StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Head over to http://www.openoffice.org if you want to check it out. I'm running RC3 right now, and it's fast and smooth. It also has built-in PDF output filters, which is very handy.

It should be great for knowledgeable people when they go to final release. Of course, the sheep will continue to use Microsoft Office

Darth Wong wrote:
It should be great for knowledgeable people when they go to final release. Of course, the sheep will continue to use Microsoft Office

I fully intend to persist with using neither.

My concern would be in writing whether the person I send my files to needs Openoffice in order to read them? With Microsoft Word at least you know most people have it and you can base many of your documents off word. Our office had to switch over from Wordperfect to Word because the vast majority of our clients used Word.

Stravo- use save as ms word document. Also the new pdf export thing if they don't have to edit.

I've had the pdf export thing for a while though via kprinter and ghostscript, or the print to file feature.


They put it in the debian archive a while ago, so yesterday's update got me the new version of OO, so no need for another 7-9 hour download.
That is the reason why debian is superior to all other linux distros.

Stravo wrote:My concern would be in writing whether the person I send my files to needs Openoffice in order to read them? With Microsoft Word at least you know most people have it and you can base many of your documents off word. Our office had to switch over from Wordperfect to Word because the vast majority of our clients used Word.

More people can read PDF than Word, and it is guaranteed to look the same on their systems as it does on yours (a Word document will look different if it uses fonts which the other person doesn't have).

Of course, if you want them to edit the document, you can always just export it. MSWord file format compatibility is the hammer used by Microsoft to beat people into submission, which is why the format has grown progressively more complex and difficult to decipher over the years.

There's always RTF as well. I'll see how OO compares to O2K later...

I'd use OpenOffice for my writing if I didn't already have Word Perfect (and a '36 Royal portable, but that format is notoriously incompatable with most people's systems). I'm at the point now that if a document is in any Office fomat, I won't look at it unless it's absolutely critical. God almighty, Word might actually be an okay word processor, but it gobbles system resources like Ed Rendell at a hot-dog eating contest, and it spreads viruses. Just how in the hell do you create a word processor that spreads viruses? It's not by writing competent code, I'll tell you that.

As far as I'm concerned, OpenOffice beats Word hands-down in most categories. Unless your documents are filled with proprietary Microsoft OLE objects, OpenOffice can read them all and export just fine.

And that's earlier versions I'm talking about (1.01-1.03); I am downloading 1.1 right now.

OpenOffice has full read and write compatibility with the Word document format for Word 6.0 through to XP, and StarWriter 3.0-5.0.

Handily, though, the same document saved as a .doc will be about four times the size it is saved as a .sxw

OOo1.1 also has export to PDF.

It's about a quarter the size of Office, available for Windows, Linux, OSX, and others, and, crucially, it's free.

What are you all waiting for?

Vendetta wrote:OpenOffice has full read and write compatibility with the Word document format for Word 6.0 through to XP, and StarWriter 3.0-5.0.

Handily, though, the same document saved as a .doc will be about four times the size it is saved as a .sxw

.sxw documents are XML format, embedded inside a zip file. In other words, they're compressed.

The old StarOffice 5.0 format was an uncompressed binary format like Microsoft Office, and was often larger than MS Office.

Stravo wrote:My concern would be in writing whether the person I send my files to needs Openoffice in order to read them? With Microsoft Word at least you know most people have it and you can base many of your documents off word.

As mentioned earlier, just use the MS Word export filter. Give the exporting a shot, then open it up in MS Word and see how it worked. After a short period of time, you'll probably feel comfortable with the export's reliability. I haven't had any major issues with the exporting as of yet.

Darth Wong wrote:It should be great for knowledgeable people when they go to final release. Of course, the sheep will continue to use Microsoft Office

Don't forget the people with parents that have not learned any other processor other than Word.

I have OO 1.1.

If I uninstall MS Office, will that have adverse effects on Windows XP Pro?

like Ed Rendell at a hot-dog eating contest

Does he plan on taxing us for that, too?



I use either WordPad or Microsoft Works(no bad puns, please). suppose I'll upgrade to OpenOffice

Notepad ownz you all!

I will stick to MS Office.
My experience with OpenOffice (which I was forced to use on a project) was so appaling, that I won't touch it again with a 10'-pole.
Before that, I'll use LaTeX...

Darth Wong wrote:Head over to http://www.openoffice.org if you want to check it out.

Uh, what do you think I'm using now

Is OpenOffice the new name for StarOffice?

I downloaded OpenOffice 1.0.1 months ago when I got my new computer. I like it a lot. I'm definitely downloading this new version.

Iceberg wrote:If I uninstall MS Office, will that have adverse effects on Windows XP Pro?

Unless you're using Outlook, no.

Durran Korr wrote:Is OpenOffice the new name for StarOffice?

OpenOffice is the slimmed-down, open-source version. StarOffice is Sun's commercial version.

How does OO's spreadsheet compare to Excel or its presentation software compare to PowerPoint? I hear a bunch of glowing reviews of its word processor, but what of the rest?

phongn wrote:How does OO's spreadsheet compare to Excel or its presentation software compare to PowerPoint? I hear a bunch of glowing reviews of its word processor, but what of the rest?

The spreadsheet is more or less comparable, but doesn't run VBA scripts and macros.

I haven't tested out the presentation software, but it loaded and ran a PowerPoint presentation I made in June.

Dammit, OO help keeps crashing repeatedly. Anyone else have this problem?

Under Linux, right?

No clue. A lot of things could be causing it.