year ago and my wife discovered that about half her resume formatting tricks were unavailable.
Nobody will install this on their buisness computers(and probably shouldn't) until anyone out there in the world can send them a file written in the prevailing standard and have it work on their computer.
> Here's something that can convert your Word files to PDF ... for free!
:)
Here's a file format that can bloat your Word files to enormous sizes! And make viewing them very slow! For free!
RTF is much better for the vast majority of users. Plus the Acrobat reader does NOT deal well when used as a browser plug-in - it hangs very often on every machine I've tried it on over the last several years. Works much better run outside of the browser, though, plus the latest version 6 is much, much snappier when scrolling through said PDF files. YMMV.
People compose a document, print it out on their inkjet and expect it to print out exactly the same on any other printer. (It almost never does.)
PDF is not printer dependent as long as your printer has the correct size paper (usually A4 or US Letter) loaded. Recent betas of OpenOffice.org Writer can export to PDF.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Does anyone know of any feature that SO has that OO.org doesn't that would make it worth the 60 or 70 bucks?
Here's something that can convert your Word files to PDF...
Wouldn't you want to convert them to an editable format (like whatever OpenOffice uses)? Then export PDFs...
John Kerry is a Joke!
I tried Open Office a few times, but all I do personally can be done in plain old ASCII (UltraEdit!).
.DOC import filters screw up too much, rendering Open Office unusable. :(
I did look into Open Office for my workplace where long manuals are written in MS Word, but the
And get this, I was applying for a job as a 'LINUX software engineer' and I was told my resume in plain text looked too ugly, if I wanted to redo it in Word because it looked better! *gagh*
In short, Word is going to stay for now... *sniff*
Each release, one or two new killer features that people actually want, and over the years we will see an application that has a reputation as a killer, not just a clone.
I predict that in 3 years time, MS will be playing catch-up with Mozilla and OOo, finding that OSS is not just an interesting development methodology, but more vitally, a much faster tool for market research. I predict that in 10 years' time, MS will finally produce the villain who designed the Paper Clip, and we can dance on his head.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Next time you see a PT Cruiser driving down the road- check to see if is not a Special Edition. I'd guess 1 out of every 40 or 50 I see is not Special Edition. It is a standing joke in my family that non-Special Edition PT Cruisers are very rare.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I've set up pdf printers for my users using redmon and ghostscript - with a little configuration it works great & all they see is a save as box.
From the redmon directions:
PostScript written to a RedMon port can be converted to a PDF file using Ghostscript.
Install a printer driver for a colour PostScript printer, e.g. Apple Color LaserWriter 12/600. If you select a black and white printer such as Apple LaserWriter II NT you will end up with your colour images becoming greyscale.
To use RedMon and Ghostscript to create a PDF writer, you need to use the Ghostscript device pdfwrite. c:\aladdin\pdfwrite.rsp would contain:
-Ic:\aladdin\gs6.0\lib;c:\aladdin\fonts
-sDEVICE=pdfwrite
-r300
-dNOPAUSE
-dSAFER
-sPAPERSIZE=a4
The Ghostscript command would be
c:\aladdin\gs6.01\bin\gswin32c.exe
and the arguments
@c:\aladdin\pdfwrite.rsp -sOutputFile="%1" -c save pop -f -
Make sure you include the space and dash at the end of the line. Failure to do this could result in Ghostscript stalling the print queue. Output should be set to
Prompt for filename
All other settings should be the same as the previous examples.
You may wish to rename the printer from Apple Color LaserWriter 12/600 to Ghostscript PDF writer.
Once they get used to typing doc.pdf instead of just doc in the save as box you're done.
If you really, really want to mimic WP's "reveal codes", write in HTML.
;)
Both OoO and MS-Word can write in HTML, and include viewers for said HTML. Or, you could use Mozilla Composer, Dreamweaver, VI, etc.
As an added bonus, you won't have the headaches that WP has that make Reveal Codes necessary.
I've been using StarOffice and OpenOfficee for about 2 years and I've had serious problems with OpenOffice since 1.0, the most troublesome being frequent unexplained crashes. Regardless of this, I have continued to use it because I know I can open files in both Windows and Linux without losing formatting and I've got all the same features across platforms.
I like Abiword for the same reason, but OpenOffice is a full suite. Incidentally, most of the problems I've been having are fixed since I started using the OpenOffice1.1 beta.
OpenOffice has a lot of the nice office suite features, and of course it's free! I've had several friends use OpenOffice with reasonable success; but most of them don't see much benefit since they just use copied versions of MS Office... sigh.
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
So: does anyone know if it's possible to replace Excel for this function?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
or let you install your own icon set.
the default cross platform set is horid.
can't they make them look better?
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
".RTF (rich text format)...also saves to a smaller file size,..." .doc files are much smaller (50%) than .rtf files. Ok, your milage may vary, but by so much?
I hate to admit it, but my experience has been that
to err is human, to forgive is divine, to forget is... umm...
Two words: Microsoft Outlook.
OK, sure, I know you can use Evolution with the exchange connector, but that's not part of Open Office, and you have to pay $60.00 for the connector. I buy open license copies of MS office for that much; there is no additional (user) learning curve, and it comes with outlook.
Give me a free, open source equivalent and i'll take a look, but for now we've got to stick with MS Office.
