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SoftMaker Rolls Out Office Suite for BSD, Linux, and Others
martin-k writes "Commercial office suite software is coming to FreeBSD, Linux, Windows, Sharp Zaurus and Windows Mobile. SoftMaker, a German developer, recently released SoftMaker Office, a multi-platform office suite that excels in Microsoft Office compatibility, claims to be much leaner and faster than OpenOffice.org and works on many operating systems, down to PDAs." While SoftMaker certainly isn't new, it is nice to see them roll out a finished suite as opposed to one-off programs.
I'm downloading the trial version now.... more on that in a minute. My question would be, "How much better is it than OpenOffice, and how razor thin is the difference between it and Microsoft Office, and how compatible compared with Open Office?"
I've had expectations raised many times in the past and while always initially excited found myself not using any products that had rough edges. For the longest time that basically meant I used Microsoft when I had to, vi and vim the rest of the time :-). Open Office was the first product with sufficient polish
and compatibility, so much so I could pretty much plug and play
replace Office for people with little fear they would have
trouble adapting.
Anything that falls short of that is likely to have problems gaining purchase in market share. I've used all of the KDE products, ABISoft, etc.... none of them really measured up. That isn't to they were bad products, many of them would be considered excellent in and of themselves, but that isn't the yardstick the buying public uses (and will use).
Well, I've downloaded and installed the trial version. I know it's not fair, but here is my five minute review (which is about all I have time to give for new products competing with products with which I already have perfectly good solutions):
Download and install went flawlessly, a requirement for any product anymore -- if the install doesn't go seamlessly, I won't spend a lot more time trying to figure out why. The program fired up cleanly, and was easy and intuitive enough to use especially if you've used any word processor or spreadsheet before. The graphics, layout, and presentation were good but the icons were not crisp as Microsoft's or Open Office's.
I don't have a suite of files to test for compatibility with Office and Open Office, but as I indicated, I have a solution for this type of work (Open Office), and I'm not inclined to spend much time beyond apparent return on investment.
PROS: Easy download and install, very similar to Microsoft Office (though that will change with the new Microsoft Office, not necessarily a bad thing), inexpensive comopared to Microsoft Office, established company, multi-platform and multi-form factor (for PDAs, though other than browsing, I'm not inclined to do much word processing and spreadsheeting (verb?) on PDAs).
CONS: Expensive compared to Open Office, not enough better (in my opinion) to warrant the switch, expensive to add typefaces, "compatibility" with Microsoft is a moving target -- one for which there is no guarantee of currency.
Cool that there's another player... Would I switch? Probably not. YMMV.
As far as I know, there are only 2 forces in the world; 'love' and 'money'
OpenOffice.org has a monopoly in the 'distributed for love' channel.
Microsoft Office has a monopoly in the 'distributed for money' channel.
Who will buy Softmaker Office, and why ?
I'm glad to see more competition in the office space. Open Office has its issues, and Microsoft Office is still the gold standard for the general public. There are plenty of players in the space, but more can't really hurt. What I really would like is to see a suite that doesn't ape MS Office, but comes up with unique ways to do things that are more effective. Of course this is almost impossible as the cost of retraining from MS Office is prohibitive in most environments, but if MS Office is making major changes that necessitate retraining anyway, then maybe there is an opportunity for the myriad "me too" office suites to move in an unique direction as well. Probably not, as most sheep will upgrade to MS Office, but the more players in the market, the more chance that people will switch come upgrade time.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
The same reason they buy redhat or suse instead of something like debian ( proper ). They want to use an alternative to microsoft but dont want to ' go it alone ' and rely on their internal IT support structure ( if they even have one ).
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I think the prices for Europeans seem a bit steep. For Americans it's $69, for Europeans it's EUR 69. That is 30% more. I know that they might have to pay more taxes, but this is quite a lot. They don't even differentiate between EU and non-EU, but just 'Europe'.
I suppose the product may be fine, but from a German company I wouldn't expect these kind of things.
Nothing sickens me more then a commercial office suite software going commercial. And for offices no less. Offices are the worst kinds of room. Where will all this filthy commerce end?
Don't know about the rest of the suite but I think TextMaker is an excellent product. I don't see anything in TFA about powerpoint files, a database, or programming, so it's definitely not a replacement for the entire productivity suites mentioned in TFA.
