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

Relationship to Mad Hatter?

[EricHsu]

AP talks about another Sun thing, code Mad Hatter or "Sun Java Desktop". What's the relationship between StarOffice and this Mad Hatter deal? Why would they work on two parallel projects like this? Presumably MH builds on the translation libraries from OpenOffice? Inquiring minds want to know...

Re:Relationship to Mad Hatter?

[EricHsu]

Okay, answering my own question, Sun talks about Mad Hatter and it seems to be merely a Java front-end to StarOffice and misc other Office type programs.

I thought it was going to be something cooler like the Java port of OpenOffice.

Re:Relationship to Mad Hatter?

[spektr]

Okay, answering my own question, Sun talks about Mad Hatter and it seems to be merely a Java front-end to StarOffice and misc other Office type programs.

A Java front-end to StarOffice? I think not.

As far as I understand it, Mad Hatter is more or less a SuSE spin-off that comes with a new Sun-theme and is bundled with StarOffice 7. At this time Sun puts the word "Java" in all their new products. This is just a brandig strategy like .NET

What happens with XML...

[The Ancients]

I have read various comments on this but wouldn't mind the /. crowd's various takes. What happens when MS's Office switches to bastardised XML? Is it going to tip the whole cart over, or is it a small bump in the road? For someone considering switching to *nix, this could make a significant difference...

Re:What happens with XML...

[Jody Goldberg]

1) We'll start supporting it. Indeed I've already roughed in a basic framework for Office XP xml for Excel. Its a good deal easier than their binary format, especially given how much of their implementation detail is exposed in the file format.

2) It will not be used very much because old versions of office can't read it (oops the Office 97 install on your secretaries machine is out of date).

3) It will not be used very much because 100 Meg of uncompressed xml takes longer to parse than people with 30Meg of xls want to wait.

Re:What happens with XML...

[4of12]

I guess there's XML and there's XML and getting between them is not necessarily easy.

Microsoft made a big deal about the most recent versions of Office writing out XML, but that was because XML was a buzzword, sounded as if it might be more open than ".doc", and was essentially a selling point.

From what I've read, people have been underwhelmed with the XML coming out.

But your question is a good one when you see the potential for XSLT transformations that enable OpenOffice to import and export DocBook XML.

If only a similar set of transformations could be developed for OpenOffice to import and export the XML of the latest version of Microsoft Office. From what I understand, the schema is not documented and the formatting and rendering rules for documents are still kept a private affair, just as it has been for .doc files.

You're still locked-in, dude!

Re:Pointless switch?

[phraktyl]

For most large companies, it's not about free or not free, it's about dedicated support. From a company standpoint, they would rather shell out money for the non-free version if they can call someone on the phone and get an answer. Sure, the free version may have mailing lists and USENET, but a company can't rely on that, and they can't point fingers when something goes wrong.

That's the same reason a lot of companies will pay through the nose for RedHat Enterprise---not because it does more, but because they have a single place to call when something goes wrong.

Slight Error in Summary

[rmohr02]

StarOffice 7 software adds functionality to enable export to PDF, and to the Macromedia Flash format.

I would like to mention that OpenOffice 1.1 supports exporting to PDF now. Perhaps OO will see Flash support in the future?

Gnumeric Recieves a Grant from Mitch Kapor

[Jody Goldberg]

Mitch Kapor's OSA Foundation funds a free spreadsheet test suite

Gnumeric has received a grant from Mitch Kapor (creator of Lotus 1-2-3) to develop an interoperability test suite with leading proprietary competitors. The money will be used as form of bounty to fund the expansion of our existing tests for worksheet functions (eg =SUM, or =ODDFPRICE). Our goal is to ensure that a users data will produce the same results (or better :-) using Gnumeric. The test suite will be in xls format, and will be freely available to all other interested projects.

Exact prices have not been decided as yet, but this is an excellent opporunity for non-coders to help opensource programs, and earn a bit of money too. Specifics to be announced on the mailing lists in the coming weeks.

Official announcement here

The Cooperative Bug Isolation Project

[Benoni]

If you want to take Gnumeric 1.2.0 for a spin, consider participating in The Cooperative Bug Isolation Project, a research project being conducted at UC Berkeley. We have prebuilt Red Hat 9 packages of Gnumeric and several other popular applications. These binaries are built with extra feedback instrumentation that lets us understand how the software is working (or failing to work) in the hands of real users.

