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StarOffice 5.1 released
Thomas Leineweber writes "Stardivision has just released the new version 5.1 of its StarOffice. You can download it as usual for free for non-commercial use. "
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I'm also using Linux. And I'm different, that is I know more than anybody around. They are stupid, don't use Linux.
:)
Is it compatible? The last time I run it on a little 100K word file it eat up my RAM ans swap (0.5G) and after twenty minutes finally finished. The result wasn't "compatible". Also StarOffice seems to be very buggy, slow and yet more buggy.
Don't use it unless you know more than the managment or whatever.
The usual AC here
Fortunately, 4front's days are numbered. :)
--ac
Which is better : Applix or StarOffice ? I don't know a damn thing about either one, so I need a clue. I want to get something that does what MSOffice does (without , of course, crashing and forcing me into upgrades every 4 years and insulting my intelligence every time I use it).
the site is up, but full of bad links, as of 17:00 05191999. But the .de looks fine. How is your German?
Groff is my preference, it is free-software. Do I need to enumerate all the benefits of free software? Here on Slashdot?? "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ...", you know the song. O yes, how much I disagree with Jon 'Maddog' Hall when he writes that only Microsoft is still at the "fighting" stage. People! There was a time when the Internet utilized files in ms, tex, and dvi formats in great abundance, but today's generation is quick to embrace Wordperfect, MS Word formats that have proprietary standards. We have gone backwards long ways, I say. We have not yet to pass the "IGNORE" stage. But can I ignore you, my freedom depends on YOU.
Word 97 files which should I choose? ApplixWare or Star Office? KOffice is looking good pretty good...
I believe it's saying something along the lines of, "You're trying to use that crappy excuse of a web browser, "Microshaft Internet Exploiter". Switch to a real browser, and we'll let you in", or something to that effect. But then again, IANAGT (I Am Not A German Teacher).
Wiggles (still too lazy to find his password).
For all Microsoft Internet Imploder 3.0x users.
The StarDivision Homepage is very large-scaled.
In fact too large-scaled for you Microsoft Internet Imploder 3.0x.
To visit our pages, you need StarOffice 4.0/5.1,
Netscape 3.x/4.x or MSIE 4.x.
Thanks for your understanding.
Don't you mean quickview, a feature integrated errr added on to the Windows shell....?
Okay, some moderator is a total tool... as of this posting, the above post is at -1. Is there a reason for this? So the person saw Star Office on a windows system. It IS multi platform after all.
/. would be moderated down.
Granted, this didn't exactly add a lot to the article, but what the hell does it contain that warrants it being moderated out of view??
I really wish moderators wouldn't moderate things when they don't have a clue about the topic.
And don't even tell me that he got moderated down for using the term 'winbloze'. If that were so, half the posts on
Christ, for once the first post isn't some ass screaming "FIRST POST", and it gets moderated down all the same. What is this, an reflex action? Do we now moderate down any first post, regardless of content?
Somebody needs to take their head out of their ass and look around.
After trying 5.0, I wouldn't push it too strongly yet. It's nicely
done, and has lots of cool features; but on my PPro200 with
64Mb RAM, it's EXTREMELY slow. In fact, Word97
in an NT box under Vmware seems more responsive.
Get Vmware (though it's too expensive in my opinion), and
you can run Word97 itself with fairly good performance.
"You may not like the fact that Microsoft Office is the de facto standard, but that doesn't mean it isn't so. "
And the fact that it's the de facto standard doesn't mean that those using it are not idiots...
Moreover you need to think to use sth different, but there is absolutly no need for thinking when
using what everybody else is using
Hi
I'm trying out SO on my Linux box and also SO for Windows. I'm sold on Linux so will keep plugging away but on my Linux box (32MB/120Mhz vs 128MB/350Mhz for my Windows box) it is noticeably slow and seems to do a huge amount of disk-swapping... it really churns away.
I must admit I am also taking a while to get used to the look/feel of SO which after Lotus Smartsuite (and previously MS Office) feels counter-intuitive.
--
Cheers
Mark
Subject says it all. Also available for alpha.
-- cary
(I don't work for applixware, honest)
Microsoft Word's file format hasn't changed between 97 and 2000. They're the same.
...we could get a *BSD version of this, too.
I think it's long overdue.
stupid it is!!
THe damn thing still uses Glibc 2.07
I guess this must be some form of new math that I didn't learn in accounting school.
Heh. $300 versus $6500... not sure where he pulled those numbers from.
try installing some ttfonts into Applix. They render a whole lot better.
What a patronizing ass. Typical of someone who has spent their entire life in the majors. Typical of a CPA friggin bean counter.
Goes to show what kind of industry the oil industry is. No new paradigms there. Just business as usual. Some of aren't so lucky. Some of were friggin geologists at a major.
Frankly, as a long time unix user, I would not hesitate to recommend MS/Office/etc to a small business whose interest in computers is to do work. Small businesses cannot afford highly paid, highly competent technical staffs with man-centuries of unix and mainframe experience to admin a few boxes. $6500 dollars is a pretty good value proposition, lot cheaper than hiring unix and mainframe admins.
