Well well well, when I need to hire someone to open a can of worms, I know where to
look.
As with all things, it depends on what you want to use it for.
My point of view?
As a system administrator migrating people from Windows and ClarisWorks and
Microsoft Office, I GOTTA HAVE IT. And I hope we see 5.2 with Office 2000 filters
REALLY SOON or we may need to brand Sun Microsystems dumber than they look.
StarOffice won't even do the job of poisoning Office sales if it does not achieve
parity with files quickly.
Yeah, I know, Microsoft added some trivial and unnecessary features threw in at
least as many new bugs as fixes and is selling an upgrade everybody is buying. But
I have to have file translation capability.
And there is no StarOffice equivalent of Microsoft Publisher. A rinky-dink package
with a new skin and a crippled version of Word dressed up with clip art and it
seems to be inordinately popular. When I show people how StarWriter can do the
same job, it falls mostly on deaf ears.
OK what about Applix?
At least as good as StarOffice, with a much better manual. But the filters stink.
If it were just a matter of using something, I'd choose it quickly.
Siag Office?
Now don't laugh! Pathetic Writer is every bit as good as AbiWord and a whole lot
better at handling memory than Maxwell. And it is available in i586 type
binaries. I like it. Scheme in a Grid is as good as any other spreadsheet.
Filtering (the art of reading alien files) could be improved, but overall it is
surprisingly good.
KOffice?
I haven't seen the plans for filtering. But toss Adobe Pagemaker in favor of Kword
and KLyX. The specialties and embeds are there. This will be THE Killer app of
office suites if ever they get it done. Mandrakesoft is helping see that happen,
BTW. Try a snapshot if you like, but figure a good 6 to 8 hours compile time and
don't use a MediaGX processor to do it, for it will terminate on a compiler error
for some undiscovered buggy reason associated with the MediaGX.
Andrew???
Well, I can't sell this one to anyone, but it does as well in 20Mb as StarOffice
does in 70. Unfortunately the missing item is in the "kiss-of-death" category.
Whoever heard of an OfficeSuite that could check syntax in programs? And where you
could define your own classes? Some would say it is an OO Programming language
masquerading as a suite. Others would say it is an Office Suite with an interface
only a programmer would enjoy.
As a Python addict, I find it fairly easy to use and VERY powerful, but I have
to know StarOffice for my users; so I don't get to use it much. If you want to do
great things and have a lot of time to learn, here you go. If you cannot use it
enough to keep your skills current, don't use it.
Abisuite?
I saw it on the distribution disk for 6.1 but haven't used it. Check it out. It
might be everything you need.
So
General purpose--
HTML, WP, Spreadsheet, Image, etc.--Applix or StarOffice
WP (Short to medium documents) WordPerfect
WP (Quick n Dirty) AbiWord, Pathetic Writer, Maxwell
Special Purpose--
WP (Publishing and longer documents) KLyX or Emacs/TeX
Pizazz/Panache--
KOffice
Crude Power--
Andrew
Imagery--
GIMP
Now I would like to go on discussing all of these for a long time, but I have to
duck the flames from those whose favorites didn't get a rave review. In the final
analysis, a lot of it is taste, and "De Gustibus non est Disputandem" as they say.
Civileme
"PSM 0x2710]" wrote:
> So what is the general opinion of Star Office? Does anyone recommend it
> seriously or is there something that would do the job just as well? Thanks all!
>
> --
>
> Seth Gibson
> www.mp3.com/PSM0x2710
> members.tripod.com/cybernetic_thunder (Under Construction)
> To paraphrase my friend stephen:
> "life can be like ifs. . .random garbare goes in and beautiful things come
> out."
