StarOffice 6.0 Beta Available

Lumpish Scholar and 753 other people wrote in to let us know that Sun has released its beta of Star Office 6. CNET has a blurb about the release as well. I was hoping that Sun's site might be unclogged enough to try it out myself, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards today.

Office XP

Shelled out a myriad of cash for Microsoft's Office XP, a few weeks ago.

Despite how much you might hate the company, this is one hell of a product. Launches in seconds, takes up scant amounts of ram, hasn't crashed yet. It's going to be a tough one to beat... especially since every area where it excels (no pun intended), Staroffice falls behind (what a hog!).

Whatever happened to it having been released open source? Where is GStarOffice with GTK+ widgets and Gnome integration? At least KOffice works well with the rest of the KDE apps...

Re:Office XP

Whatever happened to it having been released open source?

See OpenOffice.org [openoffice.org] for that one.

Re:Office XP

Scant amounts of ram?

Someone mod this +1, Funny, please.

I'm running Office XP right now. Outlook is currently using 23M of RAM. Word is using 28M. (Windows 2000 + Office XP)

Word doesn't even have a file open, not even a blank file.

I don't count that as 'scant amounts'.

And it loads quick because that "Microsoft Office" icon in your startup menu preloads most of the thing during your boot/login process where you think it's normal for your disk to be thrashing itself apart.

Re:Office XP

Please note that Office (any flavor) does not take "scant amounts of ram". Rather, it hides ram used in the system memory used column, and actually preloads many if not most of the Office specific DLL's on boot up, whether you want them or not. The memory that appears to be used by Office, is only the glue code that links the DLL/OLE/NET components together.

The reason that Office appears to launch almost instantanously, is that most of it was already loaded on bootup.

Just a clarification...

jf

Re:Office XP

Tell you what...do what I did a few years ago, when I wanted to know why my nice beefy NT workstation was eating most of my memory, with no services running:

Install NT4. Note the available memory on bootup, before doing anything.

Install Office. Note the available memory after bootup, but before doing anything.

Do the math and wonder why JUST installing Office significantly decreased the available memory on bootup.

Start Office. Wonder why the used memory doesn't increase much at all. Hmmmmm.

A black box approach to be sure, but still very interesting.

jf

mirrors

Uh, anyone have any mirrors or is it Sun or Nothing day?

SO

StarOffice kicks ass apart from some file interoperability problems. But that just might be me. I think I'll wait awhile before I try 6.0.

First Post!

Now that StarOffice is going to be released soon, I feel that we truly have a competitor against MS Office.
I am happy they rid StarOffice of the terrible interface from 5.2 and are focusing on the applications themselves, which all look fantastic!
My only wish is that they would have anti-aliased fonts, and maybe something like FrontPage, but those aren't as important as having a professional office suite on Linux. Now the WAR against Microsoft can be won.

MS support...

from the article: The new version of StarOffice is simplified to make file exchange easier. The software has support for XML file formats; more robust Microsoft Office import and export filters, including support for Office XP; and redesigned dialog boxes, new templates and graphics.


will the "more robust support" actually be decent enough for serious transfers between my Word documents? Also an important feature would be importing WordPerfect8 files. I have 100's of papers written in WP8 and for me to switch over would require filters for that. Anyone know anything about that?

I am going to try it as soon as I see some more information (the website was lacking what I really wanted to know).

I really hope I can ditch WP8 (although it is still the best for what I need) and run something more up-to-date :)

Enjoy the download :)

Simple answer: Simple text!

Seriously, there are few things that annoy me more than receiving a Word document from someone. Rarely, if ever, is there any justification for not simply using a plain old ASCII text file. They are smaller, platform independant and if formatted correctly, no harder to read.

An easy doc - txt filter

Hey, this filter even comes bundled with every Unix distribution! Check it out:

$ strings WordFile.doc > WordFile.txt
$ less WordFile.txt

Re:Simple answer: Simple text!

With all due respect, doesn't it seem a bit odd that a person demanding ASCII format would have a .sig that's an ideogram?

Problems with StarOffice

Well, the problems faced by many is the ability to read/write to Word 2000/XP format. Some companies tried to make the switch but couldn't share documents very well with other departments/companies. Best they did in StarOffice 5 was Word 97. It would be a lot more successful if it could do that. It's not Word or Office by a longshot but is Office really worth $400 when you can get this for nothing? It's still pretty good.

It's a hard battle

The problem with StarOffice is that it hasn't completely worked to import/export word/excel documents. Until that day people will never truly be able to switch to it. I would LOVE the company I work for to switch to this software. But until it's completely MSOffice complient nobody can use it.

And just as it gets good at opening MSOffice 97 docs. They change their document just enough to screw everyone over with the release of Office2000. And just as that starts to work they screw it up enough to not work with XP.

How hard is it REALLY to parse out Word Documents and have it work???? I haven't been involved in the project, but I would really like to hear some feedback to why nobody can open freaking word documents. The TRUTH .. not our typical "MS Just Sucks".

Re:It's a hard battle

How often has it been said that the first MS Office user in an office eventually "forces" the whole office to upgrade, simply by passing around files in the latest default format.

I remember one computer our office got last year, it installed 2000 by default and when I tried to remove it and install a site licensed copy of 97 it installed, but told me I had an invalid license whenever I tried to run any of its programs. I later tried to reinstall with a win98 disk. But I couldn't get the device drivers out of the install disk as it was locked to only be used as a reinstall everything disc from boot. Tried many things, never could get it working perfectly without just letting it be on office 2000. So as our site licenses offered us 2000 Prof for less then 50 dollars a peice I went ahead with the upgrade. I do like office 2000, but still embarrased that I let MS get the best of me :(

Re:It's a hard battle

They change their document just enough to screw everyone over with the release of Office2000. And just as that starts to work they screw it up enough to not work with XP

Would you expect Microsoft to do anything less

How hard is it REALLY to parse out Word Documents and have it work????

Parsing isn't that hard most of the difficulty comes in getting all the different OLE objects embedded in the document to work. Star/Openoffice, Koffice, AbiWord can all format the fonts, layouts, etc, quite well. The problem comes when you have an Excel Spreadsheet embedded in the word document as a table. Then each cell of the excel table is a word document. Then you gotta think about Macros, VB, etc.

Getting these things to work right is hard even for microsoft. Where I work now I have an Access database (I should've demanded they use something else, but they already had it installed everywhere) deployed to over 20 sites. I wrote the database in Access 97, but making it work in Access 2000 can be very tricky. Not only that, but at some places some of the Visual Basic Modules won't work in 97... welcome to my hell...

Anyway the point being, Microsoft has trouble in making THEIR office read previous MS Office files. I can only imagine how difficult it must be for someone who doesn't have the specs to make an app capable of reading them.

Re:a modest proposal

The problem is, if you're trying to move away from needing MS Office because you want to switch platforms or save $$, you can't use Word for translation. ----> Sure you can. Set it up as a server app. "MS Word Translating Server". One Winders box sitting off in the dusty corner. Got a Word file? Just tell your box to blast it over to the translating server, The translating server will send it back to you in a moment and off you go.

Net cost: One Windows computer, one copy of Office-whatever. And a few hours/days of fiddling around with Word macros.

Everyone in your office can be running whatever you want.

My first question

Have they gotten rid of that "integrated desktop"? That was my single biggest grip about previous versions.

Re:My first question

Have they gotten rid of that "integrated desktop"?

Yes. I think that was everyone's single biggest complaint about StarOffice. They have also gotten rid of the "memory hog" problem with 5.2, which was that it loaded all five applications into memory and used up about 64MB of physical RAM whenever you wanted to load it.

Their big new feature is using an open XML format for documents. I also believe they have killed the problem where StarOffice took over all of your email clients, other text editors, etc.

I think this version of StarOffice is honestly the first one that will be a real competitor to MS Office, but I think it will really only be used by small businesses and individuals. Large corporations are already dependent on Outlook/Exchange/macros to do their work, and I don't see any large corporations switching off of those anytime soon (especially since there is no real groupware solution that Sun offers that compares with Exchange.)

Still not up to par...

...but it may be my fault.

Granted I'm talking about the previous release, but my fonts all still looked like crap (blocky and hard to read) and the text area just wasn't as smooth as Office.

I kinda wish everyone would stop trying to make Unix a desktop machine when windows and mac do it so much better already. That's the one thing they do very well. There's nothing wrong with having unix servers and win/mac clients.

I have yet to see an OS do both (server and client) very well. Maybe it has something to do with the basic design concepts?

Cool!

They lost the desktop, added better font handling, and do XML... this is great.

One thing I couldn't see -- and I can't get at the downloads to check -- is to see if their Presentation software, Impress, can play movies in slides now. This is actually a big thing; in the hard sciences, where a lot of people use non-Windows and give presentations, one of the major problems for people who want to switch to Linux is that if you have results you want to show in movie form, you're pretty much stuck with using PowerPoint, or exiting your presentation and starting up xanim or something...