-ted
I'm getting tired of books pimping themselves as "Special Edition". This has been going on for a decade now.
I feel a conspiracy theory coming up.
Letâ(TM)s call them the âoespecial editionâ people.
I haven't used Office 2003, I will admit, so what are all these crazy features? Not being familiar with it, I'm not sure what you mean. As for XML...yeah, people had this idea that all these companies that previously used proprietary file formats now will make them clear...yeah, right. ;)
Most people take open source apps for granted, but this is one app that is DEFINITELY worth your cash. Ifd you really want to be part of a free software community, buy StarOffice 6 from Sun.
I think this is the clearest statement here. Buy Star/Openoffice if you want to be part of the free sofware community. This is true, and that needs to be your biggest criterion if you choose OO. I'm not trying to flame here, but if your priority is getting things to work in a heterogeneous setting where you can't make everyone use OO, then it's not a reasonable choice.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
OpenOffice is coming along, but it still has that "designed by programmers" look and feel. You know what I mean - inconsistent interfaces, unclear icons, unexpected limitations. It, like all too much open source software, needs heavy input from people like Tog Togganni and Susan Kare.
The way to test something like OpenOffice is well understood. You set up a quiet room with a computer and two video recorders, one to record the user and the other to record the screen. Then you invite a spectrum of people in and give them a task, like "write a business letter, including the data from this spreadsheet, and print it". Then you watch the videos and log every place they got stuck, had to back up, or couldn't accomplish the task. Then you redesign the interface and repeat until most users succeed easily at a wide variety of tasks.
This process finds usability defects. They are real defects, and must be fixed. It is not a matter of what the developers happen to like. You must test on the user population. You must fix interface defects based on that testing. Or you don't get any market share.
Microsoft Word has been through that process. OpenOffice has not. This is a problem.
Using Open Office as a WYSIWIG Docbook Editor would be a very cool thing. Unfortunately when I wrote this review, I didn't have time to try it out. Has anyone else tried?
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
and all our internal stuff runs on MS SQL 7 (Yeah, I know. If we're going to use MS we should use 2000, but it's a pain to switch everything over and the stuff we are doing doesn't require the additional features). The only time we use Access is on projects where the client only has Access to work with.
Technoli
There's another book, by Solveig Haugland and Floyd Jones called _StarOffice 6.0 Office Suite Companion_. It's on Sun Press. Reviews and comments can be found at amazon
... for an end to MS Word attachments;
It's due to the fact that the format is proprietary, and MS can change it whenever they like.
When I am working at home, Open and StarOffice work just fine for my needs. The problem is when I'm at the office I simply cannot use it. I can get a document from somebody and I'm able to read it is never formatted quite the same. So though I can read the document, there's no way I can then edit and return the document in something resembling its original format.
So, until this problem is resolved I have no choice but to use Office.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Kexi is the tool you are looking for then.
There are also some cool screenshots.
Artaxerxes
If your work environment is completely closed off from the rest of the world, in terms of document exchange, then OO is a great pick. But otherwise even a very small glitch in reading or creating Word files quickly turns into an immense problem in an Office-dominated world.
For people that have not used word perfect you don't know what your missing. This is an invaluable feature, and something that was standard and necessary when word processor's were not gui based. I remember back with c64 word processor's like paperclip and Compute's Gazette free open source word processor.
Anyways, once word processor's went gui, they drove me nuts, except for word perfect. This is a feature that would win over a lot of people.
Yeah, MS released a version of Word that saved RTF by default (97SP1, I think), and the file server admins were so pissed about the increased filesize they were about to storm Redmond. In some cases the files were 5-10x larger.
howdy all, we use this here at work... works very nicely... http://www.rrust.com/linuxpdfserver_howto.html
I work for a very large multinational retail organisation. (There are in excess of 10,000 MS Office licences in use.)
:-)
*ANY* FOSS software is banned (even JBoss and Eclipse - which is why we have to use 1GB P4 3GHz workstations to run WSAD!).
I have used OOo Writer almost exclusively for one year and have only found problems with forms.
Other than that - I've had great fun fixing the CEO's Word 2000 documents that Word (2000 or 97) just refuses to open: just open it in Writer and "Save As" Word format.
Now tell me why my company pays the MS licence/support/tax ?!
Most companies do *NOT* make complex documents in Word because it is far too unreliable and requires too much technical knowledge to edit when there is a distribution list.
Just my bitter/twisted/biased *EXPERIENCE* in a real working environment.
BTW: I've even seen people take documents and claim that they wrote them - the proof of their political shenaningans is the document properties
Cheers
I had been tasked with trying out OpenOffice and to invisibly infect(introduce) other users to it.
;)
Here's what I found.
OO Spreadsheets often because corrupted being opened on Excel (VERY BIG DEAL), Autofilter's werent' up to speed on real world datacrunching, Speed SUCKED on every day tasks (launching saving and just general workability since the average user opens Word or Excel at least 10 times a day), and Our Sales Quotes to customers which needed to look their best, looked like shit when opened by their versions of Word (verified by nice pics sent back to us)
Yes I stress tested and used things which probably have no right being in OO, but I've been searching for a true MS co-Alternative, not a Office Suite Replacement based on "propriatery Open source" (as seen by MS-centric users)
In summary, OO is great and ready for the casual user, but no where near ready to be interchangable in the corporate office with MSoffice.
