Where Do I Go Now That Oracle Owns OpenOffice.org?

eldavojohn writes "So I noted that there was better support for my processor in the latest BIOS for my mainboard. After downloading the update, there was a .doc file containing flashing instructions. No matter, I have OpenOffice.org installed on this machine and just opened it up. And, as should be no surprise, there was an Oracle logo splash screen while OpenOffice.org 3.2 started up. At my job, I've had a less than favorable history with Oracle that I'm not going to get into — rather let's just say I never want anything to do with them again. Including installing any of their software on my machine. So I'm facing a dilemma. I've looked into the forked LIbreOffice but that's still in beta and I'm a little wary of depending on that. Has anyone used LibreOffice (it's installing as I type this) extensively? Does it handle complex Powerpoint files okay? Is there some alternative out there that I'm completely overlooking for open source? Can anyone convince me that there's no reason to fear the Oracle OpenOffice.org? Will it remain the de facto standard? Will it eventually lock me into a commitment with Oracle? If you get by without one of these heavyweight monster editors, what do you use and how do you handle doc, ppt, (etc.) extensions?"

Comments

Write to the manufacturer

[gilesjuk]

Ask them to stop using Word documents for instructions.

Ask them to use PDF or HTML.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[neumayr]

Hehe, yeah.
Meanwhile, at some water cooler in some province of China:
Exec1: Some random guy who at some point bought _one_ of our mainboards, making us around 0.1 cents of profit, who may or may not buy more of our products, asks us to change our process.
Exec2: *rotfl*

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Yvan256]

If it's a document that will need to be edited by someone else, then I can understand using Word.

But for a document intended for end-users, it's surprising they didn't use PDF.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Anonymous Coward]

And after, that stop acting irrationally. Sure, ignore Oracle products if you wish, if you ask me that's a good thing. However, refusing to use a FLOSS computer program just because it's written by Oracle (btrfs), or just because it has the Oracle name on the splash screen (OpenOffice.org) is simply stupid. Yes, Oracle are going to fuck up OpenOffice.org, and yes, we're moving to better alternatives (LibreOffice), but there is no need to rush, unless you want to help with writing bug reports. Unless you plan to do just that, jumping to install LibreOffice before distros switch is irrational and stupid. It's too early to worry about that.

OpenOffice.org is not a product, it's a computer program, that happens to have a Oracle splash screen on it. You aren't buying it, and the code is still virtually unchanged since the acquisition by Sun, so you can't claim that by using it you're supporting Oracle in any way. RELAX.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Spad]

Then get them to email the PDF to you, but make sure they include a message to let you know what it is, something like:

"Here's the file you were after, hope it helps"

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[The Mighty Buzzard]

I'd agree if a) PDFs were easily convertible to other formats, b) they rendered at something a bit snappier than "as slow as they possibly can and still have anyone read them," c) were easily editable, d) weren't the current favorite attack vector for malware writers.

Seriously though, there's no valid reason that manuals must be displayed exactly as they would in printed form. All I need is the information. Put it in a .txt file if there aren't any images or complex formatting required, or put it in HTML if there are. Fuck a bunch of pretty and uniform, I want useful.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I don't think PDF was ever intended to be an editable format, that's trying to pound a square peg in a round hole. It's supposed to be a distribution format. The fact that the format offers script execution is pretty baffling.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[mjwalshe]

have you tried to use acrobat for document creation?

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[turbidostato]

"Exec1: Some random guy who at some point bought _one_ of our mainboards, making us around 0.1 cents of profit, who may or may not buy more of our products, asks us to change our process.
Exec2: *rotfl*"

Exec3: How much does it cost us our current process? Would it be cheaper to change it to cover that guy instead of sending him to our rivals? Would that have any effect in the rest of our client base?
General Manager: What do you think are you laughing at, Exec2?

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[neumayr]

Enter Stockholder1
SH1: Schooling our barely educated, almost unpaid throwaway workers, who are thusly void of any intrinsic motivations to do any good at their job, will cost money. Given our employee turnover rate, a lot of money. We will need to keep the processes simple, any change will only be approved if it simplifies the process. You should know all this. Exec3, GM, you're out.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Yvan256]

It's extremely easy to make a PDF file.

Print -> Save as PDF...

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Pharmboy]

I think you are correct. But when the only problem you have is a nail, you try to make your tool look like a hammer.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Kvasio]

why pay for acrobat, when you could have free alternatives? I use Bullzip Free PDF Printer, usually works like a charm.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[frdmfghtr]

It's extremely easy to make a PDF file.

Print -> Save as PDF...

That works on OS X, yes...I've done it many, many times. When I used to use Windows as my primary OS, I recall having to get some extra software if I wanted to create PDFs--nothing native to the OS.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[jbengt]

a) I agree, it's trivially easy to convert pdf to other formats. Heck, I even have the ability to convert to and from DXF at work.
b) In my experience, Adobe Acrobat actually renders the pdf documents faster than the lightweight readers, at least for large, complex documents. The issue is that Acrobat takes a long time to start up compared to most of the alternatives.
c) Though I understand that pdfs are mostly meant for read-only, the ability to edit them comes in handy at work, especially the ability to add pages, but also commenting, and mark-ups.
d) My recommendation would be to save as PDF/A, which is the pdf archive standard, and so more likely to still be readable well into the future. This also avoids the embedded multimedia and scripting that seems so unnecessary for a portable document format.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[PopeRatzo]

CEO:

"We don't make our money from selling profits, we make it from buying companies, stripping the assets, laying off the workers, borrowing to the hilt, going bankrupt and doing it all over again. So fuck you guys and your "worrying about customers, employees, docs, pdfs, etc".. Don't you know we are living in a post-productivity world? It's all about the churn now, and by the way, I've just churned your asses, and security is going to be escorting you all to the front door".

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel sorry for those who are more concerned with removing "evil" software than getting any useful work done. To those who refuse to run effective software on the theory that dire consequences will happen in the future I merely note that we're all dead in the future anyway.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Yvan256]

I don't have Acrobat installed on my system. It's built-in on Mac OS X. I'm guessing most Linux distros also have the ability to print directly to PDF, which leaves me wondering why such a basic feature still isn't supported by Windows itself.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[davidbofinger]

I don't think PDF was ever intended to be an editable format, that's trying to pound a square peg in a round hole. It's supposed to be a distribution format.

PDF's principal raison d'etre is distribution for printing. It's used as distribution for on-screen viewing which is definitely round peg in square hole. In fact it's practically triangular peg in hole shaped like Kim Kardashian. I think the reason it's popular is security by inconvenience - most people don't have the tools to edit a PDF. It's probably the most overused format in the world.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Com2Kid]

Because Adobe keeps threatening to sue Microsoft if that feature is added.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[SanityInAnarchy]

b and d are really Adobe's fault, and can be fixed by using another reader. a and c aren't really what PDF was designed for, and are also flaws in HTML.

But I agree -- HTML would be better.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[SanityInAnarchy]

OpenOffice has a save-to-PDF toolbar button.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[VolciMaster]

We don't make our money from selling profits

Ummm... duh! Who SELLS their profits?!?!

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[oldspewey]

PDF's principal raison d'etre is distribution for printing. It's used as distribution for on-screen viewing which is definitely round peg in square hole.

I seem to recall that way back in the day, PDF was pretty much exclusively a screen viewing format, while Postscript was used for print distribution. I certainly don't recall ever reading anything from Adobe suggesting they believe PDF is inappropriate for onscreen use - in fact they offer several ways to lock files so they can only be used onscreen.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[magus_melchior]

I wouldn't discount the influence of social networks and online (non-spam) marketing-- if a manufacturer is able to produce both quality parts and documentation, and get their stuff out there, I don't think computer geeks will dismiss them so easily. That translates to sales momentum, and sooner or later, the lost 0.1c can translate into thousands of dollars-- those cost-minded execs may find themselves eating crow with their shoes with their words.

Of course, geeks don't read the docs unless they have a problem and they can't find a solution by Googling...

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[xswl0931]

CTO: it'll cost about $2000 per employee to retrain all our employees due to cost of trainers and time off for training. In addition, we nned to spend more money to convert our archived documents.
CEO: don't forget to include the cost in changing how we work with our suppliers and partners
GM: rofl, exec3 you stupid

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Dogtanian]

The fact that [PDF] offers script execution is pretty baffling.

No, it's not. Adobe need to keep adding new features to the format (whether they're a good idea or not) in order to give them an excuse to sell people newer versions of Acrobat and the like.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[davidbofinger]

I'm sure Adobe's happy at PDF's wide use and I'd be surprised to hear them discourage it. But inspection of the PDF format strongly suggests the designer imagined it being printed. If it was intended for screen viewing, why would it be broken up into pages?

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[PopeRatzo]

Ummm... duh! Who SELLS their profits?!?!

Oops. I meant, "selling products".

You'll have to excuse me. When my mother-in-law came for her last visit to the 'States, she brought me a bottle of this wonderful slivovitza, and I had a coupla fingers worth a little while ago. Man, this stuff is nirvana in a bottle. It's like a potion from Elder Scrolls that makes you invisible crossed with one that makes you invulnerable. You have a few sips and your ego dissolves and you become one with the universe. That stupid greaseball Don Juan should have had a little slivovitza instead of those peyote buttons. Then he'd have known what reality was really all about.

Now excuse me, I'm going to climb up to the roof and give flying another try. The first try didn't work out so well, but the bone sticking out of my leg looks cool as hell.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[turbidostato]

"CTO: it'll cost about $2000 per employee to retrain all our employees due to cost of trainers and time off for training. In addition, we nned to spend more money to convert our archived documents.
CEO: don't forget to include the cost in changing how we work with our suppliers and partners
GM: rofl, exec3 you stupid"

Exec3 (to the GM): Hummm... not to tell our CTO/CEO are wrong, but our internal data tells that luckily PDF transforming can be done as an outbound end process on 0.001 cents per doc, it won't affect any of our current customers and it will increase our market target by 10% which is the penetration for Linux on our products, opening a low rivality niche with an expected market cap for our company of 25% out from our current 2% (see exhibit #1 on really shiny colours). Now, please see the end result (thanks, Techwriter 1). With this, theoretical ROI will be less than a week with market cash results within a month and expected net benefits increased by 2.5% this year (see exhibit #2 on really shiny colours too). Oh, and I have other ideas for streamlining our production costs.
GM: Humm... Exec3; tomorrow morning I'll be playing golf with Stockholder1; do you want to come with us?

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[turbidostato]

"I visited some technical factories in China earlier this year and they have gotten to the point where they know they have a high, high turnover rate. The average worker jumps ship in 18 months to get a much, much higher salary."

This means nothing but that those companies will need to be much less labour intensive. To-date, due to very low wages they chose man labour against automations every day; luckily for them (and for companies selling these kinds of automations) they have a big and obvious path for optimization by automation (in some cases you can find the same kind of factory that currently uses 1000 workers in China totally automated in Japan with just 2 or three workers).

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[The Mighty Buzzard]

a) No, they're in fact pretty much the worst option for ease of conversion and predictable output. That you believe otherwise simply means you've not tried to convert enough truly fucked up ones.
b) Linux and evince. Still abysmally slow compared to nearly any other doc type.
c) "Distribution documents," meaning DRM via being a PITA to edit? Even compared to closed POSes like MS documents, PDFs suck to edit.
d) Yeah, d was a weak argument that I wouldn't have even bothered mentioning if it hadn't been timely.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[The Mighty Buzzard]

b+d) Errr... I use evince. It's more or less comparable to Foxit performance on Windows.
a+c) Kind of my point. Stop inflicting PDF on us in situations where it detracts from rather than adds to a pleasant use experience.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Macgrrl]

PDF (Portable Document Format) was supposed to be effectively 'on screen postscript' to allow you to view content in a platform independent format which would render identically on any system.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[sincewhen]

It's supposed to be a distribution format. The fact that the format offers script execution is pretty baffling.

I see no contradiction here if you realise that it is a format for *distribution of malware*.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[The Mighty Buzzard]

a) Not well or accurately, it's not. You're assuming whoever created the PDF knew how to do it in a non-fubar way and that is most definitely not the norm from what I've seen.
b) I don't really care which reader we're talking about. PDF renders a damned sight slower than non-ajax html and approaches infinity in how much slower it renders than plain text.
c) Right, but is anything actually gained by making them read-only? If so, is it enough to justify all the down-sides?
d) Why? Again, what exactly is gained by refusing the end user the option to adjust the formatting so that it suits them rather than you?

eBooks and manuals in particular should never be formatting locked. What reason could anyone possibly have for forcing a user to side-scroll to see the entire page if they just wanted a larger font? There simply is no up side to PDF vs user modifiable documents unless printing is involved.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[TapeCutter]

The guy who writes the prospectus and annual reports.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[n9hmg]

Let me translate: pull your panties out of your slit and use what works. Sure, Oracle's going to start making nonsensical tie-ins with their main products. They haven't done it yet, and even when they do, it'll just be irrelevant wasted efforts, not harming the functionality you need. My old boss had a hissy fit and decided there would be no more IBM products in the company, ever. The existing products got starved (TSM shall have no more tapes when we're keeping everything forever and doubling the data under management every 6 month) and their failure under that pressure was used to justify the irrational personal decision. Are you that guy?

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Mongoose Disciple]

it will increase our market target by 10% which is the penetration for Linux on our products

Wait, what has a 10% penetration for Linux?

And nothing in the server world counts, because no one's hooking a monitor to those machines and trying to read a PDF or a .doc.

Can we at least pick semi-realistic examples?

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[dougisfunny]

Why is powerpoint broken up into pages?

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[SanityInAnarchy]

b+d) Errr... I use evince. It's more or less comparable to Foxit performance on Windows.

And I use Okular. Either way, take out Adobe Reader and I just don't see them being slow, and there haven't been terribly many cross-platform PDF exploits.

a+c) Kind of my point. Stop inflicting PDF on us in situations where it detracts from rather than adds to a pleasant use experience.

Sure, but if the choice is between PDF and DOC, I'll take the PDF. I think that was the original poster's point.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[davidbofinger]

A few answers to this.

1. PowerPoint is at least broken up into pages shaped like the display screen. Unlike PDF, which normally is broken up into portait pages and displayed on a landscape monitor.

2. What PowerPoint and PDF have in common is that they don't expect the viewer(s) to have any control over the presentation (font, font size, etc.). Because neither is intended for a single person to read through a document.

3. PowerPoint inherited the paradigm of the overhead projector. PDF inherited the paradigm of the printed document.

I guess I was imprecise and thanks for pointing that out.

I can't see how anyone can look at PDF and think its designer thought on-screen display was its main application. It's comically ill-suited, compared even with HTML or Word format. Its only real "advantage" is the inconvenience of editing it.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[acnicklas]

....I've just churned your asses...

Sounds kinky.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[thre5her]

That's an entirely realistic number when you consider the target audience for retail mainboards.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Mongoose Disciple]

Let's just take that as a given for kicks.

What percentage of that market is going to say, "What, I can't get the manual in a non-.doc format?! You'll not get my business again! How dare you provide me a document in the de-facto standard format for documents!?"

There may exist some such people, but I submit to you that they're removing themselves from the gene pool because anyone who's that completely rigid about such a ridiculous thing has almost no chance of producing offspring that will survive to adulthood.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[dna_(c)(tm)(r)]

"shaped like the display screen" isn't a standard format 4:3? 16:9? 16:10? Nor is it a standard resolution...

When I have to do presentations or teach a course I often use either html or pdf - added bonus: no transition effects, animations etc. Html rendering software is always present, pdf almost always PP rarely so.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[lordholm]

IIRC the script-support exist primarily for input validation in PDF-forms. This is a not so baffling reason in my mind. Not that I agree with adding the scripting support in PDF, but it is understandable...

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[dominious]

EXEC 4:

Guys, we are all right here at the water cooler btw. Why are we texting on /. and not talking to each other instead?

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[91degrees]

In that case, the OP should ditch his computer, and find a resource neutral means of employment.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Kvasio]

in Office 2007 and 2010 it is.
But bullzip I've refered to in GP would act as system printer.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Darfeld]

c) I want you to understand this :

You. Don't. Want. To. Edit. PDFs!

They have never been there for that and they never should be. Their are other good formats for that. PDFs are end products. Whether or not you find it useful or a good idea, their are such occasions when a document have no reason to be edited and their are no reason to permit it.

That said, I agree there are better formats for plenty of use of PDF, for e-books and stuffs... Just use the god damn format adapted to the situation. PDF isn't the one if you need editing. PDF is possibly the one if you want your document to be readable on pretty much any computer, you don't intent it to be edited and you want every one to see it with the same layout.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Dodgy G33za]

I bet you were the kid that always had a great excuse for not doing your homework.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[PseudonymousBraveguy]

Don't you know we are living in a post-productivity world? It's all about the churn now,

Speak for yourself. Maybe you are living in a post-productivity USA, but that's not "the world". Meanwhile, my country of residence is making its money by selling machinery and cars to the rest of the world. And I'd bet that countries like China, that actually produce stuff and sell it to countries like yours, would equally disagree.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[analyst-cz]

Hey, quote it properly: did this not say that evolution strategy setting dinosaur some 64 mil. years ago ?

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[turbidostato]

"What percentage of that market is going to say, "What, I can't get the manual in a non-.doc format?! You'll not get my business again!"

Up to about 10%. If they don't do it now is because they don't think to have an alternative. That's what marketing is for.

I myself have bought computers for total amounts in the tens of thousands US$ out of Linux compatibility as selective reason.

"I submit to you that they're removing themselves from the gene pool because anyone who's that completely rigid about such a ridiculous thing has almost no chance of producing offspring that will survive to adulthood."

My current spring is quite on his way to reach adulthood, thank you very much.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[turbidostato]

"Can we at least pick semi-realistic examples?"

They *are* more than semi-realistic examples on two hands:
1) The general idea is that execs shouldn't laugh at a proposition of changing their procedures; they should make the numbers and see if the change holds water. Does it seem semi-realistic enough?
2) Increased sellings of SIL-based server-class motheboards coupled to the time when they released their drivers sources to the main kernel line.

And then, for an anecdote, I buy preferentially both computers and components weigthing high their known commitment to Linux support (and that means tens of thousand dollars).

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[drinkypoo]

There's never been a problem rendering Postscript to the screen (at least not one which prevents it) ... the point of PDF was to be easier to process than Postscript to make screen rendering faster.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[ultranova]

There may exist some such people, but I submit to you that they're removing themselves from the gene pool because anyone who's that completely rigid about such a ridiculous thing has almost no chance of producing offspring that will survive to adulthood.

"Use .doc format or your children won't see adulthood."

Isn't that going a bit far, even for Microsoft?

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[cjb110]

Why? Why not use RTF, or in fact just plain text?

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[PopeRatzo]

Excuse me, Happy McFun, but did you not read the half dozen posts before mine?

Jesus Christ, your "country of residence" may have come a long way in the production of cars and heavy machinery, but apparently you've got a ways to go yet in the subtlety and satire department.

But don't worry, you can always learn from all the books, movies, and music we export to you.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[wildstoo]

They might never add it to Windows itself, but it was an optional component of Office 2007 and it's built into Office 2010 (although that information is very well hidden on the Microsoft site... maybe that was part of the deal with Adobe.)

My guess is if Adobe played hardball, Microsoft would start heavily promoting the XPS format as an alternative to PDF, so Adobe backed down.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[PseudonymousBraveguy]

but apparently you've got a ways to go yet in the subtlety and satire department.

Actually we are pretty famous for our complete lack of humor.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[DrSkwid]

CEOs sell them to shareholders in return for massive remuneration and stock options

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[DrSkwid]

> The average worker jumps ship in 18 months to get a much, much higher salary.

The average worker jumps out of the window in 18 months

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Mongoose Disciple]

I myself have bought computers for total amounts in the tens of thousands US$ out of Linux compatibility as selective reason.

"I pick stuff that's compatible with Linux" != "I won't buy it if you won't give me a .pdf."

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[tehcyder]

Right, so it's OK to use the highly popular but proprietary Adobe pdf file format but not the highly popular but proprietary Microsoft file format?

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[pixelpusher220]

you're right, you sell the IDEA of profits to schmucks who think you'll actually make them rich. You then take the money and launder it.

It's called shares of stock.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[h4rm0ny]

Germans. Nice people. Get a bit over-excited sometimes.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[mr_mischief]

All of this assumes, of course, that Word comes with Windows. It doesn't. Anyone who has a white-box PC built from retail parts needs to spend from $100 to $300 on Windows depending on version and whether or not they want MS to support it. Then they need to spend $125 or so for the word processor again just to open the document, or around $100 for Office Home and Student, or $260 or so for Office Professional.

That is, unless they pay for Corel's or Lotus's (IBM's) less expensive word processors, use OpenOffice just like the Linux folks, or pirate Word. Any of these options are less than ideal if you want perfect compatibility with both Word documents and the law. You could say you'll use Microsoft's Word Viewer, but nearly every time I've ever tried that it's been less than perfect itself.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[mr_mischief]

PDF is fully documented and has been for over a decade. It uses PostScript as its basis, then embeds the fonts and graphics into the file and tacks on data for a scripting engine. You don't even have to pay Adobe for the documentation. The specs are available for free on their web site. Certain versions of PDF are even ISO standard, although Adobe does have extensions to those since they keep updating the format faster than the extensions are put through ISO committees.

GIYF, but I'll save you the trouble.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[imakemusic]

Just don't touch their Ostriches.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Will.Woodhull]

Sometimes I wish there was a moderation for "1+ Inscrutable".

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Eunuchswear]

We don't make our money from selling [products], we make it from ...

Maybe you missed the beginning of the thread. These guys were standing around a water cooler in China. They do make money from selling products.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[GigsVT]

Postscript is a programming language, which, as it turns out, is a horrible way to implement a page description language. No one wants to have to deal with stack overflows and infinite loops in their documents.

I would say this was the primary motivation behind PDF.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[HermMunster]

Well, you are a candidate to hire someone convicted of murder to babysit your children. I'm sure they can be productive.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[turbidostato]

""I pick stuff that's compatible with Linux" != "I won't buy it if you won't give me a .pdf.""

Marketing is such a subtle stuff, isn't it?

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[fritsd]

a) it's not meant to be converted to anything else b) that's not a problem of PDFs but of Adobe Acrobat c) see a); use an ODF file if you want it editable. d) really?? I'm guessing this is b) again.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[uninformedLuddite]

B. Nail. Final Answer

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Pf0tzenpfritz]

That's more a problem of your reader of choice than a problem of the format itself. Though I prefer plain text, too there are other (free) PDF readers that will spawn fairly fast. Distributing instructions as .doc nevertheless seems to be somewhat clumsy to me.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[The Mighty Buzzard]

No, that's simply how much more difficult it is to render something in PDF format apparently. Acrobat, Foxit, evince, gpdf, even gs, they're each and every one slower at rendering pdf than just about any program rendering the same content in an editable format (not pdf/ps/etc...). I'm not talking about load speed of the program, just the time it takes to render a page after it's already loaded.

So skip both .doc and PDF and use html. It's not like it's an unsupported format on many platforms. Hell, it's pretty much standard on everything but toasters nowadays. It's also an assload easier to read than PDFs because you can be assumed to already have your minimum font size set to something you can read.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[The Mighty Buzzard]

b) See the half dozen other times I've noted that I'm not talking about Acrobat.

a) Why, exactly? What business is it of anyone's what format I want to read something in? Suppose I want to read it from a console. Most pdf to text converters have a 50% success rate at best.

c) I generally stick with plaintext or html personally but I'm speaking as a consumer of information when I say getting anything as a PDF automatically pisses me off. I want the information not your immutable formatting.

d) Guess again. Foxit and a lot of others got hit in the last few rounds, same as Adobe.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[mjwalshe]

I think you miss the point creating a document in acrobat is a bitch! even tarting up an imported word doc can be a tortuous process.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[mjwalshe]

the op wants a full tool set not just a printer driver

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[WhiteDragon]

I'd agree if a) PDFs were easily convertible to other formats, b) they rendered at something a bit snappier than "as slow as they possibly can and still have anyone read them," c) were easily editable, d) weren't the current favorite attack vector for malware writers.

All of those things apply only to Adobe Reader. There are a lot snappier PDF viewers, and even OpenOffice.org reads and writes them.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[The Mighty Buzzard]

*headdesk* You didn't read any of the half dozen times I mentioned I wasn't talking about and don't use Acrobat Reader?

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Enry]

Why are we texting on /. and not talking to each other instead?

If you have to ask that question, you should turn in your geek card.

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

Any your lack of adequate cuss-words. I mean, you can only get so far with just 'scheisse'.

Lovingly,

a neighbour

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[fritsd]

b) and d) I believe you when you say so. Maybe it's limited to MS Windows PDF readers then, because I haven't heard of this with Linux.
a)

Why, exactly? What business is it of anyone's what format I want to read something in? Suppose I want to read it from a console. Most pdf to text converters have a 50% success rate at best.

Yes, of course, you can do what you like :-) What I meant was: PDF being designed as a "end-of-the-line" format, it is generally much easier to edit the texts in the precursor format from which your word processor made the PDF, and because PDF is not meant for editing, it can be difficult.
Bad analogy: If you want to move (=edit) a painting (=text), you *can* carefully break open a wall with a fresco on it and transport the whole thing to a different museum, but most painters who care about the portability of their art-medium paint on a lightweight piece of canvas instead of on a wall. And when they do paint on a wall, they know it's not meant to be moved (e.g. Sistine Chapel).

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[Kvasio]

so:
printing: Bullzip
manupulation: PDF Tools
office suite with saving to pdf: LibreOffice

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[mjwalshe]

some of us have real jobs your method is not terribly efficient is it? some of us have to produce professional documents on a short time scale.

Just use OO or you know buy a copy of Office home and student. works out at around £30 per application much less if they still allow 3 installs

Re:Write to the manufacturer

[WhiteDragon]

*headdesk* You didn't read any of the half dozen times I mentioned I wasn't talking about and don't use Acrobat Reader?

no, I didn't. I was only replying to the comment I saw.

don't

[Baron von Leezard]

;-)

Be Patient

[WrongSizeGlass]

Wait for LibreOffice to be released a stable build and then leave OpenOffice behind. Until then you'll just have to use it and keep in mind that the only thing Oracle did for OO was buy Sun, they didn't write any of the code.

Re:Be Patient

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the point? If Oracle is so evil you don't want to use Oracle's OpenOffice, how is using the re-branded LibreOffice any better?

The LibreOffice fork tests negative for Oracle. It is not "re-branded".

Re:Be Patient

[Noughmad]

But I like using O's OO.o

Re:Be Patient

[Macrat]

The only difference between OpenOffice and LibreOffice is branding.

Re:Be Patient

[Alcoholic Synonymous]

LibreOffice still depends on Java, which is also Oracle branded. OpenJDK doesn't release binaries, and Oracle still controls OpenJDK anyway. So Oracle seems pretty unavoidable right now.

Re:Be Patient

[hedwards]

And in the past you could say the same thing about MS and Intel as well. What you do is you take as much of your business away from them as you can, and preferably only buy things which are actually good.

Re:Be Patient

[vux984]

You mean except for all of the actual executable code being Oracle's?

Except for it being opensource so its not, and it was managed by Sun which is not Oracle. Oracle bought Sun, rebranded OpenOffice from Sun to Oracle (as should be expected) and that's about it.

Switching to LibreOffice should be the same as the original Sun OpenOffice except rebranded by the Document Foundation, and they are patching in enhancement by RedHat and Go-OOo that were never accepted by Sun.

Re:Be Patient

[jopsen]

I think some of the LibreOffice developers do have dreams about removing Java dependencies, after all it's only a very small part of LibreOffice that requires Java... My point is that with LibreOffice you're on the right path... Rome wasn't built in one day, and the alternative to Sun OpenOffice.org isn't going to be built in one day either...

Re:Be Patient

[Cley Faye]

No, not really. Some advanced stuff might still need Java, but I've installed LibreOffice recently on a system with no JRE at all, and aside from some complaint on the first launch, it's now working fine.