I was just about to post a comment that asked, "Is there room for another commercial office suite, especially for Linux and BSD?"
After looking at the screenshots (very impressive!) and price (very competitive!), I think the answer just might be yes.
Of course, my meager needs are entirely met by Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets, which runs just fine in Firefox.
I just checked some of our Microsoft Office documents from work with their "textmaker" app, which is supposed to be "100% compatible" with Microsoft Word.
Of course, it's not. It exhibits the same sorts of glitches that OpenOffice does. Which doesn't surprise me given the hoary nasty Microsoft Word file format, but hey, if they're going to claim it, they better back it up.
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
Unfortunately, SoftMaker is only a Word and Excel replacement, and for many users, the level of Word and Excel support in OpenOffice, Abiword, or Gnumeric is probably more than they need. Sure, SoftMaker may have better support for the really complicated Word and Excel formats (see their comparison page for some examples), but how many people really come across 3-d graphics in everyday life?
The bigger problem for most people is PowerPoint slide decks, especially the ones generated by marketing departments that have sound and animation. This is where the shortcomings of OpenOffice hit me the hardest --- and unfortunately, SoftMaker doesn't have a solution. So is it worth it to pay USD $70 for a Word and Excel replacement which is more complete than what is currently available in the OSS world? Not for me. I'd much rather spend $40 for a copy of Crossover Office from Codeweavers and then get an old copy of Office 97 or Office 2000 that I have lying around (or which you can no doubt buy on Ebay for a relatively small change).
At first I was kinda let down by the demo. The load time really wasn't that impressive compared to OpenOffice on my Pentium-M Edgy system. Then I came across something amazing....
Planner (spreadsheet program) can actually do excel style charting (read: crappy but easy for routine tasks) with half-decent trendlines and the ability to show the forula on the chart.
This basic functionality has been on my openoffice wishlist for years, I've filed requests for it with OO.o but got nothing. I've even tried to implement it myself but OO's code is kinda scary. Since then I started using gnuplot for plotting, but for basic stuff its kind of overkill.
sssssssssssssssssssshhhh... <points>
I just tried the demo, and it has no way to change the color scheme, which is black on white. Why does all the software these days switch to these totally uncustomizable browser-like color schemes? Don't they realize that those white backgrounds are REALLY painful on the eyes? In the old days the applications were nicer about using the Windows color scheme for everything, or at least offered some way to change the look. Now, nearly everything comes with those horrible white backgrounds, instantly and painfully making it impossible for me to use them. Great. I guess all those companies can live just fine without my money.
There is always Microsoft Power Point Viewer.
According to the manuals, a machine running Windows 2000 or XP needs only 64 MB of memory to run these applications. On Windows 98, ME, or NT, only 16 MB will be enough. On Windows 95, only 8 MB.
OpenOffice.org is great for modern computers, but those of us who like to extend the useful life spans of our older machines could be attracted by these very modest system requirements, and willing to spend a reasonable amount to buy the software.
Assuming the software doesn't slow to a crawl on a system with those minimum specs, of course.
I partially agree with your statement, though I don't think there are two forces in the world, there are seven.
Microsoft office isn't distributed for money, it's distributed because of greed.
OpenOffice isn't distribuited for love, it's distributed because of pride.
As for this new contender? I'd go with envy.
(No, I'm not a crazy religious zealot freak or anything. I honestly beleive this explains a lot about software development. For instance, Facebook and Myspace exist because of lust. As JWZ once famously said, "'How will this software get my users laid' should be on the minds of anyone writing social software")
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
These applications appear to be built upon Qt. For those who are not familiar with it, Qt is the premiere C++ GUI toolkit on the market. Not only is it portable, but it's damn fast and resource thrifty. KDE uses it as its underlying toolkit, and it's one of the main reasons that people often find KDE to be more responsive, while also using less memory, than GNOME.
While it is completely unlikely at this point, were OpenOffice.org to be rebuilt around Qt, it would be far faster and less bloated than it is today. The OpenOffice.org rendering and GUI toolkit framework is one of its weak points, and Qt would go a long way towards improving the situation.
I mentioned this is my other post. A developer said a Power Point compatible product was their next step.
If it's anything like SoftMaker, it's going to be pretty decent software.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
I'm one of those Linux users that buys software for Linux.
