KOffice 1.1.1 Ships 154
Dre writes: "The KOffice team has announced the release of KOffice 1.1.1. It's mainly a performance, printing fixes (particularly in KWord) and stability release, but see the ChangeLog for the full scoop. Lots of binary packages are listed in the announcement this time. The dot
is suggesting this might be the last KOffice release before KDE 3.0, which is almost on track for a late-February stable release (the first beta is being released this week)."
Re:It's about time! (Score:5, Insightful)
Compatability with other Office Suites is #1 in my point of view.
Especially file format (and even bug) compatibility *sigh*.
I receive far too many documents in M$ Word format for work, and there is no choice but to use Word on Windows if I want to see it as the sender intended. When you're dealing with layouts of forms that have been printed and are in the field, you need to have the exact same form in front of your for data entry system design - and in many other fields it's exactly the same.
To replace Word and Excel you really need something that can handle 99% of all files from those applications, and a way to deal with the others that doesn't leave people who've stored a lot of things in those formats out in the cold.
Re:It's about time! (Score:5, Interesting)
That's going to be extremely difficult--even Word has problems with exact positioning between versions. The root cause is that the DOC file format was never meant for layout data, and most of the layout is dependant on how Word decides to format the content.
This is why if layout is important, people need to use a layout-centric file format like PDF. Open source programmers need to decide on a file format for word processing, and if they're not going to use PDF (an open specification, albeit controlled by Adobe), then they should invent an alternative. XML is great for content, but like HTML and SGML there's really no layout data, which can be important for many documents. Perhaps some type of style-sheets over XML? I've been really impressed with PDF v1.3, but are there (more) open alternatives?
At any rate, the DOC format desperately needs to be replaced. Not only because it's viciously controlled by Microsoft, but also because it's simply an absolute garbage hack of a file format. Either that or DOC should only be used when layout isn't terribly important.
- j
Re:It's about time! (Score:1, Informative)
> use a layout-centric file format like PDF. Open source
> programmers need to decide on a file format for word
> processing, and if they're not going to use PDF (an
> open specification, albeit controlled by Adobe), then
> they should invent an alternative. XML is great for content,
> but like HTML and SGML there's really no layout data,
> which can be important for many documents. Perhaps some
> type of style-sheets over XML? I've been really impressed
> with PDF v1.3, but are there (more) open alternatives?
Yup, XML describes the data, but I would have a look at http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/ [w3.org]. xsl:fo can do a lot of magic ;-)
Re:It's about time! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:It's about time! (Score:2, Informative)
XML is great for content,
Perhaps some type of style-sheets over XML?
You mean something like XSL/XSLT? Why not just get MS to switch to the open file format [openoffice.org] of OpenOffice [openoffice.org]?Good luck trying, anyway.
Re:It's about time! (Score:1)
The W3C has already has a recommendation for an Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) for use with XML. The specification is here [w3.org].
Re:It's about time! (Score:2)
Oh, I absolutely agree - but it has to be close enough to the current version that KWord users can read files from M$Word in a way that covers most of the not-too-complex things, and write files in a format that M$Word can understand (doesn't have to be Doc - MSHTML would be fine too, so long as it's transparent to the Microsoftie).
Also, Excel (including graphs) needs to be supported, and Powerpoint presentations for the suits - luckily I don't have to deal with too much Powerpoint at the moment.
This is why if layout is important, people need to use a layout-centric file format like PDF...
Sure, that would be nice - it doesn't alter the fact that at the moment, most people are using M$Word, and any program that can't talk to M$Word in most cases I deal with isn't worth the effort - I have a job to get done, and I can't spend the time wandering up to the lone Windows NT server in the machine room (running some custom VB App which talks to a voice-phone-program of some sort - I ignore it except to restart it when the VB program crashes - it's not very well written unfortunately, but we don't have time to fix/replace it).
As I was saying - I don't have time to spend 20 minutes converting a file every time someone sends me something in a Microsoft format. Until KOffice can fill that gap, I have no choice but to continue working in with
Re:It's about time! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's about time! (Score:1)
Perhaps the best strategy is to sendt the document back to the sender, telling them to save it in the file format of your choice.
Another (more discrete) strategy to get of the "M$-Office-format-race" is to save document in an older M$-Office format. At least, this way you do not force the receiver of your documents to upgrade.
Re:It's about time! (Score:2)
Perhaps the best solution is to live in the real world for a bit. Business involves compromises, and one of these is that you deal with the shit that paying customers dump on you (to a degree) or you don't get paid - file formats is only a part of this (ever dealt with changing specs, badly designed schemas and last minute reporting changes. I can tell you that telling your customers to f**k off until they fix their requirements is a great way to get fired by a company that doesn't want to go out of business because of Prima Donna numero Uno.)