As long as this is going to get moderated down anyway, here is a couple more parting shots...
I would also recommend that same small business to thoroughly investigate open source solutions for their business needs, and would stress that any unix is a much better long term payback than an MS solution (not that the friggin oil companies give a rats patootie about much more than quarterly profits). Unix skills accumulate with time, unlike windows skills.
Oh yeah, some things in life are more important than the bottom line. And personally I would not work for this guy or ANY of his competitors. I much prefer working against them. The whole bad lot of them need a nice big reality check, say a nice new truckload of environmental regulations, voted in by my elected representatives. And while I am at it, you CPA's over in Houston really need a few shifts down on the floor humpin mud for the roughnecks. Good for soul. Keeps ya humble.
Someone in the majors is using MS Word.
/. anyway? Don't these guys bill by the minute...? Oh yeah... gas just doubled in price. Duh! Stupid me.
And it seems to be the reservoir engineers. Cause they sure didn't use TeX on that res. eng. text there buddy.
And why would such a high powered exec CPA be hanging around
I want to get something that does what MSOffice does
That's exactly what StarOffice does. It mimics all the features of ms-office, and some more.
Unlike Applix, which has an "non-(ms)-standard" look&feel, SO should make you feel at home immediately.
The downside (as of 5.0): It needs quite a bit of RAM as well.
If you have 64MB, you should prefer Applix, otherwise SO is great (esp. with the KDE integration)
Pretty tough response, but all in all it makes sense.
.DOC format with Office95.
.DOC import filters of non-MS programmes.
But as we are talking about StarOffice, one thing has to be considered:
Training costs!
If you have Unix expertise in-house, setting up and maintaining Linux boxes won't result in higher sysadmin costs.
But training all those "stupid" users on a new office suite can be *very* expensive.
In fact, "cost" of a new office suite comes down to two things:
1. How much retraining of users is needed?
2. How much effort does it take to read MS DOC documents? (-> help desk costs)
Especially 2. is important. I know of big banks here (Zurich) that have switched to Office97 despite the bugs and although *none* of the new features were needed, just because it was a mess to handle the new
The case for StarOffice is simple:
a. It looks/feels much like MSOffice -> little retraining
b. It has the best
That, if anything, matters in the business sense...
Office 95 or
Office 97 or
Office 2000 or
Office 98 (for Macintosh)?
Could you, please, give to us EXACT values for the crap installation ? Is there any other way how to get registration key and customer number ? Thanks.
Too bad 5.1 is as bad a memory hog as 5.0. In fact, running vmware+NT4+Word claims less memory for itself on my box (speed is roughly the same).
Its a shame really, the package is quite nice otherwise.
I can't believe what a pain Star Division is being for non Intel users. They've plugged a Mac version for the past year -- but they don't offer a download version, so one couldn't actually check it out. And they haven't gotten around to recompiling their Linux version, either, so LinuxPPC users are outta luck.
(And it's not like either of these things would take much effort on anyone's part.)
No, training is in another column, so is machinery (maintanance). I was quite a bit more worked up that I remember, so I apologise for the condescension. That was not appropriate.
Here, you would be on Oracle, which is probably overkill. If you wanted, you could use SQL 7. Or you could use Access. It would be up to you, but the support costs would be allocated to your department unless you asked to by put on the "cannot call" sheet, in which case you would just pay for the seat. That is more common than you thing, and it has really helped control costs. Yes, you would get the manuals -- we still like big paper ones and we get them at a discount.
I have just looked at what we will be paying for licences and what options we have and the word "blackmail" had been running around my head for several hours. IBM has redeemed themselves and their MVS licencing is actually somewhat related to stuff like use and what you are doing with it. But I have found myself thinking of Microsoft the same way now that I thought of IBM circa 1980.
Again, sorry for sounding like an ass.
Licence costs per seat, plus Disk Keeper, plus anti-virus, plus a whole variety of other packages that you need to keep NT moving quickly. Some people just reinstall periodically, we prefer not to. The costs were from memory, and I violated a cardinal rule of mine: I emailed whan irritated.
Sorry about not making a clearer argument.
Well, yes on all three counts, but I am only sorry that I presented the arguments like "a patronizing ass" because that is a poor way to convince anyone.
I am not aware that there are new ways of doing business that do not fundamentally come down to realistic value propositions. Had I not been foaming at the mouth, that would have been clearer.
As for the rest of your points:
I would still suggest that a small business go with a UNIX solution and have someone with experience set it up. I liken it to maintaining your own delivery truck -- you can get one that you can keep running with a lot of work, but after a certain point your time will be better spent doing whatever you do than maintaining your truck. The thing that is interesting about all of the freeware out there is that it is free. This changes the accounting quite a bit from the start. Yes, this reflects my biases, but UNIX doesn't tend to need an operator -- you set it up on protected power and leave it alone. And it just works, in silence, allowing the person to "do work."
