SoftMaker Rolls Out Office Suite for BSD, Linux, and Others 275
martin-k writes "Commercial office suite software is coming to FreeBSD, Linux, Windows, Sharp Zaurus and Windows Mobile. SoftMaker, a German developer, recently released SoftMaker Office, a multi-platform office suite that excels in Microsoft Office compatibility, claims to be much leaner and faster than OpenOffice.org and works on many operating systems, down to PDAs." While SoftMaker certainly isn't new, it is nice to see them roll out a finished suite as opposed to one-off programs.
how much better than OpenOffice? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm downloading the trial version now.... more on that in a minute. My question would be, "How much better is it than OpenOffice, and how razor thin is the difference between it and Microsoft Office, and how compatible compared with Open Office?"
I've had expectations raised many times in the past and while always initially excited found myself not using any products that had rough edges. For the longest time that basically meant I used Microsoft when I had to, vi and vim the rest of the time :-). Open Office was the first product with sufficient polish
and compatibility, so much so I could pretty much plug and play
replace Office for people with little fear they would have
trouble adapting.
Anything that falls short of that is likely to have problems gaining purchase in market share. I've used all of the KDE products, ABISoft, etc.... none of them really measured up. That isn't to they were bad products, many of them would be considered excellent in and of themselves, but that isn't the yardstick the buying public uses (and will use).
Well, I've downloaded and installed the trial version. I know it's not fair, but here is my five minute review (which is about all I have time to give for new products competing with products with which I already have perfectly good solutions):
Download and install went flawlessly, a requirement for any product anymore -- if the install doesn't go seamlessly, I won't spend a lot more time trying to figure out why. The program fired up cleanly, and was easy and intuitive enough to use especially if you've used any word processor or spreadsheet before. The graphics, layout, and presentation were good but the icons were not crisp as Microsoft's or Open Office's.
I don't have a suite of files to test for compatibility with Office and Open Office, but as I indicated, I have a solution for this type of work (Open Office), and I'm not inclined to spend much time beyond apparent return on investment.
PROS: Easy download and install, very similar to Microsoft Office (though that will change with the new Microsoft Office, not necessarily a bad thing), inexpensive comopared to Microsoft Office, established company, multi-platform and multi-form factor (for PDAs, though other than browsing, I'm not inclined to do much word processing and spreadsheeting (verb?) on PDAs).
CONS: Expensive compared to Open Office, not enough better (in my opinion) to warrant the switch, expensive to add typefaces, "compatibility" with Microsoft is a moving target -- one for which there is no guarantee of currency.
Cool that there's another player... Would I switch? Probably not. YMMV.
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Re:how much better than OpenOffice? (Score:5, Interesting)
For personal used, I used OpenOffice.org almost exclusively up until about eight months ago (for business I use Word running under Crossover, because exact formating is crucial for me). At about that time, with no change to my desktop OS (Mandriva 2006 at the time, and had not applied any updates recently), my version of OOo, nor my file server (Debian), OOo simply stopped working with my NFS shares. I don't recall the specifics (& I'm not going to waste the time searching now so I can link it, but it had something to do with file locking), but whenever I tried to load or save a file to the NFS share I got an error to the effect that it was read-only (Word, Kword, Abiword, etc., had no problem). I Googled it, and wasn't the only one that had the problem; I tried some of the kludgy work-arounds that were suggested, but the only one that worked at all only works about 1/2 the time and the rest of the time crashes the program.
Since then, I've been searching for a replacement word processor (even though I use Word, I don't like it even aside from the cost/MS issues). Recently I have settled for Kword as the least of all evils, but I will be willing to shell out money to Softmaker if the product is as polished as it seems. Based on the trial download, it doesn't seem to write to .odt format, but it does open it flawlessly. Unfortunately, the trial version is crippled so that you can't save to .doc format . . . for a product that is meant to be a Word replacement, it is unspeakably retarded not to let people kick the tires on its Word compatibility.
