New WordPerfect Releases Reviewed 317
MikeCapone writes "The Jem Report has an extensive review (all in one page, no flash ads -- what a concept!) of Corel WordPerfect 12 for Windows and the proof of concept comeback of WordPerfect for Linux."
Upgrade Policy? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Upgrade Policy? (Score:4, Funny)
We've got unopened copies for the PDP-1 and the DEC Rainbow, maybe we can cut a deal too!
Re:Upgrade Policy? (Score:3, Interesting)
Trust me on this. My father-in-law has gotten over $25 for a simple book of Coke matches on multiple occasions, surely you can do even better.
LaTeX (Score:5, Funny)
Re:LaTeX (Score:5, Insightful)
The rest of the world is ready to contend with bloaty 2GB "text editors" that will easily put things in the wrong spot and not be compatible between versions and not have professional macros for document logistics and preamble.
Ha!
Re:LaTeX (Score:5, Funny)
It's gonna take a lot of alcohol to get _that_ one out.
LaTeX gEEKS? (Score:2)
Re:LaTeX gEEKS? (Score:2)
Re:LaTeX (Score:2, Insightful)
Saying LaTeX is proper typesetting is like saying GIMP is equivalent to photoshop. People who say it come across as fools or irrational zealots to actual, knowledgeable professionals in the field.
Re:LaTeX (Score:2)
Now, having said this...The Gimp is "getting there". No, it doesn't have CMYK yet...yet. And it doesn't have color profiles, but those are in the works.
But you're correct...no one in pre-press would use LaTeX. But as for Th
Re:LaTeX (Score:2)
Photoshop was designed by graphic artists and coded by programmers and it shows.
GIMP was designed by programmers, and it shows, too.
Re:LaTeX (Score:2)
The artists are starting to come over to Gimp now, since it's free and it shows in 2.0.
Now, if I could get my keyboard shortcuts to work exactly like they did with PS I'd be happier. hehe
Re:LaTeX (Score:3, Informative)
We always did 6 color PS files and broke out the 5th and 6th colors as seperate PS files (for instance putting like PMS 300 on the Cyan sep and PMS XXX on the Magenta plate). Then send them to the page assembly dept to trap them in ArtPro...
But this is all dependent on Gimp getting CMYK...once it does, all the tricks and work arounds we used to use with older versions of PS can come into play.
Could be helpfull to small
Bloat? (Score:3, Insightful)
I know you call a lot of those high-end features "bloat", but Adobe is catering to the professionals who use this software endlessly in their jobs, know that Adobe delivers, and will pay for it (because it's effectively earning them thousands).
It's not worth it to thes
Re:LaTeX (Score:3, Informative)
Which begs to question: if they have these plug-ins already, why are they working now to includ CMYK into the Gimp now?
And yes, I knew about this already, but as you can see right in there web page: "A plugin providing rudimentary CMYK support for The GIMP"
What can it do?
* Convert an RGB image to individual CMYK layers, using specified source and destination Colour Profiles.
* Save such a collection of layers as a CMYK TIFF.
* Proof the CMYK image o
Re:LaTeX (Score:2)
Like I said. Folks who call LaTeX a professional typesetting program just show themselves as ignorant fools.
Re:LaTeX (Score:3, Interesting)
Mark up? you do it yourself in latex
Cropping? eh? why? You just make it the right size in the first place
Pantone matching? 99.9% of technical journals are in black and white.
Kerning? Latex does it and does it well.
etc.
I've had a number of papers published in computer science journals and I promise you what happens is they send you a latex style-sheet, you apply it to your document, format everything nicely and then accept it exactly how you
A better way... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A better way... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A better way... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:LaTeX (Score:2, Offtopic)
Yay (Score:5, Interesting)
It might even spur MS to really innovate again.
Re:Yay (Score:5, Interesting)
How to make MS Office better.
1. Smaller
2. Better support for OTHER FILE FORMATS
3. Stop being the ass of the world.
4. Add some real typesetting standards.
Tom
Re:Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice in theory but it will never happen.
1 - They may be able to shave a few megs off, sure, but with MS' fatal infection of creeping featuritis that would be offset in no time.
2 - They're the 800 lb gorilla, "it's up to the other companies/projects to figure out and support the
3 - Protecting their bottom line and investors' cash is their job, they can't help it.