I bought ApplixWare. I bought WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux. Both became orphanware. OpenOffice, meanwhile, continues to hum along and is not only compatible with new versions of Linux every time I install one, but actually comes as a part of each Linux OS I've installed for years now.
OpenOffice imports word formats with a reasonable degree of accuracy and I can still open and use files all the way back to when it was StarOffice 3.0. My Applix and WordPerfectOffice 2000 files, on the other hand, are not so easy to get back into.
Plus, I now have Office XP anytime I need it running through Crossover, though I prefer OpenOffice in most cases. There's just no reason for me to buy this stuff. I wish them luck in a pretty much taken care of market. It's like trying to sell a web browser for $69 at this point, I think.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
If you need to edit and compose - especially collaboratively - Word-compatible documents professionally, you should be using Word. It is not possible to produce a product with 100% Office document compatibility for less than what it costs Microsoft to produce Office in the first place. The cost of reverse engineering every aspect of obscure, undocumented, and misdocumented functionality is prohibitive.
.doc just once on a proposal you are sending to a client, and if that screwup costs you the client, you might have just lost in potential revenue the cost of a business wide Office deployment. It isn't worth it. What are you going to tell the client? "Please resubmit this document in a different format. We don't use Office because it doesn't satisfy the FSF requirements for Free Software?" Yeah, right; good luck with that. I don't think that would even fly in Cuba (ooooh, *burn*). Or maybe, "We don't use Office because it is too expensive." That isn't going to cut it. Now the client thinks you are willing to cut corners on quality and infrastructure at the cost of customer relationships. Good one. You just lost all the money you saved by not deploying Office.
As a teenager I remember looking at the price of Microsoft Office and thinking that I could code an office suite (at least a word processor) "way cheaper". Who else? Many people have. But Microsoft Office still reigns supreme.
In a professional environment you can not afford 99% compatible. You might botch the formatting on export to
Now, maybe they have a niche market in Europe. That's fine. I don't see why anyone would choose this over Star Office (or even Open Office). But anyone in IT looking at this as a way to cut costs is probably about to make a huge mistake.
i don't see why people are so obessed about being compatable with office documents. the whole point is to force office out, adding compatablity only give it greater leverage to change their formats and screw you over. far better to create a suite that uses open format documents in xml. while you continue to pander to the make everything compatable with MS products crowd, you will not win.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Yeah. Like you PC. It was free. You just picked it off a store shelf, didn't you?
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Well, yeah. I had to dodge a bunch of assholes in black who were running after me with nightsticks and trying to shoot me with a tazer, but it was worth it.
I have no idea why this small operation out of Nuremberg, Germany keeps on trying
(and how they're able to purchase press coverage). With a choice between full
compatibility to Orifice 200x by buying the original or getting a free kick-ass
Office Package that is maybe 80% Microsoft compatible - what niche does that leave
the guy asking money for something that is 80%-90% compatible?
Word isn't even compatible with itself. Sure, it usually shows up mostly correct. But I've had experiences ranging from poor formating to error messages when opening the document (2000 to 2003 seems to be the worst).
I've got a huge (17.5MB) spreadsheet that Excel handles, no problem. Excel takes about five seconds to open it and recalculates it in about a second.
No Linux program I tried could handle this spreadsheet. Gnumeric and OOo both choke on it. If they even load it, they then take several minutes to recalculate it. KSpread doesn't even have all the functions that are in the sheet.
So I was eager to try this new spreadsheet--PlanMaker, they call it. I downloaded it. Installation was really easy (to me, refuting the people who claim that it's too hard for ISVs to release proprietary binaries for Linux.)
Planmaker has now been cranking one of my cores at 100% for about five minutes, just trying to get this worksheet open. Still hasn't opened it. Remember that Excel does this in about five seconds.
If Gnumeric is any indicator, converting from the proprietary Excel file format isn't the problem. Gnumeric performed worse in its native XML format than it did with the Excel format.
Yes, I can already see holier-than-thou geek saying that I shouldn't have a 17.5MB spreadsheet and, to tell the truth, this sheet is not as efficiently written as it could be. But part of the value of spreadsheets is that they allow non-geeks to put some simple data models together. Spreadsheets need to be able to cope with inefficiently written sheets.