Re:how much better than OpenOffice? (Score:5, Insightful)
If exact formatting is crucial, why on earth are you using Word? It's really not very good at precisely reproducing formatting. It only works reliably if both systems have the same *printer drivers* installed (yeah, wtf?) - the rest of the time, it's pot luck whether things go where you want them, or get moved by half a millimetre, knocking all your carefully arranged lines out of position...
If you want exact reproduction of formatting, use PDF. Or latex.
Re:how much better than OpenOffice? (Score:5, Insightful)
-matthew
Word is the route through these other things. (Score:5, Interesting)
And yes, the book goes into Quark before going to press, but do the authors or editors work in Quark? Do the page designers even work in Quark? No, they all work in Word. It's the lonely guy at the end of the hall doing final layout that dumps everything into the formatter/publisher application just before it goes to press for a full run.
Until that point, all the way through most of writing, editing, and design, everything is in Word. Word gets used much more than I think people in IT realize. Word/Excel/Powerpoint are the bedrock of corporate America. Most small and medium size companies (and a few large ones, too) do all of their publications with Word, all of their PR with PowerPoint, and all of their databases as Excel sheets. That's just the way it is, like it or hate it. That's all people (all the way up through management) know.
Just try to get them to change... Or to let you bring something novel to the table. You'll be shown the door.
Re:Word is the route through these other things. (Score:5, Informative)
The original source can come from anything from a text file to a Word document. Most often, it's Word. You're right there. However, the writers aren't concerned with that too much, they use what they are comfortable with. They use a Word processor to.. process words.
The book goes into Quark BEFORE going to press? If by every step afterward you mean it goes into Quark, then yes, you'd be correct. There are several hundred thousand dollar solutions dedicated to managing your Quark & InDesign files, and your assets. Check out Xinet and Dalim and Documentum and etc. The authors are out of the chain by this point. The page designers work in the page layout programs. They upload their changes to Xinet, where it is opened by the editor, marked up, changed, and approved or sent back. It's only THEN converted into a print-ready PDF. That lonely guy at the end of the hall you describe is actually 2/3rds of the workflow.
The only people that use Word are the original authors. The page designers wouldn't subject themselves to doing page layout in word. That notion is just preposterous.
I honestly can't say where you got your impressions from, but they seem to be extremely off base. This is coming from someone who went to college for print, has talked to people throughout the print industry, and now works in print.
Open Source Alternative! (Score:4, Informative)
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There's a reason Desktop Publising is usually abbreviated DTP.
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Re:how much better than OpenOffice? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:how much better than OpenOffice? (Score:4, Interesting)
Font versions is the reason you always go to PDF before publication and embed the fonts you are using.
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If you want exact reproduction of formatting, use PDF.
Funny thing. I emailled a PDF of a draft of a paper to my supervisor last week. When he printed it, the first half was fine, but the second half had all the text replaced with windings; well not quite all, there was the occasional line in the correct font. It turns out there's a bug in the laser printer's PostScript interpreter that causes it to select the wrong font sometimes after printing an image (some kind of out of memory issue, perhaps).
It printed fine the second time, but the results of the f
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THe suite works quite well on Linux. Give the trial version a spin. I still use OpenOffice from time to time, but the import/export in the new versions of Text/Planmaker appears to be as good as OO.
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Re:how much better than OpenOffice? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:how much better than OpenOffice? (Score:5, Informative)
pros:
cons:
So I'm not really clear on what the advantage is vis a vis OOo.
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Are you serious? I felt like you were spitting on my face screaming at me
Re:how much better than OpenOffice? (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting.
This is precisely the reverse of my experience.
When I'm working on large, complex documents (100+ pages, lots of headings, lists, tables), I'm constantly terrified that Word is going to crash on me and destroy my work. I save frequently, and make backups every few hours.
That's *why* whenever I possibly can I don't use Word. OpenOffice is so much more reliable, there's just no comparison, and it has been for the last three or so years. Especially when documents get big. Lately I'm leaning toward using LyX/LaTeX, which I think is an even better option for large, highly structured documents that need to be consistent and nice-looking. But I have a lot to learn before I can do that. LaTeX documents look so much prettier and more professional than any word processor output I've seen that I think it's worth the effort.
