Re: Kwork/Koffice
On Wednesday 24 October 2001 17:04, Daniel Robert Franklin wrote:
> > This question may offend some, but I just have to ask it.
> >
> > Background:
> > While advocating the virtues of Linux to my wife, I convinced her to
> > start her term paper on AbiWord (about 2 years ago). By the third page
> > of her paper, everything crashed in AbiWord and it was simply incapable
> > of typing more than 2-3 characters without some serious display problems.
>
> Hardly surprising - 2 years ago AbiWord was pretty immature. It's a lot
> better now...
>
> > I'm looking for experiences with Kword and it's ability to perform on
> > large papers. Feature-wise, I have never managed to migrate past what
> > Word 4.0 offered, so I'm not looking for much. Actually nothing more
> > than what HTML offers would be fine as far as page layout.
> > What's really important is the integrity and stability of the
> > application and it's ability to handle large documents.
> > Also -- Spelling? Is it reasonably mature? I heard some bad things
> > about Star Office so I won't introduce her to that one.
>
> My experience of KOffice is that it's not too bad - KPresenter in
> particular is excellent - but StarOffice is significantly better for word
> processing. I have not managed to get StarOffice 6.0-beta or OpenOffice
> working under Debian (segfaults during the install) but 5.2 works quite
> well. It's ugly but at least it seems to by WYSIWYG. Current AbiWord is
> probably also a better bet than KWord. KWord doesn't seem to be WYSIWYG yet
> (which apparently is a feature of Office that users like). I believe this
> is an objective for the next release of KOffice.
>
> I find all the current Office-type offerings grossly inadequate compared to
> LaTeX, but I'm guessing that this would not be a viable option for you :)
>
> - Daniel
Greetings Tom:
I feel helpless to fend off the urge to ignore this request. I just happened
to of discovered Abiword for Woody. I really like the feel and the looks, but
it is quite old, compared to Sid's .9x. I would suggest to you to do an
"apt-get install abiword" and see what *you* think as well as your blushing
bride. I didn't like the fact that it didn't want to save as a M$Word ".doc"
format, but I may have simply missed it. It has a great GUI IMO and simply
felt good.
I haven't played with the koffice suit since it's pre-alpha days when Ivan
gave it to us for Potato. I may install it now that I have Woody running.
StarOffice 6.0 really took me by surprise. It's still big, fat and plenty of
fluff, but it is also graphically beautiful and instantly gave me the
impression of "wow, this is really professional!". I don't know if I am ready
to like the license, or not. It is also supporting and pushing for further
support of open format standards with the .XML etc. I feel it both worthy and
a first to go toe-to-toe with M$muck's Word/Excel products. Don't get too
excited about starting it fast. On my 450pIII/384MB, it takes Star 5.2 16
seconds from Icon click to working GUI. It took BTW 6-12 seconds from Icon
click to working GUI with Star Beta6.
Both Star and Abiword function on this Woody box without crashing, even under
extreme duress. I would also hope that both Koffice and Abiword will add full
support for the Star XML format. This would make it very possible to offer
real open standards for all the workerbees who have to exchange documents
from platform to platform.
Go for all of them and enjoy the experience. They all rock, and they are all
growing up so fast.... :)
--
Jaye Inabnit\ARS ke6sls\/A GNU-Debian linux user\/ http://www.qsl.net/ke6sls
If it's stupid, but works, it ain't stupid. I SHOUT JUST FOR FUN.
Free software, in a free world, for a free spirit. Please Support freedom!
Reply to: