SoftMaker Rolls Out Office Suite for BSD, Linux, and Others

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.

Is there a space in the market ?

[quiberon2]

What makes Softmaker think there is room in the market for their product ?

As far as I know, there are only 2 forces in the world; 'love' and 'money'

OpenOffice.org has a monopoly in the 'distributed for love' channel.

Microsoft Office has a monopoly in the 'distributed for money' channel.

Who will buy Softmaker Office, and why ?

more competition

[gravesb]

I'm glad to see more competition in the office space. Open Office has its issues, and Microsoft Office is still the gold standard for the general public. There are plenty of players in the space, but more can't really hurt. What I really would like is to see a suite that doesn't ape MS Office, but comes up with unique ways to do things that are more effective. Of course this is almost impossible as the cost of retraining from MS Office is prohibitive in most environments, but if MS Office is making major changes that necessitate retraining anyway, then maybe there is an opportunity for the myriad "me too" office suites to move in an unique direction as well. Probably not, as most sheep will upgrade to MS Office, but the more players in the market, the more chance that people will switch come upgrade time.

Is there room for another commercial office suite?

[Teckla]

I was just about to post a comment that asked, "Is there room for another commercial office suite, especially for Linux and BSD?"

After looking at the screenshots (very impressive!) and price (very competitive!), I think the answer just might be yes.

Of course, my meager needs are entirely met by Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets, which runs just fine in Firefox.

There are SEVEN forces in the world

[Valacosa]

I partially agree with your statement, though I don't think there are two forces in the world, there are seven.

Microsoft office isn't distributed for money, it's distributed because of greed.

OpenOffice isn't distribuited for love, it's distributed because of pride.

As for this new contender? I'd go with envy.

(No, I'm not a crazy religious zealot freak or anything. I honestly beleive this explains a lot about software development. For instance, Facebook and Myspace exist because of lust. As JWZ once famously said, "'How will this software get my users laid' should be on the minds of anyone writing social software")

As a Linux user, I'm just not sold...

[aussersterne]

I'm one of those Linux users that buys software for Linux.

I bought ApplixWare. I bought WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux. Both became orphanware. OpenOffice, meanwhile, continues to hum along and is not only compatible with new versions of Linux every time I install one, but actually comes as a part of each Linux OS I've installed for years now.

OpenOffice imports word formats with a reasonable degree of accuracy and I can still open and use files all the way back to when it was StarOffice 3.0. My Applix and WordPerfectOffice 2000 files, on the other hand, are not so easy to get back into.

Plus, I now have Office XP anytime I need it running through Crossover, though I prefer OpenOffice in most cases. There's just no reason for me to buy this stuff. I wish them luck in a pretty much taken care of market. It's like trying to sell a web browser for $69 at this point, I think.

why give a fuck about office compatability?

[timmarhy]

i don't see why people are so obessed about being compatable with office documents. the whole point is to force office out, adding compatablity only give it greater leverage to change their formats and screw you over. far better to create a suite that uses open format documents in xml. while you continue to pander to the make everything compatable with MS products crowd, you will not win.

Re:how much better than OpenOffice?

[swillden]

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.

Interesting.

This is precisely the reverse of my experience.

When I'm working on large, complex documents (100+ pages, lots of headings, lists, tables), I'm constantly terrified that Word is going to crash on me and destroy my work. I save frequently, and make backups every few hours.

That's *why* whenever I possibly can I don't use Word. OpenOffice is so much more reliable, there's just no comparison, and it has been for the last three or so years. Especially when documents get big. Lately I'm leaning toward using LyX/LaTeX, which I think is an even better option for large, highly structured documents that need to be consistent and nice-looking. But I have a lot to learn before I can do that. LaTeX documents look so much prettier and more professional than any word processor output I've seen that I think it's worth the effort.

Personally I've had it with "Softwmaker"

[gd23ka]

I have no idea why this small operation out of Nuremberg, Germany keeps on trying
(and how they're able to purchase press coverage). With a choice between full
compatibility to Orifice 200x by buying the original or getting a free kick-ass
Office Package that is maybe 80% Microsoft compatible - what niche does that leave
the guy asking money for something that is 80%-90% compatible?

Chokes on big spreadsheets

[massysett]

I've got a huge (17.5MB) spreadsheet that Excel handles, no problem. Excel takes about five seconds to open it and recalculates it in about a second.

No Linux program I tried could handle this spreadsheet. Gnumeric and OOo both choke on it. If they even load it, they then take several minutes to recalculate it. KSpread doesn't even have all the functions that are in the sheet.

So I was eager to try this new spreadsheet--PlanMaker, they call it. I downloaded it. Installation was really easy (to me, refuting the people who claim that it's too hard for ISVs to release proprietary binaries for Linux.)

Planmaker has now been cranking one of my cores at 100% for about five minutes, just trying to get this worksheet open. Still hasn't opened it. Remember that Excel does this in about five seconds.

If Gnumeric is any indicator, converting from the proprietary Excel file format isn't the problem. Gnumeric performed worse in its native XML format than it did with the Excel format.

Yes, I can already see holier-than-thou geek saying that I shouldn't have a 17.5MB spreadsheet and, to tell the truth, this sheet is not as efficiently written as it could be. But part of the value of spreadsheets is that they allow non-geeks to put some simple data models together. Spreadsheets need to be able to cope with inefficiently written sheets.

Excel can cope; nothing else can. Maybe Crossover is the next option to try.

Planmaker *still* hasn't opened the sheet.

