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Slightly Skeptical View
on Microsoft Office Suit and Applications Scripting

Free and adequate looks enticing
compared with expensive and adequate.
Rob Pegoraro Washtech.com

If we can't afford the solution,
then it's not a solution ;-).
SAP marketing slogan

The main selling point for Windows and important driving force of windows development are applications. MS Office is a really impressive set of well integrated programs with impressive  the common macro language. 

It also have very impressive GUI and ports of Apple applications on windows (ITunes) have shown that Microsoft managed to beat Apple in its own game. 

Contrary to views of many naive open source advocates (Eric Raymond is a good example) MS Office is a tremendously capable suit of  software applications disguised as a consumer product. It is a professional suit of high-quality applications with real cost at least $1K which Microsoft is selling approximately for $300 (with home and student edition for less then $100). It's not only de-facto standard and that has capabilities perfectly suited for enterprise customers. It is in more then Microsoft Office is a masterpiece of software beginning and testament of IQ of Microsoft designers and tremendous talent and perseverance of Microsoft managers. It is a very rare case when such a large company producing such slick applications. Just look at software produced by IBM, Symantec, Adobe, SAP etc.  Even Apple, althouth Apple is definitely better then many.

In a way as long as Microsoft continued to enhance and further develop that suit of application s it can a lock on customers of personal computers. That might be one reason why attempts to unseat Windows domination as diverse as Linux and Apple Leopard never became more than attempts. Althouth Microsoft is tremendously competitive company and can do wonders to wear down and at then of the game defeat a serious competitor.   I think that a popular joke that any Microsoft product becomes good at version six sounds like a pretty sinister forecast to many competitors ;-)

Home users can generally benefit from simpler tools, but MS Word costs so little (previously as a part of  Microsoft Works, now as a part of Home and Students edition) that it just does not make sense to settle for less.

Situation with other components of the Office is different. Excel is a real masterpiece of software engineering (again, disguised as a consumer product) but the full power of Excel can appreciate only professional user and, may be, sophisticated investor. Relatively small percentage of home users can benefit from full power of Excel which is indispensable in the enterprise environment. I noticed that small business often use Excel as a simple database tool, instead of Access and (now discontinued) FoxPro.  The same might be true for PowerPoint and FrontPage. I personally use Frontage as MS Word substitute but that's just an idiosyncrasy as I resent unability of word to present a 'raw' editable markup of the document and also I know HTML relatively well and do not have too much needs outside its capabilities.  Actually FrontPage is another really amazing application from Microsoft (althouth it was bought by Microsoft, not developed in house), which Microsoft dramatically enhanced with each version and which provides professional user the ability to increase his/her productivity ten times or more in comparison with simpler tools.

The only problem with Microsoft Office is that it is rather expensive outside the USA, and it is extremely expensive in Eastern Europe, if you compare the price with the average monthly salary. Like in SAP/R3 somewhat perverted ( judging from the cost of SAP software) slogan: "If we can't afford the solution, then it's not a solution" ;-). Therefore generally MS Office is an extremely good, irreplaceable solution for the US market, but much less for Eastern European market, which needs to find the alternative.

Here this page might be of some help as it touches alternatives that are rarely discussed on open source sites: other Microsoft packages (like Microsoft Works 8.0 ) as well as some licensing tricks available for small businesses (Microsoft partner programs that make the cost of set of Microsoft application (including MS Office) plus OS approximately $3 a month per employee if the firm contains exactly 10 employees :-).

The key attractiveness of application like components of MS Office is openness of the API and the underlying formats. They all are scriptable and it is more useful feature that openness of code per se (its just too much code to be useful for 99.99% of the users ;-). 

• The key advantage of the MS Office -- common macro language for all applications in a suit, is the advantage that is still unmatched by rivals. Also the level of support of MS Office (books, training materials, add-ons, etc) is far superior to the alternatives.  That mean that MS Office including its crown jewels MS Word and Excel still makes sense in the open world. But if only if :

  • You can afford it (not true for many business in Eastern Europe, at least until recently Microsoft pricing was "out of reach" for them)
  • Know how to use outlining capabilities (this is a training issue). Paradoxically many users use MS Word like Word Perfect. In this case Word Perfect is a better alternative. 
  • You can benefit from macro capabilities. Ms Word have very powerful macro capabilities and that makes it a class of its own. Just look at MS Word viruses ;-). But jokes aside this is one of the most programmable word processor around and you can make it to do amazing things with macros. See, for example, MS Word Macros. Again most users and even organizations do not have enough IQ to benefit from it. If this is  case then (outside of the USA) an attractiveness of MS Office in general and MS Word in particular is more problematic and simpler alternatives might make some sense. Google tries to exploit this niche but so far its attempts were really "fist steps". 