Staroffice

To all those who say 'Staroffice isn't 100% compatable, so we can't switch our office'. Well.. I understand the logistics and all.. but.

To switch to staroffice, you have to instruct your staff to learn to use it, and adapt the workflow to staroffice, not the other way around. The same goes for switching to any product.

The financial benefits of using staroffice in many cases outweigh the use of OFficeXP

Unix Screenshots?

All of the screenshots on the Sun site are of the Windows version. What does it look like under X Windows?

Re:Unix Screenshots?

Doesn't fit in with the "native" feel at all, but is fast and easy to use, because the UI fits the application, rather than having the application shoehorned into some ill-fitting paradigm.
>>>>>>>>>
Intellectual types are so into paradigms its funny. Here are some facts from reality:

1) Developers are lazy. If not forced to standardize UIs, they'll simply make crappy UIs that look different. At least by standardizing the look, you get crappy UIs that look the same.

2) Developers are lazy. If they have some UI guidelines in front of them, then they might be coaxed into using them, and maybe have the hope of making a good UI. If they have no guidelines, they'll not bother to come up with their own, they'll just make a crappy UI. If you don't believe me, take a look at Mac-Land. Most Mac apps look and behave similarly, but the Mac is the home of such great UIs as Adobe's.

3) Developers are lazy. If they are given the freedom to do whatever they want with the UI, they'll go through the path of least resistance, or of personal preferences.

No, I do not mean to *all* characterize developers as lazy (just most). Some of them do work quite hard to come up with good user interfaces and applications by these developers stand out, even when those apps look exactly like all the other apps on the desktop. The fundemental error that most of the "developer UI freedom" people make is that the *look* of the UI has very little to do with its efficiency/ease of use. There are many UIs on Windows (3D Studio MAX, for example, or Maya) that look like standard Windows apps, but have incredible workflow. Take StarOffice or Mozilla, for an opposing example. There is nothing special in their UIs that makes them more functional than Word or IE. They simply *look* different.

Huge Improvement

When I first tried StarOffice my intent was to use it for a week to see if it was a viable alternative to MS Office. I didn't make it through the day. Kudos to Sun for finally taking the hint and creating a product that any Office user can use with little to no relearning curve. With Microsoft's new subscription licensing program, this couldn't have come at a better time. Hopefully 6.0 will prove to be a competitive product.

Mirror up

Here it is:
Star office 6.0 beta, linux x86, english [pioneeris.net]

Sigh

Any idea of we'll be seeing a compatible implementation of something that can do everything Outlook can do (including connecting to an Exchange server)? I don't mean just email, but I mean Calendar, Tasks, Contacts booking meetings etc.

As soon as I can get something that would replace this one last piece, then I can switch away from Windows in my company (as I have at home). Unfortunately, the company relies very much on Outlook's functionality, and will not move away from Exchange server, so if I want to move it's up to me to find and install a compatible alternative, but so compatible that the REST of the users can stay on Outlook if they choose to.

In my opinion, this is one thing that any true Office suite needs before MS-Office can be truly replaced. As buggy and insecure as Outlook is, it organizes the company that I work for, and it can not be removed from my desktop until a fully compatible replacement is available. It's the one last thing that ties me to Windows.

Re:Sigh

Try Insight from bynari [bynari.net][bynari.net]. They make both a client (Insight) and a server (Insight Server). The client can talk to an Exchange server, and includes calendar, addressbook, and email, just like outlook, but on Linux. The server is feature-compatible with Exchange, and is built on exim, openldap, and cyrus IMAP/POP. Outlook clients can talk to the Insight server just fine, even transparently. I am demoing it right now, and it might just replace Exchange here, and allow me to run Linux exclusively.

Yes, it's called Ximian Evolution

Ximian [ximian.com] is coming out with Evolution [ximian.com], which is essentially an open source Outlook replacement. It's still in beta but should be reaching 1.0 before the end of the year (I think).

So far, Evolution's main shortcoming is it doesn't understand Exchange protocols, so Linux clients can't use it to talk to Exchange for shared calendaring. I realize that is one of the main points you need. I believe it is a fatal flaw for evolution, but Ximian apparently doesn't think it's such a big deal, saying that such support will come "eventually, but not high priority". Nonetheless, it can do IMAP, POP, LDAP, and a bunch of other open protocols.