4 - Invented outside of MS? C'mon Tom, you should know better!
Re:Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
Well making money goodism aside they amalgamate crap together until the user is so inundated with "features" they just assume it's great. Then when they learn that the auto-toc isn't standard and easy to trip up [as I found out last semester when I was forced to use it] or that you have to manually layout figures, tables, etc.... it looks less like "neat" and more like "life sucks".
Sure a WYSIWYG is good for short memos and shit. That's why "write" exists. But for manuals, books, papers and reports LaTeX is always the best choice.
Sadly only 10 people in the world seem to know this
Of course MS could just make their own port of TeX and call it MSReX or something... claim they invented it. At least then it would be something I'd use.
Tom
Re:Yay (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yay (Score:2)
I can believe it -- I just never found out how to reproduce, say, my complex OpenOffice.org CV in LaTeX. Tutorials anyone?
Re:Yay (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a work collegue that wrote a 350 page book in word. Just scrolling the document on a 2.4G machine with 2G Ram was painful.
Re:Yay (Score:2)
Whilst I agree, when the rest of the world blindly uses your own format, what real incentive is there to spend money supporting someone elses?
Secondly, what format? Its not like there is any other format out there that comes close to doc that needs serious improvement (plain text support and rtf is pretty decent given their limits).
Re:Yay (Score:2)
Someone should target .pdf
PDF was designed as an essentially "write once" format. The Word format isn't wonderful, but its main problem is the lack of a complete description of it (outside of MicroSoft at any rate). RTF was a good attempt at a more open format, but how many typical users know it exists let laone use it?
Chris
No mail client. (Score:4, Interesting)
So if you're looking for a suite that you can use in a Microsoft-centric office, you'd better have another solution for talking to that Exchange server.
Is it just me, or is this remarkably silly? Exchange/Outlook is the hub of most offices' operations these days. Not speaking Exchange's calendar and contact protocols is tantamount to not speaking the Word file format five or six years back.
Re:No mail client. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No mail client. (Score:3, Interesting)
Notes is fine, but it's not what the rest of the world is speaking.
The hole it left has been filled (Score:5, Insightful)
At the time WordPerfect was easily the most popular proprietary application for GNU/Linux, and the hole that it left opened the door for many people to switch to OpenOffice, StarOffice, AbiWord, KWord, TextMaker and others
Why would I change back from a decent, FREE, application like OpenOffice to WordPerfect? If they're planning on selling it on the name, or because people remember WP, it's too late for that now. OpenOffice has taken over, and could soon be challenging MS Office in a big way.
Re:The hole it left has been filled (Score:5, Insightful)
Corel had their chance back when they built Corel Linux. But instead of putting the *work* into making native code, improving Linux, and making the experience overall better, they simply used the WINE libs to "port" their same old WordPerfect Suite then heaped it on top of an existing Linux distro. In other words, they did the least work possible and saw the least return. Sun OTOH has put a lot of money and effort into OpenOffice/StarOffice, GNOME, and their new Java Desktop System. This has been allowing Sun to maintain the Desktop/Workstation market while their competitors (HP, IBM, and SGI - poor saps) flounder in the Unix market.
Re:The hole it left has been filled (Score:2)
No wonder nobody wants to write for Linux when you have to deal with zealots you can never please.
Re:The hole it left has been filled (Score:2)
I hardly consider myself a zealot. Actually, I tend to dislike Linux machines. My post was a matter of practicality. By using the WINE libs, Corel delivered a product that was substandard compared to the Windows version. Things that hadn't quite been worked out in WINE simply didn't work (or didn't work right).
That actually wouldn't have been so b
Re:The hole it left has been filled (Score:2)
Bullshit. Anyone who works in Corporate technology who *doesn't* know about Sun isn't doing their jobs. Now Sun has managed to make itself a household name with things like Java, OpenOffice/StarOffice, and Java Desktop Systems sold by Walmart. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a computer user who hasn't at least *heard* of Sun.
Re:The hole it left has been filled (Score:2)
Yes. But when a Corporate customer is thinking Sun, are they thinking about their desktop or the server room?