  The main problem with the Office is that until Office 2007 both MS Word and Excel documents formats were proprietary and generally undocumented. But for all earlier versions you still can export documents in Open formats including RTF and XHTML. The latter needs some post-processing (see, for example demoroniser), if you want to publish it; raw Ms Word xhtml contains too many Microsoft styles.

  Still absence of the internal representation accessibility somewhat limits what you can do in MS Word (and complicate debugging). That's probably the most severe shortcoming of MS Word.  and that why I personally often use FrontPage as an alternative to MS Word despite much weaker spellchecker, weaker and convoluted macro capabilities and absence of many vital for word processing capabilities.

  The absence of the internal representation view limits what you can do in MS Word  and complicates debugging of complex documents

  Contrary to the opinion of typical Linux zealots, I am convinced that Microsoft Word was and still is a very good program that was innovative at the time of introduction and positively influenced the field previously dominated by somewhat backward WordPerfect (which, paradoxically, has an access to the view of the internal representation of the document).  I would agree that from the point of view of supporting open formats like HTML and XML, MS Word still have room to grow, but I am surprised how Adobe managed to monopolize the field of document viewers despite the fact that MS Word viewers would be clearly adequate (and somewhat superior due to the quality of MS Word as a tool for creating them). Weaker products might become dominant if they meet the needs of the most users.  

  In the past (in the MS DOS environment) MS Word was always underdog to WordPerfect, but despite the second place that most PC magazines assigned to in in 1987-1994 (or may be due to it :-) it was always more innovative word processor than WordPerfect:

  • I remember that the first DOS version of Word that I used (Word 4, 1987?) already had outlining capabilities.
  • Word5 for DOS(1989?) introduced the use of style sheets in a way very similar to CCS, so to a certain extent it was 10 year ahead of its time.  People were able to produce pretty complex books using Ms Word as poor man publishing system.

  BTW it is funny that generally more conservative WordPerfect has "show the source" concept of showing raw source format similar to HTML editors of today and MS Word never had it. Because in other areas MS Word was definitely more innovative work processor.  If you remember the days of character-based WordPerfect, you will remember the "reveal codes" feature, which shows an editable view of the current file with the internal formatting codes visible. This gave the user more control of the underlying text-processing than MS Word. That why lawyers always prefer WordPerfect and that's why many advanced users (including myself) for simple documents are now using FrontPage instead of MS Word (FrontPage is now part of Office Professional).

  Inability of MS Word transparently show its internal format  always was one of the biggest shortcomings of this very powerful program

  In addition to being rather expensive outside of North America,  today's versions of Microsoft Office are huge and try to implement everything  possible under the sun. The best original ideas are buried under the bloat of "me too" features. For example how many people use MS Word outlining capabilities, the really innovative feature of MS Word. My guestimate is that less then 1%.  If you do not need all the capabilities you can probably use cheaper substitutes. What are the alternatives?

  • Microsoft Work Suit 2006  Paradoxically the best alternative for the MS Word are earlier versions of MS Word. ;-). For example Microsoft Works Suit is a cheap bungle of six pretty powerful programs including MS Word 2002. This collection of software is amazing for the price at which it is being offered. Accept no substitutes :-).  The price on Amazon is around $20 which is really shareware price. It contains full version of  MS Word 2002:
     
    • Word 2002 Use the same premier word processor featured in Microsoft Office XP. Word 2002 features—such as smart tags and task panes, and improved technology for formatting—make it easy to create professional-looking documents. Enhanced reliability ensures that you spend your time working, not re-creating the work you've completed. Read more about Word 2002.

    It also contains:

    • Picture It! Photo Premium 9.0 Use photos from digital cameras, scanners, photo CDs, and e-mail attachments. Organize your photos, correct common photo problems, create great photo projects, and share your photos online. Read more about Picture It! Photo Premium 9.0.
       
    • Encarta^® Encyclopedia Standard  Access more than 38,000 up-to-date articles, plus photos, illustrations, hundreds of videos, animations, and audio files. Encarta is the ideal multimedia encyclopedia for everyday use. Read more about Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2004.
       
    • Money Standard Organize and manage your personal finances quickly and easily. If you're new to personal finance management software, Money Standard is a great way to get started. Read more about Money 2004 Standard.
       
    • Streets & Trips  Find maps, points of interest, routes, and driving directions without waiting for an Internet connection. Create and download maps to your Pocket PC.
  • Microsoft Works 9.0 Here is pretty telling review from Amazon

    Faster than microsoft office word, June 2, 2008

    By	sonnsett Radius "Sonn'" (chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

    After struggling with Microsoft Word 2007, I immediately ordered Microsoft Works 9.0 simply because it is easy to handle and I love some of the updates that has been added. I love the way it saves your letters and documents. It has a lot of other great features as well. You can make your own personal stationary, all occasion cards, budgets, and personal business forms etc. I especially love the history tab which helps me to find all of my letter/documents or anything else that I might have saved. It is easy to change letter size, and style or to print letters in different color ink.
    
    When I bought a new computer it came with microsoft office word 2007. It was too complicated when you just want a simply letter or want to add headers and footers to your letter. I will have to take a class or take some time to learn microsoft word 2007.

    That is what I love about Microsoft Works 9.0 it is very easy to manuver without a lot of reading and studying. For me, it is self explanatory. Although, almost every company and most of my teachers wants me to use microsoft office word 2007, I generally get permission to use Microsoft Works 9.0 because Microsoft Word 2007 is too time consuming if you don't know how to use it or you don't have the time to learn it -- it becomes a waste of time.
     

  Most people need MS Word which is a de facto standard in document processing, but an average user seldom needs Powerpoint or Excel. At home one can benefit from such useful programs as Money, Street Finder, and  Picture It. The last is Microsoft's publishing photo program and it alone usually costs around $60. This makes MS Works suit a real bargain and the best alternative for MS Office, especially for family use or student use.

  See also Amazon and Epinions.com reviews.
   

• Corel's WordPerfect Office.  It is the workhorse of legal departments all over the world. The recent version of WordPerfect Office X4 can work with PDF documents. Import, edit, archive and export PDF documents with built-in PDF features—no Adobe® Acrobat® required!
  • WordPerfect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    WordPerfect is a proprietary word processing application, now owned by Corel. Bruce Bastian, a Brigham Young University (BYU) graduate student, and BYU computer science professor Dr. Alan Ashton joined forces to design a word processing system for the city of Orem's Data General Corp. minicomputer system in 1979. Bastian and Ashton kept the rights to the WordPerfect software they designed for Orem, deciding to market it through their own company. Ashton and Bastian started Satellite Systems International (SSI) to sell WordPerfect in 1980. WordPerfect 1.0 represented a significant departure from the previous Wang standard for word processing. At the height of its popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was the de facto standard word processor, but has long since been eclipsed in sales by Microsoft Word. Although the MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows versions are best known^{[citation needed]}, its popularity was based in part on the fact that it was available for a wide variety of computers and operating systems, including Mac OS, Linux, the Apple IIe, a separate version for the Apple IIgs, most popular versions of Unix, VMS, Data General, System/370, AmigaOS, Atari ST, OS/2, and NeXTSTEP.

    The common file name extension of WordPerfect document files is .wpd. Older versions of WordPerfect also used file extensions .wp, .wp7, .wp6, .wp5, .wp4, and originally, no extension at all.^[1]
    
    Since its acquisition by Corel, WordPerfect for Windows has officially been known as Corel WordPerfect.

    Quattro Pro - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Quattro Pro spreadsheet program developed by Borland and now sold by Corel, most often as part of Corel's WordPerfect Office.

    Historically, Quattro Pro used keyboard command similar to Lotus 1-2-3. It is commonly said to have been the first program to use the "tabbed notebook" metaphor. However, this is not true, as Boeing Calc had already used tabbed pages^[1][2]. It currently runs under the Windows operating system. Quattro Pro avoided the 65,536 row by 256 column spreadsheet limitations inherent to pre-2007 versions of Microsoft Excel by allowing a maximum worksheet size of one million rows by 18,276 columns. Since about 1996 Quattro Pro has run a distant second to Excel's market domination.

    When version 1.0 was in development, it was codenamed "Buddha" since it was meant to "assume the Lotus position", #1 in the market. When the product was launched in 1988, its original name was Quattro (the Italian word for "four", a play on being one step ahead of "1-2-3"). Borland changed the name to Quattro Pro for its 1990 release.