Re:Sigh

Any idea of we'll be seeing a compatible implementation of something that can do everything Outlook can do (including connecting to an Exchange server)?

At the other end of the problem, the free software community is in dire need of a Samba-like clone of Exchange's MAPI abilities.

Right now, Linux still makes a better server than it does a desktop. I've replaced NT file/print servers with Samba+Linux; I've used PostgreSQL+Linux instead of MS SQL Server; but there is no way to replace an NT Exchange server with anything and still take advantage of Outlook's sweet MAPI groupware functionality.

I just don't understand why there isn't a free software Exchange clone out there. I'll tell you what - Exchange aint cheap; if a stable replacement existed for *nix, it would be one less reason for anyone to run NT Server.

Unfortunately, I'm not smart enough to do it.

How's the Word format support?

I noticed in SO v5.2, some of my fonts, spaces, and tabs are not correctly formatted (like my resume). Is this still the same issue with v6.0 beta?

Thank you in advance for a reply. :)

Is the schedule gone?

Have they removed the scheduler/calendar option? I don't see it in the list of features. The only reason my office went through the trouble of switching to Star Office was that they supported all the office software including, especially, calendars and scheduling.

Real interoperability with Office? Schweet.

The feature-touting list is actually pretty strong for this version. I used StarOffice briefly back in its 5.1 days, and while I found it to be a capable word processor, its Microsoft Office support was sorely lacking.

Now, not only does it contain the basic file filters, but it sensibly starts utilizing things like the default Outlook address book. Will all of this stuff work? It's questionable. But one of my best arguments for the Mac was "and this program can read Word files". Now, hopefully, I can say the same thing for Linux.

Limerick

Once a man up in Washington state
His competitors, how he did hate
A new Office contender
Useless it was rendered
"Change Word formats, make it obsolete!"

Mirrors and Such

For those of us that remember how to use ftp [openoffice.org]. instructions are on the sites on how to download. Have Fun

Openoffice vs Staroffice

What is exactly the difference (technically speaking) between staroffice and openoffice. Are there real differences or is staroffice iddentical to openoffice with some commercial features (like netscape mozilla) ?

$479 for Office XP!?!?!

$479 for Office XP!?!?! remember that's in US dollars well. the price is just insane. it's funny that a company that produces unstable bloatware 'suites' think that they are just as good as the hardware designers. because it looks like it's even more expensive than a bloody computer processor!

each year they add a few clicks here, move the menus around, change the file format a bit so no one could parse it properly and then they would sell it for sky high. well if they quality of the software justifies the cost, that's fine. but obviously but unfortunately it's not the case. now that's the cost for one person if he/she wants to buy it. if he makes (let's say) $30 an hour. it would take him 16 hours = 2 days of salary just to be wasted on this.... minus tax, minus food/shelter/money to be spent on car/insurances... that's about 3-4 days of salary just to get something like that...oh man....!

now imagine the whole company wanting to upgrade for whatever reason (yes.. it's true... just look around the labs in your college/university campus. they ALL want to spend so much money for the upgrade for whatever reason...)...

BUT afterall, i never bought a copy of office. my windows is a pirated version. so it's still free for me.... unfortunately it takes at least one person to buy it before i can burn myself a CD copy...

hope the new version of staroffice is not as bloat and can actually keep consistant formats so i can write my engeering docs and paper on it day in and day out!

Another blurb

The Register has also noted StarOffice new version here [theregister.co.uk].

They also go on to say that they find Abiword the best of the free Office suite pack.

As a Star Office 5.2 user...

Just last week, I reinstalled to put RedHat 7.1 on a new hard drive. On the old install, I had Star Office 5.2, mostly for the kids to do homework, but have thrown away the download file.

So now to get access to their old data, I have to re-fetch *something*, either 5.2 or the 6.0 beta. Most people will not be in this precise situation, but I'm sure many will want to know about the interoperability and quality of the beta.

So before I get started on either/any big download, should I just skip 5.2 and go for 6.0?

Microsoft will not allow perfect importing

If there is one thing we know, M$ thrives on subtle incompatibility, even within their own product lines. It is these incompatibilities that drive the upgrade process and allow them to retain market share. It is the subtleness of these incompatibilities that allow the claim of fair competition even if they are purposefully sabotaging other people's products.

For instance, if I give someone a M$ Word document created on the Macintosh, the opening of that document will sometimes crash a windows machine. There is no reason for this as I am simply transferring a document from MS Word to MS Word. I suppose that such problems are tolerated because it limit the appeal of MacOS machines, and may indicate that I need to upgrade to the latest Office.