Re:Be Patient

[jopsen]

And if you don't want to wait download go-oo
All the Go-OO patches should have been merged into LibreOffice and the Go-OO project is discontinued (e.g. developers are now hacking LibreOffice).. But if you insist on having something that is called stable, as opposed to running the LibreOffice beta, go a head a download latest Go-OO release (http://go-oo.org/)...
But remember to upgrade when LibreOffice releases a stable!

Re:Be Patient

[Taxman415a]

Currently Libre Office may still be dependent on Java, but it is a specific goal to reduce Java dependence in the future. I consider that a good thing and a realistic approach.

Re:Be Patient

[Mr. Underbridge]

Or just use LibreOffice now. I did it the day they released it, and have noticed no usability or stability problems at all, personally. Or at least no more than usual for OO. It'd be different if we were talking about a server, but this is just office software on a personal machine. Roll the dice!

Re:Be Patient

[Culture20]

But I like using O's OO.o

It's pronounced aauggggggh; in the back of the throat.

Re:Be Patient

[rtb61]

Apparently not http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-oo and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice indicate there are several differences. Also libreoffice is based upon version 3.3 of open office plus Go-oo enhancements hence the beta.

The reason to start steeping back from the Oracle version, is they are likely to push Oracle Office cloud and make Open Office undesirable to get more people to their cloud lock in. Of course if you are already heavily into Oracle cloud lock in, bonus, if not then transitioning to libreoffice makes sense.

You can also give http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Lotus_Symphony a shot as the current version is based upon open office. Interestingly enough software development is done IBM China Development Laboratory, located in Beijing, so there is very likely to be a huge surge in the number of users in the not to distant future.

The advantage of open source is made very apparent as a result of Oracle machinations, choice. Of course what will be the macro language in the future will also be an interesting question, Ruby would be nice.

Re:Be Patient

[icebike]

LibreOffice is stable. It was a fork of a stable OOo, and I've seen no problems at all.

I cut over to it from OO and everything I need it for (documents and spreadsheets) work just fine. Even those that are sent to me from Word users.

Why fret about the Beta designation when it is just a stable as the version it was forked from?

Re:Be Patient

[Dracos]

Apparently the OP sees Oracle as a Vorpal Bunny, has soiled his armor, and wants to "Run away!!! Run away!!!".

I don't blame him. Oracle has nasty, big, pointy teeth.

Re:Be Patient

[jojoba_oil]

You can also give http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Lotus_Symphony a shot as the current version is based upon open office. Interestingly enough software development is done IBM China Development Laboratory, located in Beijing, so there is very likely to be a huge surge in the number of users in the not to distant future.

I wouldn't be so sure about that one. I'm thinking that IBM based development of Symphony in China as a measure of cost reduction, not because they are targeting a Chinese audience. Further, even if their target is a Chinese user-base I don't think Symphony will take off there; things like linux-based Ylmf OS (which is developed by a Chinese company for a Chinese user-base) have trouble gaining traction. China already has Kingsoft WPS Office which is free for personal use. (The English version is a 30-day free trial.) The only Chinese I know that don't use Kingsoft WPS Office are the ones doing graduate study in the US. They're using bootlegged copies of Microsoft Office instead.

Re:Be Patient

[magus_melchior]

Yes, and if Oracle turns its sights on LibreOffice, LO will just toss the Java-dependent bindings and rework them from another platform (and most of the core binaries will still work-- the wizards and such will have to be rewritten, though).

Meanwhile, such a horribly ill-motivated act will prompt other large-scale projects to come up with plans to migrate away from Java, because if Oracle squeezes LO, they'll squeeze anyone else using Java for free or for profit.

Re:Be Patient

[oldspewey]

I think the real question here is: if Microsoft were to somehow buy LibreOffice, how many heads would simultaneously explode around the world?

Re:Be Patient

[bball99]

your comment is *vastly* underrated

Re:Be Patient

[bball99]

LibreOffice is unstable on OS X... crashes regularly under 10.5.8

Re:Be Patient

[paulkoan]

Gentoo has a "java" use flag for openoffice - and presumably if this is turned off, openoffice will be built without java. And presumably libreoffice would be built without java if the same use flag was disabled. And presumably this removes any java, rather than what is already identified as optional.

So presumably java isn't a dependency unless you use a binary that has java enabled as one.

Presumably.

Re:Be Patient

[dutchwhizzman]

It was forked from a development version and as such, not as stable as the 3.2 release version that OOo is now. That is why you should fret.

Re:Be Patient

[KlaymenDK]

O_o Oh?

Re:Be Patient

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting as AC 'cos I work for the place.

You do NOT want Symphony. It's based on a much earlier release of OO.o and is for some reason shipped without Draw and a few other bits. WTH would you _remove_ apps from a _free_ suite??!? If that weren't enough, the branding has really ruined the experience.

In fact, you may want to step around anything from Lotus at all. They/we/it (not me!) are also building a wiki system, and some of the design choices are just ... mind-bogglingly archaic (no per-page permissions, no versioning, ...).

Re:Be Patient

[gl4ss]

everything is 'beta' forever now anyways. nothing is ever truly finished.

IF oo was already filling his needs: what does he need a new version for anyways? to be part of perpetual upgrade and update machine? thing is, you could run most offices with office '97. so he could go there. what does he need, excel copy? word copy? there's plenty of those out.

however, these articles are used to promote these projects. not for advice.

Re:Be Patient

[PhilHibbs]

Sure, Oracle own the copyright, but it's all LGPL so Oracle can't poison or cripple LibreOffice. Oracle might change the licence for their future releases, which might make compatibility between future versions of OOo and LO challenging, but they can't rescind the licence for the existing code. And the more people go with LibreOffice, the less Oracle stand to gain by attempting a proprietary lock-in.

Re:Be Patient

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully they keep the Java API. One of the biggest things about OpenOffice is the easy accessibility from Java. Hope they don't lose that since that's the only competitive advantage they have over MS Office. Definitely doesn't require Java to run and do normal office tasks. It's a real good balance right now, please don't break it...

Rant mode on. Seriously guys, "Libre" Office. That is the DUMBEST product name I've ever heard. Did anyone give it any thought at all? I'm not going to be able to convince anyone to give it a try with that horrendous name. Argh. Rant mode off.

Re:Be Patient

[marcosdumay]

Well, Oracle already did buy OpenOffice, and provided an answer to your question, so just take a look around.

By the way, if you are too lazy to look what the answer is, I'll give it to you. People would invent another brand, and fork Star Office^W^W ops, I mean, Open Office^W^W, ops again, LibreOffice.

Re:Be Patient

[smegmatic]

Years ago, back when Java was closed source, Red Hat solved this problem by using gcj for the Java parts. So I don't see why Oracle would be unavoidable now.

Re:Be Patient

[rtb61]

Numbers count, get 500 million users and you have 500 million users, no one really looks at where they come from. A huge number of users with open source builds a ecosystem that in affect self funds it's development voluntarily (coders want to establish credentials, pride, employment opportunities). Remember it is open source not closed source and IBM has shown a track record of being far more forward thinking in that last few years.

As always with software, someone finally gains critical momentum and becomes 'the overnight success' that really took years of effort and becomes the dominant product in the market, will it happen, of course, now which open source product will do it, well your guess as good as any other.

Don't forget with open source forks, like a complex estuarine systems, they merge, re-fork and merge again etc. so we might no have even seen the final successful product yet, it could still be somewhere downstream.

libre office

[Anonymous Coward]

just go where 90% of developers have allready gone: http://www.documentfoundation.org/download/

Re:libre office

[fermion]

IMHO, it is a mistake to make business decisions based on dogma, or rigidly use past experience to make current decisions.

In this case, the simplistic answer to question is to licensee MS Office. MS Office, amazing enough, reads MS Word files. Now there may be issue of not wanting to pay for software or wanting open software, but if that was the case OO.org would have no issues. At this moment it is just a people trying to enact a self fulfilling prophecy. I have heard nothing that Oracle has done, just the they don't like Oracle.

I use OO.org as one of many products. I also use iWork because pages lets me create simple documents incredible quickly and Keynote because it does great animation. iWorks also opens all MS formats. For technical reports and presentations I use one of many wonderful Latex fron ends. I must admit I never used Neooffice because it seemed to me that they were more concerned with trashing OO.org rather than creating a stable product. I wonder if Libreoffice is going to fall for to the same demons.

Just to be clear I don'tuse MS Office because since about 2005 it did not meet my needs.

To answer the question, one reasonable solution is Google office. It is not open source, but it is free and will open almost anything.

Re:libre office

[AzN1337c0d3r]

90% of 10% is 9%. So only 91% of the OOo developers are staying put. :)

Re:libre office

[Okomokochoko]

Fortunately, it's only the other _91%_. 100% - (90% of 10% --> 9%) = (100-9)% = 91%. That darned 'rithmetic.

Re:libre office

[gtall]

I like iWork and it does read MS formats, but it does not display them very well nor if you resave can you get the same MS look back when loaded into MS Malware. I wait for the day when that can happen and I can kick MS crap off my machine for good.

Should be fine...

[rwven]

Seeing as libreoffice is just a fork of openoffice (they're probably almost identical in code right now), you can probably rely on it just as much as openoffice now, and possibly even more in the future.

Re:Should be fine...

[bieber]

Yep, at the moment using either one should be more or less the same thing. Just because the copyright changed hands doesn't mean the code became magically tainted.

Re:Should be fine...

[hedwards]

For now. They're in the process of merging in a lot of code from the Go OO.org folks. Should make for better compatibility with MS Office.

Re:Should be fine...

[camperdave]

Have they gotten close to having an equivalent program for OneNote yet?

Re:Should be fine...

[Lennie]

Of which most code was already running on most of the Linux-desktops. Because the go-oo is what was running on the Linux-desktops.

Re:Should be fine...

[John Hasler]

That just means that the kernel maintainers don't want any bug reports from you since you are running a kernel that contains code that they do not have access to the source of. When you install a closed-source driver you become dependent on the supplier of that driver since only they have have full access to the source code for your kernel. If you trust that supplier that's cool but the kernel maintainers can't help you.

Re:Should be fine...

[Beelzebud]

Heh I wasn't sure if that was something exclusive to Slackware or not, but it's funny to hear that the standard Linux kernel spits out that "kernel taint" message. I see it in Slack, but they must have filtered it from Arch.

It always cracked me up because I would always think to myself "Yep, tainting my damned kernel with a driver that actually has good 3D performance." :D

Re:Should be fine...

[bieber]

No, I'm saying that the code didn't become proprietary when Oracle purchased it.

Re:Should be fine...

[Just Brew It!]

Or if you don't mind running a slightly older version, just run the Go-OO one directly.

Re:Should be fine...

[hairyfeet]

But he specifically asked about .doc, .ppt, etc, and I thought LibreOffice was gonna seriously push "free as in freedom" in their fork? Because as we have seen in the past with the way RMS reacts to .doc and other MSFT formats if they truly go for the "free as in freedom" manifesto it really wouldn't surprise me to see in the future any attempt to open a .doc met with "This format takes away your freedoms. Please ask the person who gave this to you to respect freedom and send an ODF".

So while I agree that ATM OO.o and LibreOffice is virtually the same, have they said ANYTHING about MS Office compatibility on their roadmap? How much effort is someone who is pushing ODF gonna invest in supporting a MSFT format? Because like it or not if the office suite can't do MSFT formats for a good 90% of the population who have friends or coworkers using MS Office it'll be useless.

Re:Should be fine...

[airlied]

if you weren't slow, you'd have done some research, and worked out the taint name is used for a lot of things and predates the binary drivers.

But I suppose being an idiot isn't your fault, probably genetic.

Re:Should be fine...

[westlake]

Seeing as libreoffice is just a fork of openoffice (they're probably almost identical in code right now), you can probably rely on it just as much as openoffice now, and possibly even more in the future.

The LibreOffice website is itself a work in progress.

There are no links to external resources of any kind: Templates, tutorials, clip art and so on.

Office.com does this sort of thing very, very well - and I don't think the geek has ever quite understood the importance of getting this right.

"This beta release is not intended for production use!"

The Windows build is an International build - you can choose the user interface language that is suitable for you, but the help is always English. The Linux and MacOSX builds are English builds with the possibility to install language packs. LibreOffice Productivity Suite"

Re:Should be fine...

[neumayr]

Tainted doesn't mean proprietary. To some it seems it does, but that's not the generally accepted meaning of the word.
To the guy who asked the question, code that's owned by Oracle seems to be tainted, even if it's not proprietary.

I didn't think you meant to say the code's license makes it tainted. My bad.

Re:Should be fine...

[neumayr]

Huh. Some guy on slashdot, one who thinks intelligence correlates with genetics no less, thinks I'm an idiot. I will cry myself to sleep tonight.

Re:Should be fine...

[u17]

He's not just some guy, he's David Arlie. He's done work on Xorg stuff, including the nouveau driver. You should be honoured that he called you an idiot, especially since it's his second comment on Slashdot, after the first posted in 2005.

I'm not getting into the argument, just thought I'd point it out, considering that he is kind of a public person in these circles.

I'm guessing his dog must have died and he had to vent, taking these factors into consideration.

Re:Should be fine...

[Kvasio]

kernel? You mean an OpenOffice OS ?

Re:Should be fine...

[Kjella]

Considering one of the things they did was pull in the go-oo patches that include better docx support, I doubt that is the big fear. It's mostly only RMS that think closed source lock-out is a way to promote freedom.

Re:Should be fine...

[Taxman415a]

So while I agree that ATM OO.o and LibreOffice is virtually the same, have they said ANYTHING about MS Office compatibility on their roadmap?

Yes, see the latest announcement. It specifically mentions VBA macro support, which is even dirtier than just supporting MS formats. At the same time the announcement mentions reducing Java dependency which is probably a good thing. Java probably wasn't integrated by Sun to fulfill a real need, but as a Java marketing method.

Re:Should be fine...

[Mordocai]

I am getting started on contributing to Libreoffice, and I can can tell you for sure that there are currently no plans that involve getting rid of Microsoft format support.

Re:Should be fine...

[wampus]

Christ on a stick, you are all fucking taints.