    The common file extension of Quattro Pro spreadsheet file is .qpw. Older versions of Quattro Pro used also following file extensions: wb3, wb2, wb1, wq2, wq1.^[3]

• Lotus SmartSuite. IBM bought and generally killed this fine suit of applications which at one point were competitors for Microsoft. It strongest feature is 1-2-3 spreadsheet, which was foe a long time standard spreadsheet for financial people. You can buy Lotus Smart Suite Millenium Edition 9.8 SoftwareOutlet it for ~$20. SmartSuite 9.8 supports the Windows XP platform. It features the following applications:
  •  1-2-3, the spreadsheet that started it all;
  • Word Pro, former AmiPro, the aging and not very capable word processor with IBM ViaVoice as a useful add on. 
  • Organizer Release 5.04, a nice simple personal information manager;
  • Freelance Graphics, the presentation graphics package
  • Approach, the relational database
     
• StarOffice/OpenOffice. Another important player emerged in May 1999 -- StarOffice is now free for individual users on all platforms.  It's written in Java and is somewhat slow even on today's fast PCs. Applications are rather primitive in comparison with MS Office and interface is raw.  StarOffice is a set of office applications that includes: 
  • WRITER -- a decent but far from perfect MS Word alternative. Can integrate images and charts in documents, create everything from business letters to complete books with professional layouts, as well as create and publish Web content. You can publish your work in Portable Document Format (.pdf), which i do not like ;-). MS Word compatibility is also good, but sometimes I get documents from Sun that are not readable...
  • CALC  --  a spreadsheet. contains some advanced spreadsheet functions and decision-making tools to perform sophisticated data analysis. Use built-in charting tools to generate impressive 2D and 3D charts. Still inferior to Excel. 
  • IMPRESS --  multimedia presentations tool. Supports special effects, animation and has drawing tools.
  • DRAW will produce everything from simple diagrams to dynamic 3D illustrations and special effects.
  • The Database User Tools give you all the tools you need for day to day database work in a simple spreadsheet-like form. They support dBASE databases for simple applications, or any ODBC or JDBC compliant database for industrial strength database work.

  The main attraction of Open Office is that it is free. Also support of open formats is better that in MS Office. Open Office is a just a renamed Star Office that Sun bought and re-licensed. Star Office was from the beginning designed as a cheap MS Office emulator. Before Sun acquired Star Division GmbH in 2000, the original vendor, StarOffice already had 30% of the German market and it was even rated superior to Microsoft Office among users surveyed by Germany's largest computer magazine, ComputerBild. In October 2000, Sun change the license to dual with GPL as a second license, renamed the product to Open Office and organized a special site for the coordination of  development OpenOffice.org.

  Due to financial problems, currently many municipal governments play with the idea of saving money moving to Open Office and it does make sense as a regular municipal worker usually does not need any macro capabilities.
  
  There is somewhat better version from Sun called StarOffice 7 (for ~$80), but it is overpriced in comparison with the MS Works Suit which contains MS Word 2002 (street price of MS Works suit 2004 is ~$25). Therefore it mainly makes sense if you are limited to Solaris and Linux.

  In late June 2001, the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) chose to implement 25,000 units of Sun’s StarOffice software. This sounds like a significant gain until you discover that StarOffice was replacing Applix on Unix workstations as well as Windows based software. DISA’s requirement was for “an open office productivity suite to work on multiple platforms, including Linux, Solaris and Windows."

  By May 2001 Sun was reporting that five million copies had been downloaded and that more than 20 million copies of the software were distributed worldwide with the major users in the education community, government, and small-to-medium-sized businesses. In 2002 Sun promised to release version 6, which will support XML. StarOffice has good compatibility with Microsoft Office formats. It already has language support for Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish, but version 6 will add Chinese, Japanese and Korean to the mix.

  Five million downloads does not prove any specific number of users and the only way of guessing it right is the impact of OpenOffice on MS Office revenues. the fact that MS Office is ridiculously expensive in poor countries (Eastern Europe, India, China, South America...) can also help. 
   