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
Like it or not, it's quite correct.
I've really had no problems with slowness when using files I've created 100% natively.
As far as documents being screwed up, the only consistend problem I've seen are some stylesheet issues and bullets, sometimes an occasional font issue.
Other than that - Saving $400 and being able to use native versions on Windows & Linux makes Open Office worth every single penny I didn't pay.
Damn ignoramuses. You just cannot get proper education nowdays.
I would gladly use OO if Excel macros worked. I have a worksheet from work that I use that has macros. Until then, Crossover Office takes care of me.
It's not technical - it's just my experiences. For some reason, developers think that VB front ends magically make the Access DB perform better in multi-user environments - and then each one implements some kludged 'solution' to db corruption when the app invariably crashes.
As an erstwhile tech support person, it's been my experience that pure Access solutions tend to stand up to multi-user better than VB front ends.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
IE is what I usually use, so it's IE I've been having problems with Acrobat Reader with. Which one is to blame is left as an exercise to the reader, as I surely don't know. It hardly matters - I can't friggin' _stand_ .PDF files. About 99% of the ones I've run into on the Web would've been much better off being in HTML.
In case you didn't know about it, there is also PDF995 for windows that sets it up so that anything can be printed to PDF and it's only nagware until you register it and it's only like 10 bucks to register it.
Just so you know.
See how well educational discounts worked for them to overthrow entrenched MS servers and workstations? :)
The company i work for is contracted to deploy computers for schools, and i've deployed about 1500 computers with openoffice.org in the last year or so. Everyone involved (especially the superintendant of the most recent school) seemed thrilled at the idea. I hate to say it, but this really is a matter of exposure, and its up to US to create awareness of opensource software in the non-technical community.
On a different note, i've been including openoffice and the gimp in the images i use, is there any other software that might be fitting in the k-12 environment that im not aware of?
"...Microsoft's friendly GUI discourages users from thinking about document structure. Contrast that to OpenOffice.org, which nudges the user more firmly towards styles. "
Aaagh! What you mean is, Microsoft have spent
years discovering what normal users actually
want and understand, whereas OO is only usable
by computer scientists. Ever tried explaining
nested styles to a 6-year old?
I tried using StarOffice 6.0 last year,
and pushed it enthusiastically as several others.
But, the Word import/export has to be flawless
in order to survive in normal everyday use.
The simplest documents will screw up badly.
Sorry, it just doesn't make the grade yet.
The User Interface design also has a few years
to go - see above.
--William.
By now people hip to the open source concept use OpenOffice.org for everyday applications, yet MS Office is still the predominant application in the home and workplace. Many educated people have still not heard of it. Why?" Because Open Source users are a subset of Educated People, not the other way around.
I couldn't believe they wanted you to install it into your home directory rather than as a multi-user app, on a Unix-like system! Hell mine is NFS mounted (isn't everybody's?) so that would be slower. Well, you can put it in /usr/local/OpenOffice if you like, but only if you MAKE THE WHOLE THING WORLD WRITEABLE for chrissakes, so that it at runtime can write user-specific config stuff THERE, rather than in the user's home directory where it belongs. Then it ate up a lot of RAM, just to start up, and ran like molasses in January. One headhunter I worked with insisted on having my resume in Word format, so I converted it from HTML to DOC using OpenOffice, and he said it was terrible. I checked later on a Windows system, and sure enough, text running vertically up the side of the page, misaligned stuff all over, and all kinds of crap that didn't show up when I was editing it. What an embarrassment. I had better results with Ted, despite its somewhat limited feature set. But Ted's table editing is quite good.
People were raving about how wonderful OpenOffice was back then, too.
Now of course, coming up with a universal XML schema or DTD for WP documents is a really good idea. Maybe after everybody adopts it, the interoperability problems will be solved. But going from shitty bloatware to a lean, mean editing machine is probably more trouble than just starting over. I really do hope they prove me wrong.
It's klunky, it's bloated, slow as hell, and the UI is an absolute joke, ...
< joke>Sounds as if OO is ready for business use. It's got MSOffice's essential characteristics.</joke>
When you say ``...It's klunky, it's bloated, slow as hell, and the UI is an absolute joke ... '' do you mean: ``It's different from MSOffice.''? If your mission in life is to run MSOffice, then you will be happiest running Windows and MSOffice. If your mission is to work with data, and produce structured documents, you shouldn't be using an office suite at all.
See what I've been reading.
Yes! View Codes was the best feature throughout all of the iterations of WordPerfect that I used.
When I found a copy of WP9 for Windows, I was excited beyond words and picked up a copy right away. I installed it, and was deeply disappointed in its implementation; it crashed far too often and many features just didn't work. I know that there is a newer version of WINE than I had before, and perhaps that would help; however, I was so disappointed with WP9 for Linux that I haven't bothered trying.
But "View Codes" is a feature that I really miss. I wish the OOo folks would fit it in.
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
I think this all of the other detriments noted in the comments are to be expected when comparing a product that's been in development for near 20 years against a project that became open source only a few years ago. If you're evaluating OpenOffice.org as a replacement for Microsoft Office on Win32, chances are it will fail. It's much more then simply a Win32 Office replacement. For example, OOo has:
Is OOo ready to replace MS Office? No. For certain users, however, it provides options that simply didn't exist before OOo, and options that Microsoft will probably never provide. Complaints about OOo are fine and dandy, but don't overlook the strengths that it provides today and the options that it's given to thousands of users Microsoft has no intention of supporting.