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That's why I said I avoid Word whenever I can. It's when I have to collaborate with others who use Word that I can't avoid it.
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I could say the same for Acrobat, though. I guess great software is hard to find
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I wouldent recomend any Tex based system tho, not without a painless GUI
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It is heavily dependant on external converters and if the team decides to change these for licensing or other reasons half of the features break right away. For example when moving from latex2html to hevea half of the image/url related features were lost and I had to go around and fix the damn C++ source to get them working again (debian bugs 344677). 114990 is another example.
In addition to that the people who use it are highly technical which means that UI rough edge
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Re:how much better than OpenOffice? (Score:4, Informative)
What was the ISO-number of that standard again? Oh wait, it doesn't have one. Unlike some others [iso.org].
Which format did you say was industry standard?
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He said "industry"; you're talking about "international".
Office certainly is a de-facto industry standard.
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But apart from that, I have no idea who EMCA is/are (I doubt it's a new electronic version of that Beastie Boys member), and why on earth they're not coordinating with the much more de facto, as it were, ISO body. Meh.
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Re:how much better than OpenOffice? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, for large documents I don't know if I would trust OO.org either; I did my PhD thesis in LaTeX.
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Oh, by the way, than you for your wise advice on 200-plus documents being a complete impossibility on MS Word. I'll remember that, next time I read a PhD theses.
I am just finishing writing a PhD thesis, and starting writing a book (due for publication in the middle of next year), and I can't imagine doing either of these in Word. Even discounting the bugs, a lot of things are very difficult in Word that are trivial in LaTeX:
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Is there a space in the market ? (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I know, there are only 2 forces in the world; 'love' and 'money'
OpenOffice.org has a monopoly in the 'distributed for love' channel.
Microsoft Office has a monopoly in the 'distributed for money' channel.
Who will buy Softmaker Office, and why ?
Support (Score:2)
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-matthew
Re:Is there a space in the market ? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know how much room there is, but I can tell you why I use TextMaker:
Because I never liked MS Word which is terribly complicated and unpractical, and it is also very expensive.
Because OpenOffice Writer is an abomination of an awkward and slow as molasses would-be clone of that MS Word which I don't like.
(Yes, I guess this will modded flamebait, but I really hated OpenOffice every time I thought I would give it another chance)
TextMaker brought some fresh air into my (simple) word processing needs: it is extremely fast, it has all the features I need, and the ones I use (styles and occasional frames) are much more practical than in Word. Styles are accessible from the right-click menu, frames seemed much easier to work with than when I had to use them in Word, etc.
The only thing I don't like in TextMaker is it's proprietary default document format. I wish they would switch to ODF. (But maybe ODF is also an abomination like the OOo programs? I wouldn't know but I certainly hope not. We need an open document format)
(I bought the Windows version. Haven't tried the Linux version yet.)
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(Yes, I guess this will modded flamebait, but I really hated OpenOffice every time I thought I would give it another chance)"
I agree with that. Writer never seems to do what I tell it to do (or want it to do). Page designs frequently mess up and it's just not intuitive for me, however much I want to like it. I use AbiWord instead. Or notepad.
There are SEVEN forces in the world (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft office isn't distributed for money, it's distributed because of greed.
OpenOffice isn't distribuited for love, it's distributed because of pride.
As for this new contender? I'd go with envy.
(No, I'm not a crazy religious zealot freak or anything. I honestly beleive this explains a lot about software development. For instance, Facebook and Myspace exist because of lust. As JWZ on
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And you're not religious?
Please, inform us.
I thought (Score:2)
Or as I like to call them, "Ingredients to a successful office party"
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Your office parties sound interesting, but how do you work Wrath into them?
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Think of the children!
