From: Rick Moen rick@linuxmafia.com
Newsgroups: linuxworld.forums.articles.1999-12-penguin_1
Subject: Re: Disagree
Date: 4 Jan 2000 23:41:15 GMT
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already
NNTP-Posting-Host: uncle-enzo.linuxmafia.com
User-Agent: tin/pre-1.4-981002 ("Phobia") (UNIX) (Linux/2.0.38
(i486))
[...]
You have:
Applix
Quadraton Cliq
Smartsoft
KOffice
Gnome Office apps
Star Office
Corel Word Perfect and upcoming siblings
Here are some open-source additions. A few of these (such as
Abiword)
I actually _use_ on occasion. The others are just hanging around
on my
Debian "potato"-based laptop in case I ever need them. For most
of my
needs, I'm a vim / Mozilla / m4 / python / bash / awk / grep
kinda guy. ;->
Abiword
LyX (slick graphical front-end to LaTeX)
Siag Office (includes Scheme In A Grid spreadsheet, Pathetic
Writer word
processor, Egon animation program, Xfiler file manager, each
of
which is also available separately).
> Am I missing anything obvious? Do you have any comments
(quotable or
> otherwise) on this stuff?
Understand that you're asking this of someone who generates
printouts
of Web pages like this:
lynx -dump http://foo/ | enscript -G -p - | nc 10.1.0.5 9100
What I mean is that I prefer small, fast, solid tools that
work
well in combination over 50MB-in-RAM wonders like Star Office.
So, I
may not be the fellow you want to quote. (That having been
said,
Word Perfect 8.0 is pretty solid, and relatively compact in RAM
at about
6-8 MB. Nicely done.) I'm also forgiving of the shortcomings in
such
open-source efforts as Mozilla milestone 12 and AbiWord 0.7.7
beta,
because I'd rather use, encourage, and help debug open-source
projects.
[snip]
From: Bryan -TheBS- Smith thebs@theseus.com
Organization: Theseus Logic
To: Ian B MacLure imaclure@mail.arc.nasa.gov
Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 11:40:56 -0400
Cc: svlug@svlug.org,
Subject: [svlug] My take on apps -- RE: DocBook, Framemaker on
Linux
[...]
- Word Processing: Hate all (always have on any OS)
- Text Processing: LyX w/SGML and/or DocBook
(why waste time with WP?!?!?!)
- DTP/Frame Layout: FrameMaker (Linux Demo), KWord? (future)
- HTML Editor: StarWord is a very good WYSIWYG editor
(if you use Netscape Composer, dump it for SW!!!),
otherwise, it's GVIM for me, or LyX/LaTeX conversion
for documentation (see the HOWTO HOWTO), and W3C's
Amaya when I want 100% standard HTML (start with GVIM
or LyX/LaTeX, then pull into Amaya for *TRUE* WYSIWYG
preview and syntax correction/cleaning).
If you have a mixed Windows-Linux world, it's StarOffice.
It's
word processor, StarWord, is adequate (just like MS-Word, but
I'm
biased because I HATE word processors, period), although its
spreadsheet, StarCalc, really sucks (at least on Excel
conversion
-- Gnumeric is 10x better).
[...]
I find StarWord is a perfect replacement for Netscape
Composer. If
you are using Composer chuck it and start using StarWord. Amaya
is
another excellent WYSIWYG HTML editor, 100% standards
compliant,
but unlike the others, you canNOT simultanously WYSIWYG and
markup
edit (e.g., it's good for post-processing for final
publishing
IMHO).
Being an old AmiPro/1-2-3 user (and miss them both
greatly,
because even Excel still does not have all the features of my
5-year old 1-2-3 release 4, let alone fast and sleek AmiPro),
I
anxiously await KWord. I've played with AbiWord and it looks
like
yet another word processor. KWord is a frame-layout DTP
package
that should cater to us old AmiPro users (I'm hoping ;-).
> I <option><s> ( or equivalent ) every few
minutes or so as an
> automatic reflex. A habit picked up many years ago on
IBM
> and DEC iron of various weights and its mostly worked
for
> me but yes if I were writing extensively I'd be backing
> up to zip a lot and burning CDs daily.
Yeah, but that does LITTLE if the save command in Word
corrupts the
file, and even the backup file. Data integrity, NOT save
speed/backgrounding should be priority #1 / default in Word.
Hence
why I have to complete exit Word, then use the file manager to
copy
to 2 other systems (as well as use Xdelta to check-in on the
file
server itself for revision control). Simply using Save-As (to
another drive/system) in Word can cause corruptions too!
