Submission + - An unusual campaign: Download our software, and we pay money (loadandhelp.com)
martin-k writes: "SoftMaker runs an unusual campaign this year to promote its office suite for Windows and Linux: Download an unrestricted copy of SoftMaker FreeOffice for free, and we pay money. Not to you, but to charity projects around the world. Each download is worth 10 Euro cents of SoftMaker donations. Not a lot by itself, but if you multiply this with a large group people, it might become a sizeable amount of money that helps needy people. The Load and Help campaign is in full swing, with more than 15,000 downloads already completed."
Submission + - Cassini Discovers First River On Another World (thespacereporter.com)
AbsoluteXyro writes: NASA's Cassini orbiter, which has been dutifully exploring the Saturn system since 2004, has captured images of the first river ever observed on another world — and it's a biggun. 200 miles of flowing hydrocarbons meandering down a valley in the north polar region of Saturn's moon Titan, emptying into the awesomely named Kraken Mare — itself a body of liquid roughly the size of the Mediterranean Sea back on Earth. But don't think of going for an extraterrestrial skinny dip quite yet, temperatures on Titan average a brutally cold 290 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit).
Comment Re:Hmmm, don't really like the guys tone (Score 1) 473
Comment That's not our experience (Score 1) 386
We are currently porting SoftMaker Office to Android, and we are not experiencing any extraordinary issues that weren't present when we developed for Windows Mobile. So there are different screen resolutions, different Android OS versions, phones and tablets and netbooks, but a well-designed application should be able to handle that.
Comment Re:Objective comparison with OO.o (Score 1) 110
I didn't sound dismissive, or at least didn't want to. I simply invited him to track this down, if he has the time and inclination to do that. That's all.
Comment Re:Objective comparison with OO.o (Score 1) 110
If it takes 12 seconds to start a SoftMaker Office app, there is something seriously wrong with your setup. If you care, start it with "textmaker -debug", and it will create a log file (tmlog.txt) that protocols the launch process. Might be interesting to figure where it's idling.
As for the test documents, is it possible to get them? We take pride in our DOCX and XLSX filters (and their quality has been confirmed by several reviews), so I'd like to check them out.
On 32 bit systems, SoftMaker Office inherits the colors and fonts from the system (if you are running KDE or Gnome). On 64 bit systems, this doesn't work yet.
Comment Re:How did this not get binspammed? (Score 1) 110
Submission + - SoftMaker Office 2010 for Linux nearing release (softmaker.com)
martin-k writes: "SoftMaker Office is a Microsoft-compatible office suite that competes with OpenOffice.org. Its creator, German software publisher SoftMaker is nearing completion of the latest release, SoftMaker Office 2010 for Linux. This new release offers document tabs, high-quality filters for the Microsoft Office 2007 file formats DOCX and XLSX, and presentation-quality charts in the spreadsheet. It also brings integration into KDE and Gnome, using the system's colors and fonts. A release candidate is available as a free download."
Attractive Open Source Search Interfaces? 65
An anonymous reader writes "I work for a company that manages an online database for the political market. We add to this DB daily with updates from a variety of sources and our customers then search through this content via our Solr/Lucene search engine. My problem is, our search interface is a little, well, basic and I would love to know if there are any feature-rich open source alternatives out there. The only one I can find is Flamenco, and while that seems strong on categorisation, that seems to be about the height of it."
Submission + - SoftMaker Office now free... with a charity twist (loadandhelp.com)
martin-k writes: The office suite SoftMaker Office for Windows and Linux is now available as a free download ... with a twist: For every successful download, the developer donates ten Euro cents to charity and development projects on the open charity platform betterplace.org. Nearly two weeks into this campaign, the site has logged more than 57,000 downloads. But hurry, the campaign ends on December 31.
Submission + - SoftMaker Office 2008 now a free download (loadandhelp.com)
martin-k writes: The office suite SoftMaker Office 2008 is now a free download ... with a twist: For every successful download, SoftMaker donates ten Euro cents to charity and development projects on the open charity platform betterplace.org. Now there's a way to get a free office suite and do some good at the same time. Slashdot has reported about SoftMaker Office before.
Comment Not a good start (Score 1) 274
>> it includes the earlier-promised support for ODF text documents ...
And boy does it suck at that. We tried it out, and it is extremely unimpressive. Tracked changes are gone when you save to ODT, nested tables from ODT often lose their text, and object positioning is often wrong. Generally speaking, anything more than simple letters requires manual intervention.
Did they just repurpose the open source converter they commissioned? It certainly is the worst filter I've seen from Microsoft in a long time.
Submission + - A new office suite from Germany enters public beta (softmaker.com)
martin-k writes: "Looking for alternatives to OpenOffice.org or KOffice or Gnome Office? German software vendor SoftMaker today released the public beta of SoftMaker Office 2008 for Linux, a commercial office suite that is also available for Windows and for Pocket PCs. The manufacturer pushes it for its high degree of compatibility with the Microsoft Office file formats, its speed, and its reliability. So, are you willing to venture into proprietary territory?"
Comment Full speed, high speed, superspeed (Score 4, Insightful) 251
After USB full speed and USB high speed, we now have USB superspeed. What comes next? Hyperspeed? FTL-speed?
Gotta love the marketing hyperbole...
