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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$79.95 to buy your copy for home (free for edu, plus cost of media+shipping.) Now is a great time to show this to your boss and pitch that 'MS Office to StarOffice' conversion project."
An anonymous reader writes "NewsForge has a 'drive-by' 'quick-peek' look at the new StarOffice up on their site."
One suggestion on office software for the Free Software desktop: Casually re-start a friend or co-worker's Windows computer with Knoppix and show them you can open their Word files with OpenOffice.org. Mention their machine is moderately safe from Word-borne viruses until they reboot into Windows.
I suppose you could go do the StarOffice pitch to your boss, the only problem I forsee is trying to keep up with M$ and their new ideas for keeping Office locked down with the proposed security interface with Win2k3, and incompatibilities with other Office suites. Could be more of a hassle than it's worth down the line...
Blah...
Now is a great time to show this to your boss and pitch that 'MS Office to StarOffice' conversion project."
Why not switch the company to OpenOffice.org? I doubt the company needs StarOffice.
You're just going from one pay-for product, to another (albiet less cost). If you REALLY want to show your boss the beauty of alternative software. Show him something thats great, FOR FREE! (that will get any bosses attention).
And if you choose StarOffice just because "Money means better" to the management, you're just as bad as MS.
I'm sorry if this is a bit O/T but it's something I've wanted to say here for a while and no closer topic has shown up lately either (so please don't mod down...): Since we (probably) all want to avoid lock-in and thus open formats to be more widespread (ie. other office suites than MS) I have a suggestion that others might want to follow. I've tried to help Open Office spread in the following way (the reason chose Open Office is that it's supported on more platforms than any of the others AFAIK and is thus most suitable for this purpose): I'm (among other things) a business student and frequently books on eg. finance include a CD-Rom with Excel spreadsheets as examples of some concepts in the book. I test whether the sheets work flawlessly in Open Office and if so send the authors a suggestion that since Open Office would definitely fit on the CD they could spread that along for free and thus allow students who don't have access to MS Office to use the additional material if they just have a computer. So my suggestion is simply that others too do this when they encounter such books. Please note, however, that the authors of such books are businesspeople and thus "MS Sucks, Open Source rulez!" is not the way to approach them - just try to emphasize that it adds value to their book and that it's very easy to implement (you can tell how easily it worked for you) and if you feel like it you might mention that MS surely needs some competition (and they certainly acknowledge that since MS has been used in books as an example of how a monopoly sets prices).
Karma. Moderation. Is my
I respectfully disagree. Spreadsheet make a very nice interface to complex analytics. Real practitioners do their own calculations on the complex bits and use a spreadsheet front end as a scratch pad, a way to quickly twiddle data. Spreadsheets are not databases, and generally should not be used that way. However, to dismiss them as being merely stedding stones to real databases is to miss the point entirely. They're quite good at lots of other things.
Koffice Loads faster than OO, has proper footnotes, has never had its "own" font directory, and is properly integrated into the rest of KDE.
Or have them get annoyed at you when OO screws up and loses all the formatting of the word doc.
.doc import feature loses its charm.
Sorry but even as a big OO booster, I'm the first to say that importing word docs is still a total crapshoot. Plain text letters etc come through fine most of the time. In fact most of the content comes through, but when it comes to even slightly complex word docs with images and lots of formatting OO chokes badly. Sure you end up with most of the text and images, but then you have to spend 5 minutes trying to move everything back to whre it should be the
I don't fault OO for this since sucky MS won't open their file specs though. Unfortunately MS knows that proprietary Office file formats are the key to its desktop monopoly, so don't expect that to change in our lifetime.
Honestly though I just don't think its right to outright lie to people and say OO can easily open all Word files. That's probably never going to happen. For me its not a problem since I never deal with a ton of word docs anymore, but for those who HAVE to both send and recieve word docs all day long I can't say they should see that as a plus for using OpenOffice.
God I hate proprietary file specs and protocols.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Just one question about all these wonderful new "office" suites. They all use the same, standardized, open file formats by default, and are 100% compatible with each other, right? Right?
Because that would be a huge benefit of moving away from MS Office, right? Because all these different office suites are totally compatible and interchangeable, even though they can never be totally compatible with the secret, changing MS Office formats.
So I don't have to keep saving in DOC just to exchange files between StarOffice and GNOME Office and KDE Office, right? I can save in some new, default, standard, universally recognized file format, and easily exchange files between all these different programs without any translation problems or confusion, right?
And Microsoft will quickly be forced to create a patch for their Office products so they can read and write this new open file format that the whole world is suddenly standardizing on because it's used by default by every open source office suite in the world, right?
Or am I smoking crack and about to get my first -1, Troll rating for openly wondering why there is still no apparent single, open, standard, widely used file format? One to compete on solid ground with the single, closed, proprietary file formats from Microsoft and others that we all revile on a daily basis.
We've had 15 years or more to replace DOC and its brethren. Where is the replacement for DOC? Or the replacement that can be used for anything, like a combination of DOC, XLS, PPT, PUB, etc? I'd really, really, really like to know. Because until I know that, I feel pretty stupid telling people to drop the nice, simple, standard (de facto if not de jure) Microsoft Office file formats. When they ask what they're supposed to use instead, I have no answer.