We care about profits out five years. Development takes too much time not to.
Bring on the regulations -- we will do fine. The problems are simpler than people seem to think and having the regulation prevents people from being able to make a "we can probably get away with it" arguments that have governed decisions in the past. If we can COUNT ON regulation, it becomes part of the equasion. We had 90 days on reformulated gasoline and less with low sulphur #1 and #2 in California. That sort of stuff is a big problem and the only people who don't pay out the nose are lucky. Want double-hulled tankers right now? Make everyone get them. No big deal -- y'all will pay at the pump anyway.
I started as a roughneck. It made college look easy and attractive, which it hadn't before. Several of my fingers and one of my knees don't work all that well and I have a lot of scars. Happy?
Actually, I think that people are getting a "word processor" and a "page layout/desktop publishing" program confused. A word processor processes words - and words are "text". A page layout/desktop publishing program processess fancy fonts and graphics.
But tonight, this response from the registration process made it *all* worthwhile:
Oh yes. Oh yessss! Staroffice, perhaps you'd consider using postgresql under Linux next time?
I *really* hope there is a diff for this one ;-) I just finished downloading that monster!
At least Star Office now detects a SuSE Linux distribution and doesnt complain about missing glibc2 anymore.
You can download the English version from: http://sunsite.unc.edu/ StarDivision/unxlnxi/so51_lnx_01.tar and use the following info for registration...
Registration Data
Product: StarOffice 5.1
Operating System: Linux Intel
Language: English, US
Data to be filled in the User Data Dialog:
Company:
First/Last Name: bob test
Street/State: 8734 hgdfhjgsdfhjg
ZIP/City: 90210 sdf
Country: United States of America
Phone Home/Work:
Fax/eMail: sdffg@sad.com
Data to be filled in the Registration Key Dialog:
Custumer number: 8017663
Registration Key: 68L9-1RVX-7308RP-0L46C7-EJYX-YA0J
The file format has been deliberately obfuscated in order to protect the Office monopoly. I tried StarOffice on my Windows machine at the university to test it out. I don't put garbage onto my home machine. Unfortunately, it choked on several documents and the equation editor sucked. Plus, there were problems with the TOC and cross-references. I've experienced problems even with Word 97!
Secondly, the Word 97 format is unstable. I've had several documents with large figures, numerous equations and linked tables/spreadsheets. Word can take several minutes to load and repaginate the document. And I run into problems with the embedded equations several times. Fonts are missing and the greek symbols revert to their Western language equivalents. Integral signs, etc.. disappearing. The figures in various formats sometimes become elongated and I've had the stupid red X problems several times.
I would prefer Microsoft adopt a standard format like TeX or LaTeX. At least, if the frontend chokes on it, another editor can be used to complete the document.
StarOffice has lots more features, but it's way too slow and
bloated for my tastes, plus I can't stand the way it takes over
the whole desktop with its Win95 look-and-feel. It also tends
to crash occasionally.
Applix ($79 - $99) is smaller, faster, and quite stable. I've
done a couple long presentations with the graphics program,
and was quite happy with the results.
From the german requirement page:
Glibc 2.07 or higher supported.
I guess that means 2.1 support, it would be
totally stupid to release something not working on current caldera, RedHat, debian.....
Fredrik
Yes, I tried SO 5.0. It didn't _perfectly_ translate Micros~1 Word 97 files (failing on bullet points and Symbol fonts, in my case). And there was no mention of immunity to "macro viruses" or "macro trojans".
But the 5.1 version has been out for hours and what we see is criticism of 5.0. Gang, give reviews of 5.1 here, esp. since improved compatibility is supposed to be a feature!
- Pretty easy to use. My kids (6 and 8) use it all the time. The 8 year old had no trouble going through the tutorial.
- Macro programming language (ELF) does networking and you can extend it with C.
- Database integration. Not quite as slick as access, but it does work. PostgreSQL, MySql (if you can call that a database), Oracle ? Solid, and Adabas, (Informix?).
- Applix Anywhere -- access your applixware system via a java applet in your browser.
- They just released their OLAP product, TM1. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but it sounds pretty slick.
- They have open-sourced their extension language, including the drag-and-drop app builder.
- Typical office suite integration -- put a chart in a document, update the underlying data in a spreadsheet, and the chart gets updated. This might work between users, I'm not sure.
- One of the *first* companies to port their suite to Linux. Must be at least 3 years ago by now. (Hellloooo Island!).
- Ported to Alpha and Power PC.
- You can get a win95 version for something like $75.
Down sides- Not as many wiz-bang surface features compared to ms office.
- Mail client is kinda not so great.
- HTML editor needs some work.
- Non-anti-aliased fonts (but is this just x?)
As for dealing with Microsoft Office, RTF import/export works ok for simple documents. The Microsoft Input filters are a lot better, but Applix doesn't currently generate native ms word -- only rtf.The mailing list is pretty active, with a bunch of the engineers constantly answering questions, often in the form of macros that do the trick (Hi Eric, Hi Mark!).