My environment used to sport quite a few HP and Sun workstation labs for various scientific and engineering applications. However, there has been a very strong move to replacing those environments with Windows desktops. The only advancement of "Unix" on the desktop that I've heard of involves Linux
Re:The hole it left has been filled (Score:2)
This is where their deal with Micr
Re:The hole it left has been filled (Score:2)
Re:The hole it left has been filled (Score:5, Informative)
OpenOffice will convince me to abandon Office when it stops mangling fonts and layout for the Word documents people keep sending me. I can read them, but they don't look pretty, and I'm sure as heck not going to _write_ anything in OO while this is a concern.
Bad install? Maybe. But I've run into the problem in two unrelated *nix labs where it was installed. I suppose _both_ admins _could_ be sloppy, but they've been pretty sharp in other regards.
If I'm writing documents in *nix, I use LaTeX and send people postscript or PDF. But when I need to give someone a Word document, or bring a PowerPoint slide show to a conference, I use MS Office.
Your mileage may vary.
Re:The hole it left has been filled (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The hole it left has been filled (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The hole it left has been filled (Score:2, Informative)
I can tell you are a windows bigot, but don't be ridiculous.
Re:The hole it left has been filled (Score:3, Informative)
The key is likely either configuring OO in some way to select better fonts (maybe choosing better default for each font family?) or simply removing the uglier fonts from your Linux machine.
Re:The hole it left has been filled (Score:4, Informative)
http://borgerding.org/fonts.png
http://borgerd
Please, enlighten me with a good reason as to why the Truetype support sucks on Linux/X11.
Enlightenment coming up! (Score:3, Insightful)
With that being said, most Windows users are under the illusion that Windows Font Management is phenomenal when it is not. But drag n' drop or import to /Fonts under Windows makes it seem so as opposed to most Linux approaches to Font Management.
Neither one compares to OS X's Font Management, but I'll take Linux after OS X for Desktop Publishing needs. It just requires a bit more "out-of-the-box" thi
Re:The hole it left has been filled (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The hole it left has been filled (Score:2)
Re:The hole it left has been filled (Score:2)
Re:The hole it left has been filled (Score:5, Interesting)
I've used WordPerfect since version 4.x. I also use Linux (and Windows). I've tested many different word processing programs (and still do), including StarOffice and OpenOffice.org
WordPerfect will continue to be the word processing program for me because of many features that OO.o seems not to want to include.
Among them? A good Grammatik checker. Advanced typesetting features. Legal templates. Perfect listing of paper and label types purchasable from the store. Great print-as-booklet/double-sided printing. Advanced print-spooling functions (how do you want them to print? Set batches and WP does the rest).
The main problem with ALL other word processing programs is that typesetting. I haven't found one single program, free or proprietary, that has the ability for me to assign an advance-from that works, besides WordPerfect. And I believe they've been doing it since at least 6.
OpenOffice has NOT taken over. It's installed on nearly every distribution of desktop Linux, but it still pales in comparison to WordPerfect for both writers and legal professionals. Until it can come near WordPerfect in the above-mentioned abilities, it'll still be just a glorified vim to me.
And please, before you make statements that OO.o is taking over and giving MS Office a challenge, make sure it's fact and not your opinion. Where's the data that OO.o is in use enough to make a challenge soon for MS Office share?
Re:The hole it left has been filled (Score:2)
Even back then, it seemed like Star Office was far and away the most popular Linux word processor. I don't have a shred of real data to support that claim, but from word of mouth it seemed like people tried out the free Linux WP port, found it unusably slow or buggy and went back to either Star Office or vi/Emacs.
Re:The hole it left has been filled (Score:2)
Less subjectively, business users of WP are probably also the best candidates for a transition from MS to Linux. Law firms and the like don't need much other than WP, a browse
Re:The hole it left has been filled (Score:2)
I'd like to know what Corel was thinking releasing this new WP4Linux. I could see doing it if it was monder
Re:The hole it left has been filled (Score:2)
Because WordPerfect 12 is probably waaaayyyy better than "decent". My wife uses OpenOffice, but only because she enjoys the other features of Linux, and the ease with which I can keep both our boxes updated. The first thing that she said when I told her that Corel was planning a Linux version was, "When can we get it?" I know others whose sole reason for staying with Windows is that they absolutely need WordPerfect.
Challenging MS Office? (Score:2)
First you need to have Linux challenging Windows on the desktop in a big way. Its not happening.
