Re: Re Speaking of Linux

[Norman Bauman nbauman@xxxxxxxx]

At 05:34 AM 10/28/03 -0500, Bob Molyneux wrote:

>My sense of Linux applications--outside systems stuff--is
>that there are tons of them on sourceforge that are 80% done.

Speaking of Linux, I sent some notes about the multi-platform OpenOffice to
one of my lists, and I think you might be interested too:

I went to a meeting of the New York Linux Users Group
http://www.nylug.org to hear about OpenOffice http://www.openoffice.org
the freeware replacement for Microsoft Office 2000.

My conclusion is that it's not a perfect substitute for Word and Excel. A
lot of people use it for their personal work, and it reads most Word files
-- but once in the while people find some Word files it can't open. The
Excel files are compatible but the Excel macros are not compatible.

Sam Hiser, the manager of the marketing group of OpenOffice.org, gave a
presentation on 15 October at the IBM building on 57th St. in New York.

OpenOffice is available for Linux, and also for Windows. There is a Mac X
version, but it's not stable yet and crashes. A Mac XI version is under
development.

OpenOffice consists of Writer, Calc, Draw, Impress (a PowerPoint clone),
and a database front end but not a database.

The compatibility with word is "excellent," said Hiser. Writer can read
"90%+" of Word files, and in most cases the only incompatibility was font
substitution. This conclusion was based on a study by Hal Varian, which was
posted on the Internet. Varian found Word files on the Internet and tried
to open them in Writer. But once in the while people get Word files they
can't open.

Writer's default word processing format is Open XML, which is an
open,non-proprietary standard. But it can save files as Word .doc files,
and you can make .doc the default. It can also save directly as .pdf files,
which is very useful if you need .pdf.

But Writer can't read or save as WordPerfect documents. "Filters are hard
to build," said Hiser. Writer doesn't have Reveal Codes and probably never
will, although you can examine the codes.

Calc, the Excel clone, has keystroke compatibility and reads and saves as
Excel files, but it can't read Excel macros. This is a big problem for some
people who have invested thousands of hours in elaborate Excel macros. You
would have to rewrite your macros by hand.

There is lots of documentation on the OpenOffice.org web site, and you can
join a user's email list for support.

Sun supports much of the development of OpenOffice, and Sun has their own
commercial version, StarOffice. The 2 versions are essentially identical,
except that StarOffice sells for about $60 (easily available at CompUSA and
other stores) in a package that includes a manual. Sun provides limited
support with that package, and business users can buy a more expensive
support package.

-------------------------------------------------------
Norman Bauman
411 W. 54 St. Apt. 2D
New York, NY 10019
(212) 977-3223
http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman
Alternate address: nbauman@xxxxxxxx
-------------------------------------------------------