Hi James, As you probably know the Open Office family of products are fairly close clones of Microsoft Word before it got the ribbon. They became open source when Sun Microsystems purchased the German company that developed them and then tidied up the code for about a year and released it to open source. The last time I checked, about six months ago, Libre Office seems to be the one to use. The principle developers became disenchanted with Open Office and forked the project to create Libre Office. The most recent updates of Libre Office are the most compatible with MS Word whereas Open Office is becoming all but stagnant. Last time I checked Neo Office was a port of Open Office to a more Mac like interface.
I use Libre Office from time-to-time when I receive MS Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) that I need to open or when someone requires a document in the MS Office format. My first choice is Pages, Numbers, Keynote, but on some occasions there are format problems -- and on some occasions neither the iWork suite nor Libre Office can handle the formatting. I somewhat like the Open Office suite but I think they suffer from being too much a copy of the MS Office suite. The have worked hard to get ride of some of the more annoying parts of MS Office but in my opinion still carry some of the baggage. For my own documents I have ported them all from Open Office to iWork. I can see that you might find advantage in using the Open Office family drawing package or for that matter the Maths formula package. At least you can be sure that they are stored in a format which will always be recoverable thanks to the open nature of the Open Document Format which is used by the suite. Cheers, Carlo On 13/04/2012, at 9:07 , James / Hans Kunz wrote: > can i have some comments about libre office, open office, neo office? i'm > using neo office for my admin & tech drawing work > James > > SAD Technic > U3 6 Chalkley Pl > Bayswater WA > Australia > +618 9370 5307 > mob 0414 421132 (international +614 14421132) > [email protected] > http://www.members.iinet.net.au/~saddas/ > > Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties > disappear and obstacles vanish. > > On 13/04/2012, at 8:09 AM, Ronda Brown wrote: > >> Hi Bill, >> >> Pages’09 will open Word Documents, it also can export as Word documents. >> How are you trying to open the Word documents? >> >> Try dragging the Word document onto Pages or Right-Click / Control-click > >> Open with… >> >> Select a .doc file in Finder > Menu > Get Info > Open With: > Other > browse >> to Pages, inside the iWork folder, inside the Applications folder > Change >> All… >> >> Cheers, >> Ronni >> >> 17" MacBook Pro 2.3GHz Quad-Core i7 “Thunderbolt" >> 2.3GHz / 8GB / 750GB @ 7200rpm HD >> >> OS X 10.7.3 Lion >> Windows 7 Ultimate (under sufferance) >> >> >> >> >> >> On 13/04/2012, at 8:03 AM, Bill Parker wrote: >> >>> Trouble is that no matter how good Pages is, I cannot use it because >>> documents will not open in Word ( the latest version), but agree about >>> Pages styles. >>> >>> Bill >>> On 13/04/2012, at 7:53 AM, Peter Hinchliffe wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> On 12/04/2012, at 9:07 AM, Tim law wrote: >>>> >>>>> A courageous article!! >>>>> >>>>> Fortunately the OSX version I use, 12 I think, doesn't have the same >>>>> AWFUL bloated toolbars of the PC version. >>>>> >>>>> Where Word failed for me this week was when I tried to PDF a 155 page >>>>> report that included a lot of internal cross reference links. Epic fail >>>>> to send any of the hot links into the PDF format. >>>>> >>>>> I opened the document in OSX Pages, saved it as a PDF and voila, all >>>>> links worked properly when PDF'd. If only Pages did styles and >>>>> stylesheets better it'd be an able replacement for Word for my report >>>>> writing work. >>>>> >>>>> Tim >>>>> >>>> >>>> Funny, isn't it? If there's one thing that I had to pick out of all the >>>> things I prefer in Pages over Word, it would be the way it handles styles. >>>> I find Pages' way of doing it so much easier and more intuitive. >>>> >>>> >>>> Peter Hinchliffe Apwin Computer Services >>>> FileMaker Pro Solutions Developer >>>> Perth, Western Australia >>>> Phone (618) 9332 6482 Mob 0403 046 948 >>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------- >>>> Mac because I prefer it -- Windows because I have to. >>>> >>>> -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- >>>> Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> >>>> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> >>>> Settings & Unsubscribe - >>>> <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug> >>> >>> -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- >>> Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> >>> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> >>> Settings & Unsubscribe - >>> <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug> >> >> -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- >> Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> >> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> >> Settings & Unsubscribe - >> <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug> > > -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- > Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> > Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> > Settings & Unsubscribe - > <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug> -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug>