What one thing many OS supporters forget is a lot of these applications don't have the features of commercial products nor do the teams seem to be inclined in many cases to do so.
Comments like yours are one thing many companies use as an excuse for NOT writing software for Linux. It is almost becoming a stereotype that OS=FREE or Linux Software must be free as Linux is. That makes it difficult to m
I remember using WordPerfect 5.1 on my dos 3.3 box (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I remember using WordPerfect 5.1 on my dos 3.3 (Score:2)
Re:I remember using WordPerfect 5.1 on my dos 3.3 (Score:2)
*thrums fingers on the desk* (Score:5, Funny)
And for all the bandwidth that would save, the webserver is still DOA...
Re:*thrums fingers on the desk* (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry -- good hosting plans are expensive. I'm looking into moving to Pair if I can afford it. In the meantime, in case this happens I code all of my articles as HTML and then use a JavaScript redirect to the "real" article in the database. So just turn JavaScript off and go to this address:
http://www.thejemreport.com/software/wplinux.php
Or just turn of JavaScipt and click here [thejemreport.com]
-Jem
Re:*thrums fingers on the desk* (Score:2)
I have more than a hundred articles and reviews on The Jem Report. I used to do them all in XHTML/CSS but then when I wanted to change the logo or add a menu option I had to edit over 100 pages. Switching to Postnuke make everything a lot easier for me and uses less bandwidth and space, even if under extreme load it kills the MySQL server.
Explain how to do this:
"Regenerate the static content in one go from a database when you change the website HTML template" I answer.
-JemFull text (Score:3, Informative)
Purpose
Office suite
Manufacturer
Corel
Platforms
Windows 98SE/NT/2K/XP/2003 (note that Windows ME is not supported)
WordPerfect for Linux requires GNU/Linux with the 2.0 kernel or later and a functional X11 graphical environment
License
Proprietary, heavily restrictive
Market
Home users, small and medium-sized businesses, legal professionals and government agencies
Price (retail)
Available from the Corel e-store for US$300, or $150 for the upgrade. Academic editions are available for $100.
Demo
Click here to register and download the trial version of WP Office 12
Screen Shot
See article for more than a dozen screen shots, or click here for a directory listing of all screenshots related to WP Office 12
Recommended System
128 MB RAM, Pentium III or equivalent processor, 400 MB hard disk space, CD-ROM drive, keyboard and mouse or tablet
It was the promise of WordPerfect for Linux that got me to switch away from Windows in the first place, about a year and a half ago. Being an avid writer I was a die-hard fan of WordPerfect 10 (2002) and I didn't really want to switch if I couldn't use it anymore. Unfortunately after I completed the switch to GNU/Linux I was unable to locate any Linux-related resources on Corel's site -- they'd taken it all down. News came of Corel's money problems and rumor had it that a $135 million stock purchase (about 20% of the company) by Microsoft Corporation had kept Corel afloat with the understanding that they would terminate their GNU/Linux business. I don't know if the latter was true, but given the situation and the reputation of one of the parties involved I would say that it's at least likely.
Not long after, Microsoft sold their shares to Vector Capital at a 90% loss. More recently Vector moved to buy the rest of the outstanding shares of Corel, thereby turning it into a privately held company again. Overall this is a very positive move because it prevents underhanded manipulation by outside companies like Microsoft (again), but oddly there were some who resisted the buyout. It's hard to tell what went on behind the scenes, but the results are obvious and quite encouraging: there is a renewed interest in GNU/Linux porting and now there's a new version of the superior WP Office for Windows.
It's All About Microsoft
One thing that has definitely changed is the market focus of the WP product line. Corel has already realized their niche markets (legal and government), and WP 10 and 11 seemed to pander specifically to them without regard for the competition. Good for lawyers and governments, but not necessarily so good for people who want to do other things.
It's been a little over two years since WordPerfect 11 was announced and released, but I never had the chance to review it because there was some mysterious reluctance to sending out review copies of the software at the time of my request. No surprise that there was virtually no press on WordPerfect 11 except for legal and government-related print publications. That tunnel-vision focus is gone and has now broadened to include small and medium-sized busines
Re:Full text (Score:5, Funny)
Aw! Guys, if only for nostalgia's sake: how about a curses version? I can't be the only one with fond memories of 5.1 for DOS...