If you have the $99 bucks give it a try.
-- cary
Well, hmmm ... I am an MBA, a CPA, and a CMA, and have managed a number of projects with >200 people in the oil business for the last twenty years. I have about 200 people in my department. I report to the CFO here. So I think that I know my way around the "management decision meeting" business. I have one question: What's the weather like on your planet?
"Other side?" What "other side?" The only side that I am aware of is the "how much does it cost us" side. Try the "other side" crap at Phillips, Shell, Mobil -- er DoubleCross --, BP, or any of the other majors and your ass will be out the door that afternoon. Did you learn that in "Business School" -- that sounds like the stuff that kids these days keep trying to pull in interviews. I have been wishing for one of those hooks to come out and drag them out of my office when they say stuff like that (my secretary is not interested and claims osteoporosis) because when they start talking about "other sides" and "third options" and "new paradigms" the interview is basically over. It means that they cannot add or subtract and/or have never met a budget in their life. And they think that they know something about real technology. Which is even more dangerous.
The only thing that is important is the bottom line, son, and I think that you have never been responsible for one on your life. AIX stays up for 1000 days at a time. Solaris is almost as good. Even HP-UX and OSF will do 200 days. Jesus Christ on a pogo stick -- IRIX will do more than 30 days. NT won't stay up for two weeks under load. Office is a pox and is restricted here because of the support budget that it alone uses up. We restrict the availability of Powerpoint (what the technicians refer to as "Powerpointyhair") for the same reason. As far as I can tell, Linux is just another UNIX, just a lot smaller. I have been working with UNIX for years (and Linux for the last four years on the advice of some of the younger staff members), and I have never seen an advantage to NT and Office and Windows before that (and OS/2 before that, and Macs on and off -- lately IMacs). Perhaps it is the CPA in me coming out -- it's all about ROI and cost of ownership and it doesn't get any better than UNIX and mainframes (more so now with IBM's price cuts). It is amazing (and reveals your fundamental lack of experience) that you would actually suggest that NT/Office is a good value proposition! I have tried Star Office once. I wasn't impressed -- a lot of the machines here are older Pentiums with 32MB and Star Office would not run well on them. But as a value proposition you are suggesting that a system that runs us about $6500/seat in support and licences PER YEAR EVERY YEAR costs less than one that would be free+$300 (last I checked) once. ONCE. That is why we are seriously considering Applix (smaller) or a freeware suite (LyX, GNUmeric, and some others -- but that is enough and exmh is quite nice -- we have menus for setting up procmail automatically) for the new systems as we replace them and/or using X as X terminals on the old systems (with new monitors and video cards). All of this is driven by cost. Period.
"Other side?"
You shouldn't have slept through the accounting classes -- they were part of your curriculum for a reason.
But hey -- I know who we have (I hired most of them) and I know that you aren't working for me -- I only hope that you are working for one of our compeditors.
I think it may work.
I don't have a key# yet to install it completely but I did get to the setup screen. I didn't even get that far with SO5.0 on RH6. So it looks encouraging.
VENI! VIDI! VICI!
I actually like MS Office. I use WP on Linux at home exculsively, and I miss the way I could have Excel handle tables, etc... I'm anxiously looking forward to the gnome and KDE office suites, becuase they look to have the interfunctionality and customization I am looking for.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^~
Guess that makes MS an unprofessional company.
Well, a wordprocessor and a text editor are really two different things. I do not understand this comparison. Yes - there is LaTEX which somewhat blur this distinction, but I do not like LaTEX myself.
I use a text editor for programming and a wordprocessor for e.g. reports and letters.
They said they would, moments later they "promised" they would "enhance" the XML format they would use in Office - how utterly annoying, not to mention transparent.
This is the only thing keeping me back from installing RedHat 6.0. If it works on RedHat 6, I'll be very happy.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Because 99.999999999% of the time, the format doesn't matter, the text matters. And if that's the case, plain text is a far better way of doing things. I'm sick and tired of getting a 12 Mb Word for Windows file that consists of two pages of 36 point text which could have fit into a 1K text message. Especially when the idiot manager in question includes a Word Macro Virus.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
I use StarOffice on my computer at work. The machine is dual boot, and I'm allowed to use Linux most of the time because we're doing Java development. When some idiot^Wmanager sends a document in a Microsoft format, Star Office can handle it 99.99% of the time. When Star Office can't, I have the option of either asking for it again in RTF, or booting back into Windows NT and using Office. But a few weeks ago our idiot VP of Product Development sent out a document that included a Word Virus, and I was one of the few people not infected.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
After negotiating through a maze of pages that seem designed to do nothing but make it hard to reach my goal, I come upon a page with a link ("accepot the license agreement?") to http://support.us.stardivision.com/registration/do wnload/unxlnxi510.html. Click on it. 404.
The previous version (5.0 for all of you who don't know about it) didn't really impress me. Yes, it had tons of features, but it was really slow and unstable. I downloaded this thing and expected a few bugs to be fixed to give me a little bit more stable application. Boy, was I wrong. All of a sudden, they have tuned the previous glob of lard into something... well, faster. The install was speedier, and the same thing goes for just about everything else. The interface has also been improved. After a few minutes of usage, it feels like Star Division might have gotten it right this time.
Note: I tested the OS/2 version and not the one for Linux, but I'm pretty sure the same thing applies to every single other version out there.
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
I wouldn't be too confident in your arrogance.
When you are sitting on the other side of the fence in the management decision meetings you start seeing some major flaws in the whole idea of a Linux/StarOffice migration.
I can see no positives from migrating away from WinNT/Office97 and plenty of negatives.
StarOffice, WordPerfect and ApplixWare are really a boon for those running Linux in a hostile environment. I never touch the stuff to produce anything, but I love to be able to run Linux at the office and still be able to communicate with the rest of the folks.
Using the StarOffice "filter update" now and look forward to 5.1.
-cjr
19:16:31 (461.34 KB/s) - `so51_lnx_01.tar' saved [74072576/74072576]
Woo hoo! Of course, now I have to wait until I go into the lab tomorrow to put it on a zip disk. The heck if I'm gonna try to get it to the home machine via my 56K modem.
-- Rick
| Lastly I don't care if it looks like windows.
| An office package is a tool and this one works
| for me.
My biggest beef with SO5 (and SO4, for that matter), some might consider silly. But I absolutely *hate* the way that SO doesn't integrate at all with the window manager. I would love it if each edited document got its own "real" window. C'mon, Star Division! At least with Applix I can use my preferred window manager to manage the windows!
So, it's not that it "looks like Windows" - it's that it doesn't play nice with the X window system!
-- Rick
Or buy vmware, and set it up to boot your NT partition in a linux window, so you can run Office without rebooting...
What do you do that requires 500 megs of memory??
"We want to take over the world, but we don't want to do it tomorrow, it's OK if it's next week"-- Linus Torvalds
The question I have is whether it supports glibc 2.1 or not. (For those of us using Debian unstable...)
:(
So far I don't see it listed on the stardivision.com pages
/*He who controls Purple controls the Universe. *
www.gotontheinter.net
Updated vaguely once a whenever, maybe once a whenever-and-a-half.
At ftp://ftp.stardivi sion.de/pub/staroffice/unxlxni/so51_lnx_01.tar you can get the english version. (Change 01 to 49 for Gernam, 33 for French, and 39 for Italian.)
Its loaded (took me about 5 mins to get in) but seems to be going pretty quick (20k/s to the East Coast USA)
/*He who controls Purple controls the Universe. *
www.gotontheinter.net
Updated vaguely once a whenever, maybe once a whenever-and-a-half.
I prefer running 3.1 on my OS/2 box to SO5 on Linux....SO5 reminds me too much of Active Desktop.
Finally, I get around to putting 5.01 AKA 5.0FilterUpgrade onto a CD, and the very next day, lo! a new version appeareth!
I hope it's as fast (relatively speaking) on Linux as the OS/2 bloke above intimated. My 5.01 runs usefully fast on a K6-II-300 with 64M, and only crashes about as often as Word, but got about a D from me for importing things from Word (2, 6 or 8).
Mind you, Word 8 gets only a C from me for importing from Word (for windows) 2. I see on their website that SO claim to have been working on that, so perhaps they'll get at least a C as well. S-:
Oh, well... at -f grab-staroffice-from-aarnet.sh now+10hours...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Yes, it has MS Office 95 and 97 filters, and in my experience it does a markedly better job than WordPerfect Office at opening MS Office files. But it's not really compatible. It won't touch fast-saved documents, has trouble with longer ones, requires macros (if your business uses any) to be rewritten, and it's an even bigger memory hog than MS Office.
All this said, it's a decent office suite with a lot of great features, a nice interface, and damn fine cross-platform support. But it won't coexist comfortably with other office suites any better than any other office suite. A business or institution really can't mix office suites; for all the filters in the world, their file formats are still too far apart for everyday use.
A word processor that can "usually" open Word files is useless. When you're sent a Word file, the only acceptable word processor is one that can always open a Word file, even with clipart, drawings, equations, a glossary, embedded spreadsheets, and so forth.
You're not smarter than the people you work for. You're naive. There are a lot of things I dislike about MS Office, but even if StarOffice were suddenly so free that it was GPL'ed, it can cost a fortune to migrate a running business from one office suite to another.
If you have a department running Linux or some other such OS on the desktop and you need access to the company's standard office suite, WinFrame might make sense. And if you're on one of the major commercial Unixes, there's always SoftWindows.
If only I can convince the people at the place of my employment that StarOffice in a Linux environment is compatible with their Micros~1 Office suite that everyone else uses. Its hard to be different when you know more than management and they won't listen to you. ;)
Hi, I hope this comment isn't too redundant, I just thought that I should plainly post that I just installed SO5.1 on my RedHat 6 box with NO PROBLEMS, it was A-OK.