• LyX and other TeX-based tools are very good (and free for commercial use). Theyare mainly attractive for  power users  and researchers who need a precise control of formattiing (scietificarticles and dissertation are two primary examples). You operate with the the internal representation of the document using any suitable editor and them create the "preview" document via TeX.  The great advantage of TeX is its stability and simplicity. It's a tool written by a one of the greatest programmers of all times, Professor Donald Knuth.
• Frontpage and other HTML editors. For modest requements Frontpage and Netscape Composer  are good alternative.

Theoretically XML-based tools looks more viable than TeX, and OpenOffice seems to be a leader in this category.   I just do not like XML and consider XHTML quite adequate for most purposes.

Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov

Old News ;-)

Introducing Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview

Introduction to Office 2010

Office 2010 Applications

• Word 2010
• Excel® 2010
• PowerPoint® 2010
• Outlook® 2010
• OneNote® 2010
• Publisher 2010
• Access® 2010
• InfoPath® 2010
• Office Communicator 2007 R2
• SharePoint Workspace 2010
• Visio 2010

[Dec 3, 2007] OpenOffice.org 2.3 Impresses

I am not a fan of Wiki format and think that HTML is OK for this purpose and Wiki format outlived its usefulness but still this is an interesting feature.

Next I tested the most significant addition to OpenOffice's Writer application, the ability to export newly created files to the MediaWiki format, a feature-rich collaborative editing software that runs Wikipedia.

I first loaded the file up with a bunch of character formatting, such as italicized, bolded and underlined chunks of text. I also included a hyperlink. From the file dialog, I chose Export and selected MediaWiki.txt from the File Format drop-down menu. I then cut and pasted the entire document into a blank Wiki page and discovered that the italicized text made it through the conversion, as did the hyperlink. The underlined text and bold text, however, did not pass the test. Apostrophes also fared poorly, not maintaining their "smart quotes" status.

Still, introducing this format as an option to users is recognizing the growing importance and undeniable usability of the Web-based collaborative workspace that the smart and savvy should be incorporating into their software ASAP (or be left in the dust).

[Sep 14, 2006] Dr. Dobb's Microsoft Ready To Update Office 2007 Beta 2 September 13, 2006

Pegged as a "Technical Refresh," the update will be available only to users of Office 2007 Beta 2, and will be offered as a download from the Microsoft Web site.

Microsoft touted improved performance, better integration, improved collaboration tools, and "general fit and finish changes" in the Technical Refresh (TR) "This Technical Refresh is the final external product milestone leading to RTM [Release To Manufacturing]," a company spokesperson wrote in an e-mail to TechWeb Wednesday.

[Feb 17, 2006] Office 12 Christened Office 2007   Will be available at the end of 2006. Office 2007 will enable people to publish documents in the Adobe PDF. Probably .Net languages will be supported instead of VBA.

The 2007 Microsoft Office release, available by the end of 2006, is an integrated system of programs, servers, and services that will help you meet your business and personal needs. Work more efficiently, stay organized, and more easily collaborate and share information using the security-enhanced 2007 Microsoft Office system.

Register to get the latest news about the 2007 Microsoft Office release, formerly code-named Office "12", including notification when Beta 2 is available.

[Feb 17, 2006]  2007 Microsoft Office System Packaging Looks like Frontpage is no longer part of the Office Professional.

[Feb 14, 2006] Microsoft New Scripts Page

• Connect to/Start Microsoft Excel

• Convert Paragraph Style Settings

[Feb 14, 2006] MS Word is notorious for containing private information in file headers, but not any longer.

Microsoft has quietly released a tool to scrub leaky metadata from documents edited with its software. The Remove Hidden Data Add-In will permanently remove hidden and collaboration data, such as change tracking and comments, from MS Word, MS Excel, and MS PowerPoint files. For Office XP/Office 2003 only, we should add.

[Nov 9, 2005] The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities A very interesting selection; definitely gifted author !

There are a lot of great freeware products out there. Many are as good or even better than their commercial alternatives. This list features my personal pick of the "best of the best."

All these utilities in this list have been featured in past issues of of my free monthly newsletter "Support Alert"  More freebies are featured in every new issue. If you are interested in great utilities and freeware you really should consider subscribing. It's free.

You'll get the most from this list by browsing through it at leisure. The pathologically impatient can consult the index.