I teach programming and put my grades online. To do this, I need to hide the student's name. I had been posting the grades in an Excel generated html page but found that the hidden columns were still in the HTML!!!! What the hell is up with that? So, OpenOffice.org to the rescue. The Calc program not only converted everything from Office, but the HTML is CLEAN and NO hidden data slips into it. I'm sold on Calc, now if we can just get those guys to go over and work on Writer!
Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.
Don't open and close your applications all day. If you're really opening Word ten times a day, why are you closing it to begin with?
I use OO at work all day, every day, and I leave it up all day, every day. Sure, it takes a while to start, but that's only once a day.
Try it!
Oo.o by itself works reasonably decently, but it does have a nasty habit of losing embedded images. I work around this problem by linking them.
I have to type a lot of equations, and OoMath mostly works, although it is quite unintuitive. It also have quite a few annoying bugs (or misconfiguration? but I have tried hard enough.) like bad square roots.
Importing Word files (like certain standards) also mostly works, yet some defaults (like text grid) are set wrongly, so I have to fix them before some documents will look right. Also some Mathtype equations are not converted correctly.
Oo.o is also a big monster for my P2/233 with 128MB of memory. It takes one minute or so to start, and loading/saving are slow, which means I can barely auto-save, which is bad.
Anyway, writing in Oo.o isn't that bad. It is buggy, but most bugs can be worked around, and Word has many bugs (or annoying things) too. It is when exporting the files as Word ones that caused major pain.
I chose to convert the equations to MathType so that I can edit them in Word, and after opening the files in Word for win98 system resources started to drain like mad and it is just impossible to do anything serious. Normal DOC files opens okay, so it must be that the DOC files generated by Oo.o are strange enough to crash Word. Then I tried to open the resulting files on the schools' WinXP machines. Of course no more resource problems, but MathType still crashes often, so the files ARE probably problematic. Although it is in some way MS's fault too for giving strange behavior on strange input.
So I turned off Oomath->mathtype conversion. The resulting files still cause resource drains on win98, but open okay on Word for WinXP. Yet the math symbols become low-resolution bitmaps that look just too nasty. Frustrated, I replaced all OoMath stuff with Mathtype. Cost me two hours for 14 pages full of equations.
After this the remaining problems are mostly minor. One is that OoDraw doesn't get the line widths right if it is the default 0.01cm, when exporting as either EPS or WMF. 0.02cm lines are right, but 0.01cm lines just became 0.001cm ones in the EPS files. So I just made the lines 0.02cm and hacked the resulting EPS files. Another problem is some table cells become very large in Word, and I don't know why, so I just fixed that with Table->Text->Table. Finally some italic text (used as poor man's equation) becomes regular.
Last but not least, Oo.o occasionally becomes very unresponsive on Linux. Even after patching out sched_yield with a LD_PRELOAD library. It looks like some other problem.
The morals for this story: if you want to do your term papers on linux, it is a much safer bet using LaTeX. Openoffice mostly works, but expect some nasty things for now, especially for Word compatibility. Of course I hope developers will see this story too, although I have reported most of these problems as bugs. Alas, the problem of exporting Word-crashing DOC files seems to be pretty hard to debug...
As for why I have to use a beta version... Anything 1.0.x doesn't support Chinese decently.
" Some tasks have evolved over the years using these tools to the point where if we wanted to get these users 'off' access and excel, we're not quite sure how to do it."
It comes with the office suite of application, then you get somebody who creates a 'small' application in it that becomes mission criticle.
Then you have n=more people trying to use it, you start getting corrupt data, and the only way to fix it is to put it into a more robust database, but that porting the data, which sounds simple, but then you probably have to change the schema.
And if the used the Access front end, you will need to create a new interface.
If that hammer casue the carpenter to be 10 time more productive when it was used, would he use it? you bet. Why do you think carpenters use nail guns?no single nail gun works on all carpentry tasks.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
For anything with structure, Latex rules IMHO. The idea is that Word et al. are just glorified drawing programs, whereas Latex emphasizes the content and structure. The end result looks quite professional because it's designed by professionals and you only have to worry about the content. Which also means it's much much faster to get something done.
GUI word processors have their place, though. I've used them to design beer bottle labels :-P
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Heh heh heh. Good trick.
i'm sure the publishers thought they were producing a DVD, not a book... :D
ed
having to resort to both online help and a book and even then not being able to do what is needed... why bother with causing all of that frustration when a known product with a mature help system (albeit immature delivery method, if Clippy is used) is so relatively cheap?
please don't start up with virus talk, any company that can support a product like OO.o will know even to be able to patch an MS product. I've used Outlook, word, etc for 5 years without a single virus and honestly don't know of any semi-educated user that has ever gotten an MS Office-based virus, or even windows-based.
and speaking of Outlook, there is no Outlook in OO.o, that is 1/3 of the reason I use Office. And there is no Access in OO.o, that is another 1/3 of my reason. Which leaves 1/3 of the reason, Word, but Word is a better product.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
the purpose to .PDF files is to assure that everyone viewing views the same format/style and content. Its great for business docs that must be the same for everybody for legal reasons.
