On Feb 25, 2004, at 3:34 PM, Larry le Mac wrote:
Is there a serious alternative to M$-Office for OS X?
One that will work with .doc/.xls files AND save them so that to a PC user it looks as if they've only ever been worked on by Word/Excel ?
I am the sole Mac user at work and want to remain that way, but with M$ pulling support on Mac-IE, it wouldn't surprise me if one day Office for the Mac disappears (no need to get into that discussion).
Basically, I would like to look into learning an alternative if there is a competent one.
Sort of.
Think Free Office <http://www.thinkfree.com/products/pd_office20.jsp>, which costs money.
There's also Open Office, though it requires X-Windows ; Panther comes with X-Windows as an optional install. <http://www.openoffice.org>. This is free. (allbeit a 126MB download.)
The official version is 1.0, there's also a 1.1 version for downloading, <ftp://mirrors.umbc.edu/pub/editors/openoffice/contrib/MacOSX/ OOo_1.1.0_031006_MacOSX_install_en.tar.gz>.
The 1.1 is not trivial to install, though, unlike the 1.0 version which has a mac-native installer.
Basically you unzip the archive in it's own folder, navigate to that directory in an X-term window, and type
./setup
at the command prompt. This starts the graphical installer. Once installed, navigate to the Open Office folder created during the installation and type
./soffice
again, at an X-term command prompt, to start Open Office.
Be aware, that since Open Office is an X-Windows unix app, not a Mac app, things have a definite Unix-ish flavor.
However, the apps are quite MS office compatible and the price is right.
-- Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group
Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs
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