10  Best Free Software Suite
The Open CD site offers for free a wonderful collection of just about every application software product you need to run a PC including the latest version of OpenOffice. Many of these freebies substitute admirably for expensive commercial products. There is Abi Word as an alternative for MS Word, OpenOffice for MS Office XP, Thunderbird for Outlook, The Gimp for Adobe Photoshop, 7-zip for WinZip and many more. If you then add to this collection some of the other utilities from my "46 Best-ever Utilities" collection you will have all the software you'll ever need without spending a cent. Note: All of the Open CD utilities can be downloaded for free as a CD ISO image. If you have a slow connection you can purchase the CD for a as little as $1.99. In addition to the Windows versions,  the CD also contains the same collection of programs implemented under a  version of Linux called Ubuntu that can be booted and run directly from the CD. That way you not only get to try all these great programs you can try Linux as well, without interfering in any way with your current Windows installation.
http://theopencd.org

25 Best Free Hotkey Utility 
Hotkeycontrol XP is a free utility that allows you to define your own hotkeys so that a single key press can launch an application, insert commonly used text, change your volume, or just about anything else.  Hotkeycontrol works with all versions of Windows from 98 onwards, though some features will only work with Win2K or XP. Some folks with slower PCs have reported that Hotkeycontrol can be a little slow to react. If you experience this, you might like to try PS Hot Launch VVL as an alternative. It works on all versions of Windows and is an excellent performer even on slow PCs.  A third alternative is not really a hotkey utility at all but achieves the same result by using "magic words." It places a tiny text box on your screen and when you type specially assigned words into the box, they will launch a program, go to a web site or whatever. For example if you type "mail" it can launch your mail reader. Type in "46" and it can take you to the web page of the "46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities." Of course, it's up to you to define these magic words and you can have as many as you want. It all works very neatly with some really nice touches like auto-complete for your magic words which means you only have to type in two or three letters and SlickRun will complete the rest. Nice too, is an eyedropper tool that allows you to identify a program you want to "hotkey" just by clicking in its application window. There's also a built-in note jotter and a calendar date display.  It requires Win 98 or later.
http://www.digital-miner.com/hkcontrol.html  (0.91KB)
http://www.pssoftlab.com/pshl_info.phtml (743KB)
http://www.bayden.com/SlickRun/ (168KB)

45 Best Free Outliner
I'm not a great fan of outliners - my brain doesn't work that way. Some folks however, swear by them and if that includes you, then you should check out Keynote, an Open Source freeware program that has a dedicated band of followers.  Its major design attribute is its ease of use. Words like "natural" and "seamless" come close to the mark but really don't capture the essence of what is really a great design. What do you do with it? Well to quote the web site “KeyNote is used by screenwriters to draft screenplays, by medical doctors to keep patient databases, by developers to store source code snippets - and to everyone it serves as a place to put all the random pieces of information that have no particular structure of relationship to other data, and do not fit easily in task-specific applications such as word-processors, databases or spreadsheets.”  (1.7MB)
http://www.tranglos.com/free/index.html

Slashdot OpenOffice Bloated

ZDNet's George Ou has been writing a series of posts about Open Office bloat. Includes some interesting system usage comparisons" From the article: "Even when dealing with what is essentially the same data, OpenOffice Calc uses up 211 MBs of private unsharable memory while Excel uses up 34 MBs of private unsharable memory. The fact that OpenOffice.org Calc takes about 100 times the CPU time explains the kind of drastic results we were getting where Excel could open a file in 2 seconds while Calc would take almost 3 minutes. Most of that massive speed difference is due to XML being very processor intensive, but Microsoft still handles its own XML files about 7 times faster than OpenOffice.org handles OpenDocument ODS format and uses far less memory than OpenOffice.org."

OpenOffice.org 2.0 Has Edge over Its StarOffice 8 Cousin

OpenOffice.org 2.0 and StarOffice 8 share the same code base and are nearly identical. The primary differences are in packaging and certain non-free software components that come bundled with Sun's suite.

The purchase price of StarOffice 8 also includes support from Sun, where OpenOffice.org 2.0 support comes at an additional cost.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 and StarOffice 8 use the same native file format, OpenDocument, and the same macro language.

Organizations that mix the two suites, therefore, can expect complete compatibility. (The OpenOffice.org Project recently made available an update to its earlier OpenOffice.org version, 1.1.5, that includes the capability to open, but not to create, OpenDocument-formatted files.)

Read more here about why StarOffice 8 rivals Microsoft Office.

We tested OpenOffice.org 2.0 on Ubuntu Linux 5.10, SuSE Linux 10 and Windows XP, and the suite performed similarly on all three systems. One difference we noted while testing OpenOffice on SuSE 10 was the way that the suite took on the appearance and functional qualities of the GNOME and KDE desktop environments, depending on which we were using.