Re:Should be fine...

[jonwil]

Considering that even Microsoft has trouble supporting VBA (i.e. the lack of VBA in various versions of Office on Mac), I wish the LibreOffice people luck in their efforts :)

Re:Should be fine...

[Matt Perry]

But I suppose being an idiot isn't your fault, probably genetic.

Was this personal attack really necessary? You had a valid point which you then dilute by pointless name calling. I know Slashdot has a lot of teenagers on it, but can't we all be a bit civil?

Re:Should be fine...

[camperdave]

OneNote is far more than a notepad app for tablets. It is partway between a paint program and a word processor, and a wiki, and a presentation manager, with audio and video imbedding, spreadsheet and screen capture functionality thrown in as well. It has whiteboard sharing capabilities allowing for group collaboration. If you don't understand what OneNote is, then please refrain from making pathetic and worthless recommendations.

Re:Should be fine...

[rwven]

Not intended != Not suitable.

Re:Should be fine...

[Lord of Hyphens]

OneNote is a extremely useful piece of software, and the primary reason I keep an Win7 VM around. It easily qualifies for "best tool for the job". Nearest piece of work I've seen is Jarnal (pen input) and/or Tomboy (wikiish notes). The handwriting recognition and math functionality is top-notch (realizing that the handwriting subsystem shipped with Win7).

Re:Should be fine...

[Mongoose Disciple]

He's not just some guy, he's David Arlie. He's done work on Xorg stuff, including the nouveau driver. You should be honoured that he called you an idiot, especially since it's his second comment on Slashdot, after the first posted in 2005.

So what you're saying is... he's not just any pompous windbag going off on some random guy on a messageboard with the kind of insult most of us outgrew in the 7th grade, but a specific pompous windbag with some kind of claim to nerd street cred in a particular nerd subculture going off on some random guy on a messageboard with the kind of insult most of us outgrew in the 7th grade?

That's informative, but I still don't think the aforementioned random guy should feel honored. You've got somewhat odd criteria for choosing your objects of worship.

Re:Should be fine...

[WindSword]

I have the same fear of Oracle and installed LibreOffice (stooopid name). On the surface, it seemed OK, but I couldn't make lookups (dropdowns) work. I always got an error (504, I think). It may be based on the same code, but it *is* still beta, so be careful. The install is a mess as well. I put it on my Fedora laptop and when I first ran it nothing would run. The command line was incorrect - trivial but annoying.

Re:Should be fine...

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction, it's Airlie, not Arlie.

Re:Should be fine...

[arashi no garou]

You know, I'm not taking sides here but I feel the need to point out something too. It doesn't matter how high in the geek celebrity circle someone is, calling another person an idiot because they aren't aware of the facts, in itself indicates a juvenile mentality. Calling someone ignorant, on the other hand, would not only be more correct, it would be less childish and offensive to boot, and would allow for a reasonable request to become educated on the matter.

Yes, Mr. Arlie is an Xorg driver genius, but he has yet to do more than call names and pick a fight here on the Slashdot grade school playground.

Grow up, guys.

Re:Should be fine...

[youn]

It's not onenote but personally, to take notes, I love Keynotes although it is very old. The NF version has additional features like alarms for particular notes... takes notes in a treeview format with tabs.. a lot of my brainstorming is done there... open source for windows. One Note may be nicer if you have a tablet... but I use a good old mouse,

http://code.google.com/p/keynote-nf/

Re:Should be fine...

[adolf]

But what if they are an idiot? (Not to be confused with a moron, or an imbecile.)

Re:Should be fine...

[Taxman415a]

Considering that even Microsoft has trouble supporting VBA (i.e. the lack of VBA in various versions of Office on Mac), I wish the LibreOffice people luck in their efforts :)

I'm less inclined to believe they had trouble supporting it than they simply didn't support it or even intentionally didn't support it in order to make that platform less attractive. Call me a cynic, but MS has backed it up time and time again. Evidence is that they actually have talented coders and can put out good stuff when they have to.

Re:Should be fine...

[Ksevio]

Well it should at least be an achievement on Slashdot!

Re:Should be fine...

[marcosdumay]

I really doubt RMS belives Embrace, Extend, Extinguish is a useless strategy. What you are positioning yourself against is simply plain dumbness, I guess you'll have a hard time finding someone that disagrees with you on it.

Re:Should be fine...

[Philomage]

He's not just some guy, he's David Arlie. He's done work on Xorg stuff, including the nouveau driver. You should be honoured that he called you an idiot, especially since it's his second comment on Slashdot, after the first posted in 2005.

I'm not getting into the argument, just thought I'd point it out, considering that he is kind of a public person in these circles.

I'm guessing his dog must have died and he had to vent, taking these factors into consideration.

Not that I actually disagree with your assessment or anything but you do realise that that's merely an argument to authority, right?

Re:Should be fine...

[lennier]

Evidence is that they actually have talented coders and can put out good stuff when they have to.

*cough*

Internet Explorer 8's monthly vulnerabilities - how many years now after security became officially Job One? - would tend to suggest that actually, no, even when their life and data is on they line they can't code their way out of a paper bag.

Otherwise IE is evidence of deliberate malice on the part of Microsoft, and I'd prefer not to assign that if sheer incompetence is the simpler answer.

Re:Should be fine...

[jonwil]

According to what I read on an MS blog somewhere, part of the problem was that some parts of VBA were actually compiled to x86 ASM or something as an optomization.

OO / Libreoffiec

[Arimus]

For now would have thought Libreoffice's support for Powerpoint etc would be on a par with OO as the fork is based on the 0O 3.3 code base...

Antiword

[Neil Hodges]

As long as images aren't an issue, you could use Antiword to convert it into a (somewhat) styled text file. That's what I did when I ran into the same thing with BIOS updates.

Re:Antiword

[smoothnorman]

hear-hear! ...and with an "-a" option you can have your PDF output etc. For me, antiword has read/output from some MSWord documents that were too complicated (or corrupted) for pre-Oracle-hegemony OpenOffice to open. damn proprietary formats in general! [waves cane angrily]

Re:Antiword

[Boltronics]

Hmm... I've occasionally used catdoc. Might have to look into Antiword, but fortunately I rarely need to open .doc files since changing companies.

Re:Antiword

[rwa2]

Ha, yeah, amazing how far I had to scroll down to find anyone actually trying to answer the guy's solicitation for alternatives :P

No mention of LyX yet. No, it's not WYSIWYG, it's better. I do all of my serious reports in it. Though I do turn to Word and OO.org and its ilk for mail merge envelope labels and fax cover sheets. It tosses out latex, and it's a good feeling to run "make" on your report every so often and get all of your updated graphics and diagrams included and published simultaneously in linked html, single-page html, and printable pdf.

I haven't come to use gnumeric as much as OO.o Calc, but it's good for quickly viewing csv data. For other projects I'll whip up scripts in octave + gnuplot. Unfortunately, it does take time to learn, but it's much easier feeding it new sets of data and just getting out plots and analysis in your reports without lots of mindless fumbling with spreadsheet cells. It's a different way of thinking to run a script to generate your plots rather than constantly tweaking a spreadsheet.

Not as featureful as PowerPoint, but I've been using Impress!ve (formerly known as keyjnote or something like that) to present PDF slides. Also works on directories of images. It's missing a lot of the "distracting" features of PowerPoint such as builds, but has a lot things that help focus, such as slide sorter views and spotlights. And pretty OpenGL transitions.

I wouldn't go so far as to remove OO.org / LibreOffice from your toolbox, but there are plenty of other ways to work that provide some compelling advantages over the tired old approach.

Microsoft Office

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't want to deal with Oracle. Then buy Microsoft Office. You never said you didn't want to deal with Microsoft too.

Re:Microsoft Office

[hedwards]

If I had points I'd mod you insightful. While the OP doesn't state it, I would assume that MS would be off the table, given that Larry Ellison is trying to be Bill Gates. But, if it's solely an Oracle problem, Office has nothing to do with that.

Re:Microsoft Office

[Yvan256]

And if you don't want to deal with Microsoft either, you can buy a Mac mini and iWork!

Re:Microsoft Office

[Slayer Silver Wolf]

Is there some alternative out there that I'm completely overlooking for open source?

If you had rtfa you would realise as quoted above the user is searching for Open Source packages only.

Re:Microsoft Office

[CajunArson]

Obviously this is a joke but... I just got done editing a file using Office 2007 SP2.... on my Arch Linux box using Crossover. Office 2010 isn't supported yet, but I have a feeling it will be in the first half of next year. I also use Openoffice on a daily basis for making drawings with OODraw. I did a master's thesis and all my law-review related work in OOWriter. Unfortunately, right now I need MS Office for compatibility since my daily use involves ping-ponging documents back & forth with other people using track changes.. an area where OO still sorely lags even using the ODF document formats.

Re:Microsoft Office

[Simon80]

Git, or one of the other newer systems, are more flexible in how they exchange commits, and should be used over svn for new repositories unless you're resistant to learning new things (see github if you want it to be like svn and don't want to administrate the central repository yourself). Second, if the GP can't convince his colleagues to not use Office 2007, the chances of getting them to use LaTeX are pretty small.

Re:Microsoft Office

[coerciblegerm]

If I had points I'd mod you insightful. While the OP doesn't state it, I would assume that MS would be off the table, given that Larry Ellison is trying to be Bill Gates. But, if it's solely an Oracle problem, Office has nothing to do with that.

OP does state it, quite clearly in fact: " Is there some alternative out there that I'm completely overlooking for open source?"

Unless Microsoft recently released the source code to their office suite this option has been pretty clearly disqualified. RTFA.

Re:Microsoft Office

[AnonymousClown]

Have you ever heard of LaTeX and subversion? Just checking...

He probably has....but everyone else he works with probably hasn't nor are they willing to spend all the time on the learning curve to use it.

Re:Microsoft Office

[FrootLoops]

I get the impression the OP wanted free alternatives, since the words "open source" are not very prominent--they're tacked on to the end of the third question more than three quarters of the way through the OP. It seems to be more about alternatives to (the free product) OO.O, and they just typed "open source" carelessly. One free alternative, at least for the use case presented (reading a .doc file), is MS's Office viewers, which are not open source to my knowledge.

Again, this is just my impression.

Re:Microsoft Office

[interkin3tic]

Oracle recently acquired the rights to chisels and stone tablets, but quills and papyrus are yet another alternative.

Re:Microsoft Office

[rwa2]

Hey! Remember before there was Word and even Linux, we used to use WordPerfect under DOS? They're still around!

Anyone actually use it and have crap to say about it? ^_^

Re:Microsoft Office

[FrootLoops]

It would be clearer if the title was "open source alternatives to OO.O" or if the first sentence was "I'm scared of Oracle getting OO.O--are there any open source alternatives?" So, I'd say it can get quite a bit clearer than what was said. Again, though, it's just an impression.

Re:Microsoft Office

[martas]

meh, real men use LaTeX for theses...

:]

Re:Microsoft Office

[muckracer]

I remember seeing WordPerfect 7 (console version) running under Linux at a co-workers house. It was an SGI binary, IIRC. Should still be out there somewhere.

Re:Microsoft Office

[vhfer]

Ya. WordPerfect Office 12 is the standard around here for our roughly 200 employees that use PCs. The other 1000 are on vehicles most of the time and don't use any software.

Then we have a few people that interact a great deal more with other companies, local government and etc. For them we have to buy license of Microsoft Word, because abovementioned external parties continue to mindlessly send us stuff in Word format, often @#%$@#%&^%$#*& .DOCX format, and the users aren't happy with Word Viewer, Catdoc, or other tools. Worse, many have to send docs to other agencies who insist on a proprietary format from a monolithic single-source vendor.

WordPerfect mostly works ok and about 30% of my users don't realize they aren't using Bill's program. It has a few issues. There's a piece of code that sits in memory after you print until you're done until you exit WP. After printing the second doc with complicated images and layout, that piece tends to lockup and take 100% of the cpu. It never finishes what it was doing. So we just kill that piece, don't even exit WP, and life goeth on.

I love "reveal codes." Why don't all wordprocs have that? Untangles some really twisty little problems, especially when my users import docs from another source, edit it, and the result is a tangled mess.

You want to know the funniest part of this? As part of the support team for this, I have to assume when users call and say they are having a problem with "Word" that they mean "WordPerfect:" because that's what they all call it.

Try Google Docs

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Google Docs or Zoho. Google 'em.

Re:Try Google Docs

[icebraining]

Google Docs

Not exactly Open Source as the submitter asked for.

Re:Try Google Docs

[SpectreBlofeld]

It's possible the submitter requests open source because he doesn't trust running closed source software on his machine, which would make Google Docs kosher, as it's 100% web-based.

Re:Try Google Docs

[Covalent]

I second the Google Docs idea. Not open, but exportable to ODF, doc, and PDF and getting much better lately.

Re:Try Google Docs

[icebraining]

On the other hand, it's easier to secure your system from a closed source app in your PC than to secure your data after you've uploaded it to someone else's server.

Re:Try Google Docs

[tsalmark]

Don't google Google, it'll open a rift in the very fabric of the internet.

Re:Try Google Docs

[SpectreBlofeld]

While true, I imagine the risks of using Google Docs are no greater than using Gmail to email documents to yourself and others.

Re:Try Google Docs

[ToasterMonkey]

It's possible the submitter requests open source because he doesn't trust running closed source software on his machine, which would make Google Docs kosher, as it's 100% web-based.

I think you're all nuts.

Re:Try Google Docs

[icebraining]

I agree, that's why I scp them to my server instead.

It can't be that different already, right?

[tenchikaibyaku]

Does it handle complex Powerpoint files okay?

Heh. How different would LibreOffice have managed to become in like the month and a half it's been split from OpenOffice.org?

About stability, I think most of the changes that have been integrated so far has already been somewhat tested by being included in distribution patches or similar, but I admit that I probably don't really know enough to make much of a statement.

Re:It can't be that different already, right?

[Lennie]

The first thing they did is add all the patches that where already in used by the folks from http://go-oo.org/ . These are all the patches that the Linux-maintainers has created/collected but where never accepted by the OpenOffice maintainers, which is actually quiet a lot. Because the acceptance process is so slow.

Re:It can't be that different already, right?

[HiThere]

Well, given licensing, etc., there *could* be an immense change. I don't think there has been, but that's not a given. Particularly with Oracle talking about putting out a non-free version of the JVM. (That's one thing I thought was totally standardized.)

Given the recent news, I can understand being hesitant to trust anything with Oracle's name on it, or around it. This despite my being quite willing to trust similar products with Sun's name on them.

OTOH, I don't feel any pressing need to switch from OpenOffice to LibreOffice. I'll want to do it soon, but I don't see any reason to do it immediately. I did, however, scrap all plans for doing the project I've just started in Java. I'm currently considering a bunch of alternatives. At the instant Common Lisp is leading the pack, but it could easily change before next week. Lisp, however, is looking better than C or C++, because it has garbage collection and a standardized way of handling utf8 files. Python could do the same thing, but it's slower. Go is still beta, and it has lousy documentation. Etc. Also, I may have occasion to write some self-modifying code, and that's easier in Lisp than in most compiled languages. (Yeah, scheme. But Scheme doesn't support classes in any standard way. And there aren't many r6rs schemes out, and all the r5rs schemes support utf8 in non-standard ways. [They've got to. It's not a part of the standard.])

I suppose I could check things like Haskell or OCaML, but I find it hard to wrap my head around them. Erlang *is* a possibility, and maybe I should look into it more carefully. Last I checked it didn't have any GUI capability, and the default database wasn't large enough. (Maybe I could partition things, or use Mnesia instead of the built-in methods.) That would mean using C FFI's, but I'll need to do that with Lisp anyway...and multiprocessors *are* becoming more common...

Re:It can't be that different already, right?

[mark_lybarger]

my understanding is that the reason they don't take the patches is because there isn't a single point of license assignment for the patch source. if RH has a large patch, then RH doesn't take on the role of copyright assignment, but rather allows each single code creator to keep that duty. warm and fuzy of them, but not very practical at all i'm guessing

http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=users&msgNo=208463

Open Office a de facto standard?

[ferongr]

I don't know about you, but if my job was depending on a good Office suite (I'm assuming about work use, since you mention complex presentations) , I would use Microsoft Office 2010. For everything else, there's Office Live, Google Docs and Abiword (for simple text documents).

Re:Open Office a de facto standard?

[QuoteMstr]

Oh, get real. We're talking about a few hundred dollars per seat. It's not unreasonable to pay that every few years for a tool you use to make your living. If you own a business, you pay more than that for artificial lighting.

Re:Open Office a de facto standard?

[armanox]

Backwards compatibility in Office is one of the largest complaints that I have among Office users. And while OOXML may be a documented standard, the version used by Office 2007/2010 is not the same as the standard.

Re:Open Office a de facto standard?

[Alex Belits]

OOXML is a documented standard, ISO/IEC 29500.

lol

Re:Open Office a de facto standard?

[Kjella]

I'm glad I don't work in your office, or have to pay the software bill every couple years MS decides to release a new version merely to read all the proprietary formats. Seriously--working in that kind of environment would be so miserable.

So what's it like working for the FSF? Seriously, of all the things that make a work environment good or bad you pick on THAT? The only company money I really care about is what'll be in my paycheck, if they piss it away on something I figure that comes out of the CEOs paycheck. We already have a deal and I'm already getting my pay, even if they saved a few hundred bucks it's unlikely much of that would show up in my paycheck. It's not even how it functions, they don't give me money just because they save it. My pay is generally ruled by the labor market, not their internal costs.

Re:Open Office a de facto standard?

[Anonymous Coward]

OOXML is a documented standard, ISO/IEC 29500.

It's one of the best standards money can buy!

Re:Open Office a de facto standard?

[darkonc]

Unfortunately, OOXML doesn't follow the ISO standard, even though the standard was based on OOXML and was arguably the result of Microsoft corrupting the ISO process. There are, to my knowledge, no reference implementations of ISO/IEC 29500 -- not even from Microsoft.

Re:Open Office a de facto standard?

[foniksonik]

Honestly in most office environments they don't upgrade. They install from a volume license and apply security patches so more money isn't the issue.

Re:Open Office a de facto standard?

[mr_gorkajuice]

Slashdot modding is indeed seriously degraded when "lol" earns +5 insightful - no matter what's being lol'ed at.

Re:Open Office a de facto standard?

[fritsd]

This should explain the "lol":
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/04/iso-ooxml-convener-microsofts-format-heading-for-failure.ars

Although Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document format became an ISO standard two years ago, the company still hasn't built any software that truly complies with the standard.

Maybe it's fixed now in MS Office 2010, that article was from April 2010 after all.
IMHO it was a very appropriate "lol" :-)

Close your eyes while logo is displayed

[Anonymous Coward]

LibreOffice has the spanish word "libre" in it. I can't use that either because I strongly condemn the actions during the Spanish Inquisition.

Java, OpenOffice, MySQL are all GPL or better and no one can change that.

Re:Close your eyes while logo is displayed

[Ardaen]

Uhm... Isn't Libre a word in multiple romance languages all taken from the original Latin libere? The same root as words such as the English word liberty?

Re:Close your eyes while logo is displayed

[sumdumass]

GPL or better does not mean no lockins or stupid shit. At best, it means you can see it coming and choose to take another path down the road if one exists. Making that decision right now means that A:, a more popular and probably better developed alternative would already be in existence, and B:, it would send notice to Oracle that they can lose any lockin they perceive they could have if they screw up too bad.

In the end, people making the jump now, ensure that we have options later as well as pose a threat that limits actions in the future.

Re:Close your eyes while logo is displayed

[neumayr]

Smartass. Yes, it is. So? The Spanish use it in this form, so do the French. Making it a Spanish or French word, depending on pronunciation.

This comment made me a smartass of equal or larger magnitude I guess.. Oh well.

Re:Close your eyes while logo is displayed

[KharmaWidow]

The French don't have a sparkling history either if we can hold today's societies to blame for everything and anything that is recorded in history.

Re:Close your eyes while logo is displayed

[Lord Byron II]

Yes, and the Romans killed Jesus Christ. Therefore, LibreOffice is the Devil's office suite.

Re:Close your eyes while logo is displayed

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, "libre" is also a french word which means "free" (in fact, there are two words in french, one for each meanings of free in english, but I think I might be going of topic here).
So, unless you have also a problem with France, something I can understand, you should go safely with LibreOffice.

Re:Close your eyes while logo is displayed

[coerciblegerm]

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!!!

Re:Close your eyes while logo is displayed

[CAIMLAS]

The OP could just do what I did... I rebuilt all my binaries with the project names substituted with my own. So it's really mine.

Re:Close your eyes while logo is displayed

[sumdumass]

What I'm saying is that if that other path isn't available because no one has any interest in an alternative, you are effectively locked in. And if the lock in happens quickly enough, it may be possible that you can be locked in before an alternate is available.

Having other options does not mean you are not locked in. You can be locked in because of financial constrains, because of interoperability constraints, and other things. And this can all be true regardless of another clone being available or not depending on the circumstances.

Showing interest in alternatives early allows support for those alternatives to build ensuring an alternative is available before you are locked in. This also sends the message that there is a choice and that people can take traditional vendor lockin.

Re:Close your eyes while logo is displayed

[Spy der Mann]

LibreOffice has the spanish word "libre" in it. I can't use that either because I strongly condemn the actions during the Spanish Inquisition.

Java, OpenOffice, MySQL are all GPL or better and no one can change that.

Good point. We might persuade them to name it in Esperanto. Libera-oficejo all the way! :D

Re:Close your eyes while logo is displayed

[sumdumass]

Sure, in certain circumstances.

The most typical is software co-reliance in which some app won't work with the alternative. You see this listed as to why certain people can't migrate to Linux which is Open source/gpl too. Retraining and adjustments often cost money which is another thing that can stop people from having a choice. I have a law firm customer that has to support a certain piece of software because it's what all new hires are basically trained on and what had been in use forever. It would take too long to move the data and train them on another software system even though they exist (being GPLed or not).

There are a number of reasons why someone could be locked in to some piece of software. I couldn't move one firm to OO.org because of macros/formulas in spreadsheets that wouldn't transfer and run properly either when opened in Open office or after being saved in open office. And seeing how OO.org is LGPL'd it's not like they can't slip something proprietary or binding into it that causes similar situations.

Re:Close your eyes while logo is displayed

[RealGrouchy]

Actually, "Libre" in both Spanish and French originates from Latin.

If you're really hesitant, I recommend the Pig Latin fork, "IbreLayOffice"

- RG>

Re:Close your eyes while logo is displayed

[rrohbeck]

Java was once owned by the Dutch, and they had traditionally strong ties to the Spanish kingdom.
Sorry.

Re:Close your eyes while logo is displayed

[JoeLinux]

Oh, what the hell, I'll go for the obvious joke here:

*ahem*

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

Don't be launching VirtualBox either.

[toby]

Larry pisses his logo on everything first.

Then later he'll set fire to it, cut it into pieces, and throw it in a barrel of quicklime. He's the serial killer of good technology.

Re:Don't be launching VirtualBox either.

[TheRaven64]

and throw it in a barrel of quicklime

There was a bit of dust on my screen next to the l, so that looked like you said he threw it in a barrel of quicktime. Somehow, the sentence still seemed plausible, it just looked like you'd confused CEOs...

Re:Don't be launching VirtualBox either.

[grondu]

confused CEOs...

Contact the Department of Redundancy Department.

Re:Don't be launching VirtualBox either.

[BronsCon]

Cutting back on redundant departments, are they?

Re:Don't be launching VirtualBox either.

[Just Brew It!]

Yeah, I'm a little worried about the future of VirtualBox. AFAIK there isn't a viable fork yet (the VirtualBox equivalent of Go-oo).

Re:Don't be launching VirtualBox either.

[vhfer]

Say, what is this lysdexia thing I keep reading about?

The point of Open Source is...

[Lord Byron II]

...that you can use whatever software you like. If you were happy with the last Sun release of OpenOffice, then download and use that instead. It should be fine for a couple of years* and by then it should be clear which OSS office software is appropriate for you.

*It's not uncommon for Microsoft to go several years between releases of MS Office, so two years with Sun's last OpenOffice release isn't unreasonable.

for now, don't fear the beast

[Maarek Stele]

The only thing Oracle did was plaster their name on the product, once they change support, then worry. Wait until Libre Office is out of beta then switch and your nightmares are over.

LibreOffice relies heavily on Java,

[countertrolling]

and as such it remains vulnerable to potential legal attacks from Oracle which now owns the Java technology...

Disaster awaits if something isn't done about this...

Re:LibreOffice relies heavily on Java,

[Lehk228]

if oracle takes legal action against distributors of software written in java, they may as well close down java.com and close up their database business while they are at it, nobody would trust working with oracle owned properties for anything of any consequence

Re:LibreOffice relies heavily on Java,

[Esospopenon]

There is some disagreement about the java dependencies. According to OpenOffice.org, you do NOT need Java "If you do not require database tables or accessibility integration or some wizards" and I would not call this a very heavy relianse. Read more on OpenOffice.org wiki. I would imagine the same text applies to LibreOffice at this stage.

Re:LibreOffice relies heavily on Java,

[Spad]

they may as well close down java.com and close up their database business while they are at it, nobody would trust working with oracle owned properties for anything of any consequence

Give them time, they seem to be working on it full time at the moment.

Re:LibreOffice relies heavily on Java,

[Jorl17]

But, AFAIK, the parts of Java that LibreOffice uses (which are less and less as each version goes), are all freely implemented. If they work now, they'll work forever.

Re:LibreOffice relies heavily on Java,

[Lennie]

They don't care about all those users, they just want money from Java-users. They don't care if they loose or piss off the smaller users, the really big enterprise users can't switch in 10 years time anyway. That is where the money is, usually banks and other big companies/institutions.

Re:LibreOffice relies heavily on Java,

[Lanir]

if oracle takes legal action against distributors of software written in java, they may as well close down java.com and close up their database business while they are at it, nobody would trust working with oracle owned properties for anything of any consequence

Not certain what their take on events looks like but recently that seems to be a high priority secondary objective (money is always the primary objective with any corporation). Based on their activities or lack thereof in regards to the open source community surrounding java and OpenOffice they don't seem to think very highly of the standard slashdot crowd. Based on their recent high profile lawsuits, they don't seem to think much of other businesses either. I'm not sure who that leaves but whoever it is better have deep pockets or they're screwed.

Re:LibreOffice relies heavily on Java,

[Frosty Piss]

if oracle takes legal action against distributors of software written in java, they may as well close down java.com and close up their database business while they are at it, nobody would trust working with oracle owned properties for anything of any consequence

We can only hope...

Re:LibreOffice relies heavily on Java,

[mspohr]

OpenOffice.org only uses Java for the database and some of the accessibility technology and wizards. You can run the rest of it just fine without Java. This shouldn't be a deal-breaker. They have been moving away from it for some time and I suspect that the LibreOffice people will make an extra effort to remove all reliance on Java. http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Java_and_OpenOffice.org

Re:LibreOffice relies heavily on Java,

[Daengbo]

Removing the dependency on Java is a high priority for LO.

Re:LibreOffice relies heavily on Java,

[ToasterMonkey]

Disaster awaits if something isn't done about this...

The FUD is strong in this one.

Re:LibreOffice relies heavily on Java,

[lennier]

They don't care about all those users, they just want money from Java-users. They don't care if they loose or piss off the smaller users, the really big enterprise users can't switch in 10 years time anyway. That is where the money is, usually banks and other big companies/institutions.

On the other hand, pissing off large banks seems a little like stealing from the Mob.

You'll get enough cash to set you up nicely for your entire distressingly short life.

Re:LibreOffice relies heavily on Java,

[Lennie]

Asking banks for fairly small amounts of money (in their eyes) for service/support is not something that will piss them off I think.

Lotus Symphony

[garglebutt]

Latest version of Lotus Symphony is yet another fork and it has the best Excel compatibility of all the ooo variants. It is free but not open source however (look at SISSL license conditions).