Excel can cope; nothing else can. Maybe Crossover is the next option to try.
Planmaker *still* hasn't opened the sheet.
Penny - plain text accounting
But aren't there already several office solutions to choose from? Seems almost that every major window manager provides one or part of one.
.doc format compatibility, even basic tools like antiword can get you at least the text, so what remains is graphics, formatting, redlining and any metadata (versioning, etc).
:) Till then, its just more or less more of the same, according to taste.
As for
What I would like to see is a taker on the old Visio format reverse-engineering bounty that was offered a while back
In a professional environment you can not afford 99% compatible.
It's really like that for any business. You ever wonder why the "business" or "commercial" version of anything is almost always better than the "consumer" version (if there is a counterpart)? It's not about money. I know that most non-business people think that every business is Wal-Mart or Microsoft and can afford to waste money. But even so, that's not it.
I own my own business. It's the source of income for myself, and for 6 other people. There is no room for error anywhere. Any part breaks down, and that's 7 people without pay. I don't care if it's something as simple as a broom or as complicated as software. I always buy the best, and ignore the cost. I know I'm paying more than I have to. But, you can't nickel and dime your livelihood. If it's critical, it's critical.
A few hundred bucks for softwware is negligible. Hell, my business is tiny and new, but if my manager asked me if he should spend $300 on some software that we needed, I'd probably bitch slap him for thinking twice.
Send out PDFs, not virus prone .docs. Anyhoo, the way a .doc renders, depends on the installed printer. Yes, that is correct, the printer. You don't control the client's printer, so if the exact rendering is important, you should not send out .doc files.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
People mention Google docs/spreadsheets if there haven't been minimal (and often free) spreadsheet/word processing apps out for years.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
I can't wait to give it a shot....
--==--
http://wii-view.com
Fortunately, SoftMaker is only a Word and Excel replacement, and for many users, the level of Word and Excel support is probably more than they need. Sure, SoftMaker may have better support for the really complicated Word and Excel formats (see their comparison page for some examples), but how many people really come across 3-d graphics in everyday life?
The bigger problem for most people is PowerPoint slide decks, especially the ones generated by marketing departments that have sound and animation. This is where the shortcomings of OpenOffice hit me the hardest --- and fortunately, SoftMaker doesn't have a solution. So is it worth it to pay USD $70 for a Word and Excel replacement which is more complete than what is currently available in the OSS world and avoid having to watch and listen to the inane drivel the marketing department consider the height of intelligent discourse? Definitely.
caseih: "I don't trust OpenOffice that much, but I certainly trust MS Office less."
synthespian: "Yes, the expected and canonical "MS sucks and OpenOffice rulez" fanboy response."
I would have thought the expected and canonical "MS sucks and OpenOffice rulez" fanboy response would have been a bit more... I don't know... positive?
It seems you expected the MSSaOOR response a little too much.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Or as I like to call them, "Ingredients to a successful office party"
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Go to any Windows publishing house (and this includes most of the major ones, a bunch of whom I've worked in or with). How do you make a PDF? Well, you start with a Word file and you run it through Acrobat. So making a PDF for such people involves... Word.
And yes, the book goes into Quark before going to press, but do the authors or editors work in Quark? Do the page designers even work in Quark? No, they all work in Word. It's the lonely guy at the end of the hall doing final layout that dumps everything into the formatter/publisher application just before it goes to press for a full run.
Until that point, all the way through most of writing, editing, and design, everything is in Word. Word gets used much more than I think people in IT realize. Word/Excel/Powerpoint are the bedrock of corporate America. Most small and medium size companies (and a few large ones, too) do all of their publications with Word, all of their PR with PowerPoint, and all of their databases as Excel sheets. That's just the way it is, like it or hate it. That's all people (all the way up through management) know.
Just try to get them to change... Or to let you bring something novel to the table. You'll be shown the door.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Glad I am not the only one who hates how QT looks. I use Linux/Gnome, OS X and WinXP and think all 3 of them look or can look nice and functional. I have always hated the blocky look of QT. This office suite looks butt ugly to me.
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
KDE is about 100X that which GTK is. Learn to make themes for it ;)
"Free software" is a matter of liberty, not price.
about +$65 and -oss
Bah, if they're aiming for "Microsoft Office compatibility", that means more Microsoft-formatted documents, not less. Vote with your usage, stick with OpenOffice and their open formats.
