StarOffice 7, GNOME-Office 1.0 Released

An anonymous reader writes "Abiword 2.0 has been released. Finally the Linux desktop has a quality word processor that is faster to load than OpenOffice.org and includes proper footnotes. It also no longer uses its own font directory. At the same time Enchant 1.0.0 has been released, a cross-platform abstract layer to spellchecking. Enchant has been proposed to be a Freedesktop.org standard." That's not the only news, though: Abiword 2.0 is part of the just-released GNOME-Office 1.0, which, as riggwelter writes "coordinates GNOME2 versions of AbiWord, Gnumeric, and GNOME-DB, the database interface." Sun's StarOffice has just reached version 7, as well: read on below for some more information on that, including a first-look review.

Jim Hall writes "I just noticed that Sun Microsystems has released StarOffice 7. I've been using the StarOffice betas for a while now, so I have been eagerly awaiting this release! StarOffice is, of course, based on the ever-popular OpenOffice.org. StarOffice 7 software adds functionality to enable export to PDF, and to the Macromedia Flash format. It also introduces the new StarOffice Configuration Manager, the StarOffice Software Development Kit, a macro recorder, and support for assistive technologies, as well as for complex text layouts. Multi-platform running on Linux, Solaris OS and Windows. Only US$79.95 to buy your copy for home (free for edu, plus cost of media+shipping.) Now is a great time to show this to your boss and pitch that 'MS Office to StarOffice' conversion project."

An anonymous reader writes "NewsForge has a 'drive-by' 'quick-peek' look at the new StarOffice up on their site."

One suggestion on office software for the Free Software desktop: Casually re-start a friend or co-worker's Windows computer with Knoppix and show them you can open their Word files with OpenOffice.org. Mention their machine is moderately safe from Word-borne viruses until they reboot into Windows.

Pitching Star Office

[-Grover]

I suppose you could go do the StarOffice pitch to your boss, the only problem I forsee is trying to keep up with M$ and their new ideas for keeping Office locked down with the proposed security interface with Win2k3, and incompatibilities with other Office suites. Could be more of a hassle than it's worth down the line...

Blah...

Pointless switch?

[contrasutra]

Now is a great time to show this to your boss and pitch that 'MS Office to StarOffice' conversion project."

Why not switch the company to OpenOffice.org? I doubt the company needs StarOffice.

You're just going from one pay-for product, to another (albiet less cost). If you REALLY want to show your boss the beauty of alternative software. Show him something thats great, FOR FREE! (that will get any bosses attention).

And if you choose StarOffice just because "Money means better" to the management, you're just as bad as MS.

I don't think so...

[Anonymous Coward]

One suggestion on office software for the Free Software desktop: Casually re-start a friend or co-worker's Windows computer with Knoppix and show them you can open their Word files with OpenOffice.org. Mention their machine is moderately safe from Word-borne until they reboot into Windows.

... Then have them yell at you for "breaking" their computer. Not everyone understands that Knoppix doesn't actually write to any of your disks.

Yeah for GNOME Office 1.0!

[jimmy_dean]

Contratulations goes out to all of the developers for the Abiword, Gnumeric and GNOME-DB office programs. These applications show the power of open source software and the open source process. Thanks for all of the hard work and the dedication to excellence!

Re:What happens with XML...

[Otter]

What happens when MS's Office switches to bastardised XML? Is it going to tip the whole cart over, or is it a small bump in the road?

An ignorant opinion, but probably no more ignorant than most people's:

Grocery lists will continue to open fine, your 300 page thesis with autogenerated table of contents and bibliography will continue to cause a kernel panic if you're using Nvidia drivers on an Athlon/VIA system and basic documents will continue to open all the text and numbers but need some prettying up. Same as now.

And Slashdot posters will continue to insist that a) the open-source apps all open all Office docs perfectly, and if there are features that aren't supported, well, you suck because you shouldn't use them and b) Microsoft needs to be broken up because their files can't be opened.

Re:The old debate...

