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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.
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.
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.
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
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
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?
It's constantly trying to trick me into using its proprietary format!
Proprietary doesn't mean "isn't readable by other programs", it means "cannot be read by other programs because the format is a secret".
OOo may not be portable (because other programs haven't implemented filters to read it, for various reasons not the least of which being OOo's market share), but it is not proprietary.
P.S. I hate how it does that too. If I wanted to save in OpenOffice format, I'd say so!
The enemies of Democracy are
... 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
Open. The standard.
Cheers,
Ian
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
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
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.
> 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.
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.
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
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 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
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
Save your Writer document as .sxw
.zip
.. whaddayaknow .. :)
Rename the file to
Unzip it
Hey look
it's in my head
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 /.
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
If you're interested...
:-)
I wrote a Yahtzee dice game macro using StarBasic in a Calc spreadsheet.
Get it here.
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?