So, naive folks, do not wait for the day when MS Office documents will seamlessly integrate with Star Office. And do not blame Star Office for the problems. History provides nearly 20 years of evidence, all the way back to incomplete specifications for system calls in DOS, that M$ will do whatever it can to insure that integration does not occur.

MSOffice & XML

Here's Microsoft's Plans for XML. I think it's very interesting how they word things:

http://www.microsoft.com/Office/developer/platform /xmloffice.htm [microsoft.com]

Because of the many benefits associated with the use of XML, customers have demanded easy, robust support for XML, and Microsoft has answered them. Currently, Microsoft is concentrating on Microsoft Access and Excel--the applications in which XML can have the biggest impact.

Access and EXCEL? They just want to keep Word as proprietary as possible. Word is the one people can't get in or out of. Of course they don't want to focus on XML for Word. Jeash .. People have been able to export Access & Excel documents to tab deliminated files for years now. Thats why they're not worried about XLM for those apps. People can already do whatever they want to spreadsheet files, etc.. Customers need to be more pissed off at Microsoft so they force Word to use XML.

New functionality

Will 6 have grammerchecking? This is the only beef I ever had with SO. Well, that and I never really enjoyed waiting for the SO desktop to load just so I could start working on one of my documents. Other than that, I love StarOffice.

WOW

Their new file format ROCKS :)

Basicly its a pkzip encoded directory tree with a pictures folder, XML metadata and content, really looks nice !

When will it run on OS X?

When will "the other 7%" get to run this? Sad that M$ will beat them there.

almost there...

It's nice to see some reasonable competition for MS Office. I alternate between Office2K and Openoffice (633) with reasonable success, but there are a few things left to complete the puzzle:

1. Where's the Mac OSX version? OS10.1 is getting great reviews, but this is even more critical from a general marketing standpoint than from a Mac-head view. Why? Cross-platform compatibility is a great marketing lever, not because of a possible massive platform shift (unlikely) but because of uncertainty about platforms and compatiblity over the long term. (See #4 below.)

2. Some major features are not quite there: imho outlining is the biggest hole; people who write large documents or like structure really need it. Instead of just copying the MS interface, perhaps the existing SO/Navigator tool could be extended to provide a killer structure interface similar to Framemaker+SGML. That would be pretty compelling. Likewise, a quickstart feature (as just implemented in Mozilla) would help to silence the yelps about quick startup ( after long preload) of MS Office XP.

3. Sun/OpenOffice needs migration documentation & tools. For example, it would be nice to have a short whitepaper from Sun that describes (or better yet, provides a one-click tool) that reconfigures MS Office to save in known cross-compatible formats. Word files should be saved in RTF or a reasonably-documented .DOC/95/97 format. Picking XLS/97 wouldn't be that difficult, but it's important to nail down the multitude of inconsistent PPT formats in a way that retains all content.

4. Marketing!! Star/OpenOffice has such potential, and if handled properly, can deliver a very compelling message. I'm no marketing guru, but imagine turning some heads with these advert leaders:

• "StarOffice: Full-featured software for free. You pay for the support you use. You control when and how you upgrade. Isn't that how it should be?"
• "The software license for Microsoft Office XP says you're prohibited from figuring out the .DOC format your own documents are stored in. Do you think you should pay a license for your own data? Try StarOffice - open formats, full compatibility, and lower costs."
• "StarOffice is compatible with 99.xxx% of all systems worldwide. Freedom to choose."
• "StarOffice is available on every major operating system in your company, from the systems guru to the graphics geek, and the secretary to the CEO. Shouldn't your company communicate like this?"
• "The arrival of MS Office XP forces you to pay more for your licenses, and forces company-wide upgrades by introducing yet another data format. StarOffice reduces TCO by allowing you the flexibility of running any desktop OS you choose (even the free ones), and doesn't commit you to costly upgrades in the future."
• "Running Office XP? That's great, as long as renew your licenses to the new, more expensive program, can support the increased hardware requirements, upgrade everyone in your organization at the same time, or are willing to take the productivity hit by introducing yet another document format. Oh, and you can't take it back for a refund. Try StarOffice for free."

Jon ([e-mail])

How long before free CD's appear

Oh, don't you just hate it:

* Day 1 - You must register to download product, but server overloaded due to demand and /. effect.