Re:Is there a space in the market ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Word processing software is a multibillion dollar market. Most multibillion dollar markets have dozens or hundreds of competitors. Why would you think that the limit on the number of vendors for this market is just two?
more competition (Score:3, Insightful)
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a successful "office suite" is shaped by how you define "office work."
and by what is convenient and practical to deploy.
the geek who complains about bloat doesn't have to find a single solution that works for the road warrior, the loading dock and the executive suite.
in this context, "unique and more effective" are not particularly easy goals to achieve.
the second pr
Wrong office suite comparison (Score:2)
European Price (Score:3, Interesting)
I suppose the product may be fine, but from a German company I wouldn't expect these kind of things.
Try that with any other software product... (Score:4, Interesting)
"Find what?", you may ask. The answer: That for the European price, the company simply takes the U.S. price and replaces the $ with a , and call it a day.
For example, I recently purchased Paint Shop Pro for an aunt.
U.S. price: $99.99
Euro price: 99.99
That price in Euros is valued at $129.579 (xe.net, December 18th, 2006). 30% more expensive indeed.
This is for The Netherlands. The Netherlands carries a Sales VAT of 19% on such goods. In other words, 11% is pure profit*
Add to that that in the U.S. there's a discount on the product to $79.99, and it's a 62% markup, so 43% pure profit*.
* One may argue that shipping costs (as in, from Country X exported to The Netherlands, as opposed to the U.S.) drive up the price. Not true, this is for the electronic download version (not that the boxed version is more expensive, by the way). One may argue that translation costs drive up the price - also not true, as both the U.S. and Dutch-bought versions ship with all languages.
So naturally, I purchased through the U.S. store.
You'll find that it is much the same for any software product, and Europeans are, sadly, used to it. If you happen to know any Dutch, go check the news posts over at www.tweakers.net on newly announced products. Whenever somebody wonders what the price in Euros will be, the standard reply - which tends to work out as being correct - is that if the product costs $100 in the U.S., it will cost 100 in Europe.
That's probably a bit of a self-perpetuating issue there. Why would a publisher be so silly as to charge less when they can obviously charge more with the consumer half-cursing the practice while at the same time making the purchase anyway?
So I wouldn't say that I wouldn't expect it from a German company; in fact, I would expect it from -any- company.
=====
You might think that $30 more for PSP isn't so bad - but obviously, it gets worse when the cost of the goods increases, such as the gem that is Autodesk's AutoCAD 2007:
U.S. price: $3,995
NL price: 4,750
NL price in dollars: $6,217.48
Mark-up: 55.63%
'Profit': 36.63% or $2,277.53
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Another that's trying to take us (Europeans) for a ride is Adobe, Distiller is about twice the US price...
Guess were we shop.
I just hate when people sell out (Score:4, Funny)
Is there room for another commercial office suite? (Score:3, Insightful)
I was just about to post a comment that asked, "Is there room for another commercial office suite, especially for Linux and BSD?"
After looking at the screenshots (very impressive!) and price (very competitive!), I think the answer just might be yes.
Of course, my meager needs are entirely met by Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets, which runs just fine in Firefox.
Re:Is there room for another commercial office sui (Score:2)
People mention Google docs/spreadsheets if there haven't been minimal (and often free) spreadsheet/word processing apps out for years.
-matthew
Just checked with some of our Microsoft Office doc (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, it's not. It exhibits the same sorts of glitches that OpenOffice does. Which doesn't surprise me given the hoary nasty Microsoft Word file format, but hey, if they're going to claim it, they better back it up.
Unfortunately SoftMaker doesn't support PowerPoint (Score:3, Informative)
The bigger problem for most people is PowerPoint slide decks, especially the ones generated by marketing departments that have sound and animation. This is where the shortcomings of OpenOffice hit me the hardest --- and unfortunately, SoftMaker doesn't have a solution. So is it worth it to pay USD $70 for a Word and Excel replacement which is more complete than what is currently available in the OSS world? Not for me. I'd much rather spend $40 for a copy of Crossover Office from Codeweavers [codeweavers.com] and then get an old copy of Office 97 or Office 2000 that I have lying around (or which you can no doubt buy on Ebay for a relatively small change).