Re:Full text (Score:4, Interesting)
No, you're not. That was a pretty darn good application, and possibly the high-point in Word Processor history. Ever since then, for Word and WordPerfect, it's been "what new junk can we shove in this thing to justify another release."
When I was in high school, I used to do my reports in WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS. Since my mom did desktop publishing out of our home, we had a laser printer. It would freak teachers out at school when I'd hand in my perfectly typeset, smooth-font report... when all the other students had crappy pixilated faded dot-matrix printouts.
Re:Full text (Score:3, Interesting)
Those were the good ol' days. I was hoping that the emulation of 5.1 would truly be a DOS text screen with the function menus on the bottom, but it just seems to be (from the screenshot) a color shift of a graphical window.
Whatever (Score:4, Insightful)
See what simple bell you can add so that we can up the version and ship out a new one in 6 months. Fix old bugs? Sure a few, but the focus is more on adding junk in order to name a new edition.
I quit and gave in to MS Office. Why MS office? becuase it works best with windows (MS secret APIs undoubtidly), and my mom uses windows because of the visual aid software available on it. and I can not teach my mother to use Linux, so don't even say it! She is legally blind already..
Re:Whatever (Score:2)
Re:Whatever (Score:2)
You could say that about MS Word as well.
Maybe there just aren't all that many more features which can be added to a word processor.
Re:Whatever (Score:2)
Stagnant? Useless bells and whistles added to up the version number, but little bug fixing? Sounds a lot like MS Office to me.
Frankly, if they'd just ship WP 6 with updated import filters, that would be a hell of a lot better than MS Office anyway.
Of course, I've never been a great fan of the whole wordprocessor idea - I'd rather have a good text processor and a good desktop publisher, and for most things that latter is un-needed. Wordprocessors always seem to be a half-assed text processor plus a quart
Re:Whatever (Score:2)
Right on... (Score:5, Funny)
"Presentation software has quietly become an essential tool for validating otherwise totally useless company meetings; it makes a lot of nothing look like something important (...)"
I would add:
If you don't have anything good to say, put it in a presentation.
Re:Right on... (Score:3)
A university lecturer once explained to us that a housefly's brain can process hundreds of simultaneous inputs and outputs. After going through 16 years of formal education, the human brain can cope with a single input and a single output. I'm sure bulleted presentations reinforce this.
Re:Right on... (Score:3, Funny)
In other words, give all bad news via power point.
Instead of sending out a server failure message to you CIO via e-mail, pager, or cell phone, you should send him a power point presentation explaning that your most important mission cricial server just died. The said power point presentation should last longer than the downtime and recovery time of said server.
Yawn (Score:4, Insightful)
When they come back with a decent interface, all of WP12 features and full support for OASIS format, they may have a chance. This is just half-arsed.
Dictionary feature looks to be a disappointment (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Dictionary feature looks to be a disappointment (Score:3)
Let's hope (Score:5, Insightful)
I know that in MS Word, I curse every day with the damn Autoformat features that try to do everything for you, even when I try to turn the features off, it is still a pain in the ass.
It seems you are trying to write a letter, would you like to:
Re:Let's hope (Score:2)
For simple text documents in which you might only have to
*yawn* (Score:5, Funny)
Great news! (Score:3, Funny)
where I work (Score:4, Interesting)
Yet, I see more and more MS Office documents pass through my department.
But a lot of the people who use either app still don't know how to write a document properly with tabs and other text formatting functions (e.g. 20 spaces instead of two tabs, pressing Enter at the end of each line, etc.)
Maybe it's time I saw a hypnotherapist...
proof of concept comeback of WordPerfect Linux? (Score:2)
Outrageous. (Score:2, Funny)
And it's outrageous. Truly truly truly outrageous.
[/80s cartoon]
--saint
Trolls (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Dare I hope for an OS X version? (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh no! (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess that there will be a lot of people here on
Well I disagree with all that. I want my WP for Linux.
-0-
Re:Oh no! (Score:2)
You can buy it in the EU...
http://shop.mensys.nl/cgi-bin/db2www/MNS_art2.d2 w/report?artname=&catname=LINUXWP8
-JemNeed an updated logo... (Score:2)
Too Little Too Late (Score:4, Insightful)
If you wanted or needed to have complete control of your document it beat Word hands down. Over the years Reveal Codes alone has saved me many hours of work trying figure out why formatting didn't work.
