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StarOffice 7, GNOME-Office 1.0 Released
Jim Hall writes "I just noticed that Sun Microsystems has released StarOffice 7. I've been using the StarOffice betas for a while now, so I have been eagerly awaiting this release! StarOffice is, of course, based on the ever-popular OpenOffice.org. StarOffice 7 software adds functionality to enable export to PDF, and to the Macromedia Flash format. It also introduces the new StarOffice Configuration Manager, the StarOffice Software Development Kit, a macro recorder, and support for assistive technologies, as well as for complex text layouts. Multi-platform running on Linux, Solaris OS and Windows. Only US$79.95 to buy your copy for home (free for edu, plus cost of media+shipping.) Now is a great time to show this to your boss and pitch that 'MS Office to StarOffice' conversion project."
An anonymous reader writes "NewsForge has a 'drive-by' 'quick-peek' look at the new StarOffice up on their site."
One suggestion on office software for the Free Software desktop: Casually re-start a friend or co-worker's Windows computer with Knoppix and show them you can open their Word files with OpenOffice.org. Mention their machine is moderately safe from Word-borne viruses until they reboot into Windows.
Openoffice is based off of Star, not the other way around.
2.0, as specified in the article title, or 1.0, as specified in the article text?
Madhatter is a integrated desktop focused OS. First release will be based on SUSE Linux. Staroffice, Mozilla, Evolution, Gnome, tightly integrated. Target market is call centers and the like.
I don't see any problems with gnome-office listed in your discussion of gnome's failings. Can you elaborate on any issues you've had with recent versions of Gnumeric, AbiWord, or GNOME-DB ? We're quite interested in constructive feedback.
Try Qt. It has superb documentation, examples and tutorials. And once you pick it up, the KDE API documentation (which assumes you know Qt) will make much more sense.
If I run KDE, will I be able to run Abiword?
You'll need to install some Gnome libraries to get it to install, but yeah, there's no problem running any app in any window manager or desktop.
Sorry, it is you who are wrong; the original statement is correct. Although the original codebase was StarOffice, the main tree is now OpenOffice, which StarOffice is now just a branded child of (there are others, like Ximian's OpenOffice). StarOffice includes some other things as well, which can't or won't be open-sourced.
Yes is would be very nice if we could stop replicating each others work. However, its difficult to do that in practice because we're all operating on what are in effect completely different platforms. KDE uses entirely different data structures than GNOME, which is in turn different from OO, which is different from mozilla ... and MS sits on the sidelines and smiles.
Adding to the technical challenges are the politcal bits. I've writting elements of gnome-office (libgsf) with the specific intent that it be sharable between the different platforms. Why bother rewriting OLE import/export 3 times ? Unfortunatly, that teeny little 'g' is a big problem. The kword folk have accepted the library, but the kspread team seems intent on writing their own. The OO people can't even look at it because 'the mac people would scream when they saw a glib depend'. Its depressing.
For the time being we're stuck. Each of us feels our project can produce the best result in the shortest time. At best the projects can share test suites and documentation. Which is where Mitch Kapor's grant to Gnumeric comes in handy. We're using it to commission a set of tests in xls format (so that we can all read it, even Ms Excel). The other projects are welcome to use it along with all of our other interoperability tests.
You using the NVIDIA drivers for XFree86? I've heard that for some reason Gnome/GTK2 has in the past (and maybe still has) problems with those drivers making it run slow.
When I first read that I thought you were joking, but as I read the rest of your comments, I understand where you misunderstandings lie. I don't know anything about Apple's APIs, but I imagine that they are very clean. Win32, on the other had, is a mess. Linux *does* have very clean and well-defined system APIs. You are mistakenly thinking that windowing and GUIs have something to with system APIs. They don't. And they shouldn't. Instead, userland libraries supply this functionality. The windows gui is quite a hack, api-wise. And it has many, many security problems because of it's being put into the kernel as a system api.
Windowing has nothing to do with the standard C library (which all c compilers link against, even on windows -- that's what msvcrt.dll is for). This library, combined with the system apis (chapter 2 of the man pages) provides lowlevel access to the operating system. User interaction on linux comes through other higher-level apis from libraries such as gtk. This may seem backwards to a Windows developer to separate it this way, but this gives a great amount of development flexibility and increased application security.
It's quite funny, actually, that experienced unix programmers wonder the same thing about win32 developers. I recommend checking out some books on linux development. I think you'll be slowly impressed as you discover the unix model of development and the simplicity and power of the posix-style api, and the tremendous availability of programming libraries to do things like gui programming, you'll be impressed.
Yes, of course. You just need the gnome libraries installed (but not the full environment.
Of course you can also pay for StarOffice because...
(i) The money going into StarOffice is being used to continue the development OpenOffice, as Sun still pays for a lot of the Development of OpenOffice.
(ii) You can get product support, and training from Sun. Important for even small business, or any overstressed IT department.
Not all of the cost of software is in the purchase of that software.
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It's a shame that the parent comment is a blatant troll because it does harbour a truth or two.
Gnome Office and OpenOffice.org (I couldn't comment on Star Office as I have not used it) are many features behind Microsoft's latest incarnations of it's Office suite.
However, Microsoft Office has had a head start. It's been going for a great deal longer than any of OpenOffice.org, AbiWord and Gnumeric. It also has many more developers.
Yet the Free Software Office programs seem to be catching up. AbiWord has matured massively between 1.0.x and 2.0 - they're almost unrecognisable from each other.
Gnumeric is the one exception to the 'fewer features' since it actually boasts more functions that Excel. A little bit of polish, tweaking, and a few subtle feature additions and Gnumeric will be superior to Excel - some argue that it already is.
OpenOffice.org is also making great strides. 1.1 is far better than 1.0 in all areas - features, speed, and general polish. The plans for 2.0 are promising - there is a detailed roadmap that makes for interesting reading. Version 2.0 of OpenOffice.org will be a major milestone for the project. 1.0 was the initial release, 1.1 was the produce of a bit of spit and polish, 2.0 will be the first to feel like a true individual project as opposed to a bastard-brother of Star Office.
How is it that these Free Software programs are gaining on the software developed by the software giant?
Since Free Software developers develop for free, I think there's a pride assosciated with their work that inspires them to overcome obstacles insurmountable to a payrolled team. It could also be that we have a superior development platform, but that's just flamebait.
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Actually, I agree. And it's just MIME-type games. But here's how it works. You save your file in Abiword 2.0 as a Microsoft Word .doc. What Abiword does is it is actually RTF but with the extension .doc. If you do want a true RTF with the proper extension, that option is there too. How's that work for you?
-> Sometimes, you just gotta break free from the shackles of proprietary code.
StarOffice happens to fall under our existing contract for Sun anyway. But it is excellent support.
We are still, unfortunately, stuck with SO5.2 (I know, and I'm working on it...), but we have gotten custom patches from Sun 3 times in the last 6 months for SO dealing with MS Word documents. I'd like to see MS provide patches for Word because it's not bringing up a Word Perfect file up correctly...
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