Re:Unfortunately SoftMaker doesn't support PowerPo (Score:2)
If it's anything like SoftMaker, it's going to be pretty decent software.
Fortunately SoftMaker doesn't support PowerPoint (Score:2, Funny)
The bigger problem for most people is PowerPoint slide decks, especially the ones generated by marketing departments that have sound and animation. This is
Re:Unfortunately SoftMaker doesn't support PowerPo (Score:2)
So it was save as
I had lots of probs with Open Office during the early days - formatting just wouldn't stick - reminded me of Lotus Word Pro in the late 90s - slow crappy half baked software. The more recent versions seem to be a lot better. Still slow, but less crappy.
Decent charting! (Score:3, Informative)
Planner (spreadsheet program) can actually do excel style charting (read: crappy but easy for routine tasks) with half-decent trendlines and the ability to show the forula on the chart.
This basic functionality has been on my openoffice wishlist for years, I've filed requests for it with OO.o but got nothing. I've even tried to implement it myself but OO's code is kinda scary. Since then I started using gnuplot for plotting, but for basic stuff its kind of overkill.
Low system requirements good for older machines (Score:2, Interesting)
OpenOffice.org is great for modern computers, but those of us who like to extend the useful life spans of our older machines could be attracted by these very modest system requirements, and willing to spend a reasonable amount to buy the software.
Assuming the software doesn't slow to a crawl on a system with those m
That's the beauty of Qt. (Score:2, Interesting)
While it is completely unlikely at this point, were OpenOffice.org to be rebuilt around Qt, it would be far faster and less bloated than it is tod
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Given what the software costs I can upgrade or replace my older machine.
The holidays are here, and afterwards there will be even more free and cheap computers available that will run fine with a fresh 'nix install.
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Several years ago, I used the Textmaker wordprocessor and the Planmaker spreadsheet on my old 266 MHz Pentium II. They are both now part of SoftMaker Office. The computer could dual-boot between Windows and Linux, so I used a version of Textmaker and Planmaker in each OS. Textmaker and Planmaker would start up in about a second or two, while OpenOffice would take about 40 seconds. Other Linux wordprocessors such as Abiword, Gnumeric and KOffice also opened up quickly on that computer. I also used the
As a Linux user, I'm just not sold... (Score:3, Insightful)
I bought ApplixWare. I bought WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux. Both became orphanware. OpenOffice, meanwhile, continues to hum along and is not only compatible with new versions of Linux every time I install one, but actually comes as a part of each Linux OS I've installed for years now.
OpenOffice imports word formats with a reasonable degree of accuracy and I can still open and use files all the way back to when it was StarOffice 3.0. My Applix and WordPerfectOffice 2000 files, on the other hand, are not so easy to get back into.
Plus, I now have Office XP anytime I need it running through Crossover, though I prefer OpenOffice in most cases. There's just no reason for me to buy this stuff. I wish them luck in a pretty much taken care of market. It's like trying to sell a web browser for $69 at this point, I think.
"Like Office but cheaper" not a good business plan (Score:2)
As a teenager I remember looking at the price of Microsoft Office and thinking that I could code an office
Re:"Like Office but cheaper" not a good business p (Score:2)
It's really like that for any business. You ever wonder why the "business" or "commercial" version of anything is almost always better than the "consumer" version (if there is a counterpart)? It's not about money. I know that most non-business people think that every business is Wal-Mart or Microsoft and can afford to waste money. But even so, that's not it.
I own my own business. It's the source of income for myself, and for 6 other peop
Use PDF (Score:3, Insightful)
why give a fuck about office compatability? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:why give a fuck about office compatability? (Score:4, Interesting)
Being compatible with MS Office does *not* mean that you're defaulting to its file format. It means that you have the option of reading documents that people send you in
What you're proposing will marginalize yourself, and that's exactly what the FOSS movement does *not* need.
