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| Home >> Resources | Support >> SHEX >> SHEX (share experience) on OS, Software, Systems & Notebooks >> |
SHEX - Office Software for Linuxby thespian (07/25/02) Copyright (c) Directron.com.We have SHEX (share experience) posts in Directron.com Help Desk Forum. We now have compiled them into this new section on Directron.com. We hope more people will write such pieces to benefit the entire PC community. Copying the contents for commercial purposes is strictly prohibited without Directron.com's written consent. However, you are welcome to distribute these computer support tips free to your friends and associates as long as it's not for commercial purposes and you acknowledge the source. You are permitted and encouraged to create links to this page from your own web site. Shex: Office Software for Linux A lot of people say they would consider moving to Linux if it weren't for the lack of office applications. There are a few to choose from for standard word processing and spreadsheets. Unfortunately, a lot of people mean "Microsoft Office Applications" when they say office applications. A company called Star originally started producing an office application for Linux called "StarOffice". Eventually that was bought by Sun Microsystems who developed it for a while and then open sourced as much of the code as possible. OpenOffice.Org is the software that has resulted from that source code and a lot of open software development. There are Word, Excel, and Powerpoint compatible offerings which can import and export their MS colleagues. More than that, you don't even really need their Microsoft counterparts since you can install OpenOffice.org for Windows and the MacOS as well. Most people use the wordprocessor, and the old version of this was powerful enough (including some revision tracking features the even MS has yet to get right) that author Piers Anthony has been using it for his last several books. From the [URL=http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/source/features.html]Features Page: OpenOffice.org 1.0 prints, saves to PDF (*) , has an online help, and does have a working spellchecker with many available dictionaries. Having said that, let's detail some of the major features: (*) Under UNIX based systems where spadmin, the printers administration program, uses ghostscript, ps2pdf, etc. The Entire Suite Native XML file format for small, yet powerful documents. The powerful OpenOffice.org API allows you to create external functions to leverage the power of the suite just how you need it. Ability to import many different types of documents and templates from a range of other programs. Ability to export to a huge range of formats from HTML to MS Office XP Mozilla/ Netscape 6.x or LDAP Unicode support, allows more than 15 localisations of OpenOffice.org to be available. Vastly enhanced printing capabilities and options. Autopilot guides you through creating complex document, clearly. Writer Direct connection with external email software to seamlessly send your documents worldwide. The Stylist allows you to change the entire look of your document instantly. Form-letter management to send letters to addresses in a database. Compare changes and work collaboratively using the Versions system. AutoCorrect word completion speeds up your writing in a non-obtrusive and powerful way. Indexing and Bibliographic functions make moving around inside a document easy. Sophisticated layout manager that allows you to display everything you want simply and clearly. CALC Create StarBASIC macros or sophisticated Add-In functions in Java or C/C++ using the OpenOffice.org API. Import and manipulate information from external sources (such as ODBC or JDBC databases) or other OpenOffice.org programs using DataPilot. Natural language formulas. Combine the contents of cells from several sheets with data consolidation. Scenario manager to perform what-if-when analysis. Charting tools to visualise data in 2D or 3D. Draw FontWork allows you shape text for an extra effect. Quick and easy creation of complex 3D shapes. Bezier curves, for realistic smooth curves. Eyedropper to change any pixel color into another Raster tools and effects. Impress Exploits all the effects and graphics tools from Draw AutoPilot helps you get your ideas down just how you want them. AutoLayout makes sure your presentations look professional. A number of slide effects add an extra spark to your presentation. Reply by Jacob There is a suite that you've forgotten here, or maybe just didn't want to list, but it's actually very nice - koffice. The differences between, koffice and StarOffice, are fairly straightforwards. StarOffice is based on gtk+, and koffice is based on kde, so you'd want to use whichever your distribution is based on, for better performance and higher stability. Also, koffice apps more closely mirror their windows counterparts, so have a much lower learning curve, although, most people should be able to convert to StarOffice from MS Office in a very short amount of time, some management types are very picky about learning curves, and dropping it to 1/2 hour from 2 hours-ish makes a huge difference to them. Reply by thespian The latest versions of OpenOffice more closely resemble the MS Office interface. In fact one person has posted about fooling office personnel with what they were using. The recent versions of OpenOffice.org (it's a minor thing but someone owns the "OpenOffice" name so they add the ".org") also don't require a separate desktop installed at all. For compilation you need some of the GTK files, but not for installation and use of the binaries. That way you can use it without any desktop standard (just the way I like my X--desktop free!). Reply by Inverted For those stubborn people who just "NEED" MS Office, or their work requires that they use nothing else, there is always Lindows (http://www.lindows.com). I have personally tried Lindows out and I can say I was fairly impressed. Now I know you all say well what about wine (http://www.winehq.com), or what about this..etc etc. All I am saying is this is an OS you can install for someone who has never had any experience with Linux, or who needs to run several windows applications under Linux without the hassle of setting up vmware or wine. Reply by Craigweb Be sure to have a look at AbiWord it is a free Open Source word proam it has all the power of a bigger word procsseing program in just 6 MB. It has versions for Linux and Windows and QNX and BEos and MacOSX. And, as always, you can post a question on the Directron Help Desk! (by122304) |
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