[jimmy_dean]

I think collaboration between the camps is fantastic. Take a look at freedesktop.org for this initiative. Other than that, a single thing is almost always a bad idea. Competition is a really good thing. There are plenty of talented open source programmers to go around for all of the projects. No need to put everyone in the same boat only to get people mad at each other for conflicting ideas. Then you get about 50% less people working on the project(s) because they can't express their ideas for program improvements. Bad, bad idea. :)

A related suggestion on open source office suites

[mijok]

I'm sorry if this is a bit O/T but it's something I've wanted to say here for a while and no closer topic has shown up lately either (so please don't mod down...): Since we (probably) all want to avoid lock-in and thus open formats to be more widespread (ie. other office suites than MS) I have a suggestion that others might want to follow. I've tried to help Open Office spread in the following way (the reason chose Open Office is that it's supported on more platforms than any of the others AFAIK and is thus most suitable for this purpose): I'm (among other things) a business student and frequently books on eg. finance include a CD-Rom with Excel spreadsheets as examples of some concepts in the book. I test whether the sheets work flawlessly in Open Office and if so send the authors a suggestion that since Open Office would definitely fit on the CD they could spread that along for free and thus allow students who don't have access to MS Office to use the additional material if they just have a computer. So my suggestion is simply that others too do this when they encounter such books. Please note, however, that the authors of such books are businesspeople and thus "MS Sucks, Open Source rulez!" is not the way to approach them - just try to emphasize that it adds value to their book and that it's very easy to implement (you can tell how easily it worked for you) and if you feel like it you might mention that MS surely needs some competition (and they certainly acknowledge that since MS has been used in books as an example of how a monopoly sets prices).

Re:StarOffice has a lot of catching up to do

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because he posted as an AC. If he posted from an account it would probably be +4 Informative by now.

Re:abiword

[jimmy_dean]

Nope, I've been running Abiword CVS HEAD for about a whole year (on a Gentoo stable box) and those types of problems haven't been around for months now. Are you trying this out with the Abiword 2.0 stable release or a pre-release?

Re:Pointless switch?

[DeathPenguin]

>>And if you choose StarOffice just because "Money means better" to the management, you're just as bad as MS.

Unfortunately, it seems that many management types look up to MS management. A friend of mine worked for an ISP which ran Windows server software. In spite of my friend colocating a Linux server which had no problems to speak of, a mail system superior to NTMail, and trying his darndest to get his boss to switch to free software, his boss still insisted on equating free with crap. PHB's (Pointy-haired bosses) don't know the meaning of the word "free," and are willing to piss away enormous amounts of money for a warrenty card and tech support number even if the product itself is inferior.

That's where StarOffice comes in. OpenOffice is great, no question about that. Only problem is that it doesn't come with any sort of liability. Sun calls their version of OpenOffice StarOffice and fills this gap, maybe even going a little further to make the migration from MS to non-MS a little easier.

Re:Pointless switch?

[rmohr02]

Make the switch to StarOffice at first. Then, after StarOffice and OpenOffice have had new releases, show your boss how the programs look exactly alike, and that one is free, while the other costs $80.

Re:Pointless switch?

[kotfu]

Exactly. Why just the other day, we had this problem with Word crashing all of the time. We called those bums at Micro$oft, got right through to a person, and told them that we didn't get our sales presentation finished on time because Word kept crashing. The MS guy was real nice, he took all of the blame, and even offered to remunerate us for our lost revenue. My boss said, "see, that's why we spend the big bucks for Micro$oft products, they have great support and always make things right."

Really what happens is you wait on hold for 30 minutes, and then talk to someone offshore who may or may not understand the English you are speaking. After hitting your credit card for 35 bucks, you are told to reboot, and that will fix the problem.

I'll take the mailing list any day.

Spreadsheet Programs

[Jody Goldberg]

Same goes for spreadsheet 'programming'. If you have to automate some data analysis, write a program. Spreadsheets should be used for quick analysis, or a place to keep your notes for anything not complex enough to warrant a database

I respectfully disagree. Spreadsheet make a very nice interface to complex analytics. Real practitioners do their own calculations on the complex bits and use a spreadsheet front end as a scratch pad, a way to quickly twiddle data. Spreadsheets are not databases, and generally should not be used that way. However, to dismiss them as being merely stedding stones to real databases is to miss the point entirely. They're quite good at lots of other things.

Re:Pointless switch?

[contrasutra]

YOU GET VERY LITTLE SUPPORT WHEN YOU BUY STAROFFICE. You have to pay Sun MORE money for corporate support.

On top of that, how much support do you need for an OFFICE SUITE? I of course understand how you would need support for an Operating System/Server, but who could justify spending the money for StarOffice (thousands of dollars) just for support.

Blatant bias..

[Jondo]

Finally the Linux desktop has a quality word processor that is faster to load than OpenOffice.org and includes proper footnotes. It also no longer uses its own font directory.

Koffice [koffice.org] Loads faster than OO, has proper footnotes, has never had its "own" font directory, and is properly integrated into the rest of KDE.

Re:I don't think so...

[bogie]

Or have them get annoyed at you when OO screws up and loses all the formatting of the word doc.

Sorry but even as a big OO booster, I'm the first to say that importing word docs is still a total crapshoot. Plain text letters etc come through fine most of the time. In fact most of the content comes through, but when it comes to even slightly complex word docs with images and lots of formatting OO chokes badly. Sure you end up with most of the text and images, but then you have to spend 5 minutes trying to move everything back to whre it should be the .doc import feature loses its charm.

I don't fault OO for this since sucky MS won't open their file specs though. Unfortunately MS knows that proprietary Office file formats are the key to its desktop monopoly, so don't expect that to change in our lifetime.

Honestly though I just don't think its right to outright lie to people and say OO can easily open all Word files. That's probably never going to happen. For me its not a problem since I never deal with a ton of word docs anymore, but for those who HAVE to both send and recieve word docs all day long I can't say they should see that as a plus for using OpenOffice.

God I hate proprietary file specs and protocols.

Re:vs. Office

[LardBrattish]

How is it that these Free Software programs are gaining on the software developed by the software giant?

My take would be that M$ have not really added any compelling "must have" features to Word since at least Office 97 & arguably Word 6.0 for Windows 3.1 (except XML and I am NOT buying Office 2003 for that, I bought Office 2000 OEM and cheap when I was building my own box & I didn't see any reason to upgrade to XP either). So with a fixed target the open source versions are bound to catch up with the "key" features RSN. Now, being fair to the great Satan there are not many more features that could be crammed into Word 6.0 that are actually useful to the majority of users. Unfortunately for them they have to get people to upgrade regularly and "now without that crash-bug that lost you 3 hours of work" ain't cool enough (and IMHO should not be chargable anyway - unless I can charge them for the three hours of my time they wasted...)

Re:Pointless switch?

[RisingSon]

PHB's (Pointy-haired bosses) don't know the meaning of the word "free," and are willing to piss away enormous amounts of money for a warrenty card and tech support number even if the product itself is inferior.

Not to be an ass, but in my modest experience in the professional software universe (7 years) I've noticed that most of the PHB's that insist on paying more money for an inferior product with more visible support usually are scared shitless of technology in general because they aren't gurus.

I've thought about this quite a bit. If I was a technology Charlaton that landed a job in management, I'd do many things that I see other techies bitching about:

Only use software that has a highly visible technical support. This would be my scapegoat when something goes wrong. Pass the blame.

Have a temper. Scare people into not questioning my non-technical mind. That way when I'm in a meeting and I claim that an X-client on Win2k xhosting apps running on linux servers taxes the clients more than writing a distributed corba system that utilizes 100% of all clients (except Sundays) nobody will question me.

Memorize all FUD that favors your previous decisions and speak in at least 30% buzzwords. This makes you sounds smart to non-tech top-level execs that write your paychecks and also frustrates just-out-of-college-newbies that know you're wrong but can't muster up an argument to prove exactly why you're full of horse manure.

Spend 90% of you're time at work writing email containing mostly the crap listed above. This leaves a paper trail that will hopefully save your ass when your group fails ("Its not my managing - look at these 10 reams of paper I've written in email during project XYZ") and it also makes you look busy enough that no one bothers or questions you. And of course, you get to easily dance around any real issues the gurus harass you with.

Don't let anyone that is doing the work actually speak with the customers, clients or end users. That way, if you're the only contact, all the customers, clients, end users (and thus employers) think any progress on the project is due to your hard work (and email - see above)

Last but not least, since you don't really do anything usefull, spend the time you should be doing something productive playing the politics. Always smile when you're visible outside your group and make sure to go out of the way to ask how the exec's weekend trip with the family went.

So, long drunken ramble summarized - the management that makes the decisions on what office suite to use in the group (or even company) may in fact not be making their decision based on the quality of the software. They may evaluate software based on the smoke it generate, perserving their longevity.

Just one question...

[RedBear]

Just one question about all these wonderful new "office" suites. They all use the same, standardized, open file formats by default, and are 100% compatible with each other, right? Right?

Because that would be a huge benefit of moving away from MS Office, right? Because all these different office suites are totally compatible and interchangeable, even though they can never be totally compatible with the secret, changing MS Office formats.

So I don't have to keep saving in DOC just to exchange files between StarOffice and GNOME Office and KDE Office, right? I can save in some new, default, standard, universally recognized file format, and easily exchange files between all these different programs without any translation problems or confusion, right?

And Microsoft will quickly be forced to create a patch for their Office products so they can read and write this new open file format that the whole world is suddenly standardizing on because it's used by default by every open source office suite in the world, right?

Or am I smoking crack and about to get my first -1, Troll rating for openly wondering why there is still no apparent single, open, standard, widely used file format? One to compete on solid ground with the single, closed, proprietary file formats from Microsoft and others that we all revile on a daily basis.

We've had 15 years or more to replace DOC and its brethren. Where is the replacement for DOC? Or the replacement that can be used for anything, like a combination of DOC, XLS, PPT, PUB, etc? I'd really, really, really like to know. Because until I know that, I feel pretty stupid telling people to drop the nice, simple, standard (de facto if not de jure) Microsoft Office file formats. When they ask what they're supposed to use instead, I have no answer.

Re:StarOffice has a lot of catching up to do

[LDoggg_]

Maybe because just calling something "superior" than something else is generally considered a flame?
Whereas providing specific examples of why its better is usually moderated as insightful or interesting.

Re:I don't think so...

[shaggie]

Amen to that.

One of the biggest taboos when dealing with non-geek related side of any business is demanding a client to conform to your document standards. If the client sends you a file in .doc, you better make sure you send your files in .doc back to the client. Any time a client calls up complaining about being unable to read or open your documents, your job security is on the line.

I did a test on our secretarial staff, I had them try OO once, they still stick to their MSO mentality. Most of the questions are where can I find menu feature X or Y, its not where its supposed to be or the like. New hires are all versed in the nuances of MSO and most never heard of OO.

It is very difficult for us to switch over to OO at all. All the top management have considered OO for a very long time but reality is that we just can't do it because of our business realities and the education in computing usage being provided in our region are 95% based on MS products.

What ist this fetisch with fast loading times

[12dec0de]

I don't get it. Why is everybody interested in the fast loading of a office suite? Or an Web-Browser for that matter? I start my computer, load mozilla, load openoffice (as part of my saved session) and it stays up. Do I hear you say memory restrictions? That the job of the virtual memory manager. The last time my system stayed up for 163 days until some work on the power system and a kernel update forced a downtime.

What difference does it make whether it takes 1 or 2 minutes to load?

Re:Pitching Star Office

[blibbleblobble]

"I suppose you could go do the StarOffice pitch to your boss, the only problem I forsee is trying to keep up with M$ and their new ideas for keeping Office locked down..."

I find the "I need such-and-such features. You could pay $600, or I have this system which is available free..." tends to work quite well.

Of course, after the first "these 5000 documents are in Word97 format, and if we want Office2003, it'll cost 3 man-weeks to convert them" conversation, some people might have a serious think about file formats.

Keeping up with the latest file formats? Doesn't that cost $500 per year per computer, plus half a day of everyone's time? And for what? The feature-list hasn't changed in 8 years.

Re:Biased Story, apps already exist.

[stm2]

90% of the features of current MSOffice go unused,

According to MS (sorry, I don't have the source) most people use only 10% of the features, but the problem is that is not the same 10%. And if the software doesn't have only one of the feature people need, they won't make the change.

Re:What ist this fetisch with fast loading times

[WebMasterJoe]

I think you did not read my comment till the end.

Interestingly, I don't think you read the end of my comment. :) Computer geeks use computers differently than the rest of the world. And the bottom line is, if the users complain, then it is an issue. You can't close a bug report with, "users aren't using application the way we expect them to."

Clearly a slow-loading app isn't a problem if you leave the application open for 163 days. But you're an exception. Most people shut down their applications at the end of the work day, if not their whole system. For these people, I can understand why a long load time is bad. And if they complain, you can't very well tell them that you don't have a problem with the load time, and they should stop turning off their computers.