StarOffice 7, GNOME-Office 1.0 Released

An anonymous reader writes "Abiword 2.0 has been released. Finally the Linux desktop has a quality word processor that is faster to load than OpenOffice.org and includes proper footnotes. It also no longer uses its own font directory. At the same time Enchant 1.0.0 has been released, a cross-platform abstract layer to spellchecking. Enchant has been proposed to be a Freedesktop.org standard." That's not the only news, though: Abiword 2.0 is part of the just-released GNOME-Office 1.0, which, as riggwelter writes "coordinates GNOME2 versions of AbiWord, Gnumeric, and GNOME-DB, the database interface." Sun's StarOffice has just reached version 7, as well: read on below for some more information on that, including a first-look review.

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.

Comments

Re:Pointless switch?

[kotfu]

Exactly. Why just the other day, we had this problem with Word crashing all of the time. We called those bums at Micro$oft, got right through to a person, and told them that we didn't get our sales presentation finished on time because Word kept crashing. The MS guy was real nice, he took all of the blame, and even offered to remunerate us for our lost revenue. My boss said, "see, that's why we spend the big bucks for Micro$oft products, they have great support and always make things right."

Really what happens is you wait on hold for 30 minutes, and then talk to someone offshore who may or may not understand the English you are speaking. After hitting your credit card for 35 bucks, you are told to reboot, and that will fix the problem.

I'll take the mailing list any day.

Re:I don't think so...

[bogie]

Or have them get annoyed at you when OO screws up and loses all the formatting of the word doc.

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 .doc import feature loses its charm.

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.

Just one question...

[RedBear]

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.