SoftMaker Rolls Out Office Suite for BSD, Linux, and Others 275
martin-k writes "Commercial office suite software is coming to FreeBSD, Linux, Windows, Sharp Zaurus and Windows Mobile. SoftMaker, a German developer, recently released SoftMaker Office, a multi-platform office suite that excels in Microsoft Office compatibility, claims to be much leaner and faster than OpenOffice.org and works on many operating systems, down to PDAs." While SoftMaker certainly isn't new, it is nice to see them roll out a finished suite as opposed to one-off programs.
how much better than OpenOffice? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm downloading the trial version now.... more on that in a minute. My question would be, "How much better is it than OpenOffice, and how razor thin is the difference between it and Microsoft Office, and how compatible compared with Open Office?"
I've had expectations raised many times in the past and while always initially excited found myself not using any products that had rough edges. For the longest time that basically meant I used Microsoft when I had to, vi and vim the rest of the time :-). Open Office was the first product with sufficient polish
and compatibility, so much so I could pretty much plug and play
replace Office for people with little fear they would have
trouble adapting.
Anything that falls short of that is likely to have problems gaining purchase in market share. I've used all of the KDE products, ABISoft, etc.... none of them really measured up. That isn't to they were bad products, many of them would be considered excellent in and of themselves, but that isn't the yardstick the buying public uses (and will use).
Well, I've downloaded and installed the trial version. I know it's not fair, but here is my five minute review (which is about all I have time to give for new products competing with products with which I already have perfectly good solutions):
Download and install went flawlessly, a requirement for any product anymore -- if the install doesn't go seamlessly, I won't spend a lot more time trying to figure out why. The program fired up cleanly, and was easy and intuitive enough to use especially if you've used any word processor or spreadsheet before. The graphics, layout, and presentation were good but the icons were not crisp as Microsoft's or Open Office's.
I don't have a suite of files to test for compatibility with Office and Open Office, but as I indicated, I have a solution for this type of work (Open Office), and I'm not inclined to spend much time beyond apparent return on investment.
PROS: Easy download and install, very similar to Microsoft Office (though that will change with the new Microsoft Office, not necessarily a bad thing), inexpensive comopared to Microsoft Office, established company, multi-platform and multi-form factor (for PDAs, though other than browsing, I'm not inclined to do much word processing and spreadsheeting (verb?) on PDAs).
CONS: Expensive compared to Open Office, not enough better (in my opinion) to warrant the switch, expensive to add typefaces, "compatibility" with Microsoft is a moving target -- one for which there is no guarantee of currency.
Cool that there's another player... Would I switch? Probably not. YMMV.
Just checked with some of our Microsoft Office doc (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, it's not. It exhibits the same sorts of glitches that OpenOffice does. Which doesn't surprise me given the hoary nasty Microsoft Word file format, but hey, if they're going to claim it, they better back it up.
Unfortunately SoftMaker doesn't support PowerPoint (Score:3, Informative)
The bigger problem for most people is PowerPoint slide decks, especially the ones generated by marketing departments that have sound and animation. This is where the shortcomings of OpenOffice hit me the hardest --- and unfortunately, SoftMaker doesn't have a solution. So is it worth it to pay USD $70 for a Word and Excel replacement which is more complete than what is currently available in the OSS world? Not for me. I'd much rather spend $40 for a copy of Crossover Office from Codeweavers [codeweavers.com] and then get an old copy of Office 97 or Office 2000 that I have lying around (or which you can no doubt buy on Ebay for a relatively small change).
Decent charting! (Score:3, Informative)
Planner (spreadsheet program) can actually do excel style charting (read: crappy but easy for routine tasks) with half-decent trendlines and the ability to show the forula on the chart.
This basic functionality has been on my openoffice wishlist for years, I've filed requests for it with OO.o but got nothing. I've even tried to implement it myself but OO's code is kinda scary. Since then I started using gnuplot for plotting, but for basic stuff its kind of overkill.
Re:So how about .. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:how much better than OpenOffice? (Score:1, Informative)
To be honest, this isn't exactly a direct answer to your question.
