On Sun, Mar 03, 2002 at 11:22:26AM +0000, Phillip Deackes wrote: > On Sun, 3 Mar 2002 19:39:03 +1100 > Davor Balder <dbalder@ozemail.com.au> wrote: > > > I use AbiWord as well as OpenOffice... OpenOffice is nice too if you > > need plenty of nice features... As far as I am concerned, OpenOffice is > > my favorite for communications with those poor Word users... As a matter > > of fact I was writing all of my resumes with OpenOffice, converted docs > > to Word format and attached the with my job applications when I was > > looking for work... > > > > We've had decent and professional WordProcessing packages for Linux for > > some time now... :-) > > Hi Davor. Thanks for your input. > > OK, I do have StarOffice 6 Beta installed and it is OK, still very large. > I tried OpenOffice yesterday and it wasn't nearly as stable. The first > thing I noticed was that when I clicked on any menu item (like File.. > Edit.. etc.) the drop down menus were not navigable with my mouse - they > simply disappeared as soon as I tried. I could use the arrow keys on my > keyboard but is was awkward. OpenOffice crashed a few times on me too. > What version are you using? I downloaded the 641C version OpenOffice 641C is not a stable release. I think it is StarOffice 6.0 beta, stripped from some database extras. I have also met with the terrible mouse/menu problem, BUT only under twm, not under icewm or KDE. >- but that was > dated March 2001. 641C is from 21 december 2001. > Surely much must have happened in a year. The latest > versions must be wonderful 641C is the latest version. > It just seems that we rarely get a polished product. I use Office 95 at > work, and Word, Excel etc. open in a split second and are very stable. I > also have the Windows version of StarOffice 6 and the startup splash > screen stays on the screen for *ages* before anything happens. > > I am quite happy to pay money for a product. I bought Applix - nice, but > still plenty of bugs/annoying features. As a teacher I do a lot of > DTP-type work (worksheets etc.) and the ability to have pictures/diagrams > in frames which can be moved around is essential. kword from KDE is rather DTP oriented, have you tried it? > A 'Word Art' feature > would also be extremely useful. For those who don't know it, Word Art is > an MS OLE utility which turns text into an image which can be resized, > reshaped, coloured, have borders around the letters etc. very simply > indeed. I know I can use the Gimp, but it takes a lot more work to do > simple things this way. The Star Office version of this is a joke. The > availability of such a utility would be the one feature which would mean I > could be truly rid of MS Windows at home! I have played a bit with abiword, kword, StarOffice 5.2, OpenOffice 641C, Wordperfect 8. They all have some strength, but none can really replace MS Word. Personally I prefer latex with emacs or lyx, but my wife has done some serious typing in StarOffice 5.2 and OpenOffice. I work at a university and I hope to convince the rest of the institution that diskless clients running GNU/Linux is a better choice, but right now that's not realistic: they will all miss MS Word + EndNote too much. A stable release of OpenOffice that could use some wine-ified EndNote, or by other means could offer easy data exchange with bibliography databases, could change that. WP8 is just too ugly IMHO. -- Note that I use Debian version 3.0 Linux emac140 2.4.17 #1 sön feb 10 20:21:22 CET 2002 i686 unknown Hans Ekbrand
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