Re:how much better than OpenOffice?

[asuffield]

for business I use Word running under Crossover, because exact formating is crucial for me

If exact formatting is crucial, why on earth are you using Word? It's really not very good at precisely reproducing formatting. It only works reliably if both systems have the same *printer drivers* installed (yeah, wtf?) - the rest of the time, it's pot luck whether things go where you want them, or get moved by half a millimetre, knocking all your carefully arranged lines out of position...

If you want exact reproduction of formatting, use PDF. Or latex.

Re:how much better than OpenOffice?

[misleb]

Indeed. People should not be using a word processor as if it were a desktop publishing or layout application. That is what Quark/InDesign/PageMaker/etc are for. Word processors are for.. processing words. But people shouldn't use email to share large files or use spreadsheets as databases, but they do anyway. Unfortunately, Microsoft crams so many features into Word that using it for desktop publishing is just too tempting for some people. I've even seen people use Word to produce web pages! Ack!

-matthew

Use PDF

[flyingfsck]

Send out PDFs, not virus prone .docs. Anyhoo, the way a .doc renders, depends on the installed printer. Yes, that is correct, the printer. You don't control the client's printer, so if the exact rendering is important, you should not send out .doc files.

Re:how much better than OpenOffice?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which format did you say was industry standard?

The one that everyone uses. A de facto standard carries as much, if not more, weight as a declared one.

Re:why give a fuck about office compatability?

[bcrowell]

i don't see why people are so obessed about being compatable with office documents. [...] adding compatablity only give it greater leverage to change their formats and screw you over.
That's a great strategy to make sure that Linux and OSS are a miserable failure with the 99% of the population that doesn't care about the Stallman stuff. People have huge quantities of documents already in Word format. If there's never any reliable way of translating them into an open format, then those people will never switch to an open format.

the whole point is to force office out
So you want to annihilate office, and then built an open-source utopia out of the ashes? Doesn't seem too practical to me. Maybe a better option would be to outcompete office, and let people switch of their own free choice. That's what worked for Firefox, which is basically the only OSS app that many ordinary people use.

Re:Is there a space in the market ?

[Waffle Iron]

What makes Softmaker think there is room in the market for their product ?

Word processing software is a multibillion dollar market. Most multibillion dollar markets have dozens or hundreds of competitors. Why would you think that the limit on the number of vendors for this market is just two?

Re:how much better than OpenOffice?

[Constantine Evans]

100% Microsoft Word compatibility is impossible. While complete compatibility with specific versions might be feasible, Word is notorious for being incompatible among versions.

Re:why give a fuck about office compatability?

[NorbrookC]

People have huge quantities of documents already in Word format. If there's never any reliable way of translating them into an open format, then those people will never switch to an open format.

Exactly! Like it or not, Office is the 800 pound gorilla, at the moment. It might help people here to remember that at one time, WordPerfect was the 800 pound gorilla. One of the standard features in Word 6 was to not only read and save into the WP format, but you could also enable it to use the WP command set. Microsoft didn't do this out of the goodness of its heart (insert laughter and obligatory sarcasm here), but because if it wanted Word to be adopted, it had to be able to read the format of the dominant word processing package.

On the other hand, demanding "perfect translation" is a bit of a stretch too, since it's hard to get that between Word versions. All you need is someone still using Word '97 when you send them something to find that out.

No OS X version?

[Yvan256]

...FreeBSD, Linux, Windows, Sharp Zaurus and Windows Mobile.

Great. They take the time to make a version for a pratically non-existant marketshare such as the Sharp Zaurus, but they skip over OS X? What are they smoking? And don't tell me that Microsoft Office is available for Macs, because it's also available for Windows and that didn't stop SoftMaker from making a version of their office suite for Windows. It's also not about a dev. suite cost, because it's bundled with all Macs, even the Mac mini.

Bah, if they're aiming for "Microsoft Office compatibility", that means more Microsoft-formatted documents, not less. Vote with your usage, stick with OpenOffice and their open formats.

Re:Worth every penny

[flight_master]

A typical response from a smart-ass linux fag.

This would make more sense if, a) I was a faggot. b) I was a smart-ass, and c) you weren't an anonymous coward.

Re:how much better than OpenOffice?

[1984]

He said "industry"; you're talking about "international".

Office certainly is a de-facto industry standard.

Re:how much better than OpenOffice?

[SnowZero]

Funny you should mention that. I happen to know somebody who lost much of their PhD dissertation document after writing it in MS Word. It got corrupted in some subtle way, and then ended up making large portions of text unusable and unrecoverable. Most of the large MS Word documents you saw probably used master documents, as the GP mentioned. Of course, he is a "fanboy", and cannot be trusted, right? Your arguments, by contrast, are only based on "facts" (or a lack of medication).

Of course, for large documents I don't know if I would trust OO.org either; I did my PhD thesis in LaTeX.

Re:Chokes on big spreadsheets

[zesty42]

I'm not sure it's really that far off on the edge. I work in construction as a project manager. I setup spreadsheets for the people that work for and around me. Most of them are simple, so yes, the number of users that only need 'common' features is larger. I use big Excel files (10-15MB) that do a lot of calculations. Gnumeric went comatose when I tried it. I use Excel, so the people around me use Excel. Most people use so few features that a switch to OO wouldn't be a problem, but its not realistic for me. If I make the switch, the people around me will also, so these 'unusual' cases are really the key to growth many cases I believe. This situation of a 'power user' controling the documents of many is fairly common from what I've seen in engineering/construction.