My experience with OpenOffice has not been nice. Two years ago, I used for serious stuff and, boy, did I regret it. This friggin' bug made me loose all pagination. They told me OpenOffice was production-ready. So they told me. They lied, they were just a buch of free software fanboys who never wrote more than 20 pages with the thing. So, this is from someone who actually had to used OpenOffice for more than 20 pages.
It has gotten better with time. But I don't have the time. Recently, I tried installing it on FreeBSD and I had problems with the dictionary and other bugs. Always little stupid bugs with OpenOffice. Also, Excel support still sucks. Portuguese language support sucks. It just sucks, please don't reply with work-around hacks. I have followed the instructions. I has to resort to giving up work time to reading instructions on the internet in order to provdie for my wife a decent, usable installation. Now, I know some Linux fanboy kids love that. They think they are "hackers", when they have to work around the little problems all the time. They think they are system administrators. That they grok Unix (this is one of the reasons you always hear more about Linux in the internet forums then you head *BSD people - BSD, which is mostly the crowd you'll hear tell you that there are no problems with OpenOffice. doesn't really have those stupid little problems - at least, not as much as Linux. And, oh yeah, I used Debian for way, way, longer than I should have). So, me, I am tired of the FLOSS community expecting a bug report for little stupid bugs that should never exist in the first place and that are there just because of lazyness. When you don't have the time, it's best that you pay somebody for a well-done job. IMHO, SoftMaker is doing a fine job.
Also, I think it is extremely important that an ISV takes this step (supporting FLOSS - and, most importantly, _not_ just Linux - because, in fact, there's little reason for Linux-only software, unless you don't give a damn about POSIX, which some Linux software developers apparently don't). I would have bought the software for this reason alone, considering its price (honest price). You will notice I am a FreeBSD user, so my world view has room for proprietary software. I do not think open source will survive unless ISVs make software for our free operating systems. I also am very happy that there are people looking at FreeBSD from a commercial standpoint. So, it's not just Linux anymore. And it's not just SoftMaker. Currently, other vendors support FreeBSD too, such as virtualization software, mathematical softwares and IDEs. So things are looking good. I think the best scenario is to have a mix of both worlds. This, I believe, is realistic. The anihilation of proprietary software, at least in this century, is highly unlikely. I am not one of those Debian zealots, who revel in long threads about the "freedomness" of the Firefox icon. Microsoft products are a standard in 99% of businesses. It's important that the FLOSS community get this simple fact of life. Unless we are able to support such an evironment - an ISV-friendly environment - rant all you like, our beloved operating systems will not make it to the desktop.
SoftMaker did a fine job, in my opinion. In terms of word processing, so far it seems perfect. It fires up fast, it's totally Microsoft-compatible, AFAIK. They have told me they will develop presentation software next. The spreadsheet software has some Excel-functionality missing, like the solver. I hope they add these two things. My opinion is that it's well worth the (honest) price, and I also see it as a very important thing that people actually want to _sell_ us software, that they actually want to seize this business opportunity. Now, I am not somebody whose daily life revolves around Excel, but they demonstrate on their site they the match more features than OpenOffice.
Re:how much better than OpenOffice? (Score:5, Informative)
pros:
cons:
So I'm not really clear on what the advantage is vis a vis OOo.
Re:how much better than OpenOffice? (Score:4, Informative)
What was the ISO-number of that standard again? Oh wait, it doesn't have one. Unlike some others [iso.org].
Which format did you say was industry standard?
Re:how much better than OpenOffice? (Score:1, Informative)
# file locking now enabled by default
#SAL_ENABLE_FILE_LOCKING=1
#export SAL_ENABLE_FILE_LOCKING
Everything will be hunky-dory, at least with 2.0.3 or earlier. I have had other problems with 2.0.4 and 2.1.
I don't know why they did this dumb thing.
Re:how much better than OpenOffice? (Score:2, Informative)
I wouldent recomend any Tex based system tho, not without a painless GUI such as Lyx, or else you will be right back to dealing with formating, or at the very least annoying text, with Lyx style applications will just show you what you wrote, in its default formating.
Re:how much better than OpenOffice? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:how much better than OpenOffice? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Word is the route through these other things. (Score:5, Informative)
The original source can come from anything from a text file to a Word document. Most often, it's Word. You're right there. However, the writers aren't concerned with that too much, they use what they are comfortable with. They use a Word processor to.. process words.
The book goes into Quark BEFORE going to press? If by every step afterward you mean it goes into Quark, then yes, you'd be correct. There are several hundred thousand dollar solutions dedicated to managing your Quark & InDesign files, and your assets. Check out Xinet and Dalim and Documentum and etc. The authors are out of the chain by this point. The page designers work in the page layout programs. They upload their changes to Xinet, where it is opened by the editor, marked up, changed, and approved or sent back. It's only THEN converted into a print-ready PDF. That lonely guy at the end of the hall you describe is actually 2/3rds of the workflow.
The only people that use Word are the original authors. The page designers wouldn't subject themselves to doing page layout in word. That notion is just preposterous.
I honestly can't say where you got your impressions from, but they seem to be extremely off base. This is coming from someone who went to college for print, has talked to people throughout the print industry, and now works in print.
Open Source Alternative! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:how much better than OpenOffice? (Score:3, Informative)
I bought it, I like it, I recommend it (Score:5, Informative)
Looking over the course of this Slashdot thread I'm not surprised by the now-familiar Microsoft-bashing/LaTeX/Lyx recommendation/OO.o zealotry/refusal to pay Softmaker's price. But I have been reading Slashdot now long enough to know the words to this particular song.
I bought Textmaker back in 2003 and liked it so much I also bought Planmaker, their spreadsheet (now sold together). But because I'm a (professional [gotonicaragua.com] and prolific [therandymon.com] writer, I care a lot about my tools, and I've tried just about all of the products out there; plus, because I use Windows at work and both Linux and Macs at home, I've been exposed to a lot of word processors.
On Linux, I use Textmaker. Here's why.
Stable. I've never crashed it, even with ridiculously complicated documents
Fast. I like OO.o but on my old 555Mhz PIII it's unbearably slow to start up, and on my Mac, NeoOffice is just not fast enough, and even repainting the screen after a window stretch/shrink is ghastly. I appreciate the effort and even use the software, but it's not the first thing I reach for. On Textmaker menus are snappy, the graphics are fast, and things work as though it had been designed and built by professionals that want to make a product good enough to convince people to spend money on it.
Easy to use. That means keyboard shortcuts for everything, sensibly laid out, familiar interface, professional.
Lightweight. It's been designed to be resource friendly and is, even on my outdated hardware.
Fast enough to be a useful document previewer for your mail client so you can get a glimpse of what's in the Word docs I receive.
Basically, it's fast, reliable, and works well. Its Word doc import is much better quality than OO.o's. I gave Abiword a try but rejected it because of frequent crashes and a somewhat amateurish feel to it; Kword has never been usable for more than simple letters in my opinion and the font kerning issues make Kword printed documents ugly. OO.o is simply too slow in spite of all its other endearing qualities.
Textmaker's downside? The TML format is a mystery to me, so I don't use it. You can save to Doc format as a default, but I hate Docs. I would be thrilled if they would adopt the ODT format. It's also not as feature rich as OO.o, which is in turn not as feature rich as Word. On the Mac there are far better alternatives (I happen to love Mellel, and Apple's Pages is top-notch). And I use LaTeX for what it does best, and RTF or even plain text all other times.
But face it, GNU/Linux (and BSD more so) lacks a small, fast, good word processor. Abiword and Kword are fast but not good, and OO.o is good but not fast. For professional writers that care about their work and their tools, this is a great piece of software and I'm not alone in representing a market of GNU/Linux OSF fans that believes in freedom but is not against paying for software (SUSE, Rekall, Textmaker, Planmaker, Xandros, NoMachines) if with that software comes additional quality, reliability, or convenience. Textmaker provides all three.
Finally, the above doesn't even take into consideration the fact that its primary market isn't Linux/BSD in the first place, it's Windows users that synch docs to a PocketPC. And in that niche, it is unsurpassed and very critically acclaimed. Be glad they even make a Linux version at all, whiney slashdotters.
Re:how much better than OpenOffice? (Score:3, Informative)
It printed fine the second time, but the results of the first pass were quite comical.