Ben
sunsite.unc.edu still works, but we prefer that you use MetaLab.unc.edu instead. it's our non-vendor-specific name.
so that would be
http://MetaLab.unc.edu/ StarDivision/unxlnxi/so51_lnx_01.tar
Thanks
Certified Black Helicopter Pilot *** Unwitting Dupe of One World Gov'ment
Please use MetaLab instead of our old name, sunsite.unc.edu. MetaLab is our non-vendor-specific name--tho sunsite.unc.edu still works.
http://MetaLab.unc.edu/ StarDivision/unxlnxi/so51_lnx_01.tar
Thanks
Certified Black Helicopter Pilot *** Unwitting Dupe of One World Gov'ment
.. When one have to read/review a lot of lengthy documents, proper formatting and just plain good look is essential. TeX does not cut it - DVI preview is bad looking, plain TeX, or even LyX rendering is not good.
..HTML is adequate (and superior to Word or RTF) for most cases. It lacks formulas and some other useful doodads now. After XML (an MathML and the likes) support appears in all major browsers we are saved....
In your case - ask your boss to buy full Acrobat (with distiller) - it adds a button to Word - print to PDF. Works very well.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
I agree that there was a definite improvement in the registration process...but did you ever think that a company could so totally and utterly screw up something so simple in the first place?
I'll be downloading it soon, but I hope that they have fixed the tilde and cedilla problem that occurs since version 4.0 (3.x haven't any support for dead key composing). Please, if anybody can set the keyboard to Brazililan International and language to Portuguese, test the sequences: (acute)(c) for a ccedilla "ç", and (tilde)(a) for "ã", and (tilde)(o) for "õ". You must have the XKB extension of XFree working.
-- (
You know, they annouced the MacOS Star Office last year. Never ever saw it released. Any news on MacOS or LinuxPPC ports that EXIST?
Gee, I had no problem getting all my windows hot keys working in linux, in fact I have more hotkeys in linux than I do in windows. It took about 10 minutes with xkeycaps to configure X so that the windows key is mapped to one of the Meta modifiers, and the context menu key is recognized in the 104-key layout as a key. So, I go into the WindowMaker menu config (substitute whatever system you use to assign hotkeys to commands) and start mapping keys...
lets see...
context menu key gives me the menu I get when I right click on the title bar, windows-space shades the window, windows-F4 closes it, windows-x toggles maximize, windows-n minimizes it, windows-h hides it, windows-t brings up a terminal, windows-e brings up an editor (my current favorite is joe) in a term for quick jotting of notes, windows-q exits the X session, windows-1 through windows-5 switches to a particular virtual desktop, windows-leftarrow and windows-rightarrow moves to the previous and next virtual desktop, respectively...
need I go on? Or have I blabbed at the mouth enough?
-Cheetah
As someone mentioned above, StarDivision used functions from glibc 2.0 that weren't meant to be public and are not available with glibc 2.1. It's SO that is/was broken.
Curious question. What *WOULD* you recommend? ApplixWare? Something else? I would seriously like to know, as this may matter to me greatly in the near future.
Heart, Hands, Honour
I've only tried the Window$ version of StarOffice 5, but I was unimpressed enough to keep it off my Linux partition. The UI did not please me, and though it is customizable, the whole thing is a huge memory-sucking beast. I didn't find much of the program to be intuitive, and the integrated browser and email functions are useless.
As to using my favorite text input software--Wordperfect with linux, my attraction to linux (besides stability and quality) is being able to custom configure and compile apps. Neither Wordperfect for Linux nor StarOffice let me do that. And I really missed my Windows keyboard hot-keys, the mouse may be nice for the brain but not for my hand. Anyway, my dish is that Staroffice looks cool on their website (no screenshots!?!) but lacks usability. It is free though. That's worth considering.
"I want peace on earth and good will toward men." "We're the U.S. government. We don't do that sort of thing!!"
For 5.0, RedHat 6.0 has an RPM of Star Office which works just fine. It's not installed by default, it's on the Applications CD.
I wish I could find out if 5.1 works or not on my RedHat 6.0 system, but as another /.er already stated, the download area says that its closed.
----------
In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
An alle Microsoft Internetexplorer 3.0x Benutzer.
Die Star Division Homepage sehr aufwendig. Zuaufwendig für ihren Microsoft Internetexplorer 3.0x.
Damit Sie diese Seiten aufrufen können brauchen Sie ein StarOffice 4.0/5.1, Netscape 3.x/ 4.x oder MSIE 4.x.
Wir bitten um ihr Verständnis.
I hate it when this happens...
Microserf: 18.5% slashdot corrupt
just a minor correction - yes, aarnet's mirror
project primarily serves aarnet members, but we
do make archives available to australian connected
networks for the australian 'net community.
we can't make this available to networks outside
australia due to the high cost of international
traffic
-jason
As an occational user of StarOffice 5.0 (whenever I need to interact with the Windows world or write a presentation) I have seen no real problems with it. It is quite fast an useable (on a P100 32 megs -- admittedly it takes about 45 seconds to load, but that's the ONLY slowness I have seen).