* Day 2 - You must still register to download product, but server takes ages to allow you to download. Give up.

* Day 3 - You've forgotten your password, re-register, to find that server's been misconfigured by some Sun intern SA who doesn't know his apache rewrites from his linux rawrite.

* Day 4 - You get registered, get the software, and find the file got corrupted in the download.

* Day 5 - Internet connection down, so nothing to do but work.

* Day 6 - Internet connection up, remembered password, downloaded product, ran of out of disk space.

* Day 7 - Having mentioned the product was out to your colleagues, a week ago now (without having seen it), you are ridiculed when they realise
you're still using MS-Office on the sly.

* Day 8 - Hurrah! Downloaded, installed and running. Success. Treat yourself to visit a conference that's on in town. Some bloke hands you a "special edition CD", featuring beta of staroffice 6. Go home to weep.

*WHY* is there this damn registration. *WHY* aren't there loads of mirrors (sunsite!!!!). You know they'll be dishing out the damn CD's eventually.

And they say the network is the computer....

and after all that, my downloads working, on day one.

strange things are afoot at the circle-k.

(no, i don't work weekends these days)

Multiuser installation?

Why is it that Star/Open Office wants to be installed on a per user basis, instead of a system wide location where everyone can use it. I've never had any luck getting it to work unless I installed it in my home directory. Does anyone know of a way that I can make it available to everyone?

Re:Multiuser installation?

Do a /net install. Has been that way with SO since version 4.0 on linux (the first I used).

And it is pointed out several times in the detailed installation guide.

Sometimes I think the difference between computer gurus and guys like Lehtyos and other normal computer users is the ability and willingness to read a manual....

Gobe Productive

It may not be open source, it may not have originally come from Linux ... it's Gobe Productive 3.0 and I think it deserves a little advertising here.

Productive 1.0 started as a product of the team who created ClarisWorks (now AppleWorks), but for BeOS. With it's wonderful interface, and the backing of the great but now dwindling BeOS community, Gobe stayed alive and released a 2.0 version a year or two before Be began to go under.

Productive is a great product, and I suggest you all look here [gobe.com] to find a great alternative to Microsoft Office and Sun StarOffice. Now for both Windows, Linux and BeOS.

It's frickin' HUGE!

I downloaded the beta just minutes ago. Here I was expecting the 50-70 MB file as before, but the file is 118+ MB! I haven't installed it yet - I was going to install it on my laptop to replace the EXTREMELY buggy and EXTREMELY slow OpenOffice (OpenOffice is certainly not broken into individual apps, or if it is, then they have done something horribly wrong. It takes WAY longer than standard StarOffice 5.2 to startup and crashes with every blink of an eye). I don't have the room on my laptop for this monster. I will have to transfer it to my desktop system and give it a shot there.

HUGE!

Seems like a nice piece of software

Just installed it and took it for a spin. Don't tell Sun, but I might have even paid for this. I opened a large presentation and only 2 slides were in need of repair. It does do slideshows just like powerpoint, but without the crashing. Word-XP and Excel-XP docs open great, including spreadsheets with calculations. I really like the absence of the "desktop" that dominated 5.2. Now I need to reinstall Mandrake and load this puppy up at home!

They still ALL lack something CRITICAL

STILL it is ONLY Lyx that can handle professional research paper, scientific paper writing. Not a single other suite in existence or planned for linux can do citations or references. None of them even allow for 3rd party apps to deal with this (ala endNote with Word or Wordperfect for Windoze). ONLY Lyx has this capability, only lyx has the pipeline that allows apps like pybliographic or sixpack or kbib (defunct) and a few others to do what EndNote does for windoze users of Office or Wordperfect - add painless citations/attribution to your serious research documents.

All these suites permit are letter writing and other simple crap that doesn't require proper attribution. When will SOMEONE get a clue and actually realize that EVERY highschool kid, EVERY college kid, EVERY scientist MUST cite references in their documents/research papers and that this is NOT a job to be done by hand like the days of the typewriter. Nay, you either HAVE to use Word and EndNote (and the like windoze apps) or Lyx if you use unix/linux. That's it. Sheesh.

staropenoffice

ok so microsoft will not allow compatability, how hard can it be to type information into a different recepticle? If people cannot handle that or hire someone intelligent enough to convert formats then all is lost to the powers that be.

Really Nice Productivity Suite

Most of the threads that've been modded up have been bitching about Star Office not importing/exporting Microsoft Office documents well. How many have really tried this?