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Re:why give a fuck about office compatability? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a great strategy to make sure that Linux and OSS are a miserable failure with the 99% of the population that doesn't care about the Stallman stuff. People have huge quantities of documents already in Word format. If there's never any reliable way of translating them into an open format, then those people will never switch to an open format.
the whole point is to force office out
So you want to annihilate office, and then built an open-source utopia out of the ashes? Doesn't seem too practical to me. Maybe a better option would be to outcompete office, and let people switch of their own free choice. That's what worked for Firefox, which is basically the only OSS app that many ordinary people use.
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People have huge quantities of documents already in Word format. If there's never any reliable way of translating them into an open format, then those people will never switch to an open format.
Exactly! Like it or not, Office is the 800 pound gorilla, at the moment. It might help people here to remember that at one time, WordPerfect was the 800 pound gorilla. One of the standard features in Word 6 was to not only read and save into the WP format, but you could also enable it to use the WP command se
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We are a business, not cannon fodder for the war on Microsoft.
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I agree. What is the average time-to-live for an MS Office document, anyway? How many 6 month old MSO documents do you have on your computer--or in your office--which you still use AND for which it is important to be formatted exactly as they were originally? I am really guessing, but there cannot be many of them.
As other posters indicated, the only real problem is with Excel. There must be a truckload of very old, yet crucially important spreadsheets in every office. If the competitor does not open them
Personally I've had it with "Softwmaker" (Score:2, Insightful)
(and how they're able to purchase press coverage). With a choice between full
compatibility to Orifice 200x by buying the original or getting a free kick-ass
Office Package that is maybe 80% Microsoft compatible - what niche does that leave
the guy asking money for something that is 80%-90% compatible?
Chokes on big spreadsheets (Score:4, Insightful)
No Linux program I tried could handle this spreadsheet. Gnumeric and OOo both choke on it. If they even load it, they then take several minutes to recalculate it. KSpread doesn't even have all the functions that are in the sheet.
So I was eager to try this new spreadsheet--PlanMaker, they call it. I downloaded it. Installation was really easy (to me, refuting the people who claim that it's too hard for ISVs to release proprietary binaries for Linux.)
Planmaker has now been cranking one of my cores at 100% for about five minutes, just trying to get this worksheet open. Still hasn't opened it. Remember that Excel does this in about five seconds.
If Gnumeric is any indicator, converting from the proprietary Excel file format isn't the problem. Gnumeric performed worse in its native XML format than it did with the Excel format.
Yes, I can already see holier-than-thou geek saying that I shouldn't have a 17.5MB spreadsheet and, to tell the truth, this sheet is not as efficiently written as it could be. But part of the value of spreadsheets is that they allow non-geeks to put some simple data models together. Spreadsheets need to be able to cope with inefficiently written sheets.
Excel can cope; nothing else can. Maybe Crossover is the next option to try.
Planmaker *still* hasn't opened the sheet.
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No OS X version? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bah, if they're aiming for "Microsoft Office compatibility", that means more Microsoft-formatted documents, not less. Vote with your usage, stick with OpenOffice and their open formats.
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Seriously?
One of two things happened: either one of the core developers has a Sharp Zaurus, or they see it as a more economically viable platform to develop for than OS X.
Is there a list of compatibility items? (Score:2)
"For BSD" (Score:2)
Ok, back to OpenOffice.org, so...
OpenOffice Is good enough (Score:2)
I bought it, I like it, I recommend it (Score:5, Informative)
Looking over the course of this Slashdot thread I'm not surprised by the now-familiar Microsoft-bashing/LaTeX/Lyx recommendation/OO.o zealotry/refusal to pay Softmaker's price. But I have been reading Slashdot now long enough to know the words to this particular song.
I bought Textmaker back in 2003 and liked it so much I also bought Planmaker, their spreadsheet (now sold together). But because I'm a (professional [gotonicaragua.com] and prolific [therandymon.com] writer, I care a lot about my tools, and I've tried just about all of the products out there; plus, because I use Windows at work and both Linux and Macs at home, I've been exposed to a lot of word processors.