Re:It's about time! (Score:1)
Agree. But it is not only paying customers who dump you shit. And hopefully you do not have to compromise with everybody everytime?
I can tell you that telling your customers to f**k off until they fix their requirements
What a luck I am not working with sales.
Imagine (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Imagine (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Imagine (Score:1)
BTW, what is Office, if not a fancy editor with formatting and spell checking gradually slapped on?
Open File Formats (Score:3, Insightful)
Where things should be better is where there's a closer overlap in functionality between different packages. The first step - where we are now - is to have office packages working on *published* file formats. Following on, a degree of component sharing would make sense (as with the Gecko engine).
At this point the benefit of using free software kicks in with a vengeance, as interoperability issues are of interest to *both* parties rather than a cat and mouse game based around reverse engineering. Extending Bob Young's analogy, you would then find Ford helping BMW to transplant in their engine, rather than suing them for cutting through the welds which hold the bonnet (hood) shut.
Right now Microsoft's most valuable asset is probably the huge and growing base of documents in proprietary file formats, a pernicious form of enslavement. Our blow for freedom must be the use of open formats such as plain text and comma separated lists.
Dunstan
Re:Open File Formats (Score:1)
Allready there
Following on, a degree of component sharing would make sense
That would seem quite impossible since the base is different; KWord can't use Windows hooks and OpenOffice can't use QT hooks etc.
Our blow for freedom must be the use of open formats such as plain text and comma separated lists. :)
Ehm, make that utf8 texts and XML with open DTDs, and I agree
Re:Imagine (Score:1)
On a less flippant note, this is exactly what XML and it's applications are designed to do. It has some shortcomings, for example the limitation on three nested Schema and the very long winded syntax, but for computers and computer programs talking to each other, it is actually pretty good. One especially neat thing would be that support for new graphics formats and database connectivity would be pretty easy to add once the basics are in place.
Re:Imagine (Score:2)
On a serious note, this may be an undesirable but necessary result. It is hundreds of times more important that these programs read/write MSWord than that they read/write some "standard" that MicroSoft is going to ignore. And they get interoperabilty for free as a side effect, reducing the need for this standard format to nearly zero.
A standard format's real use would be to make it easy to write small stand-alone programs that generate or manipulate text. That would be extremely nice but I don't think it is going to happen while MicroSoft controls everything.
unified desktop (Score:1, Redundant)
And people used to say opensource software was for servers only... bit by bit all the pieces of the puzzle are falling into place.
It's a sad day for monopolists.
Powerpoint files? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Powerpoint files? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Powerpoint files? (Score:1)
A user should have the experience of "oh this program just opens my files without complaints and they still look right" and not "if I want to use this program with files people send me, I must tell them to save them in this or that way and they will not remember this and each time I have to get back to them and ask to send them again and they are set up and it is all quite messy".
This also concerns Word and Excel etc. KWord will be measured by the way it opens MSWord documents. Users expect all the pictures to be at the right place, the bullets appear at least similar and the tables' cell background be the same color and so on. And they are right, those users!
Re:Powerpoint files? (Score:1, Interesting)
While we're at it. I agree with you about how KWord will be judged regardless of the terms it sets for itself. #2718820 is also kinda ambiguous. It's not that if you don't use the latest features it will save as Powerpoint '97 - microsoft don't have their users in mind.
Opensource has the problem? (Score:1)
Re:Powerpoint files? (Score:1)
Yeah, because no one will ever ask that user to please save files so that the huge majority of users on older versions of Windows can open it as well. Early adopters who forge ahead breaking standards willy-nilly deserve to be stuck with the inconvenience of making sure they're the ones who bend over backwards if they want the rest of us to read their files. While I agree that it would be nice for various free software projects to be able to accurately import MS files, if there are version back-compatibilities with other Windows installs, it's not like us zealots are the only ones being impacted.
The whole tactic of breaking back-compatibility for document formats is something that Microsoft could have anticipated and planned for a decade ago with little real effort, but making new documents at least partially operable on older installs would provide less inducement for me to upgrade.
And why does this only work one way? I'm just a user... why if I create a document in KWord or KPresenter do I not have the right to expect MS users to just be able to open my documents? If MS users come whining about that will you be telling *them* to take it to Microsoft and defending *me*?
Re:Powerpoint files? - Automated conversion? (Score:1)
Because some partners and clients who are still using Office 95/97 (and even 2k itself) sometimes couldn't open our Office files, we now only send stuff in pdf (automatic conversion through a linux virtual shared printer and ps2pdf).
Then the only thing that forces us to have Office is that sometimes we RECEIVE stuff in those formats.
I'm thinking about this:
- Have one single license of Office 2k (or XP, for that matters) on a windows server on the network,
- setup VB/VBA programs/macros to automagically open any file it sees in such and such directories (shares) and both print them to the "pdf" printer (saving the original formatting) and saving them to a KOffice / StarOffice compatible Office older version (allowing edits).
Has anyone already done this? Would it be LEGAL? (I was about to setup Acrobat Writer in the windows server to create the pdfs, when I found out it was not legal, so I switched to gs)
I believe "printing" to pdf would be straightforward and easy from VB. What about saving? How would I open a file (disallowing its own - untrusty - macros to run) and then run a pre-defined macro which is not in the file itself?
Note: We amavis filter our emails, so conversion could even be activated upon email attachment arrival.
Re:Powerpoint files? - Automated conversion? (Score:2)
Because some partners and clients who are still using Office 95/97 (and even 2k itself) sometimes couldn't open our Office files, we now only send stuff in pdf (automatic conversion through a linux virtual shared printer and ps2pdf).
Know of anything that will work for AutoCAD 14 .dwg files and AutoDesk Inventor files? (either to DXF or to .pdf) -- I'd love to be able to provide that same functionality to people who use our drawings. Yeah you can save to .dxf but that's a pain for the draftsmen who have a zillion drawings around WITHOUT having dupes in .dxf format.
Re:Powerpoint files? - Automated conversion? (Score:1)
The way it's setup here, it works with anything that can print. We do use AutoCAD LT 98 with it too. It's quite transparent for the users, and for the application.
If you want details on how to implement it, email me (same slashdot username, @rf.com.br)
Another option for sharing the DWGs and other AutoDesk formats is asking people to download the free DWG viewer from AutoDesk at:
their site [autodesk.com]
or
their ftp [autodesk.com]
Joao
Re:Powerpoint files? - Automated conversion? (Score:2)
The way it's setup here, it works with anything that can print. We do use AutoCAD LT 98 with it too. It's quite transparent for the users, and for the application.
nonono... this is for an automated system in our intranet. i.e. customer wants to see/play with drawing without downloading the entire thing. Yeah I know Acrobat creator can print to pdf; that's not quite what we need (unless it is perhaps possible to script it out from a network connection...)
The problem with the readers (voloview et al) is that they only work for Windows; there's no decent dwg viewer for Linux that I have been able to find, so I'm trying to find a good convertor. :-)
Re:Powerpoint files? - Automated conversion? (Score:1)
I'm not using Acrobat creator, but ghostscript's ps2pdf on a linux box. A virtual smb shared printer (a perl program) processes the files with ps2pdf.
customer wants to see/play with drawing
The conversion keeps the DWG "vectoriness" so the person seeing it (with pdf reader on any platform) can see/zoom quite a lot. No layer playing though.
without downloading the entire thing
You want the user to be able to download just a piece of a drawing, containing the area he wants to view? No way AFAIK. How would (s)he know what's the desired area without first downloading it all to have a "bird's eye view" of the whole?
If with "scripting out" you mean making the conversion on demand according to a web interface selection, then I guess you'll need the help of a windows box to open and print (convert) the files, if the available linux CAD program which can read DWG aren't compatible enough for your files. But you can also have all DWGs converted to PDF first, and just "refresh" them from time to time, which would be faster.
If pdf is not quite what you need, what other cross-platform, free-viewer, open, established format do you want to convert the DWGs to? If pdf IS quite what you need, then ps2pdf is a good converter (not as good as Acrobat IMHO, but that's a matter of time, I guess).
Re:Powerpoint files? - Automated conversion? (Score:2)
I don't anything about AutoCad, dwg or dxf but I noticed this on apps.kde.com [kde.com] the other day:
Linux Drawing Viewer [sourceforge.net]My experiences with KWord (Score:5, Interesting)
You just draw frames where you want to have text and type in them (if you use frames, you can also use KWord without them like a normal word processor). You can connect frames so that text flows between them, and they are automatically extended to subsequent pages.
Things I haven't yet tested are data connectivity (which is essential for business stuff) and very large documents. But general writing functionality was quite impressive already. The biggest problem I had was printing: I didn't get the result to look like the preview. Reading the summary, I doubt this is fixed, but I'll be pleased to find out I'm wrong. Generally, KWord is on the right track.
Re:My experiences with KWord (Score:5, Insightful)
This is how any good page layout program does things; Quark Express, InDesign, FrameMaker. After using any decent layout application I find it an absolute chore to do anything besides memos in Word. It's really unfortunate that most people don't realize that there are vastly superior alternatives.
I always knew Word was bad at anything but the absolute basics, but it was made blatantly obvious to me when I did my my latest resume in InDesign. When it comes to layout, Word is quite possibly the worst program for the job, but only a handful of companies will accept my resume in
Oh well, that's nothing new. The world is full of frustrating inefficiencies because of the Microsoft monopoly.
- j
I know at least one reason.... (Score:1, Flamebait)
I can think of one reason: Because they are the people who are hiring and they get to say what they want to accept from applicants?
Start your own company (or get really important in an already established organization) and then refuse to accept any resumes but those in PDF format. Much better than trying to buck the system before you're even being considered for a position...
-B
Re:I know at least one reason.... (Score:1)
So your company will only employ professional layouters and some geeks who are willing to pipe tex into dvi2ps into ps2pdf. Maybe thats what you want, but maybe not. At least I'd suggest accepting text/html and text/plain as well.
Re:I know at least one reason.... (Score:2)
A resume is supposed to get your foot in the door. Someone hopes to do that by sending them a resume in a format they either can't or won't read. It does make a point, but while that point is being made, some fellow who bodged a resume together on his girlfriend's Word-laden PC is in talking to HR, not you.
Unless you're a complete superstar, you don't get to say what their HR dept will read. "You want to hire me? Then here's my CV. Oh, really... can't open it? Well, you can download and install a PDF reader for free. PDF is a standard and much better than Word, you know..." It won't fly unless you're a big shot. And if so, then more power to you. Maybe the next guy will get a shot because you already primed the PDF pump...
-B
Re:I know at least one reason.... (Score:1)
- j
Re:I know at least one reason.... (Score:1, Insightful)
EVER.
Every job I have ever landed, has been landed with a professionally laid out resume, on high quality paper.
There are resume services that will take your resume, in electronic format, and then put it onto paper. I have received several complements from employers on my resume, and heard comments about how very rarely others take their resume as serious.
My resume is ALWAYS handed to the employer in a nice folder. The only goal with your resume is to differentiate you from the other applicants. If you were not qualified, you should have never even gotten inside the door.
Yes, I am talking about employment that requires pre-screening... not some job off of www.monster.com where you send your resume via their 'click here to apply' link, and pray for the best.
Those types of services are excellent for actually finding the job, but do NOT ever apply with that route.
Employers want people who are willing to go out of their way, take the extra step, etc... Remember that, and you will succeed.
I hope the 'resume futility count' guy actually reads this... Maybe the reason he hasn't been hired is that employers aren't impressed with a 'plain text format' resume.
Yours Truly,
David Fishinghawk
CCIE #1076
Boston, Mass.
Re:I know at least one reason.... (Score:1)
What, people invert you after reading your CV?
take their resume as serious.
Nuff said.
not some job off of www.monster.com
Pet hate of mine.
professionally laid out resume, on high quality paper.....My resume is ALWAYS handed to the employer in a nice folder.....
When we take on people, we accept paper or electronic CVs. Doesn't matter to us as long as the person is qualified (although CVs over 2-3 pages are likely to get thrown. It's your job to highlight your achievements, not write an autobiography and let us sift through it.)
Sure, make your CV presentable, as messy hard to read ones make the reader's life more difficult and get thrown. Equally, don't send in a coffee stained paper copy (or virus infected email copy
But when it comes down to it, it should be 95% experience/qualifications that get you an interview, and *then* we decide who's got the edge.
<flame>
But that is for people applying for skilled, techical jobs. Judging by what you wrote, you seem to be going for very low grade jobs. I for one would not be happy to take on somebody with such a low command over the English language.
There certainly are *some* types of job out there when a nicely printed CV in a colored folder with a picture on the front may be an advantage, but it sure ain't in my industry.
</flame>
Oh, I'd better make an exception for applications to the typesetting industry...
Re:I know at least one reason.... (Score:2)
>read ones make the reader's life more
>difficult and get thrown. Equally, don't send in
>a coffee stained paper copy (or virus infected
>email copy
>unprofessional.
Many years ago, at 18, I had been hired by a startup to write software. We needed changes in some firmware, and I told them that my change to part time for the school year would prevent me from doing that *and* keeping up with the MIS system.
I'd been hired on the spot when I showed up. I didn't know better than simply to appear with my resume in hand, rather than mailing it in. I was abe to show them something they desparately wanted, and they realized they could have me full time for less than a part time consultant.
Anyway,they handed me the folders of resumes collected when they had advertised, and told *me* to find someone.
I was shocked by some of them. I'd always heard about the importance of appearance, etc., but I just wasn't prepared.
The one that I can still picture had been printed on a crummy (even for the time) dot matrix printer--the kind swhere the dots were distinct with space between them. It had then been copied on a crummy photocopier, and was quite grey. To top it off (really, I'm not making this up) the cover letter was written on *graph paper* in pencil . . .
hawk
Folders. (Score:2)
Let me guess, you were that nimrod in high school who always padded the shit out of his papers but put them in a nice plastic dust jacket, weren't you?
--saint
Re:I know at least one reason.... (Score:2)
grep -il SP2 resumes/*.txt resumes/*.html
is all I need.
Paper is easy on eyes, but a nightmare to quickly find the infor you need (specially when you have 200 resumes for a job opening).
I have a
a2ps resume.txt
output of mine, and the interviewers _loved_ it. I was told it is the quality of the work you did that matter, not how pretty you can format your resume.
If I get a resume in a folder printed on colored paoper, I'd be suspicious about it. We all know how we look for jobs. WE apply to about 50 jobs a day. If yoru resume is a close match, then you 'stand-out' in your interview. That is what they are there for. I never judge how serious some one about a job just b/c they handed me a laminated resume. I wait till I talk to the guy.
And hell yes, when I ask please only send txt/html resumes, everything else is tossed out (another reason why I love electronic format
Re:I know at least one reason.... (Score:1)
I can think of one reason: Because they are the people who are hiring and they get to say what they want to accept from applicants?
Maybe so, but if they're too stupid to accept standard formats and expect something proprietary instead, I know I don't want to work there.
Good computer scientists are hard to come by, and if they think they should deliberately narrow their options, well tough luck for them.
I am looking for another job right now, one of my conditions is that _I_ get to choose my tools.And yes, _I_ get to set my conditions, because the market is still tight.
I've had to use crappy tools, deal with lacking or incorrect documentation, non-working software for longer than I care for - it's time for sth. decent.
Re:My experiences with KWord (Score:1)
They may or may not have acrobat reader, they may or may not be allowed to install it etc etc.
Yes
Re:My experiences with KWord (Score:1)
Bit of advice... If you feel that strongly, (and I can see why you should), then don't work for a company that can't handle .PDF!
Back around, '95 or '96 was the last time I looked for an employer. Well, I decided that my resume was going to be on the web, and if anyone wanted to read it, they could navigate themselves right on over. No paper. No Word. No floppies. No fax.
Ended up, I got a *sweet* development job. When I told my interviewer how I felt about modern communication and why my standards were what they were, his jaw dropped.
Stick to your guns. Companies are dying for good people. (Always have been, always will be.)
Re:My experiences with KWord (Score:1)
Re:My experiences with KWord (Score:2)
CSS Paged Media (Score:1)
If basing it arond a page is necessary RTF is probably the best - otherwise I'd stick with XHTML+CSS.
What about XHTML+CSS Paged Media? [google.com]
Re:My experiences with KWord (Score:2)
Re:My experiences with KWord (Score:1)
I wrote the following last year when I was job hunting to explain to people why I could not send my resume in Word (.DOC) format:
http://www.unixzone.com/why_no_word.html [unixzone.com]
KWord's Word output filter (Score:1)
*BUT* there is no Word *output* filter, which unfortunately makes it almost totally useless to me.
To output a Word document from KWord:It works.
Re:My experiences with KWord (Score:1)
No, no, no, you want the tabs over here
BAH! My project team for a grad school project spent almost as much time during crunch undoing Word's brilliant formatting decisions as we did proofreading. That's the biggest draw (IMHO) of both KWord and StarOffice...
Re:My experiences with KWord (Score:1)
>Microsoft's efforts, but that is not true: Unlike
>MS Word, KWord uses a very simple and efficient
>frame concept, which makes it quite easy to
>create complex layouts. For example I was able to
>create a letter layout with two columns in a
>couple of minutes with no prior knowledge of the
>program.
>
>You just draw frames where you want to have text
>and type in them (if you use frames, you can also
>use KWord without them like a normal word
>processor). You can connect frames so that text
>flows between them, and they are automatically
>extended to subsequent pages.
That's a great innovation on the side of KWord, It's much more efficient, because in Word you have to cope with drawing text fields where you want to have text and then type in them. Word also confuses you with ability to connect those text fields so that text flows between then.
Re:My experiences with KWord (Score:1)
Sounds like we have an interleaf fan. Personally I like word processors, Word, StarOffice, Final Writer. But I have enough trouble getting what I want actually typed up without having to worry about layout specifics before I start working.
KWord can be a good rival to Framemaker /Publisher (Score:5, Informative)
KWord was a pleasant surprise, then. With KOffice 1.0, it was not ready for primetime use, but the direction it was headed showed that it will sooner or later make it easy for people like me to switch from the pain of FM (yes, it may be the best in the world for tech editing, but it still sucks royally) to something better.
Re:KWord can be a good rival to Framemaker /Publis (Score:3, Informative)
OK, it absolutely took some getting used to, but once I got the hang of it I was suprised at how easy it was to create good looking documents... Most free Office utilities try to mimic the behaviour of commercial applications, while in my opinion the strong point of Linux is the fact that it takes a different approach... on that works...
Same thing goes for document formatting... LyX with LaTex as it's backend may be different from commerical apps, it works like a charm, and I'm definately never going back to the pain of WYSIWYG word processors...
I have spoken!
huge documents and lyx (Score:3, Insightful)
I used lyx, and found an existing isu.sty program. My time? Less than 10 minutes . . .
hawk
Re:KWord can be a good rival to Framemaker /Publis (Score:1)
> Personally I still prefer LyX for large technical documents...
> Same thing goes for document formatting... LyX with LaTex as it's backend may be different from commerical apps, it works like a charm
In my experience, LaTeX sucks with large documents! I have been struggling with a 600+ page user's manual. Whenever I exceed 620 pages, it dumps mad core. I keep getting the cryptic error messages like "max strings exceeded".
Changing my texmf.cnf is useless. The limits are hard-coded into TeX. So much for TeX being bug-free!
So now I am faced with having to hack a big convoluted mess of code that isn't even written in a normal programming language! It's "literate programming" or something... Whatever.
LaTeX definitely doesn't work like a charm for large documents!
Re:KWord can be a good rival to Framemaker /Publis (Score:1)
*Crash & Burn baby!*
Re:KWord can be a good rival to Framemaker /Publis (Score:1)
-_Quinn
Re:KWord can be a good rival to Framemaker /Publis (Score:2, Interesting)
In the end this will mean a slower progress and probably a rewrite here and there (tables are being redone for the 1.2 release). Maybe you guys can post good bug reports about the little stuff that make an application look 'finished'. Not stuff like "I need this and that". But more like "Hee, this feature could also be done via drag and drop there and there" . You know; the small things we develoipers tend to overlook..
A4 paper? (Score:3, Interesting)
I want to set Kword to default to "US letter" size paper, and it doesn't "take". Every time it comes up as A4 size.
Does anyone know how in the world one can change the default paper size?
Re:A4 paper? (Score:5, Funny)
Move to Europe.
Re:A4 paper? (Score:1)
Re:A4 paper? (Score:1)
Re:A4 paper? (Score:2)
Apparently one workaround would be to create a page in the format you like, then save it as a template. Now when you start koffice it should fgive you the option to choose that template.
Re:A4 paper? (Score:1)
"Plain Text" template.
That's the template that is used when starting kword with the "empty document" radiobutton.
Re:A4 paper? (Score:1)
The major annoyance of any "US-english" based piece of software for me has been the default US-letter settings.
It's a *good thing* that there's now an European software project that does the reverse
KOffice: The emancipation of European Software!
hehe
meneer de koekepeer
Re:A4 paper? (Score:1)
.... Redneck in Jax
Re:A4 paper? (Score:1)
so, australians (me!) use A4, europeans use A4, brits use A4, what's the deal with the US using letter? is this like the metric system? (what *is* the deal with still using the imperial system???)
Considering switching (Score:2)
(writing this on my 486 laptop running win95 WOOT!)
So... What should I go to? I got a better box for games, and I really don't like playing around with linux on a 200mhz 64mb ram machine with a 2 mb vid card.
From those who have - how is koffice compared to the standard MS suite?
What about file compatibility problems (can I take stuff to school?)
Speed - how is star offices speed - I'm assuming x is a lot faster on this box than on the 200, but are there any issues?
Any "major psycotic hatreds"?
Any comments / advice from people who have done the switch?
Thanks.
(website down because 2k is down)
Switch - you'll like it (Score:3, Insightful)
So you paid for Windows and now you feel like they're all yours and nobody else's, eh? :-)
on my zoomin' fast 700mhz box crapped and I'm sitting here with a copy of windows 2k, xp, rh 7.1, caldera 2.3.. Interesting dilemma.
Well, I can tell you what I would do. But you already know what I would do. This is Slashdot, after all. Answer: Install Debian.
Seriously, I think you'd get a lot more out of RH 7.1 than 2K or XP. Why? I've used Linux as a desktop OS for years now, and I made the complete switch last May. I haven't been to Fry's once. So I've saved lots of money. My machine has been up continuously since then, BTW. And I play Tribes2 and RtCW quite a bit. (But I also use Star Office a lot). Now, I've had to ssh into it from another machine in my office to kill -9 a game or whatever, but I never reboot.
As far as the Caldera - RH argument, it's a matter of choice really. RH might be more "dynamic" maybe. It's certainly being updated more. Quite a few RPMs out there too. Go with what you know. Of course, real men use a Linux with apt-get, yada yada yada... (They make you say good things about Debian on /. regardless of the fact that it's all Linux and all good. :-)
(writing this on my 486 laptop running win95 WOOT!)
Ugh. Maybe Linux there as well? RH 5.0 runs fine on my P100 laptop. XMMS streams to the stereo. I tried WinAMP and Win95 on it and it wouldn't even run.
So... What should I go to? I got a better box for games, and I really don't like playing around with linux on a 200mhz 64mb ram machine with a 2 mb vid card.
Oddly enough, you have a machine which is almost perfect for Linux. It's not powerful enough to run the latest MS (or other) apps, yet you could run a minimal Linux install and get added life out of that box as a word processor. Since the box is old, there should be very little wrestling with drivers. As far as GUIs bringing you down, try Blackbox [alug.org]. It's very minimal (yet very full-featured) and should serve you well.
From those who have - how is koffice compared to the standard MS suite?
Well, I use Star Office 6 even at work now. Guy says he wants "powerpoint", I give him slides. Need to look at Excel sheets, I open scalc. As far as KOffice, I don't know. I've had more than once experience where KWord just quit on me. Vanished. No core file, no syslog error, nothing. Just gone. I save a lot when using either it or KWrite (which is worse; KWrite goes down more than a White House intern). I'm using older versions, sure, but I was not too impressed with the stability. Now Kate... wow. There's an editor. Sure, it's plain text, but it's a real good example of a stable app. At least in my experience these last few months. Does syntax highlighting fo0r Perl, C and SQL, too, so that's a big plus. Of course, I've turned in memos/meeting notes, whatever printed two-to-a-sheet with enscript or with line numbers before, so...
What about file compatibility problems (can I take stuff to school?)
You should be able to move files between home and school. Make sure to save in native format (Star Office will ask what format you want to save it in). I've exchanged Word 2000 docs with Star Office 6 and back again. Every once in a while I get a document that saves to like 8MB (when it should be like 400K). A resave helps sometimes.
I haven't been able to get simple Word or Excel macros running. I haven't tried, though. I don't want to run macros if I can help it.
Speed - how is star offices speed - I'm assuming x is a lot faster on this box than on the 200, but are there any issues?
Star Office 5 is about as fast as a wounded prawn. It will literally suck the life force out through your face. One should be paid to use it. The Star Office Beta 6, however, rocks. Worlds better. It has warts, sure, but it's beta. (Do you really think any software -- which had a ship date -- that came out of either Redmond or Mountain View had anything like the QA it should have had?) I've been using beta 6 since it came out and haven't noticed anything overly weird (except a deep-seated and possibly misguided reliance on Java). Me and a few other gus use it for work, so it's good enough I guess.
Any "major psycotic hatreds"?
Visio. I hate Visio. And sometimes I hate project managers, too.
Any comments / advice from people who have done the switch?
I've been using nothing but Linux for months now -- like I said -- and I wouldn't go back. Hell, I couldn't. Deal with XP and it's sugary GUI and nasty licensing/copy "protection"? Not a chance. Pay for Apple hardware? I'll save for my kids college funds instead and run Linux on older hardware. And why not? Linux runs great for me. I love being able to right-click on the desktop and get an xterm where I can write a shell script that goes into cron. Networking works, I have every compiler I'd ever want, a choice of GUIs, lots of customizing, I use ssh tunnels, scp is fine, samba keeps me and the wife in sync, games are fine and I just don't spend any more time or money on the upgrade mill. And BTW, check out Opera for Linux [opera.com]. I've paid for the Win32 and Linux versions of Opera. Everyone who's taken time to look at Opera has loved it, at least in my experience (which is predominantly IE users).
-B
Games? (Score:2)
So, are you using transmeta, wine, or something I'm not aware of? I'd love to get some advice on this one. The more I move to Linux, the happier I am.
Re:Games? (Score:2)
I mostly play native ports. I buy just about every game Loki [lokigames.com] releases. I'm a sucker. I even bought SiN [hyperion-software.com] even thoiugh it won't work with NVidia cards. I also use Transgaming's WineX [transgaming.com]. It supports quite a few Win32-only games (like Age of Empires). It won't work with DirectX8 games, however, but support is coming.
I used my PC for games about 60% of the time I was in front of it when it had Windows and Linux on it. Now that Windows is gone, I find myself reading Perlmonks or looking at freshmeat stuff more often than I used to. I'm happy I switched.
-B
Kword & Kspread (Score:1)
But that shouldn't deter you from using linux, openoffice 638c is very good, so is gnumeric. They should suit your needs. Considering how rest of kde evolved, I'm pretty sure that most koffice problems with stability will be solved soon, too.
Re:Considering switching (Score:2)
KOffice is getting (a lot) better, but I still use StarOffice more because:
As to performance, StarOffice was unusable on my ancient box (a P166, 32Mb RAM), usable on my old laptop (PII-400, 128Mb RAM) although it takes some time to start, and fine on my new laptop (PIII-1000, 384Mb RAM, yum).
StarOffice, though not free software, is the application that has enabled me to ditch Windows altogether because it can handle the Office formats pretty well. KOffice can't yet - I've just been opening some .DOCs with the new 1.1.1 and it's better but not good enough yet.
kde 3.0 (Score:1, Flamebait)
more interesting... (Score:1)
I'm not trolling, but i am curious. Anyone care to guess? My wild-ass guess would be maybe 500k downloads, maybe a tenth that as daily users.
Re:more interesting... (Score:3)
My guess is that daily usage/download will actually be lower than 10%
//rdj
Re:more interesting... (Score:2)
I think for KOffice it is going to be way way lower, like 1%.
OT: Word Alternative for Mac (Score:1)
Solution to the eternal document-format-problem (Score:5, Interesting)
We never will get rid of complaints that the newest free office suite can not read the newest MS Office file formats. This is quite natural, but what can be done about it?
I was thinking that maybe it is possible to write a Windows application that automates the task of converting documents by using Word itself. I don't know VB or VB for applications, but is this possible? Is it not true that scriptability is one of the major features of MS Office applications?
If this is technically possible, and Office licensing allows it, then companies could dedicate a server with this program and an Office installation to become a document-transformer. Lets say it reads
Then no MS Office installation is neccessary on the workstations, but converting documents to Koffice/StarOffice/whatever is still easy.
Re:Solution to the eternal document-format-problem (Score:1, Informative)
The company I work for has a service whereby you upload an MSWord document and we run it through Office 2002 > XML > HTML. Due to the overheard of word this takes about 8 seconds but we spit out perfect XHTML with ALT tags and internal links - big w00ps indeed.
I suspect that Microsoft have realised this though. As the only other format that can replicate the same exact same features as Word is RTF and Office 2002 will bloat RTF (as I said in another post, above).
The difficulty is telling users that other formats won't look exactly the same. All formats aren't completely compatible (there is a large overlapping feature set in most). Accepting that it's only going to be pretty close is where the problem is (and deciding another format to put it to).
Openoffice can open any MS Word document that I've seen to a relative degree of accuracy.
File Format Middleware (Score:1)
Problems:
I remember thinking this would be a great idea if people could embrace an XML based office-software-based data file format. But then again, it would also be great if there were no war, no starvation, free beer, etc. etc.
Return to Format Hell (Score:2)
Anyway, scriptability is kind of beside the point. Yes, you can use VB (or any other COM-aware language) to access the data in MS-office files. But that doesn't really solve any major problems. There are any number of ways to access this data. Sometimes COM scripting is the easiest way, but it's never the only way.
So if getting the data out of the files isn't a problem, what is? The problem is that the data is extremely complex. There's all kinds of information embedded in the file -- font names, paragraph parameters, widow-orphan control, stylesheet definitions... You can get a taste of how complex Office documents are by looking at the specification for Rich Text Format [microsoft.com], which attempts (not always successfully) to represent a Microsoft Word file in plain text. It's also instructive to dump a Word document to HTML. Use Word 2K or XP -- earlier versions didn't preserve as much formatting detail.
To have a reliable two-way exchange between two word processors, you have to define and implement a mapping between every possible combination of text and formatting in one WP to the some combination in the other WP. And that mapping has to be one to one! Otherwise people can't trade their documents without losing stuff.
It can't be done. It requires that the two WPs have roughly equivalent feature sets, which is unheard of. And even if you can somehow force your users to stick to a common feature subset, implementing the mapping is mind-bogglingly complex.
The basic problem is documents that intermingle content and formatting. Once you separate content and formatting (using, for example, XML for content and XSL or CSS for formatting) you've drastically simplified the problem, and you can start talking about application-independent documents.
Ween the world off MSO (Score:1, Interesting)
As for powerpoint. I send a reply, stating I don't like powerpoint presentatations, please send me plain text and annotated images. Funny when you ask for that, most people skip the stupid clip art they love to put in PP.
KOffice is perfect for me, but them I refuse mst MSO documents. Nonetheless judged on it merits it works great and does everything I ask of it.
Who here is using KOffice as your primary suite? (Score:3)
My only experiences with KWord (admittedly limited) have been bad. I've opened a few Word docs in KWord and found them to be a disaster (whereas StarOffice did a 99% good job).
Also, the one time I typed a homework in KOffice and saved as HTML, as soon as I opened the HTML file in vi, I found that it contained nothing but "<html>". If I can't assume that pressing "Save" will save my file, then it's really not so useful to me.
I Confuse Your Brain (Score:1)
KDE rocks. KDE is wonderful. KDE is great.
This is not sarcasm. I will explain no further.