Secondly, most of the problems people have relate to "ease-of-use" and "it looks to damn much like windows, so it's from hell." Ok, I have almost never used MS-Office, but I found StarOffice Trivial to use, I reciently wrote a nice looking presentation with all of the "useless" imbeded objects, and my time was spend thinking about the presentation, not the software -- perfect. The result is nice too.
Lastly I don't care if it looks like windows. An office package is a tool and this one works for me.
If you want to write a "nice looking" presentation, report, etc. have you considered using LaTeX?
I know some people might feel it's hard to use, but as of a couple of weeks ago I'd never used LaTeX or TeX in my life, or even seen sample source for it. With the aid of LyX I wrote a 10000 word dissertation in it, including tables, diagrams, contents pages, etc.. And it looked substantially better than I've ever seen someone achieve with something like Word. And it only took me about 5 days (last time I wrote a project of around 8000 words in Word, it took me about 8 days, because it kept crashing / misnumbering figures / messing up bibliography references etc..)
I agree that you shouldn't be thinking about the software - but should you be thinking about the presentation? Surely the software should get the presentation right for you, and you should be worrying about the content! The software industry shows what happens when people worry more about presentation than content... Mentioning no names...
Microsoft is not the answer, NO is the answer. Microsoft is the question.
- Andy
---- Microsoft is not the answer, NO is the answer. Microsoft is the question
it can cost a fortune to migrate a running business from one office suite to another
Yep, and that includes from one version of MS Office to another.
Sure, you can retrofit filters and such so that your department still using Office 95 can open docs than some other branch that's using Office 97 sends you - maybe. But what about those old Word 5.0 files you've got around, or the Word documents from the division that used to be all-Mac? Yeah, you can open them (if you jump through the right hoops), but you'll lose the formatting. (Voice of experience here.)
Yes, it's an effort to switch from one office suite to another -- and each one still insists on its own internal format as well as supporting (to some degree or other) several other "portable" document formats -- but you're going to face that cost every time - or at best every other time - Microsoft comes out with a new version of Office, so you ought to look at all the long term costs involved.
Hell, a halfway competent manager will have already looked at these factors and decreed some standard -- as in really standard, not just what's most popular -- document format (or subset of document content) for the company, so that last year's contract boilerplate is still recognizable in next year's version of Office -- whoever's Office it is.
-- Alastair
STAR OFFICE 5.1 Download Sites:
FTP SITES:
Sun SITE UTK at University of Tennessee - Knoxville
TU Clausthal - Germany
Sun SITE Central Europe at RWTH-Aachen - Germany
Sun SITE Finland at the Tampere University of Technology
Sun SITE Switzerland - cnlab & SWITCH - Rapperswil & Zurich
Star Division - Germany
Star Division - Germany
AARNet Mirror Project - Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
HTTP SITES:
Sun SITE USA at University of North Carolina - UNC Chapel Hill
Sun SITE UTK at University of Tennessee - Knoxville
Sun SITE Central Europe at RWTH-Aachen - Germany
Sun SITE Finland at the Tampere University of Technology
Sun SITE Nordic at Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan - Stockholm
Sun SITE Belgium
Sun SITE Northern Europe at Imperial College - London
Sun SITE Switzerland - cnlab & SWITCH - Rapperswil & Zurich
Do the macros work in this version?
---Joe Merlino gnupg public key ID: 1E91EBAF
Just installed the english version of 5.1 from sunsite.utk.edu/pub/ StarDivision/unxlnxi/. My mashine is running rawhide from about a week before 6.0 came out - should be pretty similar.
SO works with libc-2.1.1 ok with about 5 minutes of testing. It still slightly munged a test M$ Word 97 doc I had laying around. Abiword did a better job of importing the same doc.
If Vmware seems expensive to you, what's the source you suggest for obtaining Word97?
As part of the M$ plan to take over the internet, I seem to remember there being talk of making the file formats of Office 2000/Windows 2000 based on XML. If that were to happen, then it shouldn't be a problem to hack together a parser or to write the tags.
Anyone know about this?
I wouldn't be without vi for quick in-and-out work. Half the time I'm telnetted into an OS/2 box and just need to quickly edit one config file or script. vi does stuff like that great. However, for longer editing sessions I prefer Emacs or Textpad (a product for Win machines). For quick and simple when generating new files the best thing is cat > filename.txt on Unix, or copy con > filename.txt on DOS or OS/2.
The last version of StarOffice used some undocumented glibc2.0 calls that disappeared in 2.1, which meant that StarOffice was broken for users of some recent distributions, including RedHat 6.0. Does anyone know if they resolved this problem in the new release?
--
Some keywords for the NSA in the Lord of the Rings universe: One Ring bind find Sauron quest Nazgul freedom
Looks like only the German site has the news, the U.S. site still has 5.0 only. From what I can make out using BabelFish (ugh! too many friggin' frames!), the English port is still not available yet.