Re:Lotus Symphony

[RazorSharp]

Latest version of Lotus Symphony is yet another fork and it has the best Excel compatibility of all the ooo variants. It is free but not open source however (look at SISSL license conditions).

I just want to thank you, but I wish I had seen this comment a month ago! After years of getting away without MS Office installed on my computer, I caved and did it b/c of an Excel document my boss needed me to touch up and OpenOffice/NeoOffice had a terrible time displaying it. I just downloaded Lotus and opened that file and Lotus displayed it perfectly. I had previously assumed that Lotus would just have the same problems as OOo. Guess that's what I get for assuming.

The problem is what it pulls in

[Animats]

The problem will come if OpenOffice starts to demand Oracle's proprietary version of Java, and then Oracle starts to tighten the screws on Java.

I'm much more worried about MySQL under Oracle's control. Oracle has every reason to make MySQL worse, especially the versions that scale up.

Re:The problem is what it pulls in

[tuppe666]

One of the first reactions of the split between Libre/OpenOffice is the dependency on Java is being reduced.

Re:The problem is what it pulls in

[icebraining]

Is there a lack of Free databases? PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Firebird, HyperSQL... and all of these are relational; there are plenty more of other types.

Re:The problem is what it pulls in

[Lonewolf666]

On top of that, it should be easy enough for Libre Office to stick to the features of the current version of Java. Or the open version, if Java upgrades are necessary at all.

I guess Oracle might be able to push Open Office into a stronger dependency, but then it should become obvious even to the last Oracle fanboy that Open Office is not the future of Open Source office suites.

Re:The problem is what it pulls in

[Alex Belits]

I'm much more worried about MySQL under Oracle's control. Oracle has every reason to make MySQL worse, especially the versions that scale up.

I would be quite happy to see users moving from MySQL to PostgreSQL.

And Oracle would not like this at all but who cares?

Re:The problem is what it pulls in

[Culture20]

Linux Apache PostgreSQL PHP. This was Linus' goal all along. Expect SUOMI soon after.

Re:The problem is what it pulls in

[Beezlebub33]

First, I agree. Losing MySQL has not been an issue for us. Partly because of the licensing on MySQL has always meant that we could not bundle it when we delivered software to customers. Firebird has been our choice and has worked great.

Second, what's SUOMI?

Re:The problem is what it pulls in

[Culture20]

what's SUOMI?

LAPP, short for lappilainen. Linus is a Finn (although I don't know if he's a laplander). http://translate.google.com/#fi|en|Suomi http://translate.google.com/#fi|en|Suomi

I was making a funny.

Google ...

[ableal]

... or any equivalent web service will render those "Office" files for you in a modern browser. "Installing software" is becoming increasingly quaint, except for a very few heavy duty applications.

Re:Google ...

[phreakincool]

As quaint as it is, some companies, like mine, prohibit the storage of the company's documents on external sites, such as Google.

go-oo.org - libreoffice

[raker]

http://www.go-oo.org - is merging its patches into LibreOffice

I have been using the go-oo.org build for a couple years now very happily. If LIbreOffice is good enough for go-oo.org, its good enough for me

Lockin?

[Improv]

You can always leave later. Your data won't always be perfectly portable, but you can keep old versions of Staroffice around and export to various formats.

IBM Lotus Symphony ... ?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

You could try this: http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.nsf/home

Although, if you've had bad experience with Oracle, maybe you've had bad experience with IBM, as well.

Re:What?

[ScrewMaster]

No, Oracle is the love child of microsoft and satan. I too will not use any product they own, nominally "free" or otherwise.

Satan has a twin sister?

Ratonale?

[Stan Vassilev]

At my job, I've had a less than favorable history with Oracle that I'm not going to get into — rather let's just say I never want anything to do with them again.

I'd like to think people who deal with technology are rational, so if in your dealings with Oracle you have learned of some objective reason why people should avoid OpenOffice.org now, I believe you should share it, if your contract allows.

If there's no objective reason, then quite simply keep using OpenOffice.org and keep an eye on the situation between Oracle and LibreOffice.org.

In our daily lives we use the services of companies that have wronged us by means of poor policy, or unprofessional employees, but if we took a hard stance every single time and dropped everything, even at no clear alternative, society would not last for long.

If you live in US, did you stop using oil fuel and oil based products (i.e. basically almost everything around you) when the BP oil spill happened? I guess not.

Re:Ratonale?

[Spad]

These things are rarely objective; if you have to deal with Company X for something and they are spectacular fuckups, then you're not going to willing choose to use their software again if there's any alternative - not because the software is inherently bad, but because you never want to have to deal with the company again in any way.

For precisely this reason, I will never choose to work with Commvault products if at all possible.

Re:Ratonale?

[Just Some Guy]

If you live in US, did you stop using oil fuel and oil based products (i.e. basically almost everything around you) when the BP oil spill happened?

No, but I did stop knowingly using BP products.

Re:Ratonale?

[mr_gorkajuice]

I'd like to think people who deal with technology are rational.

lol
"Everything should be free as long as it's just data, long live TPB!"
"Oracle/Apple/Microsoft is evul - EVUL I TELL YOU! Google are OK though. Trust them with everything. They told us directly that they're not evul."
"If I can't tamper with the source code, the product sucks. How is this not obvious to everyone?"

Re:What?

[socsoc]

Seriously. He's giving up on a FOSS suite because he doesn't like the current owner and is wondering how well a fork of the current codebase works.

Downgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

Did Oracle contribute anything to the previous versions? Are they really so tainted that once they've touched OO, everything that is OO before this point is now dirty as well?
If not, just downgrade.

Go-oo

[jonbryce]

You should visit Go-oo.org and use their fork of OpenOffice.org.

Re:Go-oo

[zhilla2]

From their site: Go-oo has been made obsolete by the exciting new LibreOffice project.

Re:Go-oo

[Macrat]

You should visit Go-oo.org and use their fork of OpenOffice.org.

LibreOffice is a rebranding of Go-oo.org

Re:Go-oo

[Just Brew It!]

Yes, but the last build (3.2.1) is still available for download. So if someone is waiting for LibreOffice to come out of beta, and doesn't mind being stuck back at 3.2.1 (which isn't really all that old yet), Go-oo is still a viable option.

Re:Go-oo

[PhilHibbs]

Go-oo have announced that they are going to close down their project and support LibreOffice, but in the mean time until LibreOffice comes out of beta Go-oo is a viable choice if you want a stable release with no Oracle logo.

Oracle Logo ?

[denisbergeron]

Your problem is the Oracle Logo... go to gnome-look.org and find a new splash screen that suit you.

Abiwords, gunumeric, and dia

[DarkOx]

Most users need a word processor and a spread sheet and perhaps a Viso type utility. I guess lots of people probably want a presentation tool like Power Point as well but I never give those types of presentations I am white board man, so I can't help you there. Abiword, Gnumeric and Dia pretty much meet my needs. If I need to look at a Visio doc Microsofts viewer works pretty well under wine. Abiword and Gnumeric are probably not as feature rich as OO.org but both are easier to use IMHO and both handle most Microsoft Office documents of their respective types pretty well. Dia is a pretty good tool for putting together diagrams and getting ideas down fast. Depending on your needs you should check those projects out.

Re:Abiwords, gunumeric, and dia

[Xtifr]

Actually, I think gnumeric may well be the best open-source spreadsheet out there, but both oowriter and kword are better than abiword, IMO.

Re:Abiwords, gunumeric, and dia

[snilloc]

Abiword does not have true .doc export, nor do they plan to. The .doc export function is just renaming an rtf as doc, which will certainly look doc-ish and will open in Word, but complex documents are going to be mangled. In my experience, OOo exports a reasonably good .doc , which I always verify with the free Word Viewer from MS before sending out. In the rare event of mangled formatting, I fire up my ancient installation of Office97 as a last resort.

Re:Abiwords, gunumeric, and dia

[howlingfrog]

Not just open-source. Gnumeric is the best spreadsheet out there, period. As of recent versions, its numerical accuracy and featureset leave all other spreadsheets in the dust, along with some well-known statistical analysis suites.

The MrBabyMan of Slashdot?

[harlows_monkeys]

If you weren't a Slashdot celebrity, that ridiculous submission would have been rejected as whining over a complete non-issue. Grab the OOo source, and build your own copy that doesn't display the Oracle logo. Problem solved. (Or just look away when the splash screen appears).

Re:The MrBabyMan of Slashdot?

[FrootLoops]

You completely missed the point and your post got modded up?

Re:The MrBabyMan of Slashdot?

[gmhowell]

Slashdot celebrity? How? WTF is MrBabyMan?

Re:The MrBabyMan of Slashdot?

[gsslay]

.. or stick a Post-it note in the middle of your screen before launching the application, so your eyes are never assaulted by the eeeeevil company's logo. Better still, use generic sticky paper pad, lest you replace the tyranny of Oracle with that of 3M.

The very fact that the submitter of this question feels he has to first justify his need to read a Word document, lest anyone think it was a regular habit of his, which would make him a slave to eeeeevil software company Microsoft, tells me all I need to know.

Sometimes having an over-developed sense of principles is an inconvenience and costs time, effort and money. This is one of these times. If your principles are so highly tuned that you must, at all costs, never sully yourself with the slightest suggestion of any involvement with devil-spawn of the Evil Corporate Empires, then you've set yourself an impossible task that can only end in living in a cave. Your principles will be intact, but you are going to have to do without a few comforts.

oblig

[Madster]

LibreOffice has the spanish word "libre" in it. I can't use that either because I strongly condemn the actions during the Spanish Inquisition. [...]

I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition...

Re:oblig

[Pteraspidomorphi]

Nobody does.

Re:oblig

[awshidahak]

Noooooooobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Re:Go buy Microsoft Office

[Anonymous Coward]

They have an MS-Office for linux now?

Re:Seems you have a choice

[tuppe666]

OpenOffice, and all the oracle crap that is inevitable. Or MS office.

For my purposes, I choose MSOffice. Sure, I'm supporting the "Evil" MS, but I don't really care about that. I just need something that works, and like it or not, that's MS Office.

Both WORK. If you had talked about Memory Usage, Compatability, File Formats, Ease of Use, you may have chose different...or the same, but yes OpenOffice works for 100 million users, and rising.

Don't worry about it

[steveha]

All Oracle did was buy Sun. There isn't some sort of magical evil contagion that instantly infected OpenOffice.org; the software is no different than it was before the sale.

Now, Oracle could potentially direct OpenOffice.org development to go down the path of evil. They could change the license under which OO.o is distributed to an unacceptable one. They could do all sorts of things! But they haven't had time to do it yet, and by the time they get their evil ducks in a row, LibreOffice will be up and running.

Little-known fact: many (most?) Linux distros are already shipping a non-pure OO.o. There is a collection of patches that were never part of the official OO.o, called Go-oo, and distros have been shipping Go-oo instead of the pure Oo.o.

I fully expect LibreOffice to merge all the Go-oo patches, leaving us with two office suites: Oracle OO.o, and LibreOffice. And I think it is very possible that the community will line up behind LibreOffice and leave Oracle OO.o completely irrelevant and unloved. (Consider the situation with Xfree86 and X.org. In that case, the switchover happened in a stunningly short period of time.)

The worst-case scenario is that Oracle adopts some license that keeps LibreOffice from merging Oracle patches, and then Oracle funds a development team to make giant improvements to Oracle OO.o; then the community might have to choose between the free LibreOffice and the Oracle offering. But even there, I am not actually worried. The current state of OpenOffice is usable. Even if Oracle poured huge resources into OO.o development, what could they really offer to tempt us away from LibreOffice? A toolbar with giant icons? A dancing paperclip? Meanwhile, if all that LibreOffice does is simply to fix bugs, improve speed, and rewrite to end Java dependencies, I for one would be completely happy.

If you use OO.o on Windows, just don't take any updates until LibreOffice is ready, and you will be fine. Or better yet, simply start getting your installers from the Go-oo web site. If you use Linux, you almost certainly can simply trust your distro to do a good job of keeping your office suite relatively evil-free.

Oracle may be evil, but they aren't magically evil. Don't worry about this.

P.S. After writing this post, my 'o' key on my keyboard is overheating. I'd better not use it for a while or it might stp wrking.

steveha

Re:Don't worry about it

[Xtifr]

I fully expect LibreOffice to merge all the Go-oo patches

Already done--that was pretty much the first step.

And I think it is very possible that the community will line up behind LibreOffice

Pretty much already done as well, at least as far as the Red Hat, Novell, Debian, Canonical, FSF, IBM and Google parts of the community.

Re:Don't worry about it

[Xtifr]

Really? IBM doesn't sound all that enthusiastic.

Huh? That article doesn't seem to weigh in either way on whether LO is good, bad or indifferent. It merely points out that it's not the first derivative of OOo to appear, which is plainly true. Nor is there any indication that he's speaking for IBM. It's simply a statement of Rob Weir's opinion that LO is not as unprecedented as some people seem to think.

If that stands as anything, it stands as evidence that Rob Weir doesn't like the term "fork". It offers nothing about either Rob's opinion or IBM's opinion of LO as a project.

That said, the reference I was using to claim IBM support turns out, when I read more closely, to have been speculative, so I'll mark them as neutral for now, until more evidence appears.

Re:Don't worry about it

[elashish14]

P.S. After writing this post, my 'o' key on my keyboard is overheating. I'd better not use it for a while or it might stp wrking.

I suspect your 'e' and spacebar are in greater danger. Including everything up to your P.S. and stripping the URL to plain text, including [go-oo.org]:

$ cat post | tr [A-Z] [a-z] | fold -w1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr

        371
        230 e
        182 o
        160 t
        138 i
        117 a
        109 n

Now I guess I'll wait until someone rails me with a more efficient solution...

Re:Don't worry about it

[10am-bedtime]

Well, the

cat POST | tr [A-Z] [a-z] | fold -w1

portion can be handled by sed, though less succinctly:

sed -e 'y/ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ/abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz/' \
        -e 's/./&\n/g' POST

Re:Don't worry about it

[elashish14]

I imagine { sed 'y/[A-Z]/[a-z]' } would work just as well

Re:Don't worry about it

[steveha]

I like using Python for this sort of thing. Here's a Python 3 program to find the top 10 and print them:

from collections import Counter
s = open("post").read() # read in entire file as a single string
lst = Counter(s).most_common(10) # find top 10 chars
# lst is a list of tuples: (char, count)
print(lst) # prints list

It's likely more efficient than spinning up six processes, but more importantly I think it is pretty easy to understand (and it was easy to write).