The real masters of Wordperfect though were always the secretarial folks in any large company. They could make it sing and dance. They didn't need Wizards and Clippy because they knew that program inside out, and knew how to make it do exactly what they needed.
Word simply cannot be controlled in the same manner as WordPerfect. The automagic features in Word are still a phenomenal pain in the ass. It is still possible to find your formatting totally screwed up with no way to find out what's wrong.
So am I still using Wordperfect?
Only for two things: envelope printing, for which it has the best widget I've seen, and outlining, which it does much, much better than Word because it doesn't try to out-think you or take over the whole process.
Other than those, I have moved almost entirely over to Open Office which avoids most of the really irritating things about MS Word, and does so at a price that WP can't beat.
MOTIF??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyone at Corel ever heard of QT? GTK? how about some common interface with KDE or GNOME? (or both? I could always hope...)
It looks like someone took the old version (6? 7? and just doing some touch ups...)..
Irony (Score:2)
So brags the author of the link. Then the webserve get's slashdoted as every nerd in the world tries to read that HUGE article on one page.
Re:Irony (Score:3, Informative)
Just turn of JavaScript and go to www.thejemreport.com/software/wplinux.php for the full article in HTML (it bypasses the database, which is now overloaded).
-JemIronically (Score:2)
Some people with DOS/Windows 3.X and use WP 3.0 to 5.X for DOS. I know a few lawyers who still use WP 5.0 to 6.0 for Windows on versions of Windows as new as Windows XP. They got documents written using WP macros that do not convert well into modern technologies. There are still bugs with it, like when I created an invoice using WP 6.0 for Windows using the built in template and tried to print it out over a Novel network printer, it made
No hope for large scale deployment (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft Word OWNS the document market by virtue of mass action - no one can fight the torrent of Word documents coming at them from all sides. The stubborn of us, like me, use OpenOffice/Abiword and fight the good fight. But we also get a major benefit - those tools are zero $$$ in cost. That makes a difference, and quite realistically is the only reason they are used on a large scale - if people had to pay $$ similar to what they pay Microsoft, they'd pay it and move on. But free is good for low budget situations. There is the long term benefit of the code always being available and thus in theory the app can survive as long as it is needed, but experimental evidence seems to indicate that benefit isn't enough to counter the Momentum of Microsoft. No one is seriously worried about Word vanishing.
So, I conclude WordPerfect has no chance to be a large scale commercial product. It might survive in small corners somewhere, but the cost of it will turn off the people seriously looking for a Word alternative. It's not open source, so even the small subset who might pay $$$ for an open source app because it is open are out. Their only real potential market is businesses that are going to Linux, but want a commercial word processor and are willing to retrain their folk to WordPerfect. In that scenario OpenOffice is hard to beat, but maybe some companies don't want it. But will that be enough to fund development?
I hate to see this, but it seems to always work like this - market share is EVERYTHING. Even Linux and OpenOffice, with zero up front cost, are only slowly making headway against the inertia out there. Wordperfect doesn't have a ghost of a chance - most of its potential market (i.e. willing to consider something other than Word) has moved/will move to the free OpenOffice suite. If your retraining anyway, why not go for the free, open product?
I don't imagine Wordperfect will ever be open sourced, which is a shame. I used WP8 a little and liked it. Much lighter weight than OO, for one thing. But except as an open source app it won't survive. Too little, too late.
Am I the only one? (Score:2, Informative)
I know people are going to say OpenOffice.Org, Evolution, and use MySQL. I already do, but MySQL is a little daunting and big for what I really need. Access is more what I need, something small, easy to use, and quick to set stuff up in, when you are not a DBA.
Don't get me wrong, I love OpenOffice, I use it all the time, Evolu
Another "excellent starting point" (sigh) (Score:3, Interesting)
If I had a nickel for all the projects that have been mentioned in the last few years that manage to come up, with say, a Word-alike toolbar, and a ruler with pretty tabs on it and a feature set comparable to AppleWorks, and partial RTF-format compatibility except for details like font display... that have all the capability you need for a business letter...
Please spare me the products that are at an "excellent starting point." Wake me up when something crosses the finish line.
I'd buy WordPerfect (Score:3, Interesting)