#include "disclaim.h"
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
I don't know, I have a TB Montego in my system which has that damn Aureal chip in it. It was the first piece of hardware I ever bought knowing there was no Linux support. It was brand spanking new at the time and I figured it was only a matter of a couple of months before it would be supported, judging from TB's other cards. I was unaware of the Aureal thing at the time, I just wanted a good card, comparable to my GUS (still in use in a "multimedia/router" Linux box hooked up to my home theatre system).
Then I found out about the Aureal connection. I was pissed.
4Front now supports my card for US$30 until 2002. It was sad that I had to do that, but it wasn't 4Front's fault, it wasn't the Linux community's fault, it was only partially TB's fault. The blame is on Aureal for continuing to be a pre-Linux-hype Diamond or an (until recently) ATI. 4Front had to pay Aureal to get support for Linux, so I don't really mind because I like my sound card and an old GUS is hard to find (few people part with them, such as myself).
A somewhat happy ending though, the driver is still in beta and there are a couple of issues, like sound playing too fast. I filled out the support form and got an actual intelligent response in less than 5 minutes. It explained pretty much exactly what was happening and that they were working on it.
I was impressed. I'm so used to being given the "corporate finger" by many companies, especially after my response to the inevitable (which version of windows are you running). "We don't support Linux," they say matter-of-factly. Even when OS is completely irrelevant (broken switch on Toshiba notebook).
So 4Front is on my good list along with Matrox, Iomega, ZWorld, and Epson, all who have been very good to me regardless of what OS I use.
Red Hat is just staying current. Any professional company knows not to play with undocumented fnx's.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
AARNet Mirror Project - Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Please note that this mirror is not available to addresses outside Australia - it's intended for use by Australian Academic Research network members.
-- Post No Gravy
Hmmm...... Star Division online (.com) advises that "The dornload area is currently under construction. Please be patient. It is expected to re-opens the area on wednesday this week.".
;P.
It's a good job they put the news about 5.1 on the front page of their site tho', or nobody would know about it
"Elmo knows where you live!" - The Simpsons
Two things I don't like about star office:
1) forcing us to use their integrated, windoze95ish environment.
I don't mind this as much under linux as I do under OS/2, as linux doesn't really have a common feel to all of its apps anyway. But having to run that big program just to launch a single program (even if it's the mail client) really blows. You can integrate the apps to talk to each other without forcing what equates to a separate 'desktop' Might be good for people who do nothing but do word-processing/spreadsheets/etc but sucks for the rest of us.
2) creating their own scripting language.
Why not use PERL, REXX, Python, TCL, or anything that is already there? Or better yet, hooks to an API so that you can use the scripting language of your choice with it. REXX under OS/2, for example.
Other than that, it is a good suite once you get used to it...although they try to be too much like word in the wordprocessor. The drawing program is on the order of coreldraw and is great for doing flowcharts and such. I haven't really played with the other apps yet.
I'm one of those dolts that dont upgrade my OS unless I have a need to, so I run the extremely old 5.2 (I know im so 1'st quarter 1999) and I plan on running 5.2 until I either upgrade hardware, blow up something, or have a real need to upgrade it (GASP! a geek not running Kernel 2.3.9.8.555.4.5.alpha9) If star office's install is as crappy as it was 6-7 months ago (download it and it complains about libs that RH5.1 dont have) then they will stay wayyyy behind real software like Corel...
.93 and glibc.99 and I'm a happy guy!
Gimmie Kernel
Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday May 19, @03:06PM EDT
from the who-needs-a-word-processor-when-I-got-vi dept.
damn right.
I just got my Official RH6.0 two days ago.
Third (applications) CD-ROM has Star Office 5.0
in RPM format. But this RPM contains just an installation of Demo thirty days version. I was surprised how easy it was to register this version. I just clicked on "Star Office registration" and after a moment it says - "Registartion Complete!" That's all. Word "Unregistered" dissapeared from the window' title.
So what i want to says that it works pretty good
with Red Hat 6.0
Cool, I just saw staroffice on a friends winbloze box, will have to check it out
You've sure hit upon the biggest problem out there.
Is there no way to guide people into using some form of steady standard? The OS wars are not yet over and this problem looms over all us as an even bigger problem. I have to process files from all versions of Office and Word and the incompatibility of the various versions is one of the biggest time wasters known.
Does any one know of an association that is looking into this?
Something must be done before W2000 adds another layer of inefficiency to an already screwed up situation.
try staroffice.com
or click on the globe at staroffice.de
Ive been wondering if its redhat 6 thats the problem or a latest version of kde. ive been running RH 5.2, and when i upgraded to the latest version of kde, i had to upgrade glibc, which broke star office.
since RH 6 seems to come with KDE, im a little suspicious.
Looks like it works with my Debian potato (glibc2.1) based system. There is also an AppIcon in wmaker, which was missing in 5.0.