Unlike StarOffice 8, OpenOffice.org adopted environment-specific dialogs for opening and saving documents, a nice integration touch.

Another benefit that OpenOffice 2.0 offers on Linux systems is better integration with the various packaging systems with which different Linux distributions ship. Sun ships StarOffice 8 as a set of RPM packages.

NewsForge Basic button-pushing with OpenOffice.org macros

There are two ways to create a macro in OOo. One is to use OpenOffice.org Basic to write the macro. The other is to use the macro recorder. That will be the approach we focus on.

The macro recorder is great, because it lets you create a macro without any programming, and when you're done you can look at the code it built and add your own enhancements.

We'll sort a grocery list to illustrate how to build macros. I update my OpenOffice.org Calc-created grocery list spreadsheet weekly before trudging off to the store. I don't know how some of you shoppers do it with your handwritten random lists.

Before I run my macro, I delete the quantity of each item from the previous week. I sort the list alphabetically by grocery item (column A), then enter the desired number of each grocery item (column B). Once I've done that data entry, I want to sort the list from lowest to highest according to aisle (column C), filter the list so only non-zero-quantity items show up, then print the filtered list.

I created a macro to sort by item name using the macro recorder:

• Select the Tools menu item, then Macros.
• Click Record Macro to begin to record your keystrokes.
• Left-click on the first item in column A.
• Drag the mouse down to the bottom of the list, then across to include columns B and C.
• Click the Data menu item, then Sort.
• Select Column A and Ascending.
• Click OK to do the sort.
• Click the Stop Recording button that popped up when you clicked Record Macro. The recording box will close and open a menu for specifying the macro name. Click My Macros, then Standard, and finally Modules1. Move the cursor up to the upper left input box and give the new macro a reasonable name. Since I was sorting on the A column, I called the macro "sorta."
• Finish up by clicking OK.

Why macros?

Why would you want to use macros? If you do repetitive jobs, like moving data around in a spreadsheet or regularly deleting old data from a column, some simple macros can save you lots of time and reduce your error rate. Automating tasks in OpenOffice.org might just turn you into the departmental macro guru, and managers and business owners like people who can make using spreadsheets faster and easier.

Running the macro is even easier than creating it. Step through the Tools menu, Macro, and Run Macro. Pick the macro out of the list and push the Run button at top right. In my case it was My Macros, Standard, Module1, and "sorta." The spreadsheet flashed briefly and then it was sorted alphabetically by column A.

Creating a macro to sort by aisle was the same process, except I sorted on Column C instead of Column A and named it "sortc."

I also created a "finddeli" macro that looks for all instances of the word "deli" in my list. You can record just about any sequence of actions or key clicks and turn them into a macro.

Attaching macros to buttons

Clicking through the Tools, Macro, Run Macro sequence is almost as much effort as just sorting manually. A worthwhile upgrade I made was to attach the sorta macro to a button that could be placed right on the spreadsheet:

• Turn the control toolbar on with View, Toolbars, and Controls. The floating toolbar will appear.
• Click the Design Mode On/Off button (the ruler with the little draftsman's triangle) on the Controls toolbar to light up the various controls. Click the pushbutton and then move down to the spreadsheet and use the mouse to drag out a rectangle.
• Right-click on the new button, then select the Controls menu item to bring up the button properties menu.
• On the General tab fill in an appropriate Label for the button. In my case it was "sort a."
• On the Events tab move down to the Mouse Pressed item and click the triple dot button on the right.
• On the Assign Menu, click the Assign button to bring up the Macro Selector menu, where you can choose the macro to be actuated by the button. In my case I chose My Macros, Standard, Module1, and the sorta macro.
• Click OK to complete the assignment.
• Again click the Design Mode On/Off button to allow the button to be pushed in the spreadsheet.

You can now run the sorting macro by clicking on the button.

Creating buttons and macros for simple repetitive jobs like this can save you loads of time. You might look at your spreadsheets and make a list of the tasks that you do over and over, then record a macro and run it to see if it saves you some time. Any situation where you flip back and forth between some spreadsheet state is a candidate for some pushbutton automation.

If you want to get more sophisticated with your spreadsheets, you can also use text boxes, radio buttons, and list boxes. Controls like buttons and list boxes on forms are another way to interface with macros.