HTML can change from browser to browser.
That said, I have seen many instances where there is no real reason to use PDF files.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What bugs me the most about OO is the degree to which it unfairly overshadows other OS office aps. A lot of people state that the lack of a comprehensive suite of office aps is a major point that keeps them from switching to linux. Linux advocates will then point out the existence of OO. The problem is that OO sucks. It's slow, clunky, and font handling is nothing short of bizzare. What else is there? Koffice has been improving greatly in the background. I use it for most all of my classwork. When I'm submitting somthing for publication I'll write it in Lyx. I've had fewer MS office compatability problems with kword than with OO writer. I've not used them, but Aplix office and Hancom office are out there too. Ted is an awesome little word processor which can work with rtf documents and export to .pdf.
Gnumeric is the best basic spreadsheet I've seen.
I really don't see what the big deal is about OO.
Damn ignoramuses. You just cannot get proper education nowdays.
:-)
The plural of 'ignoramus' is 'ignorami'.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Even though I've tried to switdh to OO I've found that it is frustrating to try to make simple charts.
As an engineer I need those all the time and not having the capability to choose different X values for each series is a pain in the behind.
Excel rates much better in that field, didn;t find many differences in the rest of the suite.
I went back to the good ol' Quattro Pro v5 (for DOS)
Ecuador always on my heart....
Personally, I think StarOffice/OpenOffice need to become clearly *superior* to Microsoft Office before they'll gain much market-share.
As long as they simply tout themselves as "very compatible" with Office, they'll just be a minority alternative to Office.
The problem is, the documents people create (especially in a corporate environment!) are typically much more valuable than the price of the Office suite itself. The fact that OpenOffice is free is almost a non-issue. The up-front cost of licensing MS Office might seem outrageously high, but you have to remember most companies are paying out a LOT more than that in salaries/hourly wages for all their employees' time typing documents up in the software afterwards.
If there's even a hint of a possibility that important documents could get "mangled" or not open right if a business switches Office suites, they'll usually decide against the switch.
If there's no compelling reason to switch, they'll keep using what they've been using too. Why incur additional training costs for people to learn something new, if there's no obvious productivity benefit?
That said, I'm convinced MS Excel has some unacknowleged bugs in it that can cause document corruption. I've read many a story of people who worked for hours on an Excel spreadsheet, saved it - and came back the next day to find the document completely gone. (One of the "switcher" stories recently posted to Apple's site documents this, for example.) I also ran into this at least a handful of times when doing computer support for companies. People would blame our server, or say their computer just "ate my file".... We'd either have to pull a day old backup off a tape or just say "Sorry.... you'll have to type it over." It seemed like systems with less RAM in them were more likely to exhibit this behavior - but it was impossible to duplicate, and didn't happen with any real pattern. I do think it tended to only happen on a larger, more complex spreadsheet though. (At least, if it happened on small "quickie" spreadsheets, the victims never complained about it.)
A truly more stable spreadsheet app with all the power and charting abilities of Excel could compel people to switch.
The biggest conceptual challenge in moving from MS Office to Star/OpenOffice is getting used to the idea of applying styles to text instead of just clicking on an icon for formatting.
Granted, I haven't used Word all that much, but I seem to recall it uses styles as well. But for some strange reason nobody uses them.
My first WYSIWYG word processor was Lotus Wordpro (Amipro). It had awesome style capabilities. 99% of the work would be spent creating content while only 1% was spent fiddling with formatting. OpenOffice Writer is almost as good in this regard. Adobe Framemaker on UNIX has the world's worst user interface, but its excellent style support almost makes up for this. I can't for the life of my figure out why someone wouldn't want to use styles.
But MSWord users don't. We have some Framemaker and MSWord templates at work we're supposed to use for process documents. I always use the Framemaker ones, since I use Solaris and FreeBSD at work. But the few times I've used the Word templates, I've noticed that there are no styles! What's the frickin point of a word processing template without styles? Do they think we're masochists? Do they think we want to spend 99% of our time formatting our documents and 1% of our time creating content? Our company Powerpoint templates are the same way.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Openoffice has always had multiuser install capabilities. I cribbed the following from here:
.tar.gz
/net option:
/net
Official Installation Procedure
1. Get a tarball of the most recent build from OpenOffice.org and untar it with
tar xfvz
As root, install soffice using the
setup
2. Then, when a user runs soffice for the first time, the user will be prompted to run the setup program. The user should use the "network installation" option when prompted, rather than "local installation". The network installation will copy about 10 megs of files into the user's directory, i think. The "local install" will copy the whole gigantic program.
Star Office saved my ass once... I had made a presentation in PowerPoint and suddenly the latest file (always save multiple copies :-) wouldn't open anymore! If I remember correctly, PP actually crashed. Anyhow, I tried open it in StarOffice and to my surprise it worked. I never looked back... :-)
I would gladly switch to OpenOffice or Star Office, on strictly "political" grounds.
BUT
In my job, pretty much all documentation is done in Word. Fairly simple boilerplate, as far as functionality goes - it translates well to Open/Star Office. But we use a Document Management System, Hummingbird OpenDocs (weep for me), which has an interface to Word, including a few menu items, etc, which allow Word to open files directly from OpenDocs.