On Linux, I use Textmaker. Here's why.
Stable. I've never crashed it, even with ridiculously complicated documents
Fast. I like OO.o but on my old 555Mhz PIII it's unbearably slow to start up, and on my Mac, NeoOffice is just not fast enough, and even repainting the screen after a window stretch/shrink is ghastly. I appreciate the effort and even use the software, but it's not the first thing I reach for. On Textmaker menus are snappy, the graphics are fast, and things work as though it had been designed and built by professionals that want to make a product good enough to convince people to spend money on it.
Easy to use. That means keyboard shortcuts for everything, sensibly laid out, familiar interface, professional.
Lightweight. It's been designed to be resource friendly and is, even on my outdated hardware.
Fast enough to be a useful document previewer for your mail client so you can get a glimpse of what's in the Word docs I receive.
Basically, it's fast, reliable, and works well. Its Word doc import is much better quality than OO.o's. I gave Abiword a try but rejected it because of frequent crashes and a somewhat amateurish feel to it; Kword has never been usable for more than simple letters in my opinion and the font kerning issues make Kword printed documents ugly. OO.o is simply too slow in spite of all its other endearing qualities.
Textmaker's downside? The TML format is a mystery to me, so I don't use it. You can save to Doc format as a default, but I hate Docs. I would be thrilled if they would adopt the ODT format. It's also not as feature rich as OO.o, which is in turn not as feature rich as Word. On the Mac there are far better alternatives (I happen to love Mellel, and Apple's Pages is top-notch). And I use LaTeX for what it does best, and RTF or even plain text all other times.
But face it, GNU/Linux (and BSD more so) lacks a small, fast, good word processor. Abiword and Kword are fast but not good, and OO.o is good but not fast. For professional writers that care about their work and their tools, this is a great piece of software and I'm not alone in representing a market of GNU/Linux OSF fans that believes in freedom but is not against paying for software (SUSE, Rekall, Textmaker, Planmaker, Xandros, NoMachines) if with that software comes additional quality, reliability, or convenience. Textmaker provides all three.
Finally, the above doesn't even take into consideration the fact that its primary market isn't Linux/BSD in the first place, it's Windows users that synch docs to a PocketPC. And in that niche, it is unsurpassed and very critically acclaimed. Be glad they even make a Linux version at all, whiney slashdotters.
whiney OO zealotry .. (Score:2)
I hadn't realized recomending OO was a) a sign of zealotry, b) anti-microsoft and c) a sign of being stingy. Also this is the first example I've seen on slashdot of a blanket comdemnation of the whole thread. What I have seen in the rest o
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I just tried the demo, and it has no way to change the color scheme, which is black on white. Why does all the software these days switch to these totally uncustomizable browser-like color schemes? Don't they realize that those white backgrounds are REALLY painful on the eyes?
I'd like to know how you deal with reading Slashdot? Do you use custom CSS?
I also happen to hate the black-on-white color scheme, which I think derives from paper documents rather than browsers. For word processing it kind of makes sense to emulate ink and paper look; if you're not planning to print the document, there are surely better ways to write it.
Unfortunately, too many people seem to regard computers as fancy typewriters, so they insist on black-on-white even for websites that are rarely pr
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If you're looking at a black background, the iris will open up a little because you're getting less light. When you try to spot, say, white text on a black background, there's a perceptible glare. At lower resolutions, it's not really that significant. But
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There, fixed a typo for you.
There are a lot of good KDE/QT-styles out there. Once I showed my wife, she instantly changed everything on her desktop into something *I* find hideous. She is perfectly happy with it.
There is no way to say that a toolkit is ugly, it's the themes that use the toolkit that are ugly.
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Unless you're confusing "capitalized" with "bold"?!
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My apologies to anyone who reply to me before myself, I'm being blocked by Slashdot's lame "slow down cowboy" delay...
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(you have to have seen scooby doo: the movie to get that one)