On Thu, 28 Mar 2002 at 13:13:39 +0800, "��y��" wrote:
>Have you try OpenOffice?
>http://www.openoffice.org/
OpenOffice build 641c, though a bit more lightweight than StarOffice 6.0,
doesn't read nor write RTF files (which I think is the only sane document
format that M$ produced, though they change its specs with every new
release of M$ Word. At least its open specs deter, even for a bit, insertion
of destructive macros), as well as two other issues which failed testing only
on Linux. Since I transact via RTF files with my classmates who still use
MS Office, the need to maintain slowpoke StarOffice 5.2 simply because
OO641c can't do RTF is a bit irritating. And it still has some issues with
some SDD files constructed by StarOffice 5.2 which still bombs out with
OpenOffice (reason I never knew why...) Nonetheless, I'm still happy with
OpenOffice.
Development build 642 fixed these, though there's still one more irritating
bug - something about adding or editing horizontal rules in documents. I'm
counting that once build 642 is already out as stable, this issue would be
resolved.
And oh, StarOffice 6.0 ain't free anymore, as they prophesied. It's now
offered to members of the Mandrake Club if I'm not mistaken, though only
for the higher-paying members. At the very least it's _much_ cheaper compared
to MS Office. I'm not sure if it's already out outside the offer to the Mandrake
club, though
>> the problem is that staroffice 6.0 has some (well, many) problems with
>> MSOffice file integration. we're trying to move away from MSOffice
>> enterprise-wide because we don't want the BSA on our backs. unfortunately,
>> aside from imperfect MSOffice compatibility, StarOffice is a frightful
>> resource hog.
This is expected of a company that doesn't even publish the specs
of their own document formats. As much as I don't want to view this
as an excuse nor reason, I'm afraid to bow down to reality once complex
macros and functions have been already embedded to some vital documents
produced by the MS Office suite.
OpenOffice isn't too much of a resource hog like StarOffice was, though
sometimes it would error out for no apparent reason (but fortunately it
offers to save the files you have opened before crashing - which makes it
possible to recover the state of your files prior to the crash of the office
suite), and it takes 5-10 seconds for the opening splash screen to dissipate
even on my 700MHz machine with 320MB RAM and 1GB swap running on
2.4.18 with RML patches.
And oh, I'm still waiting for the OpenOffice team to finish their
documentation. Not so friendly readme file (makes me want to at least
contribute documentation, given the time).
-->paolo
Paolo Alexis Falcone
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