I really do wish that StarOffice would fully replace MS Office, but the reality is unfortunate: At this time, there is not enough compatibility. Just often enough, files get munged in the translation process and certain MS Word features like revision editing (which is a heavily used feature) simply doesn't exist in StarOffice. I personally used StarOffice to author my book. I did all the first drafts with it, exported to MS Word format, and sent it off to my editor. Unfortunately, when I received the document back from my editors, I had to use my wife's Mac with MS Office on it in order to continue working on the documents because they used revision editing. For the time being, I think StarOffice is great for people who need occational MS Word document support. (e.g. engineers/developers, etc.) but is not enough for full time administrative folk who regularly exchange documents with others who use MS Office... So feed the Symantec family and keep your virus defs up to date...
Not having said what your book is about, I assume it is some kind of technical reference/tutorial. In that case, I suggest you stick to dead tree format for the time being. This is for the simple reason that unless someone big like Amazon or FatBrain is going to sponser you, you're not going to get the necessary press for others to find your book and buy it online. At least with dead tree format, people who browse bookshelves (and a lot of people still do -- the B&N across the street from my apartment is always busy) are at least likely to see your book and can browse through it to find out whether it works for them or not.
Taking myself as an example, I'm relatively unknown. When I wrote Linux Administration: A Beginners Guide, I had no way of getting anyone to visit my web site and download my book unless I spent a lot of time and money doing the advertising. In the end, it was better that I let my publisher take care of that. Being placed on the shelves has given me a lot more visibility than I could have gotten anywhere else. (Short of a Slashdot review... Hint hint.;-))
Final note: If you are doing a technical book, don't forget that in a situation where the reader is trying to do the task that you're guiding them through, having a hardcopy is crucial. If the OS is crashing or their viewer is being a pain, or they simply don't have the screen space to both view your book and do the work, having the book in electronic format does them no good.
Once a few more big names go electronic with PDA type devices, we'll start seeing some more interesting options. Until then... Well, recycle old books! (Please, never throw away an old book. Donate it to your local library. At the very least, they can sell it at their used book sale and get some much needed money out of it!)
We all know that benchmarks can be looked at in many different ways depending on what you want to do with them. (For an excellent discussion on the topic, check out Raj Jain's book on Statistics and Modeling.) But the reality is simple: there needs to be *some way* to compare products. And an OSS solution would fit the bill nicely. At least with an OSS benchmarking tool, there is no mystery as to how numbers were derived and better yet, they give buyers a chance to do comparisons themselves.
I'll pick on a popular tool as an example: WebBench. When you talk to folks who do hardware/software that is web related, you inevitably here about WebBench. ("We get XXX connections/sec with WebBench.") For as terrible as Web Bench is, it does provide a standard tool for testing. It's free (as in beer), and anyone can download it from ZDLabs. In other words, I can setup a testbed and compare my numbers with the manufacurers' numbers. If mine are substantially lower, I can go back and ask for an explaination. This gives me power as the buyer. As a developer, it gives me a way of figuring out whether or not my product can compare against another.
But there are a lot of little problems with WebBench that really make it suck. For one, it only runs under Win98. This means I have to physically be at the test location to work with it. Another big problem is when I want to change the parameters of the test, I have to go restart all of my clients -- very tedious. And of course, my favorite -- try running WebBench for an overnight test. It'll crash after a few hours. =( If there was an OSS version of WebBench I could at least see why/where it's crashing. I could also benefit from a lot of other people who are using it to put contributions back to make it more efficient, feature rich, and stable. And the best part -- there are no doubts about how I tweaked the software to make it work better for my config.
Does this mean all benchmarks will be fair? Hell no -- you still can't cure clever sales folks who know how to graph things just the right way to exaggerate their benefits over another product. But at least there will be less voodoo behind how their benchmarks were derived.
Slashdot Mirror
I really do wish that StarOffice would fully replace MS Office, but the reality is unfortunate: At this time, there is not enough compatibility. Just often enough, files get munged in the translation process and certain MS Word features like revision editing (which is a heavily used feature) simply doesn't exist in StarOffice.
I personally used StarOffice to author my book. I did all the first drafts with it, exported to MS Word format, and sent it off to my editor. Unfortunately, when I received the document back from my editors, I had to use my wife's Mac with MS Office on it in order to continue working on the documents because they used revision editing.
For the time being, I think StarOffice is great for people who need occational MS Word document support. (e.g. engineers/developers, etc.) but is not enough for full time administrative folk who regularly exchange documents with others who use MS Office... So feed the Symantec family and keep your virus defs up to date...
Taking myself as an example, I'm relatively unknown. When I wrote Linux Administration: A Beginners Guide, I had no way of getting anyone to visit my web site and download my book unless I spent a lot of time and money doing the advertising. In the end, it was better that I let my publisher take care of that. Being placed on the shelves has given me a lot more visibility than I could have gotten anywhere else. (Short of a Slashdot review... Hint hint.
Final note: If you are doing a technical book, don't forget that in a situation where the reader is trying to do the task that you're guiding them through, having a hardcopy is crucial. If the OS is crashing or their viewer is being a pain, or they simply don't have the screen space to both view your book and do the work, having the book in electronic format does them no good.
Once a few more big names go electronic with PDA type devices, we'll start seeing some more interesting options. Until then... Well, recycle old books! (Please, never throw away an old book. Donate it to your local library. At the very least, they can sell it at their used book sale and get some much needed money out of it!)
-Steve
You may be interested in knowing that no medical device based on Windows 98 has ever gotten through the FDA...
We all know that benchmarks can be looked at in many different ways depending on what you want to do with them. (For an excellent discussion on the topic, check out Raj Jain's book on Statistics and Modeling.) But the reality is simple: there needs to be *some way* to compare products. And an OSS solution would fit the bill nicely. At least with an OSS benchmarking tool, there is no mystery as to how numbers were derived and better yet, they give buyers a chance to do comparisons themselves.
I'll pick on a popular tool as an example: WebBench. When you talk to folks who do hardware/software that is web related, you inevitably here about WebBench. ("We get XXX connections/sec with WebBench.") For as terrible as Web Bench is, it does provide a standard tool for testing. It's free (as in beer), and anyone can download it from ZDLabs. In other words, I can setup a testbed and compare my numbers with the manufacurers' numbers. If mine are substantially lower, I can go back and ask for an explaination. This gives me power as the buyer. As a developer, it gives me a way of figuring out whether or not my product can compare against another.
But there are a lot of little problems with WebBench that really make it suck. For one, it only runs under Win98. This means I have to physically be at the test location to work with it. Another big problem is when I want to change the parameters of the test, I have to go restart all of my clients -- very tedious. And of course, my favorite -- try running WebBench for an overnight test. It'll crash after a few hours. =( If there was an OSS version of WebBench I could at least see why/where it's crashing. I could also benefit from a lot of other people who are using it to put contributions back to make it more efficient, feature rich, and stable. And the best part -- there are no doubts about how I tweaked the software to make it work better for my config.
Does this mean all benchmarks will be fair? Hell no -- you still can't cure clever sales folks who know how to graph things just the right way to exaggerate their benefits over another product. But at least there will be less voodoo behind how their benchmarks were derived.