It's simply impossible to do some of the same things with Open Office. And getting my employer to change to a different DMS is similarly impossible. (tens of thousands of employees worldwide).
This is actually the ONLY application that keeps us Windows-dependent.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
One side note: It will set itself up as your default printer, so you may need to reset your default printer after it's done w/ its installation.
I'm not sure what the secret to success is, but the secret to failure lies in trying to please everyone -Bill Cosby
I love it because it's free, and mostly replaces Microsoft Office. I hate it, because v1.0.x cannot open Microsoft Office password protected files even if you know the correct password, so you need to make sure you unprotect all your Excel files using Microsoft Office before you switch over to using OpenOffice. g
no, it isn't
in English or in Latin
It's free as in speech.
You can ensure and support continued development with your charitable donation though. Of course, now I'm sounding like an ad.
The best way to keep free software free is to support the developers.
That is what tetex is for.
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
What good is it to convert one proprietary format to another? I think open source word processors should focus on standard formats such as XML (which infact MS does, albeit not very portably). PDF is proprietary and is not editable unless you pay Adobe. .doc at the reader level. Besides, XML as it is now with HTML rendering is good enough for 99% of the documents, I'm sure. I'd like to see more HTML, MathML, XML improvments in word processors rather proprietary format war. The format is nothing, when you think about it. How hard is it to serialize a document? It's not. The big deal is in the editors and that's where the competition should take place.
What's so good about PDF anyway? Seriously, the font smoothing is now a feature of Windows XP so I don't see any advantage PDF has on
-- You people make me sig!
Open an excel file with open office, save it, and you will find that O.O. appends random quantities of blank text to random cells. I've had files at least quintuple in size due to this feature. I discovered the problem when reading Excel files with Apache Jakarta's POI library.
I've banned everyone in the office from touching any of my Excel files with O.O., under penalty of a severely foamy-mouthed and long-winded berating.
BTW I gotta give credit to those POI folks for enduring the difficult & thankless task of working with a series of formats thought up by a bunch of MS employees - individuals who clearly were not only stone drunk, but criminally insane, and mentally retarded to boot.
I've been reading many of the comments posted here, and most of what I see are people complaining about what StarOffice/OpenOffice lacks, and how bad this or that is. I just have one question: how long did it take Microsoft to get MS Office to the point where it is now? With most OSS projects, the developers are playing catch-up and getting close to the level of the competition in less time than the competition.
Oh yes, and just to make this post on topic: I intend to buy this book because I want a reference on StarOffice/OpenOffice. I've been looking for a reference on OpenOffice and didn't know that it was a free version of StarOffice...
KWord, although addmitedly not as robust in features as OOo really gets the job done, and its auto-recovery feature has saved my ass more than once. For a student, primarily doing simple text papers, kword is an incredible option.
transmission_err
Software is rated on how well it does the job, not how well it mimics another package.
There are many jobs for which Word is utterly worthless - any sort of desktop publishing and formatting, mail merges (yuck), compatability among versions, to name a few.
Word can't even import reliably among its own versions, yet SO gets downrated for not reliably importing Word. Hey bunky, nothing can import a Word file but the Word version it was created in.
WordPerfect excels at the above tasks and PDF export passably, but we get stuck with Word because of management idiocy.
At minimum, you'll need two network cards for the computer with broadband (one for the cable/dsl modem and one for the network) and one card for the other computer. If there are only two computers, the simplest setup is to connect them directly with a crossover cable (make sure it's a crossover cable and not a regular ethernet cable). No hub required. If you want to add another computer, you'll need a hub and regular cables. You'll also have to set up the broadband-connected computer to share the connection (the procedure is different depending on which OS you're using).
If you're interested...
:-)
I wrote a Yahtzee dice game macro using StarBasic in a Calc spreadsheet.
Get it here.
I checked this discussion, didn't find any reference to the GREAT tool of exporting to .swf (flash) in the new openoffice beta. Open an impress or ms ppt file and simply export it to swf. You can then embed these into webpages or "play" them fullscreen. Like export to pdf or html its a beta feature that could really use (and probably will) receive some additional features. But its a great tool to quickly slap togethet a presentation.
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
When I talk about word processors with friends, I don't try to get hyped about it -- they are inevitably disappointed. The bottom line is to phrase the question as: "which one sucks less." Potential MS Office switchers and new computer users factor in price, control (of your own data) and the need/cost/pain for future upgrades. When you lay it out like that, they tend not to be disappointed.
Lets face it, both MS Office and OpenOffice both suck. WordPerfect had a much better interface, was more logically laid out, and it had reveal codes. All of those features made it superior to MS Word. Why does OpenOffice feel compelled to make a clone of the worst mass-market office suite? At the very least, the OpenOffice developers should make a special interface that mimics WordPerfects or something better than Word. Making a better interface, instead of copying what others have done, is one of the opportunities that the open source world has.
Long term, businesses are consumers are better off with a universal document format that they can use/see/edit/store for many years. It is a sad fact, however, that most users (and I include businesses and governments here) don't appreciate that fact. Use of a stable format can have other benefits too. As with other commentators, I've had the most luck when I've avoided Microsoft's formats altogether. However, that goes with *any* word processor (be it AbiWord, WordPerfect, OpenOffice Writer, you-name-it). Incidentally, WordPerfect's format is akin to a tag-based language (ala HTML). How hard would it be to reveal the tags for an XML formatted document?