I replaced Microsoft Office 2000 (on Win98SE) with Open Office build 638 about two months ago at work. So far, I haven't had one co-worker have a problem with files I've created or edited. I imagine this release of Star Office would be better than Open Office build 638 at this.

Open Office is really a nice productivity suite that's getting stronger. And while it's not at Microsoft Office's level yet, it is doing the job for me at home and at work. It's also Open Source and I really like that.

I don't think it's going to work real well at this time for Joe Administrative Assistant, but the techies here on Slashdot should try replacing their copies of Office with it, and see if any one even notices.

Transition tools that exploit MS Office

It seems to me that one of the big problems with suites competing with MS Office is the problem of importing MS file formats, particually MS Word, in that they are very complex and need to be reverse engineered.

Would it not be more easier and more effective to create a tool for those companies doing the transition from MS Office which exploits MS Office itself? I envisage something like this:

A server-based tool which scans through a company network over night, looking for .doc files. When it finds one, it makes a copy and then automatically opens MS Word and uses an Office VisualBasic macro to parse the document and convert it to the OpenOffice XML format. This copy is then returned to the users hard-disk and the .doc version removed. Users can retrieve the backup version of the original .doc file if they wish.

Of course, there will be instances when this process doesn't completely work, but it should cover 90% of cases. If all old documents in a company are converted like this then it will help everyone to forget about MS products and make the transition go more smoothly.

StarOffice 6

I just downloaded StarOffice 6 from Sun and just wanted to say that so far, I think it's great. At first glance, here's what I like:

• Clean GUI. Sun pulled out the retarded desktop interface.
• The screen fonts look amazing. My documents are very easy to read.
• Launches quickly. I am up ready to start typing in 3 seconds.
• Is significantly cheaper than MSOffice.
• Runs on Linux and Windows.
• XML

The only thing I didn't check was the .doc import feature. Mostly because I don't care. I do wish they would stick a WordPerfect filter in there though.

Star Office really Free like 5.2?

Is the FINAL release of star office 6.0 really free (like 5.2)? I am asking because in this link [sun.com]

Quote "StarOffice software costs about 86% less than Microsoft's office suite, without costly upgrades, and offers twice as many applications . You can find StarOffice software on Amazon's or FatBrain's Web sites; you can buy it at retail computer stores; you can even download it from our download page...."

I do not mind paying, just want a confirmation. Any comments on this?

Put it where the Sun don't shine

Exactly who do I have to fuck and/or kill to get this code bundle?

It's Free Software, dummy!

Register register register register register.

Is there any other information you'd like like cocksize or eyecolor or the number of blades of grass in my lawn?

You can't accept the address I use which is fine for the USPS - why is that?

And then the download doesn't kick off - hangs hangs hangs hangs.

Great PR for the "The Company that runs the Internet" - assholes !

Installation Guide Mirror...

Anyone mirrored the installation pdf? Cheers

Who needs .doc when we have .html?

Nuff sed

BTW... why does /. say "Your comment violated the postercomment compression filter. Comment aborted" when I try to use the bold tag, which is listed under the "Allowed HTML" comment below? HMMM?

Australian Mirror now up

ftp://planetmirror.com/pub/staroffice/6.0beta/ [planetmirror.com]

Currently leeching ...

Document Cruft Remover

I have a novel. I started writing it a couple of years back in Office 98 or 97. It was then imported into office 2000. Then I changed jobs and lost my right-to-use MS office so I imported it into Star Office 5.1. When I save it in the native format of OpenOffice 6.x (the XML based format) when I reopen it I can not scroll to the last page.

I think it has something to do with the page renumbering (makeing the first page of chapter one, which is after the index etc, be "page one"). This guess is likely because there is three pages of preamble and I can only scroll within three pages of the end of the document.

What is one supposed to do with *that* kind of a problem?

Works on FreeBSD

If anyone cares, the linux .bin file installed without a hitch on my FreeBSD 4.4-RELEASE machine (which has linux compatibility enabled).

Re:Double Standards

Personally, (aside from MS's other immoral and unfair practices) I have no problem with MS giving IE away from free ... it's BUNDLING it with the OS. Most people wouldn't take the time to download other browsers because IE's already there.

Re:Double Standards

Personally, I wouldn't even say bundling is the issue with me - for me it is their shoddy business practices (rolls back to 1994 or so):

1. The internet is slowly being brought to the masses. Windows 3.1 exists, but need the WinSock TCP/IP stack to get in the net - fortunately, a free version is available, and is included by ISPs. Mosaic is also included...