I really don't understand your question, since I see "Start" in that picture, not "START"...
Unless you're confusing "capitalized" with "bold"?!
... and it seems I'm confusing "capitalized" with "uppercase". ;-)
My apologies to anyone who reply to me before myself, I'm being blocked by Slashdot's lame "slow down cowboy" delay...
...and you'll find much the same, if not worse.
"Find what?", you may ask. The answer: That for the European price, the company simply takes the U.S. price and replaces the $ with a , and call it a day.
For example, I recently purchased Paint Shop Pro for an aunt.
U.S. price: $99.99
Euro price: 99.99
That price in Euros is valued at $129.579 (xe.net, December 18th, 2006). 30% more expensive indeed.
This is for The Netherlands. The Netherlands carries a Sales VAT of 19% on such goods. In other words, 11% is pure profit*
Add to that that in the U.S. there's a discount on the product to $79.99, and it's a 62% markup, so 43% pure profit*.
* One may argue that shipping costs (as in, from Country X exported to The Netherlands, as opposed to the U.S.) drive up the price. Not true, this is for the electronic download version (not that the boxed version is more expensive, by the way). One may argue that translation costs drive up the price - also not true, as both the U.S. and Dutch-bought versions ship with all languages.
So naturally, I purchased through the U.S. store.
You'll find that it is much the same for any software product, and Europeans are, sadly, used to it. If you happen to know any Dutch, go check the news posts over at www.tweakers.net on newly announced products. Whenever somebody wonders what the price in Euros will be, the standard reply - which tends to work out as being correct - is that if the product costs $100 in the U.S., it will cost 100 in Europe.
That's probably a bit of a self-perpetuating issue there. Why would a publisher be so silly as to charge less when they can obviously charge more with the consumer half-cursing the practice while at the same time making the purchase anyway?
So I wouldn't say that I wouldn't expect it from a German company; in fact, I would expect it from -any- company.
=====
You might think that $30 more for PSP isn't so bad - but obviously, it gets worse when the cost of the goods increases, such as the gem that is Autodesk's AutoCAD 2007:
U.S. price: $3,995
NL price: 4,750
NL price in dollars: $6,217.48
Mark-up: 55.63%
'Profit': 36.63% or $2,277.53
"Free software" is a matter of liberty, not price.
I believe the more appropriate comparison would be between StarOffice and this new one, rather than OpenOffice.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
The only interest I have in this is to make myself more compatible with MS Office. For 90% of the stuff I want to do OpenOffice.org is fine, but sometimes at work it just doesn't do the job. For example, does SoftMaker have VB support like VLOOKUP() in excel?
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
An annoying thing I found with openoffice's version of powerpoint was I couldn't get it to display a presentation on the 2nd monitor (actually the projector). It insists on being on the 1st.
.ppt, and powerpoint viewer time...
So it was save as
I had lots of probs with Open Office during the early days - formatting just wouldn't stick - reminded me of Lotus Word Pro in the late 90s - slow crappy half baked software. The more recent versions seem to be a lot better. Still slow, but less crappy.
Interesting move. I noticed Planmaker in one of the Ubuntu repositories already. Textmaker and Planmaker are good applications. I am running both on an older Windows CE 3.x PDA and they are way better than the defeault PocketWord and PocketExcel you get. Both applications are fast, easy to use and hence a good starting point for W2L migration. The more supported platforms the better.
But is that really true? I mean, if someone (a client, a supplier) sends you a Word document, generally you don't care about the pretty formatting (unless you are one of the unlucky few working in a page layout job). If you can read the information in the document, that is good enough. Same thing for Excel spreadsheets, and Powerpoint presentations. Note that I personally do not accept any Office documents from third-parties that contain macros. they are just too dangerous to allow onto my system.
And as for sending documents, don't. Send PDFs. They are harder to modify for nefarious purposes, they give a guaranteed layout on the receiving computer, and they are platform agnostic.
Don't forget Scribus, it's excellent for DP! My company switched for all our new publications (to avoid the Quark mafia, $900 yearly or publishers can't read your files.) It saves directly to PDF with perfect color, fonts, embedded icc profiles etc. Oh, and it's Open Source!
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. - Hunter S. Thompson
It's not "For BSD", but unfortunately only for FreeBSD.
Ok, back to OpenOffice.org, so...
{{.sig}}
While their page shows some MS Office Docs that OpenOffice 2.1 can not read(I tried) I've never run into this problem myself. Personally I think OpenOffice is fine for most people since most never use the advanced features of MS that screw up in OpenOffice. Anyway the two big things that are missing are Access and PowerPoint. Most people want PowerPoint(especially parents with kids in school, teachers love power point) but hate the idea of paying for MS Office. Access is the other thing, there is no program on Linux that can read and write Access files, it would be great to have this feature sometimes. Last term I had to install it via crossover to be able to do some stuff.
Word!
(you have to have seen scooby doo: the movie to get that one)
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
Can we distinguish between "Big IT" and "Small IT"? As one of the two guys wearing the IT hat part time, I am fully aware that Word and Excel are the 17 foot draft horses of the office. PDF? That's something you do when you want an untouchable scan so your contracts don't come back with a surprise on them. (Without requiring a level of work that sends red flags)
Because of the tech specs of one of our servers, we're getting great exposure to Open Office, precisely for that lovely price - Free as in Birds, and Beer. As soon as our other IT admin updates it past Beta on the server, I'll quietly promote it even louder.
That's why these German folks are missing the boat. The expensive Gorilla from Redmond, and the Open version(s) are defining the framework. "Cheap" is not good enough anymore.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Fair point.
These are examples of some advanced uses that apparently Open Office cannot yet handle. However, I will continue to use it at least part time and promote it, because anything is better than the status quo of the past x years. Use MS if you must ; you have made the considered choice which should be how all users approach MS.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
There, fixed a typo for you.
There are a lot of good KDE/QT-styles out there. Once I showed my wife, she instantly changed everything on her desktop into something *I* find hideous. She is perfectly happy with it.
There is no way to say that a toolkit is ugly, it's the themes that use the toolkit that are ugly.
Free beer is never free as in speech. Free speech is always free as in beer.
Both programs import OpenDocument, an explort filter ist currently developed and will be part of a free update. In my opinion, the DOC support of TextMaker is better than that of OOo.
Looking over the course of this Slashdot thread I'm not surprised by the now-familiar Microsoft-bashing/LaTeX/Lyx recommendation/OO.o zealotry/refusal to pay Softmaker's price. But I have been reading Slashdot now long enough to know the words to this particular song.
I bought Textmaker back in 2003 and liked it so much I also bought Planmaker, their spreadsheet (now sold together). But because I'm a (professional and prolific writer, I care a lot about my tools, and I've tried just about all of the products out there; plus, because I use Windows at work and both Linux and Macs at home, I've been exposed to a lot of word processors.
On Linux, I use Textmaker. Here's why.
Stable. I've never crashed it, even with ridiculously complicated documents
Fast. I like OO.o but on my old 555Mhz PIII it's unbearably slow to start up, and on my Mac, NeoOffice is just not fast enough, and even repainting the screen after a window stretch/shrink is ghastly. I appreciate the effort and even use the software, but it's not the first thing I reach for. On Textmaker menus are snappy, the graphics are fast, and things work as though it had been designed and built by professionals that want to make a product good enough to convince people to spend money on it.
Easy to use. That means keyboard shortcuts for everything, sensibly laid out, familiar interface, professional.
Lightweight. It's been designed to be resource friendly and is, even on my outdated hardware.
Fast enough to be a useful document previewer for your mail client so you can get a glimpse of what's in the Word docs I receive.
Basically, it's fast, reliable, and works well. Its Word doc import is much better quality than OO.o's. I gave Abiword a try but rejected it because of frequent crashes and a somewhat amateurish feel to it; Kword has never been usable for more than simple letters in my opinion and the font kerning issues make Kword printed documents ugly. OO.o is simply too slow in spite of all its other endearing qualities.
Textmaker's downside? The TML format is a mystery to me, so I don't use it. You can save to Doc format as a default, but I hate Docs. I would be thrilled if they would adopt the ODT format. It's also not as feature rich as OO.o, which is in turn not as feature rich as Word. On the Mac there are far better alternatives (I happen to love Mellel, and Apple's Pages is top-notch). And I use LaTeX for what it does best, and RTF or even plain text all other times.
But face it, GNU/Linux (and BSD more so) lacks a small, fast, good word processor. Abiword and Kword are fast but not good, and OO.o is good but not fast. For professional writers that care about their work and their tools, this is a great piece of software and I'm not alone in representing a market of GNU/Linux OSF fans that believes in freedom but is not against paying for software (SUSE, Rekall, Textmaker, Planmaker, Xandros, NoMachines) if with that software comes additional quality, reliability, or convenience. Textmaker provides all three.
Finally, the above doesn't even take into consideration the fact that its primary market isn't Linux/BSD in the first place, it's Windows users that synch docs to a PocketPC. And in that niche, it is unsurpassed and very critically acclaimed. Be glad they even make a Linux version at all, whiney slashdotters.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
"Looking over the course of this Slashdot thread I'm not surprised by the now-familiar Microsoft-bashing/LaTeX/Lyx recommendation/OO.o zealotry/refusal to pay Softmaker's price. But I have been reading Slashdot now long enough to know the words to this particular song"
:|
I hadn't realized recomending OO was a) a sign of zealotry, b) anti-microsoft and c) a sign of being stingy. Also this is the first example I've seen on slashdot of a blanket comdemnation of the whole thread. What I have seen in the rest of the thread is the usual OO doesn't render PowerPoint correctly and OO.calc is slow, doesn't do macros etc.
"But face it, GNU/Linux (and BSD more so) lacks a small, fast, good word processor"
As someone once said, they never got any real work done until they banned PowerPoint. As far as I know printers prefer the source material in plain text. Unless you are doing material for display and need rich text a plain 'text editor' is all you need. I'm surprised no one has mentions Emacs. There is a version for Windows and it can be configured for ZXCV (using a config file I borrowed from the net). It handles huge files and can be configured for different modes, most of which I've never used.
"I'm not alone in representing a market of GNU/Linux OSF fans that believes in freedom but is not against paying for software (SUSE, Rekall, Textmaker, Planmaker, Xandros, NoMachines) if with that software comes additional quality, reliability, or convenience. Textmaker provides all three"
I hadn't realized you were the official GNU spokesman. But do you mind me asking if you have shares in Textmaker. My philosophy is that software is a net negative on the balance sheet in that you have to pay someone to work it after you have 'licensed' it. What with ongoing upgrading costs and the next version probably having a different file format I would prefer not to climb back on that particular bandwaggon, thank you very much.
"in that niche, it is unsurpassed and very critically acclaimed. Be glad they even make a Linux version at all, whiney slashdotters"
Do you have shares in Microsoft as well. whiney !!
was I bought it, I like it, I recommend it (Score:2 Commercial)
davecb5620@gmail.com
OK, XP is run in the fancy mode, with all the tellytubby bling but it's still 'Standard'.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
This is a very important feature. I haven't used PowerPoint recently, but Keynote lets me put the slides on one screen and have the current slide, the next slide, the time this slide, the total time and the notes on the other. This is perfect for a laptop user; my laptop display is my view, and the external display (usually a projector) is what other people see. Having to put the display in mirror mode for presentations seems like a chronic waste of resources. I hope OO.o fixes this, if it hasn't done so already.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Last time I looked, StarOffice was $20 (maybe $25) for educational institutions. Oh, and that was a site-license, not a single seat.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Ok, now what about the difficult improvements?
You got caught making shit up, now you're lying some more.
Not surprising considering how much lying you've done in the past, but I still lauhg at the retards who haven't figured you out yet.
Seriously, what kind of loser makes up lies about themselves to post on a web board?
Why are so many posts with factual errors modded up?
Agreed, there are some quite beutiful themes for KDE, just like most OSS many-things-gui managers.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
uh, should nt you just ignore, by definition, any marketing material with animation or sound ?
They say that they use a custom toolkit, which is neither Qt nor GTK+.
OO.o is a very nice MS Office competitor but like MS Office I find it too much of a heavyweight for my needs. I have a somewhat underpowered notebook at home that I still like to use when I don't want to sit at my desk and have found Abiword and Gnumeric fit the bill very nicely. I wasn't all that impressed with KWord when I tried it, but that was some time ago, plus I most often work in a GNOME environment so KWord just didn't deem to "belong" compared to the more GNOMEish AbiWord. Since I'm sure KWord has improved a fair bit I'd be curious to know how it came about to be the "least of all evils" for you.
.odt standard (dragging their feet on .odt support is what annoyed me about Abiword for awhile too but they eventually addressed that). If you like what you see so far from Softmaker by all means LET THEM KNOW that you'd like these shortcomings addressed--user participation is what makes Free software great and though you cannot participate in the DEVELOPMENT of the closed Softmaker product you can still help them out with product suggestions.
Anyways, I like AbiWord because it more than meets all my needs for a general-purpose word processor and is still pretty lightweight--the startup time is significantly faster than OO.o, which is close to intolerable on my sub-1GHz notebook (though not too much of an issue on the desktop PC). Gnumeric is also pretty snappy, and it actually seems MORE full-featured than the OO.o or KOffice alternatives.
I think it is great that Softmaker has brought out another viable contender for multi-platform productivity software and though it is not free (or Free) I'd be willing to try it out. However I am disappointed that they have feature-limited the trial edition (Can't they do something like time-limit it instead?). It also seems a shame that it doesn't seems to have support for the
I wish the people at Softmaker luck--however I do think they are fighting a pretty steep uphill battle, becasue in the Windows world Microsoft has the market locked up and on all other platforms there are established, mature, free (and Free) alternatives that already have equal or better support for standard (.odt) and popular (.doc) formats. Softmaker can't just match these people they have to offer something markedly better to justify the extra cost and more restrictive licensing or they will fail, and it is difficult to match the pace of development found in many successful open projects. Nonetheless it is still important to give all alternatives a fair shake--that is what drives continuous improvement for everything.
Tell you what, I actually have a pocket PC myself and I even let it run Windows CE
mostly because I use it as a road navigator in the car. That PocketPC will however
be up for sale in a week or two because frankly the navigator software sucks
and I really don't have any use for a PocketPC without phone capability.
Even with a PocketPC at my disposal I have found that I still get all my work done on
my notebook. That notebook wont be for sale for some time because as opposed to
the PocketPC, I can sit down, take it out and get it done. It has everything the
PocketPC doesn't like a screen and a keyboard large enough to work with even for
a couple of hours when you're on the move. Contrast that to working with a small
underpowered device and entering a lengthy text with the tiny accessory keyboard or
even worse with the stylus it comes with.
So as far as the embedded small device angle is concerned I doubt that but a handful of
people really subject themselves to the agony of writing a lengthy text on their
PocketPC. With that out of the way... again where does it leave you? Where's your niche?
After doing a quick image search for "Windows XP GUI", it seems the standard word on the start button is "start", not "Start", which is what the parent asked about since SoftMaker have "Start" in their screenshot instead of "start".
I for one would LOVE to see a Mac version, but I'm incredibly glad to see that Linux and FreeBSD were given due attention from the onset.
I know for small companies in particular, you've really gotta pick your battles, so I salute them for choosing to give full support to Linux and FreeBSD. I hope the community response to the product is as strong as many have predicted, and that it's a solid success for the company and users alike.
If it is:
1.) It will give them incentive to keep going (and to perhaps add other versions.)
2.) It may give other developers/firms incentive to start rolling out more products for Linux, *BSD, etc.
Ask anyone over 35 about word processors (yes, I know we can't be trusted) and chances are they will pine for the old console version of WordPerfect. It used complex keyboard shortcuts for everything, it wasn't WYSIWYG, and yet real people used it to get real work done. Not just simple letters and term papers, but complex legal documents and screenplays.
Most importantly, non-technical users felt like they were in *complete control* while using it. That's quite something for a console app.
If you really want to capture the "hearts and minds" market for MS Office alternatives, you could do much worse than to bring the original WordPerfect interface back from the grave.
No it is not compatible with BSD. It is only compatible with FreeBSD. Fix the Article.
To Hell with the Queen of England!
The largest block I have with using OOo is its lack of a multivariate optimiser (a la Excel's "Solver"). Does SoftMaker's spreadsheet program have that?
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
The whole problem with QT is that its themes are intricately linked to KDE. I use QT for one application (lyx) and to get it looking remotely decent I had to install all the KDE libs, just so I could install a QT theme!!! That's just crazy - building a theme for a toolkit should never require all the crap of a desktop environment.
Ah OK, I have a Dutch version and it's capitalised too.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."