Actually no. As a quick look in OED shows, ignoramus means "We do not know" in Latin, so it is not a noun at all and does not have a plural in Latin.
The plural in English should be constructed according to the usual rules then.
Until some competitor presents a viable alternative to VBA combined with Excel, there is no way you can get me to switch. For me it always comes back to Excel (the seamingly forgotten app as far as MS is concerned -- at least in regards to how little new, cool features have been added in the past few versions). Nothing provides me the ease to perform data reduction, graphing, and reporting with the ease that Excel and all my VBA programs do.
Since MS hasn't really upgraded anything in Excel since Office '97, that's the reason I've not upgraded since then either.
It took me five seconds to start OOo 1.1beta2 [It is a lot faster than 1.0] and to locate the text table function under Tools-> Text-Table.
I assume you mean that function. Or maybe you just haven't ever used the program you are blabbing about.
Moritz
RTF produced by word is hideous. Try saving a blank page a RTF, and then look at the source. RTF is a lot like TeX, so it's easy to read, but the output from word is horrible because it tries to add all of the extra data which is part of a word document, but not part of the RTF spec into it. Until recently the only difference between word's RTF output and word's DOC output is that th DOC version was compressed, which would account for the disparity ni file sizes.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
If I were MS, I would design future versions of Office so that, even more so than is the case today, files created in Office would be corrupted, uglified, and incomplete upon opening them in OO.o, and vice versa. I already have to write different scripts for Netscape and Internet Explorer because MS includes proprietary bits and doesn't adhere to standards whenever possible. OO.o is running to catch up to MS, to become more and more compatible with existing MS documents. But the competition isn't a sitting duck. MS could become a moving target, it could go on the offensive and include crazy proprietary killer features, unopenable elsewhere, the minute it senses a threat from another office suite, thus exploiting its market share to make people depend on is proprietary features.
for crying out loud I can't send my OpenOffice document to my friend who uses AbiWord
At LinuxWorld/SF in August 2002, Abiword and the OpenOffice people announced that they would use a common file format.
Unfortunately, I can't find the link.
Anyone out there know of the status of the agreement?
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
In fact, every time I have tried to save anything but the most trivial OOo doc in word format, it has failed horribly.
The binary Microsoft Word document (.doc) format was never meant to be an exchange format between Microsoft Word and other applications. Microsoft Rich Text Format (RTF), on the other hand, is a textual encoding of the information in a Microsoft Word document (.doc). It's a lot easier to write an exporter of valid RTF than an exporter of valid .doc. In fact, some programs that write "Microsoft Word documents" actually write RTF with a .doc extension, which Microsoft Word accepts gladly.
In short: If you want Microsoft Word to Read The File correctly, use Rich Text Format.
It made files that hung Word upon opening.
That's Microsoft's fault for not performing appropriate sanity checks in its .doc parser. No program should hang on untrusted input.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I've noticed a lot of debate over OO's word processing application. How does AbiWord compare? I've used it a little bit and found it to be much faster and more stable than OO, though with fewer features. Its similarity to MS Word is a nice advantage over OO for the MS Word converts who don't want much of a learning curve.
I have only little experience in both OO and AbiWord though. Anyone who's used these extensively care to comment on their relative performance?
Last I looked, which was for Office 2000, bulk licencing didn't even START to give you a discount over retail until you were talking 200+ copies, and then, it wasn't much. I was shocked at how little a discount they actually offered. We had 50 workstations, and it turned out to be about 1/4 the price if we went to the store with a pickup truck, bought 50 copies of MS Works, then 50 copies of Office 2000 Upgrade.
Yeah, the last company I worked for considered Access work, "student worker" dispoable cruft that might be used to teach students a few useful things about the business but never for anything real.
If you want to do databases that don't suck, learn to set up discarded office computers as postressql or mysql servers on your choice of free software, and have it generate web pages. Viola! That's an insturment that everyone likes and has nothing to do with the M$ vendor lock in. Because it won't break in one or two years, the company might keep using it and it will be much easier to maintain than that awful Access VB nightmare.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You can already convert any document to PDF format from any application running on any OS that supports samba printers. Simply setup a samba printer, set the print command to be ps2pdf, then lie and say that the printer is really a post script printer (just pick any PS printer that has a driver that ships with Windows). Install the printer under windows and boom, you've got instant PDFs from any application.
If anyone is interested I can post my samba config file once I get a chance to access the box its sitting on.
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
Have you tried gnumeric lately? It works better than the Star Office thingy. Star Office is still a better M$ translator, but gnumeric has good auto-fill, sort and even simple graphs that rival or beat M$ Excel.
On fonts, you will find the same problems moving from one M$ box to the other, especiall when they use different Office versions or M$ O$. Sometimes the same programs from a different vendor will create problems. It's just another one of those M$ pains that should have you moving further away rather than further toward them. Place the blame where it belongs. Star Office, on it's own, produces better looking stuff with much less effort.
As for Power Point, Star Office has never had a problem reading those things for me. It works just fine, though I might lose some cheezy effects. Once again, I have to say that Star Presenter, on it's own is vastly superior to Microsoft's offering. It is easier to use, does more usefull stuff and writes out to more formats: html, pdf, and others that can be opened by anyone.