For a thorough education on OpenOffice.org macros be sure to get "OpenOffice.org Macros Explained" by Andrew Pitonyak. Don't let the book's massive 476 pages intimidate you. It has vast sections of basic programming practice that explain things in minute detail. It could be a knowledgeable silent companion for anybody who wants to be a departmental OpenOffice.org macro guru.

... ... ...

Links

1. "OpenOffice.org" - http://www.openoffice.org/
2. "OpenOffice.org Basic" - http://api.openoffice.org/docs/DevelopersGuide/BasicAndDialogs/BasicAndDialogs.htm
3. ""OpenOffice.org Macros Explained"" - http://service.bfast.com/bfast/click?bfmid=2181&sourceid=39391960&isbn=1930919514
4. "Rob Reilly" - mailto:robreilly@earthlink.net

Recommended Links

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In case of broken links please try to use Google search. If you find the page please notify us about new location

• Unicode and multilingual editors and word processors for Windows
   

• ****+ Document/Word Processing on Linux --  Christopher Browne's (who is also the author of anti-raymondist paper Linux and Decentralized Development) has a very good discussion and list. I disagree with some of his opinions, but the page is well worth reading.  This web page enumerates the available word processors better that this one and should be used as a primary reference. It also provides opinions on why there isn't a "free" clone of Microsoft Word for Linux...

This document discusses the document processing software that is available under Linux. Word processing software has been a matter of great interest for those that wish to see Linux more widely adopted for use in business.

There is a fairly sizable assortment of free software packages for this purpose. Unfortunately, they are not generally considered to be terribly ``credible'' particularly they do not generally read or write the data formats used by Microsoft Word, which is widely considered the ``industry standard.'' Furthermore, many projects to build ``free word processors'' tend to get started, but, unfortunately, few ever reach any degree of completion.

There are, in contrast, a number of commercial software packages that do a reasonable job of ``understanding'' various proprietary word processor formats.

This document also includes an opinionated discussion about word processing. I feel that the actual thing that people wish to do (doing stuff with documents) is not generally well understood and that peoples' expectations and use of word processing software is hence impeded.

• Freshmeat: Office Applications
• Focus On Linux 
• Axene  
• Caldera  distribution includes StarOffice.
• Siag Office  Includes spreadsheet, word processor, presentation graphics.
• SuSE's "Linux Office Suite"

WordPad Class

MozillaQuest Magazine - AbiWord - A Free, Decent, MS Word Clone for Linux, MS Windows, & Other Platforms

Ted -- RTF editor for Linux

Ted is a text editor running under X Windows on Unix/Linux systems. Use RTF as native format. Can be used as  as an RTF viewer in Netscape. Developed by Mark de Does. Home page is http://www.nllgg.nl/Ted/  Distributed under GPL license.

Ted was developed as an operating system accessory like Wordpad on MS-Windows. In our opinion, the possibility to type a letter or a note on a Unix/Linux machine is clearly missing. Only too often, you have to turn to a Windows machine to write a letter or an e-mail message. Teds function is to be able to edit RTF documents on Unix/Linux in a wysiwyg way.

Compatibility with popular MS-Windows applications played an important role in the design of Ted. Every document produced by Ted should be accepted as a legal .rtf file by Word without any loss of formatting or information. Compatibility in the other direction is more difficult to achieve. Ted supports most basic text formatting, as supported by the Microsoft applications. Other formatting instructions and meta information are ignored. By ignoring unsupported formatting Ted tries to get the complete text of a document on screen. Ted can be used to read formatted e-mail sent from a Windows machine to Unix, or as an RTF viewer in Netscape.

Features

• Wysiwyg rich text editing. You can use all fonts for which you have a .afm file and that are available as an X11 font. Ted is delivered with .afm files for the Adobe fonts that are available on Motif systems and in all postscript printers: Times, Helvetica, Courier and Symbol. Other fonts can be added with the normal X11 procedure. Font properties like bold and italic are supported; so is underlining.  Ted uses Microsoft RTF as its native file format. Microsoft Word and Wordpad can read files produced by Ted. Usually Ted can read .rtf files from Microsoft Word and Wordpad. As Ted does not support all features of Word,some formatting information might be lost.

• In line bitmap pictures.

• Postscript printing.

• Spelling checking in several Latin languages. (English, Dutch, German, Portuguese, French and Spanish.)
• Directly mailing documents from Ted.
• