Dear Sir: I am a recent user of Open Office and find it to be a rather excellent set of applications. In addition to using the desktop computer with WinXP, I use a NEC MobilePro 900C with Win CE4.2 as the OS. The writing and spreadsheet tools for this very useful NEC machine are, to say the least, awful. Is there any work planned to develop a version of Open Office for this environment? The user community is small but enthusiastic and the Win CE 4.2 platform on the NEC 900C has many advantages over a laptop. Its instant on, the machine is small but very easy to use and the battery charge lasts between 5 and 10 hours. There is a German company making a software suite for this system called Softmaker and while the writing program is ok, the Spread sheet is almost unusable and no companion program exists for doing presentations in this suite of applications.
Clearly not all of the Open Office functionality is needed on the CE platform. What is needed is support for file interchangeability with the desktop applications and support for the formatting options like tables in the text processing. In the Spreadsheet, full and well supported functions and the ability to edit and modify the sheet or create a new one on the fly is needed. In the presentation unit, editing and modifying a presentation and the ability to show it on screen and on another device (monitor or projector) are key requirements. There are several devices using the Win CE OS that are in use today that really need the kind of modern application package that Open Office provides. These include the HP Jornada, the NEC Mobile Pro and DOCOMO Sigmarion III. And some people in the user community are beginning to apply the Linux OS to these devices in order to increase the functionality of them. Paul C. Ross __________________
