StarOffice 7, GNOME-Office 1.0 Released 336
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$79.95 to buy your copy for home (free for edu, plus cost of media+shipping.) Now is a great time to show this to your boss and pitch that 'MS Office to StarOffice' conversion project."
An anonymous reader writes "NewsForge has a 'drive-by' 'quick-peek' look at the new StarOffice up on their site."
One suggestion on office software for the Free Software desktop: Casually re-start a friend or co-worker's Windows computer with Knoppix and show them you can open their Word files with OpenOffice.org. Mention their machine is moderately safe from Word-borne viruses until they reboot into Windows.
Relationship to Mad Hatter? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Relationship to Mad Hatter? (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought it was going to be something cooler like the Java port of OpenOffice [planamesa.com].
What happens with XML... (Score:4, Interesting)
Finally!? A word processor!? (Score:2, Interesting)
And people wonder why Linux isn't 'on the desktop' yet!? Seriously, apps like these are needed; they aren't some kind of swish extra that only Windows users can have. So while it's nice to see a decent 'quality' wordprocessor, it's also a bit embarrassing really.
What was everyone doing? Waiting for M$ to release Word or is it just a sign that Linux is still currently in the palm of techies, not office workers?
Re:Pointless switch? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the same reason a lot of companies will pay through the nose for RedHat Enterprise---not because it does more, but because they have a single place to call when something goes wrong.
Re:Lazy Questions (Score:3, Interesting)
Word processors should be used for letters and very short papers. Anything approaching a book, or anything needing any kind of consistency should be done using a document processing language like LaTEX.
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.
Re:Relationship to Mad Hatter? (Score:5, Interesting)
A Java front-end to StarOffice? I think not.
As far as I understand it, Mad Hatter is more or less a SuSE spin-off that comes with a new Sun-theme and is bundled with StarOffice 7. At this time Sun puts the word "Java" in all their new products. This is just a brandig strategy like
Re:What happens with XML... (Score:5, Interesting)
2) It will not be used very much because old versions of office can't read it (oops the Office 97 install on your secretaries machine is out of date).
3) It will not be used very much because 100 Meg of uncompressed xml takes longer to parse than people with 30Meg of xls want to wait.
Slight Error in Summary (Score:4, Interesting)
Gnumeric Recieves a Grant from Mitch Kapor (Score:5, Interesting)
Gnumeric has received a grant from Mitch Kapor [osafoundation.org] (creator of Lotus 1-2-3) to develop an interoperability test suite with leading proprietary competitors. The money will be used as form of bounty to fund the expansion of our existing tests [gnome.org] for worksheet functions (eg =SUM, or =ODDFPRICE). Our goal is to ensure that a users data will produce the same results (or better
Exact prices have not been decided as yet, but this is an excellent opporunity for non-coders to help opensource programs, and earn a bit of money too. Specifics to be announced on the mailing lists [gnome.org] in the coming weeks.
Official announcement here [gnome.org]
The Cooperative Bug Isolation Project (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to take Gnumeric 1.2.0 for a spin, consider participating in The Cooperative Bug Isolation Project [berkeley.edu], a research project being conducted at UC Berkeley. We have prebuilt Red Hat 9 packages of Gnumeric and several other popular applications. These binaries are built with extra feedback instrumentation that lets us understand how the software is working (or failing to work) in the hands of real users.
Even if you have never written a line of code in your life you can help make the software better for everyone simply by using our special bug-hunting feedback packages.
Read more about it [berkeley.edu] or download and install [berkeley.edu] today!
What about Document Management? (Score:2, Interesting)
A strong pitch for Gnumeric (Score:5, Interesting)
According to the release mentioned above [gnomedesktop.org], Dr. McCullaugh recommends using Gnumeric instead of excel.
Re:StarOffice has a lot of catching up to do (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What happens with XML... (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess there's XML and there's XML and getting between them is not necessarily easy.
Microsoft made a big deal about the most recent versions of Office writing out XML, but that was because XML was a buzzword, sounded as if it might be more open than ".doc", and was essentially a selling point.
From what I've read, people have been underwhelmed [com.com] with the XML coming out.
But your question is a good one when you see the potential for XSLT transformations [tomw.net.au] that enable OpenOffice to import and export DocBook XML.
If only a similar set of transformations could be developed for OpenOffice to import and export the XML of the latest version of Microsoft Office. From what I understand, the schema is not documented and the formatting and rendering rules for documents are still kept a private affair, just as it has been for .doc files.
You're still locked-in, dude!
Re:Blatant bias.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Relationship to Mad Hatter? (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't think even IBM has been ready to go that far (well, they could've done it with OS/2 eight or nine years ago, and I don't see that they've grown a spine since that time).
This'll be interesting to watch.
Re:Spreadsheet Programs (Score:3, Interesting)
Just to second Jody's point: I've seen spreadsheets (specifically Excel) used for, of all things, spacecraft design (among other things). In fact, JPL's Project Design Center (aka Team X) uses a whole slew of linked workbooks to develop entire conceptual mission designs. The beauty of spreadsheets is that they are very flexible, and it's easy to create and modify low-fidelity models very rapidly. As a result, Excel gets heavy use throughout the aerospace industry for doing all sorts of back-of-the-envelope calculations and simple math modelling. As Jody says, they make a great scratch pad.
Presentation application? (Score:4, Interesting)
I see a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a database app. How about that other stalwart of the "office productivity" suite, presentation software? Much as it pains me to say it, Powerpoint has become almost indispensable (at least in my line of work) these days. OO.org's Impress is nice, but still not quite on a par with PPT. A Gnome-Office PPT equivalent would be a nice addition to the suite. Or is there some other open source presentation option out there I'm not aware of?
Why I can't switch to Abiword yet (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, the story claims that one of Abiword's distinctive features is, "includes proper footnotes". Well what is this supposed to mean? I've never had any difficulty making OpenOffice.org Writer do footnotes properly. Is there some widely known deficiency of which I am completely unaware?
There were also a number of other issues last I tried; perhaps this have since been resolved:
Seemingly no support for automated numbering of a proper outline (i.e. cycle Roman numerals, capital letters, numbers, etc.). I can't even get it to work manually, changing the sort of "numbering" I want at each level of indent.
select+delete or cut text fails to properly redraw the screen, leaving a line of the removed text visible, and leaving me to wonder whether I actually removed the section properly, or if it is just due to improper redraw.
In "Web Layout", strange breaking occurs where page breaks "should be", leaving me to wonder whether it hit "Enter" accidently, or if it is merely this bug.
Scrolling results in text distortion, making one or more lines unreadable until scrolled off the screen again, or until the application window is covered and redrawn (although disabling "smooth scrolling" seems to "fix" this).
Also, Abiword doesn't appear to allow the insertion of any "objects" other than "pictures". Of course this isn't a "fault", as I suppose it is waiting for a framework to be standardized for this sort of thing.
No, between everything else, I don't have the time now to get a handle on the code base and fix or implement these things myself, and so please don't tell me to.
I'm simply stating that as I found it last I checked, it was not sufficient to meet my needs, and I will, if most of these issues still remain, have to wait a while longer before I can adopt or endorse it for regular use.
I look forward to switching.
Re:vs. Office (Score:3, Interesting)
That's all well and good, but is it four times the usability and productivity of SO? Because that's what the price tag says (and that's just for the standard version). Hell, WinXP Pro retails for less than that.
I'm pretty agnostic when it comes to buying software (and, yes, I buy software), but when it digs into my pocket book as much as a proposed MS Office solution does, I'm going to spend on SO instead and use the savings on ways to make money.
abiword not there yet (Score:4, Interesting)
for OpenOffice, any MS Word doc with graphics is hosed and forget about Word Art.
Quite frankly, both have a lot of work ahead of them IMHO.
Re:Complete history (Score:3, Interesting)
It should be noted that Claris always was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Apple. Apple did buy ClarisWorks from Claris and rename it to AppleWorks (which is also the name of a word processor Apple created back in the Apple II era), and Claris renamed itself to Filemaker, Inc. which is still an Apple subsidiary.
Claris the company is not to be confused with Clarus the dogcow [google.com].
Re:No macros and they JUST got footnotes? (Score:3, Interesting)
Just about every Unix system has an X11 server, but few seem to know the dark arts of programming directly to X. Everyone picks the windowing toolkit flavor of the month and programs for that, apparently under the assumption that everyone will eventually see the light and pick their toolkit.
KDE, Gnome, CDE, OpenWindows, OS X, etc all have one OR MORE windowing toolkits! Even though the underlying OS is basically the same in all cases. I love Unix but I can see why folks prefer programming for Windows. The APIs may suck but at least there are fewer of them.
Looks like the future may be an abstracted or even interpreted language, like Java or Dflat. At least a developer has a chance of writing multiplatform code in one sitting.
Re:Spreadsheet Programs (Score:2, Interesting)
Most of these scientists don't test 1 compound; they test hundreds at a time. So doing it themselves would be a pain in the ass. Using spreadsheets, they can instantly see the resulting graphs and determine where the good data is.
Re:I don't think so... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure you're right about OO's performance here. Unfortunately, you can say exactly the same thing about Word opening slightly complex .doc files. Word will choke when trying to make them, choke when trying to save them and (it's wonderously consistant!) choke trying to open them.
I have opened a ``moderately complex'' Word document on the same version of Word on two machines, and had it paginated differently. I have seen one copy of Word fail to import some of the features of a document created on another copy (again, same version).
I think that's no different, and no more lying, than pretending that Word can easily open all Word files.