2. Netscape builds and releases a much improved "Mosaic", called Navigator. Microsoft yawns, sees it all as a "fad", that the consumer won't embrace.

3. 1995 rolls around, and the consumer is raving mad for the net - Bill looks around and screams WTF!? Netscape is raking in money from sales of Navigator, creates Communicator which adds email, news, and web site creation tools.

4. In a mad dash, Bill throws out Windows 95, which had been worked on for a while, but had no internet capability (AFAIK). Rushes to make a TCP/IP stack (probably bought WinSock, knowing him).

5. Bill then sees that the internet explosion isn't a fad, and that he must "posess" it - rapidly IE is created, and is released for free to the masses.

At this point, things go crazy - because while Netscape isn't free - it is, sorta - but people for some reason are too stupid (or honest?) to figure it out: Netscape is "free" for students - simply check the student box on the download form, and you can download it for free - no authentication or anything required. Still, most people see it as expensive, and the marketing/FUD is done for IE to point out how expensive Netscape was (which it really wasn't that expensive - $70.00 or so for the deluxe version).

6. MS then "bundles" IE with later copies of 95, then fully integrates it into 98 - thus sealing the fate of Netscape, which went on to become a footnote (yes, I know it still exists, etc - but in the whole scheme of things, Netscape is just the tool, and not the company it was any longer).

It is this major undercutting that is a bad business practice - they saw that such software was cheap and easy to make, and thus had no "real" value, unlike an office package. But that doing so would leverage them into a whole new market, a much larger possible market - to market that office software to.

Now, Sun is doing the same thing - who knows if it is for revenge over Java or what - or if _they_ have some ulterior motive (which they probably do), which would allow them to leverage into another market...

Re:Coparison between KOffice?

KWord still butchers MS-Word documents .. staroffice is a little better in the x-compatibility dept (imho) ..

Re:Double Standards

I think part of the problem is that Microsoft's browser was free, but not open. That means that they still control the direction of the browser, and can use that to their advantage to gain market dominance. With SO or OO, you are getting an Open Source product. If you don't like the direction it is headed, you can change it.

Re:Where's the Source?

The source is at OpenOffice. [openoffice.org] StarOffice isn't open source, per se. Sun takes the code from openoffice, adds in fonts and other 3rd party licensed software they pay for, and distributes it for free to eat into Microsoft's market.

www.openoffice.org

The source is there minus small name changes (a la mozilla --> netscape6).

Re:Double Standards

The statements you made about mozilla/staroffice might be true for the older releases.

But have you tried the latest 0.9.4 build of the Mozilla ? It does not crash for me, and works very well.

And for staroffice, even the versions I downloaded from openoffice.org was pretty stable and fast. Much much better than the 5.2 version.

Re:Slashdotted

I think lucky...I've been trying, but keep getting a connection refused when clicking to go to the page that lets me download the file.

Re:Double Standards

Netscape was shareware from the beginning, also Microsoft didn't make a browser, they used Mosaic! In fact, Version 5 still is based on Mosaic, which is one of the many reasons it's slower than netscape. Truth is, Internet Explorer wasn't free first, because it was only for Windows at the time of it's release. For people on Unix, and Mac, Netscape was the first one to be Free.

Second Microsoft did it for selfish reasons... Integrating it into Windows made it obvious they were just doing because they couldn't accept a standard unless they created it. Another reason why Windows is still not the Standard operating system.

openoffice, but which source?

StarOffice6b comes from openoffice.org.

Does anyone have any info on what source they used? Which snapshot (627, 632, 633, 638?), if any, did Sun use?

I've spent the last couple of days trying to build snapshot 638 (it definitely is not a build that you can just kick off). I'd just like to know which is the most recent source.

Re:An MSWord user's first impression.

So spread the word to the people who really need to hear this. Too many people act like they have to learn to type all over again.You sound like this can happen. Go for it!

Rules for Monopolies

This is exactly the point. Simple fact:

It is perfectly legal to have a monopoly. However, once you have one, the rules you have to play by are very different from the rules everyone else has to follow.

In other words, it's perfectly legal to give away a product in order to gain market share. However, once you've created a monopoly, it is no longer legal to give away, or more properly, to bundle that same product for "free" in order to leverage that monopoly into another market area

In other words, YES, there is a double standard, and yes, it still makes sense.

Re:Slashdotted

which cunt slashdotted this? now no mutha fucker can download it!