You could do this whole thing in two lines (one for the import, one to do everything) but it's ugly:

from collections import Counter
print(Counter(open("post").read()).most_common(10))

steveha

Re:Don't worry about it

[steveha]

Oh, and here is a version that doesn't slurp the whole file into memory. You could count some really large files with this one.

from collections import Counter

def file_chars(name):
        for line in open(name):
                for ch in line:
                        yield ch

# set "itr" (iterable) to generator instance for file
itr = file_chars("post")
lst = Counter(itr).most_common(10)
print(lst)

steveha

string theory

[TheGratefulNet]

or rather:

% strings foo.txt | less

uhhh, it DOES work and it often good enough for reading readme.txt files that should have been text to begin with.

Don't Switch.. Yet

[SirThe]

LibreOffice isn't really ready for production use, it randomly freezes up for me when trying to save documents sometimes, as well as freezing sometimes when trying to export PDFs as well (no clue why). I wouldn't recommend using it, yet.

Re:What?

[S.O.B.]

Satan has a twin sister?

...and she's HOT!

Google Docs ?

[Etrigoth]

What about using Google Docs online ?

Me and a colleague have been using them to co-ordinate a contract we're working on and so far, it's been great.

De Facto Standard?

[rrossman2]

Can anyone convince me that there's no reason to fear the Oracle OpenOffice.org? Will it remain the de facto standard?

That made me chuckle.. I'm pretty sure at this point Microsoft Office is the de facto standard (even if it doesn't follow standards). The other chuckle I got was I was actually able to paste into a slashdot comment using Chrome again! Finally!

Re:De Facto Standard?

[RazorSharp]

Can anyone convince me that there's no reason to fear the Oracle OpenOffice.org? Will it remain the de facto standard?

That made me chuckle.. I'm pretty sure at this point Microsoft Office is the de facto standard (even if it doesn't follow standards). The other chuckle I got was I was actually able to paste into a slashdot comment using Chrome again! Finally!

1. The Open Document Format -- what's important is that the format becomes the de facto standard, not the application that runs it. OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Lotus Symphony, NeoOffice -- the most popular should be the most stable and feature rich, nothing else really matters. No one can own or monopolize the document format, so the application really shouldn't matter. Kind of like the internet and web browsers.

2. I'm pretty sure that Sun had OpenOffice under a license that Oracle won't be able to abuse. They may be able to abuse the copyrights, but not the code/patents/forks.

3. Oracle has the same interest in OOo that Sun had -- it's a thorn in the side of Microsoft. Neither Ellison nor McNealy are shy about their distaste for MS, and I doubt Ellison would pass up an opportunity to take money away from MS's #2 moneymaker for the sake of locking down OOo. OpenOffice doesn't stand a chance of ever being profitable, just look at what happened when it was StarOffice. But that thorn can get pushed further and further into Microsoft's side.

try AbiWord

[Lazy Jones]

A free word processor (GPL) that aims to support Microsoft Word documents: Download

Oh grow up.

[RocketRabbit]

The damn SPLASHSCREEN bothers you? It's still Openoffice.

I can understand if you were raped anally while being shown the Oracle logo by a maniacally laughing, disfigured clown, why you might be upset by seeing that logo.

By the way, when OpenOffice was under Sun patronage, did you chew your nails off worrying? NO?

This whole story is a joke, a propaganda piece against Oracle (and I have no love for Oracle) and just undermines the credibility of Slashdot. Oh, wait, it's a Timothy post? NEVER COULD HAVE FUCKING GUESSED!

Re:Seems you have a choice

[Jorl17]

Also, MS Office works fine under Wine. Even though I spit on it when I can -- LibreOffice does it all for me.

Re:What?

[countertrolling]

Satan has a twin sister?

Yes, and if he will not turn to the dark side, then perhaps she will...

No Oracle at all?

[nurb432]

I guess that means no java for you either :)

Re:www.freeoffice.com

[theskipper]

FreeOffice.com just sold for $55k at Sedo.com:

http://domainnamewire.com/2010/11/02/500000-logo-com-deal-helps-sedo-clear-1m-for-the-week/

The whois info shows a change on 11/11/10 so the owner fields are probably current for the buyer SoftMaker:

org: SoftMaker Software GmbH
address: Kronacher Str. 7
city: Nrnberg
pcode: 90427
country: DE
updated: 2010-11-11 11:09:42

Their site advertises some type of Office software. But the temporary page is interesting in itself, though probably not related to the OO fork. Dunno.

Beta Quality?

[nurb432]

I know being labeled as 'beta', but wasn't it taken from the last good source snapshot at time of the fork? If so, i would say that things are pretty stable at this point. ( or if you disagree that OO was stable, its at least as stable as the last pre Oracle OO was. )

Did you read the summary?

[upside]

"Has anyone used LibreOffice (it's installing as I type this) extensively?"

go-oo.org

[feranick]

Until a stable release of libreoffice is out, go-oo.org will do for you. No Oracle banners, and many useful patches never accepted in the official openoffice.org. Besides if you use Ubuntu, Novell, RedHat, they use go-oo.

Re:What?

[ScrewMaster]

Satan has a twin sister?

Yes, and if he will not turn to the dark side, then perhaps she will...

According to this, she already has.

Re:counter domain name still available

[The Wild Norseman]

According to network solutions, nooo.org is taken.

But noooo.org is available!

Be careful, though, when typing noooo.org into your browser because noooooo.gov is owned by Lord Vader and he's a stickler when it comes to protecting his domain.

Make it a pic of your cat instead.

[stickystyle]

I'm not usually the one to post these types of 'fix it yourself' OSS comments...

Download the source
replace oracle logos with something else
compile
problem solved (profit?)..

Use Koffice...

[sleepy_weasel]

I quit using OO.org when I found Koffice. Koffice builds much faster for me in OpenBSD, and it can open the microsoft formats, and export to PDF, which is what I use it for anyway. I used LibreOffice on my windows box, as Koffice is not easily available (it requires a beta version and using a KDE installer that didn't work for me on windows 7).

Re:Use Koffice...

[sleepy_weasel]

I don't use KDE as a desktop, but on OpenBSD-current using scrotwm, it works great.

Hmm

[drolli]

So lets forget about the original poster having an personal wrath against a company, of which he does not even specify the type:

-Try Abiword
-run the microsoft word viewer (may run under wine)
-take the .doc document filter out of OO and use as standalone
-use the IBM version of OO
-test Libreoffice (if they are in beta and your personal feeling about oracle are so bad that you annoy the Slashdot community with that question, i dont find it out of the way that you help)

Open Office is not the only game in town

[andr00oo]

You could try Lotus Symphony:
symphony.lotus.com

Symphony 3 is much better than the original and handles at least some ppts better than OO.o

Andrew

Uh, maybe nowhere?

[phreakincool]

Oracle has owned Sun since the April '09 announcement. OpenOffice is still free. So what's your major gripe with it? Until Oracle starts charging for it, I will continue to use it. By the way, Oracle also owns Java and MySQL, so I hope you never have to use those products, either.

LibreOffice

[sjvn]

The existing codebase is OO 3.2x and they're adding in Novell's existing older and OpenXML MS Office format support. It does fine on my Presentation slides that started life in PowerPoint.

Steven

KOffice?

[fredrickleo]

Try KOffice...

Koffice has just split!

[IYagami]

http://lists.kde.org/?l=koffice-devel&m=128782551919625&w=2

"Dear fellow members of the community,

As you might be aware, after months of discussions, it has been concluded that
the best solution is to split the community.

However, the split is going to happen at application level. The maintainer of
each application will be asked to consult his fellow developers to decide in
which group, A or B, the application will lived. The other group is free to
fork the application under a different name. It is also possible for the
developers to change the application name and ask that the current name is not
used by any of the group. This can be used as an opportunity for a fresh
start.

Currently, to the best of my knowledge the groups are composed of the
following applications:

Group A: KWord
Group B: KPresenter, Krita, Karbon, Kexi

Since the license give the right for a fork, I can already mention that Group
B will come with a fork of KWord, under a name that has yet to be decided.
Group A is free to fork any application of Group B under a different name.

Maintainers have until Sunday October 31th to decide with which group to go.
Applications that have not choosen a group will have to be renamed by each
group.

The KDE e.V. board will be asked to decide what happen to the KOffice name,
the KOffice website, the KOffice mailing list, KOffice.org, KOffice wiki and
the KOffice bugzilla product. The recommendation from members of the CWG is to
retire the name KOffice altogether, which will allow both side to start on a
fresh start and leave the past behind. Then the application maintainers and
developers of each group will have one week to find a new name for their
suite, and move to another place in the KDE subversion tree and to rename or
remove the applications that are in the other group.

In the meantime, I am suspending the KOffice release process, meaning that I
will release Beta 3, but that the date for the following release is undefined.
The reason is that I do not feel confident that the splitting will happen in
time before the RC1, and I do not think it is a good idea to ship a RC release
that will get different applications than the final release. If the splitting
takes more time, I will proceed with one more beta. I also advise each group
to ensure that they have a release coordinator.

I will urge readers of this letter to:
1) refrain discussion around the splitting outside the mailing list, or to do
so in private conversation
2) acknowledge, that at this point there is no sense in trying to place the
blame anywhere, we just have to accept the fact
3) remain civilised and polite in this difficult moment

--
Cyrille Berger Skott"

Re:Koffice has just split!

[Anonymous Coward]

Krap.

Re:Koffice has just split!

[makomk]

That's a very cryptic mailing list message - presumably deliberately so - but this reply appears to be fairly accurate about the missing details. Basically, Nokia wanted to use the core of KOffice in the office application on their Meego mobile platform, so they created their own fork that massively restructured KOffice and changed its APIs. Apparently they then tried to use their fork to ram in patches that the KOffice developers had rejected. Some of the other developers weren't happy about this state of affairs, but Nokia have so much pull inside the KDE community that they basically have to be accomodated.

Re:Koffice has just split!

[Anonymous Coward]

This post is full of FUD. As the KOffice marketing dude, let me clear it up.

It's true that the KOffice community is splitting up. Right now it looks as if group A is going to be more or less one person, and group B the rest of the community. I won't write any more about that and I'll let you speculate freely on it.

Nokia has *not* forked anything. At the point when the feature freeze came along before the release of KOffice version 2.3, Nokia wanted to continue developing some features. As good citizens in the community this is being done in a work branch in SVN. In the mean time the team working within and together with Nokia does both lots of bugfixes and some new features. All the bugfixes go directly into SVN trunk, and the new features go into the work branch. This is how it should be.

Once KOffice 2.3 is released, the new features in the work branch will be individually presented to the community for review. If the community accepts the feature, it will go into trunk, and if not it will be reworked until it's accepted.

This said, It's not impossible that team B (being almost all of the previous KOffice community) will continue to work from the work branch as the new trunk, but then it can be regarded as the community accepting the new features.

Inge Wallin
KOffice developer

Re:Koffice has just split!

[tokul]

Group A: KWord Group B: KPresenter, Krita, Karbon, Kexi

And Abiword is not part of Gnome Office.

Re:Koffice has just split!

[makomk]

This post is full of FUD.

Nope. There's also more supporting details I neglected to mention.

At the point when the feature freeze came along before the release of KOffice version 2.3, Nokia wanted to continue developing some features.

The most significant of which being a major restructuring of the code that touched large parts of the codebase for the benefit of Nokia's mobile app, yes. I even read the "testing done" bit on the review request and it didn't even mention any testing of the actual KOffice apps, just of Nokia's FreOffice.

As good citizens in the community this is being done in a work branch in SVN.

Which, as best I can tell, has become effectively the "real" trunk, with the actual official SVN trunk being relegated to backported bugfixes and few developers even testing it except when they encounter a bug in the work branch they need to test.

Far more of the mailing list discussion (and the vast majority of review requests) seems to be about FreOffice than the desktop UI, the apparent consensus amongst developers is that mobile is the future, and KOffice is having huge issues actually getting a release out because most of the developers are working to Nokia's release schedule and goals.

This said, It's not impossible that team B (being almost all of the previous KOffice community) will continue to work from the work branch as the new trunk

Which is what they were effectively doing already, except that bugfixes got merged into the 2.3 development branch and pulled from there rather than vice-versa. They'd already largely abandoned the "official" KOffice development and release process in favour of what Nokia wanted - I suppose at least this way they might actually make the change official.

Inge Wallin
KOffice developer

You also appear to do a fair of PR and announcements - and even the odd conference session and demo - for Nokia's FreOffice...

Try go-oo.org

[woboyle]

The Go-oo.org version of OOo is the leading-edge distribution of OOo, far superior IMO than Google/Sun's. As I understand it, they will be fully supporting the LibreOffice version in the immediate future. In any case, they have better support for MS Office file formats than the plain vanilla version of OOo. Visit them at www.go-oo.org. You will find this on their home page about LibreOffice:

quote:
Go-oo joins forces with LibreOffice

Go-oo shares much of its goals and philosophy with The Document Foundation's LibreOffice project, we're therefore supporting LibreOffice since it's inception, and are in the process of merging most of our patches over, as well as migrating to Document Foundation infrastructure. Going forward, the Go-oo project will be discontinued in favor of LibreOffice.
:end-quote

Re:Try go-oo.org

[ernstp]

Yeah, this is what to use! This is what's installed on all Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Suse machines anyway.

Google Docs?

[Jim Hall]

I use OpenOffice.org on my Linux laptop, but I'll tell you that it doesn't get used too often. I write, edit, and review almost all of my work documents (DOC, XLS, PPT) using Google Docs. We are a university, and have signed up for Google Apps for Domains. It works great. Unless you're a power user of Office, Google Docs will work just fine.

And by "almost all" I mean "all except one". That one XLS file needs some special formatting that Google Docs just can't do (I rotate the column header text by 90 degrees.) If I didn't need to have that feature for formatting, I'd do it in Google Docs.

Re:Ah Yes, There's the Familiar Acerbic Sting ...

[thepotoo]

For what it's worth, there are those of us (myself among them) who genuinely appreciate your articles and comments. Sorry if we're less vocal about our thoughts than the trolls, but please keep up the good work.

um

[buddyglass]

Use it until they make you pay for it or the features become unbearably annoying. Who cares if its from Oracle? Its not like you're spending money on it. Personally I've always found OO to be a giant pile of crap and use MS Word instead. 2003 version; I don't especially like the new 2007 look and feel.

Being silly

[Dzimas]

You were fine with Open Office when it was a Sun product, right? It's still the same app suite, based on the same code. There's just a different company's name on the splash screen. So get over your past adventures with Oracle and use it. It's free, it was written by smart people, and it's not like using it means that you love Oracle's RDBMS products.

Not cut your nose off to spite your face?

[Cloud K]

I don't know what Oracle did, but presumably they don't go around clubbing kittens or anything. Is it really worth losing such useful software over what sounds essentially like a grudge against the company that happened to buy it?

If Oracle are such a vile enemy that you wouldn't like to see the ground they walk on without spitting on it, just use a previous version that hasn't been contaminated with their logo?

open office is for MS fanboys

[Cyko_01]

real nerds use vi. Your geek cred should be revoked.

Lotus Symphony

[fadethepolice]

Not sure if this is even useful as it is a derivative work of open office, and I haven't tried power point files or used it all that extensively but it has served my purpose so far. It might be something to look into.

The Magic Touch of Oracle

[NapalmV]

Isn't this magic... once Oracle has touched OpenOffice... Linux users having to chose between installing native OpenOffice or a virtual machine with MS Office... might now prefer the later.....

Re:The Magic Touch of Oracle

[John Hasler]

Linux users having to chose between installing native OpenOffice or a virtual machine with MS Office.

What gives you that idea? Most Linux distributions have been shipping go-oo for quite a while now and it is the basis for LibreOffice. For us there is no change. We're there already. It's just a name change. The software is the same.

Just lobby and get the LibreOffice name changed!

[BlueCoder]

LibreOffice is just a name placeholder while the people involved get the leadership and politics sorted out. Just think of it as a project codename. No sense in wasting a good name and confusing people when you don't know if the program will fork again. It will take a couple years probably until we have a couple coder/software architects that can inspire others to follow them. It's actually a much better situation that the MySQL debacle.

Oh, *that* flashing

[sootman]

"After downloading the update, there was a .doc file containing flashing instructions."

Am I the only one who thought the instructions were actually <blink>flashing</blink> the first time reading that?

Re:More thievery from the linsuxs fanboi's

[jedidiah]

> So a few people are miffed that Oracle actually wants to maintain some minor control over a product that they developed

If that product was released under the GPL or any other similar license they simply don't get to do that.

They have to obey the law like everyone else.

Or are you trying to now claim that Oracle is somehow above the law?

try Softmaker office

[JonySuede]

Softmaker Office seems quite decent and it seems to have good commercial supports

ebay/last edition microsoft office

[cinnamon colbert]

seriously Open Office just doesn't cut it for complex stuff You can get prev versions of microsoft office cheaply on ebay Course, your stuff is so simple you can use OO, then it doesn't really matter what you install, or how buggy it is; just don't use any feature that is a problem

don't panic

[t2t10]

OpenOffice doesn't magically become proprietary because of a name change or Oracle.

Just wait until the dust settles. Until then, OpenOffice is fine.

LibreOffice (c) Oracle

[mtemmerm]

So I just removed OO.o from my Arch installation and replaced it with LO. Looks just the same except LO adds a systray icon. And the copyright notice still says Oracle on it.

Re:Microsoft Office - Yes, it is a joke

[Hyperhaplo]

Right now I create and edit documents in Office XP (2002), Office 2007 and Office 2010.

At home I have the option of Open Office. Let's not go there.

I am very tired of fixing word (.doc) documents. Formatting going astray, the unsuitability of using MS word (any version) for any large document (100 pages+ of text .. and it all goes pear shaped), uselessness of the file conversion wizards (why can't a later version of office just edit the document from a previous version without corrupting it? too much to ask?).

I've lost track of how many times I have 'cleaned' bullet points, corrected fonts, and worst come to worst Copy all, paste to notepad, paste into a new document to fix very screwed up formatting problems.

Microsoft office can be very frustrating. While not being very funny, yes, it is a joke. When will they fix the basic problems with the office suite?

Unfortunately, the laughter is all on their side as they collect licence fees for each 'upgrade' while we get stuck in editing hell.

--

It will be interesting to see what oracle does with open office. Considering the tainted history the company has with software development in the past, perhaps they have learned and are turning over a new leaf.

*L*ucy in the *S*ky with *D*iamonds

[microbox]

Can I have some of what you're smoking? I think some hallucinations would spice up my life a little.

Yours truly

Bored slashdotter.

For making documents, use a HTML editor.

[Kaz Kylheku]

I use Kompozer. HTML for content, CSS for styling. SVG for inline vector graphics.

To print, open it in the browser, set up some page parameters (margins, footer), and off we go.

HTML cuts and pastes easily into Word documents, and Outlook e-mails, with formatting largely intact.

I use CSS tricks for numbering sections, subsections and subsubsections. (Tricks which, ironically, don't work in IE7).

A simple script generates a clickable table of contents (which is in its own DIV that is styled differently: we don't want the spacing arounding the headings to be the same as in the rest of the document.

If someone complains that you aren't using Word, you can say that you're using the languages that the Web is based on, including every single e-commerce website in the world, from the largest to the smallest. End of story. STFU.

 

Re:Acronym

[hendrikboom]

Try Lo, and behold. Or else try Lo.o, pronounced Loo.

Other Office

[zaivala]

For most uses, KOffice works well (Windows or Linux); GNOME Office (AbiWord, Gnumeric, GIMP, etc.) also work well, but I don't think there is a Powerpoint analog. For Windows computers, the best office package I've found yet is Ashampoo Office -- it's not free, but it's cheap and frequently discounted. Ashampoo being a German software developer, they don't get many writeups in the US, but the few reviews that exist are generally quite positive, and my own experience with their software is extremely positive. I prefer Ashampoo Office to Microsoft Office -- it has nearly all the functions (including Track Changes) yet is much simpler to use, has a cleaner interface, and takes up much less space on whatever hard drive it is installed on.

Re:Other Office

[zaivala]

Oh, and Ashampoo Office is MUCH more compatible with M$Office than anything else I've tried.

Don't be foolish, keep using OpenOffice.org...

[PhilipTheHermit]

Why do YOU care if it says Oracle made it? Why do YOU care what kind of splash screen appears when you start up the software? You're letting your dislike of Oracle influence your thinking in non-advantageous ways.

Listen, here's a prescription from Dr. Hermit:

FOR NOW, keep using your Oracle-branded Open Office. Meanwhile, keep an eye on LibreOffice, which is the obvious next step.

IN A YEAR, when they've got all the kinks worked out of LibreOffice, uninstall OpenOffice and switch over.

Problem solved! And wasn't that easy?

Use IBM Symphony

[msoftsucks]

Use IBM Symphony http://symphony.lotus.com/ . It is based upon Open Office but IBM has added a few of it's own features to it.

Don't forget the user "education" factor

[LostMyBeaver]

Every Linux user will typically bitch about how now they have to open a Word doc... then... whether using OpenOffice, AbiWord, KWord, Google Docs, Office in VMWare, Office in Remote Desktop, office in Citrix application sharing, Office in Wine, doc2pdf etc... will simply open it.

If you're a Linux guy that's bought a motherboard and IS UPGRADING THE BIOS... then let's assume for the moment that you can figure out how to open up a Word document.

If you can't, then please pack the motherboard, return it to the store and go to Brookstones and buy a new toy to play with instead, like a 100Mhz, 64meg Android device.

Re:Don't forget the user "education" factor

[RichiH]

So what you are saying is that because we _can_ open a file we should not care about _how_ we can open it?

And that once the next version of MS Office comes out we will have to wait a bit cause it's, like, new. And those formatting mistakes all over the document that MS carefully engineers into their standards? Don't worry, you can open the file!

johnfrum_42

[Barlo_Mung_42]

Where do you go? Just get Office. really not a big deal.

Just use Debian

[risom]

They have erased the Oracle logo off the splash screen :)

Re:Go buy Microsoft Office

[muckracer]

> They have an MS-Office for linux now?

Yeah. Emacs!

Re:Just lobby and get the LibreOffice name changed

[muckracer]

> LibreOffice is just a name placeholder while the people involved get the leadership and politics sorted out. Just think of it as a project codename.

They should have a naming contest online and have *users* come up with and subsequently vote for the names, that work for them.

Re:Ah Yes, There's the Familiar Acerbic Sting ...

[RocketRabbit]

Please, go elsewhere.

You sit here bitching and moaning that Oracle is giving you software for free, because you are pissed off at them?

Seriously, grow the fuck up. If you don't like their software, don't use it, but come on man, couldn't you at least read the Wikipedia for about 10 seconds and answer this question for yourself?

This whole post and the fact that it made it to the front page are two enormous jokes, and if you were actually serious in your little rant there you are a fucking joke too.

Let me as you, were you raped anally by a team of neo-Nazis wearing spiked condoms while being shown the Oracle logo by a maniacally laughing, disfigured clown? If the answer is no, you're just a drama queen.

You don't get it. None of it.

[RichiH]

I for one thank that weird worry-maker RMS for GNU & the GPL. If he had thought like you, I would still be paying for OS licences.

You're On Your Own

[jman.org]

mkdir oo | cd oo | wget http://download.services.openoffice.org/files/stable/3.2.1/OOo_3.2.1_src_core.tar.bz2 | tar -xzvf OOo_3.2.1_src_core.tar.bz2 | *alter at will* | ./configure | make | make install | enjoy

use a converter

[swatthatfly]

Use a free .doc to .pdf converter, like this one: http://www.pdfonline.com/pdf2word/index.asp

Abiword, Zoho api or Gnumeric just a few

[ElliotWilcox]

Install Ubuntu 10.x and search the software repository for word processors Abiword, Zoho api or Gnumeric (excel like) just a few

Re:Desktops. 10% linux on Desktops.

[Mongoose Disciple]

Desktops. 10% linux on Desktops. It's probably a little higher than that, mind.

Citation? I've yet to see credible numbers that peg it at even 2% much less 10.

Don't just use software; use common sense...

[Lewah]

If what you have now works for what you're doing, use it.

If something better comes out that tickles your fancy, install the shiny.

If you're not contributing to the project and directly involved in the squabble between Oracle and The Document Foundation, then why in the hell do you care? It's not /that/ hard to install new software on your OS is it?

Let Oracle screw it up (like they always do), and then jump ship like everyone else; otherwise, get in the mix and start helping make the alternative better.

In my opinion, this thread is moot.

Re:Ah Yes, There's the Familiar Acerbic Sting ...

[mr_gorkajuice]

But I'm sure I'm alone in my worries and it's just because I'm a celebrity that my bitching gets put up with.

At least reason is not lost on you.

P.S. You're discarding a working, free product because you're pissed. You're being a zealot. If you were religious, you'd be considered extremist and dangerous.

Go Libre.

[DaVince21]

The LibreOffice beta is actually surprisingly stable. It'll definitely allow you to just *view* the documents without crashes, at the very least.

(Personal experience: some freezes occur when you do some specific stuff, like with tables, but it always gets out of the freezes.)

Nomination for QoTW:

[TaleSpinner]

> You should be honoured that he called you an idiot

Priceless.

Just instructions? Could be worse

[GameboyRMH]

A lot of mainboards can only have their BIOS updated through a Windows utility, and so far I've never seen one of these utilities that works in WINE. Some mainboards can only be configured with a Windows utility (most Toshiba laptops for instance, but if you bought a Toshiba laptop that's just the beginning of your problems...)

So don't use that version, then?

[neminem]

I hate the look of Skype 4. I hate the look of Skype 5. So I'm still using Skype 3. I just got a new computer; apparently Win7 x64 doesn't get along with the final release of Skype 3, so I went back to oldversion.com and grabbed the penultimate version instead, which worked.

I liked AIM back in the day, but they kept adding more ugly bloat and more ads everywhere, so at a certain point I just stopped letting it upgrade. I'm still running an AIM install from about 2004, and guess what? It still works great. I still have Office 2003 installed, too (with the compatibility pack to view 2007/2010 docs). Boom, no more ugly screen-realestate-eating ribbon. You can run XP's no-ribbon paint and wordpad in Win7, too - just copy the executables over from a different computer.

My point is, companies try to convince you that the only proper way to use their software is to upgrade every time they release a new version, but sometimes "upgrades"... aren't. So why not just use the pre-Oracle version you liked, until LibreOffice is up to your standards?

Re:Just lobby and get the LibreOffice name changed

[ErikZ]

GimpOffice!

What about Open Document Format?

[fritsd]

What if the choice is between PDF, DOC and ODF?
ODF is meant to be editable, and there are efforts to compare how it renders in different word processors and viewers (http://officeshots.org/).
There are no current scandals around ODF in the news, but that doesn't mean there has been no progress in crafting ODF 1.2 (currently committee draft #5, maybe published still this year) and to make it work on a lot of platforms :-)

Re:What about Open Document Format?

[SanityInAnarchy]

What if the choice is between PDF, DOC and ODF?

For something I only need to view, I'll still take PDF, especially now that ODF is recognized natively by recent versions of MS Office -- I really don't trust Office to get it right.

And I'd still take HTML over any of the above.

Now, for something I need to edit and needs to be printable, I'll take ODF. But that's about it -- in general, I see office software as relics of the print age. I don't care about margins, page breaks, or fonts. I care about scalability, portability, links, and content.

No lack of free databases

[petit_robert]

I work daily with PostgreSQL with great pleasure.

I would add to your list the excellent SQLite : serverless, zero configuration. It's used as storage engine by Thunderbird, among others.

http://www.sqlite.org/index.html

Strangely, Oracle is one of the consortium members.

Try using google docs

[mophab]

You can upload the doc file to google docs and then read it.