Even if you have never written a line of code in your life you can help make the software better for everyone simply by using our special bug-hunting feedback packages.

Read more about it or download and install today!

A strong pitch for Gnumeric

[RealAlaskan]

Dr. B.D. McCullaugh is a big name in statistics, and has made a name for himself in (among other things) testing statistical software. In this article, he says:

The problems that rendered Excel 97 unfit for use as a statistical package have not been fixed in either Excel 2000 or Excel 2002 (also called "Excel XP"). Microsoft attempted to fix errors in the standard normal random number generator and the inverse normal function, and in the former case actually made the problem worse.

That's the entire abstract!

According to the release mentioned above, Dr. McCullaugh recommends using Gnumeric instead of excel.

Re:StarOffice has a lot of catching up to do

[Kehl]

I use Star Office at work and Open Office at home. Open/Star Office has certainly been noticed by MS however with a patented and closed source MS ".DOC" format (yes it's coming soon!), it may cause some hardship. My last three job applications (CV's) were in .TXT format (containing a reason why I sent the document in this format) and I am proud to say that on 2/3 applications I got the job! Oh and don't forget finances! XP Pro Office XP Firewall Virus Checker DVD Player Photoshop .NOT(NET) Development package ..... etc --------------- Lets call MS software updates (for a "Techie" user) 750.00 per annum Linux 0.00 Allways nice when you have an imaginary balance of + 750 each year and high tail it to France backpacking! Or you could put it in Bills pocket ..... your choice =) Vote With your feet ----> GPL

Re:Blatant bias..

[r00zky]

The problem with KOffice being it doesn't convert from MSOffice docs as well as OO

Presentation application?

[GileadGreene]

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."

I see a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a database app. How about that other stalwart of the "office productivity" suite, presentation software? Much as it pains me to say it, Powerpoint has become almost indispensable (at least in my line of work) these days. OO.org's Impress is nice, but still not quite on a par with PPT. A Gnome-Office PPT equivalent would be a nice addition to the suite. Or is there some other open source presentation option out there I'm not aware of?

Why I can't switch to Abiword yet

[The Revolutionary]

I'm currently an OpenOffice.org Writer for various informal to semi-formal tasks. Although for anything "serious" I use LaTeX. Something like Abiword, which integrates better with my GNOME desktop, is just the sort of application I would like to use.

Also, the story claims that one of Abiword's distinctive features is, "includes proper footnotes". Well what is this supposed to mean? I've never had any difficulty making OpenOffice.org Writer do footnotes properly. Is there some widely known deficiency of which I am completely unaware?

There were also a number of other issues last I tried; perhaps this have since been resolved:

Seemingly no support for automated numbering of a proper outline (i.e. cycle Roman numerals, capital letters, numbers, etc.). I can't even get it to work manually, changing the sort of "numbering" I want at each level of indent.

select+delete or cut text fails to properly redraw the screen, leaving a line of the removed text visible, and leaving me to wonder whether I actually removed the section properly, or if it is just due to improper redraw.

In "Web Layout", strange breaking occurs where page breaks "should be", leaving me to wonder whether it hit "Enter" accidently, or if it is merely this bug.

Scrolling results in text distortion, making one or more lines unreadable until scrolled off the screen again, or until the application window is covered and redrawn (although disabling "smooth scrolling" seems to "fix" this).

Also, Abiword doesn't appear to allow the insertion of any "objects" other than "pictures". Of course this isn't a "fault", as I suppose it is waiting for a framework to be standardized for this sort of thing.

No, between everything else, I don't have the time now to get a handle on the code base and fix or implement these things myself, and so please don't tell me to.

I'm simply stating that as I found it last I checked, it was not sufficient to meet my needs, and I will, if most of these issues still remain, have to wait a while longer before I can adopt or endorse it for regular use.

I look forward to switching.

abiword not there yet

[DuckWing]

unfortunately for me, AbiWord doesn't come close to OpenOffice Write. OO does a better job of converting MS documents. AbiWord, in all my tests, is pathetic at it.

for OpenOffice, any MS Word doc with graphics is hosed and forget about Word Art.

Quite frankly, both have a lot of work ahead of them IMHO.