[...]
Use the tools that get the job done best. Right now, Linux
fills
about 75% of those roles IMHO. Now if I could get us over to
100% StarOffice.
-- TheBS
From: Rick Moen rick@linuxmafia.com
Subject: [vox-tech] Re: [vox] Linux Word Processors?
Reply-To: vox-tech@lists.lugod.org
Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2002 16:15:58 -0800
Moved to vox-tech.
Quoting Robert G. Scofield (rscofield@afes.com):
> Unlike most Linux users, I think there is a real problem
getting a
> good
> wordprocessor. Unfortunately the ones for Windows are
better. I am
> wondering what people think of Open Office and KWord.
If it'll help, I include a (too-brief) rundown on all
available word
processors for Linux as part of my Word Perfect for Linux
FAQ,
http://linuxmafia.com/wpfaq/ .
Please see especially section 8.5 ("What
alternatives to WP exist on Linux?").
> How is Open Office different from Star Office (which I can't stand)?
First of all, with Star Office / OpenOffice.org, as well as
with all the
others, you have to be careful about what versions you're talking
about:
There are a lot of comparisons floating around that address the
merits
of long-vanished versions, which tend to mislead people.
Also,
unfortunately, some _packages_ have fewer problems than others.
(It's
like with the Galeon Web browser: I might say my Galeon v. 1.2.5
is
great, while you say your distribution's Galeon v. 1.2.5 is
terrible and
unstable, and we might both be right.)
Back to your question about Star Office vs.
OpenOffice.org:
OpenOffice.org is (approximately) the Star Office 6.0 code
stripped of
third-party proprietary components Sun didn't own copyright to,
plus
some enhancements developed by the surrounding open-source
coder
community. And Star Office also throws in some materials Sun
can't
really afford to give out to the public for free, such as use of
Apple
Computer's patents on byte-hinting techniques for (some) TrueType
fonts
at small point sizes:
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Apps/OpenOffice.org/fonts.html
The third-party components include the bundled ADABAS D SQL
database and
the WordPerfect filters (again, Sun didn't own the rights), among
other
things.
_Both_ Star Office 6.0 and OpenOffice.org 1.0.x have the
advantage over
Star Office 5.2 of eliminating the obnoxious "desktop" window
that
everything had to reside in, on-screen. I believe SO 6.0 also
eliminates Motif in favour of GTK+. (OO.o definitely does.)
Both of them are pretty mammoth in the RAM they require to
start (73
MB), but that's partly because the binary that loads can handle
any of
the supported documents: I'm told that the perception of a
distinct
"Star Calc", "Star Writer", etc., as well as of distinct data
formats
for each document types is something of an illusion: There's a
single
(very complex) XML-based format for all supported data, and a
single
executable that assumes various roles.
A big plus for SO / OO.o is Microsoft document compatibility.
They're
really good at it (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). Abiword does well
for
Word; Gnumeric does well for Excel; KPresenter does well for
PowerPoint
-- but SO / OO.o is one-stop MS compatibility that's pretty
reliable
(though not 100% perfect). It's important to note that Microsoft
itself
isn't 100% able to parse Microsoft data formats, and sometimes SO
/ OO.o
will not only be able to read documents MS apps can't, but cleans
them
up in the process of reading and resaving them so that MS apps
_can_
suddenly read the result.
> Is anyone using KWord? Does anyone like KWord? What are
the problems
> with KWord?
What I hear is that KWord has been undergoing pretty rapid
development,
same as AbiWord. So, you'll need to be particularly careful about
the
version and package problems noted above, in weighing anything
you hear.
KWord differs from most of the others in being
frame/template-based,
sort of like FrameMaker or the much-liked DeScribe word
processor.
Arguably, this results in more-reliable and better-structured
documents,
especially long ones.
KWord 1.1.1 is fairly current (being the KDE 2.2 version, not
the KDE
3.0 one), and is the version I have some experience with -- but
not
much. Most of my editing is in vim.
I've personally found the AbiWord stable release (1.0.1) to be
_really_
stable -- and fast, and generally likeable. The main missing
feature
is tables, which was deliberately deferred until after 1.0 (so
they're
doing the code for that, now).
As always, compound documents (OLE stuff) and
password-protected
documents from Microsoft tend to be problematic anywhere but on
the
Microsoft platform du jour.
--
Cheers, "To summarize the summary of the summary:
Rick Moen People are a problem."
rick@linuxmafia.com --
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