The faster you get away from the Microsoft lock in, the better off you are.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I remember the shock and horror a fellow office worker once had when they got a new computer and all of their Word docs renderd wrong. They had spent the better part of a year translating them from Word Perfect, which had no such problems, into Word. They were furious because they had to reformat every one of those docs again. Imagine my surprise that year when I got a version of Word Perfect up and running on Linux and opened Word Perfect 4.2 stuff without a problem. Oh well, that's how it goes.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It is well worth the money. Just got finished digging in mine to find out how to do something in an easier way. And it worked. :-)
I'm in kind of a unique position. I work in computer retail (ok, I sling computer games and accessories to pay the rent), and I'm the only regular employee who's familiar with Linux and FOSS.
.doc or .xls files, and their tasks aren't overly complicated, I will point them to OpenOffice. I even tell them about StarOffice if they're not too sure about a piece of free software (the old line about "you get what you pay for" and all that). This works especially well if the customer mentions something about how their friend can pirate Office for them; I just tell them that OpenOffice is a perfectly legal option that still won't dent their wallet.
Once in a while, some poor schlub will come in, asking about the price of Word or Office. When I bring up the appropriate price from our chain's database, most of the time their jaws drop. Occasionally, the customer will ask if there's something cheaper they can buy. If the person just needs to view Word or Excel documents, I point them to Microsoft's viewer options. If the individual, however, needs to edit and send
So far, I've only pointed twenty, maybe twenty-five people to OpenOffice. However, if even five of those people like it and make it their regular office suite, they will probably end up telling five other people about it. If one of those five decides to try it, and one out of five of those people like it and continue spreading the word, that can add up to a lot of people satisfied with an alternative to the pricey MS Office.
I'm sure my boss might kill me for not encouraging people to pony up a few hundred dinero for Office, but then, I don't work on commission, and he's actually a pretty fair guy--so maybe not.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
who needs the book. here's how you can do it all for free.
1. download and install the adobe postscript printer drivers:
http://www.adobe.com/products/printerdr
2. download and install ghostview/ghostscript
to convert ANYTHING to postscript, just print to file using the dummy install postscript device (print to file as
then open the ps file in gsview: file -> convert.
done.
my blog
I've had a few recent experiences with OpenOffice.
What happened was I blew up my folks PC when I tried to upgrade some hardware, so replaced their PC with an older one of mine running Win2k and the latest OpenOffice (1.0-something). I tried testing it out by importing my resume and printing it out.
It was immediately apparent that there was a problem with the conversion because all of the bullet-points were wrong, and some other formatting inconsistencies. I couldn't use my folks as a test lab for trying it out, because they needed to import existing documents.
My belief is that for small documents, the import/export routines to and from MS Office to OpenOffice/StarOffice are fine, but most major companies have customised documents with tables and autocompletes and other spiffy things that they use on a daily basis. Those are the things that will most likely break on import, and as such, the migration path to OpenOffice/StarOffice is neither cheap nor simple.
I'll keep trying it out ever new release, but I'm still a little disappointed in how well it can import/export MS Office stuff. If it isn't 100% then it's not good enough for me for anything other than quick writeups.
NOTE: I do understand how hard it is to keep up with changing formats tho, the developers have done a great job so far!
Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
I wonder if the book tells you how to upgrade your PC so it run StarOffice fast enough. :)
Their Word won't open them, but IE will render and print them perfectly.
If they're really anal, just do what I do, and use RTF. It was good enough only ten years back, so why not now?
Excel is a different matter. I've never managed to make an OO sheet that won't open in Excel, but the reverse is very common.
If M$ opened up their pissy formats, maybe the world would be a better place.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
HungWeiLo - the mild mannered janitor?
I admire the irony, anyway.
"OO Spreadsheets often because corrupted being opened on Excel (VERY BIG DEAL)"
There is no cure for this. MS can always make excel crash when opening up OO files and they probably will. Not just excel but all the MS office products.
"Windows isn't done till lotus won't run" remeber that one?
War is necrophilia.
Ony 64%?
I use MS Word to view scientific documents (chemistry, physics, and mathematics) and the equation editor in Star Office never opens them correctly. It always looks like crap if it even renders the symbols at all.
This was about a year ago, maybe it's better now.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
shouldn't that be "stupid.stupid.stupid" ?
Acrobat PDFWriter is available for download from Adobe, for free. You have to scratch around on their site for it, but it's been there fore a long time now, since people started writing free software that would cost them market share and control of the PDF standard.
No need to wave a dead chicken over GhostScript...
-- Terry
...my comment may have come across as flamebait, but it was not intended to be so - it is a simple statment of the truth. Accept it.
My wife has been working on her Ph.D. for some years, and I have finally weaned her off of M$. She now uses FreeBSD without a lot of problems. Primarily she uses email [sylpheed], a web browser [opera], a calendar [ical], and a wordprocesser [OO].
To date, none of the Open Source word processors are worth a flip, including OO. AbiWord is crippled at best, and OO works to a better extent, but is a bloat monster. Basically, nothing on the Open Source side can match the capabilities of DeScribe for OS/2, which is almost a 10-year-old product [somebody PLEASE find the source code for this and port it to *nix!]
All she needs is basic, solid wordprocessing [as I convert everything she does to LyX anyway], and the OpenSource stuff falls flat.