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StarOffice 8 in July 34
McSpew writes "Sun Microsystems plans to release StarOffice 8 in July. Can this mean that OpenOffice.org 2.0 will be ready in the same timeframe?"
If I have not seen so far it is because I stood in giant's footsteps.
Re:Staroffice and OO.org (Score:4, Informative)
Star Office = Open Office + some proprietary add-ons and a business-friendly support plan
This is why the submitter speculated that this new major StarOffice release would beckon a new major OO.o release. This is probably true, as both of these new versions have been sitting in beta for weeks/months and are certainly ready at this point.
Re:Staroffice and OO.org (Score:2, Informative)
But I guess even misreading an article is more than the Slashdot editors might do. ;-)
Re:So? (Score:2)
I do care, myself. I try to use OO, but the exporting/importing from MS Office in 1.x has some problems.
I'm also primarily a Windows user (learning Linux on the side. I'll switch when I'm ready) and the 2.x betas are not provided as binaries. The sooner 2.x goes official the sooner I get my Windows OO binary, the sooner I can stop using MS Office.
Re:So? (Score:1)
Welcome to 2005 (Score:4, Informative)
Amongst other things, I'm a technical writer, submit all of my OOo writing in MS-Word DOC format, and have never had a glitch as a result. I have also done several PowerPoint presentations on provided equipment, the presentations were of course created in OOImpress (all six of the machines running in this house run Linux), and they have all worked OOtB.
So far the only big disappointment has been OOCalc's importation of Excel macros, which I'm sure you will be delighted to know is on the table for radical improvement as I type. The few documents that don't import perfectly generally feature the same baroque style which causes problems going between versions of MS Office, or (on MS Office, anyway) if you try to print it to a different printer than the original was connected to.
Re:So? (Score:2)
If all people who "try" to switch from windows, would do the same, user helping forums and such would be a lot nicer!
How many people just try to switch out of anger or even good faith, but are disappointed to be on foreign land without a clue as what to do next and then blame the os.
Thank you.
Re:So? (Score:2)
Long story short, I have tried a bunch of unsuccesful knee-jerk switches (I now have Redhat, Fedora 2 & 3, Debian Woody & Sarge, Gentoo, and Ubuntu lying around my desk...) and I have realized that it's not the way to do thin
Re:So? (Score:1)
You might find a better experience with Slackware. The relevant forums, particularly Dropline's [dropline.net] tend to be very civilised and helpful.
The 2.x binaries are available as binaries. (Score:2)
The 2.x binaries are available as binaries. I've been using them on various Windows machines for several months.
http://download.openoffice.org/680/index.html/ [openoffice.org]
They are a great way to port a word doc to PDF or readable-HTML. I can use OOo to fix broken Word Documents when Word itself cannot read the document.
Re:The 2.x binaries are available as binaries. (Score:2, Funny)
Thank you for clarifying that!
Re:The 2.x binaries are available as binaries. (Score:2)
Windows binaries (Score:5, Informative)
You obviously haven't looked very hard, they are all released in binary format on their mirror sites [openoffice.org].
Damien
Re:Windows binaries (Score:2)
Re:Windows binaries (Score:2)
Is it 2.0 for all intents and purposes?
Re:Windows binaries (Score:2, Informative)
1.9 is the name they give to version 2beta
Re:So? (Score:3, Insightful)
I always feel that I need to count to 10 and calm down before refelecting on such statements. The main reasons I would never embrace anything from and related to Microsoft is that today there are very many people that really think that everything out there should be Microsoft-compatible, and _never_ the other way around. No matter if the others have genuine standards compliance, great open formats, etc
Re:Holding back their cards when they've had them. (Score:2)
Are you talking about real-life relationships? like boy-girl relationships? (or g-g or b-b)
Is that how you think relationships are?
Loser.
The significance of StarOffce/OO.org (Score:4, Informative)
Given the expense of MS Office, OO.org and StarOffice offer a _real_ alternative for an insignificant faction of the cost. StarOffice is now integrated at no cost into Solaris 10. OO.org is the de facto office suite on Novell and Red Hat. Millions of people use OO.org. One by one whole companies are switching over.
Everyone should at least try the next major versions of OO.org/StarOffice. I've found that they really are an adequate replacement for Office. I even use StarOffice to make simple web pages, resumes, mailing labels, etc. Odds are, if you haven't tried it, that you could start using it as a drop in replacement for Office right away.
The sore losers in all this, of course, are the people who used Microsoft's proprietary automation system, Visual Basic. You should probably stick with Office, then, because that's what lock-in is all about.
Re:The significance of StarOffce/OO.org (Score:1)
Re:The significance of StarOffce/OO.org (Score:3, Informative)
I installed OOo on my wife's iBook, and the process seemed no different to installing any other piece of software. The only things I don't like about it are that the menubars are a bit dark for my taste (anybody here know how to change that?) and the fact that the launcher insists on firing up an unnecessary xterm window.
It would help, however, if the OS X port was kept a bit more current.
Re:The significance of StarOffce/OO.org (Score:2, Interesting)
check out
i'm not sure if that's what you want, but it looks promising
and i don't know what to do about the too dark
Re:The significance of StarOffce/OO.org (Score:1)
Thanks for that, I'll give it a go next time I get an opportunity. Taking up my wife's time while I make geekish customisations on her machine is bad for marital karma points. :-)
The _Department_ (Score:2)
Interesting... this post is from The Department. Or is that the '' (null) department? The HTML source does have two spaces between "the" and "department", so perhaps that's the case...
Adabase and Base? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Adabase and Base? (Score:1)
Re:Adabase and Base? (Score:2)
Ok, after the rant, I'd also very welcome Base, not for myself, and not for many others, but it would represent a significant point in convincing the great joe6pack masses about the usability of OpenOffice.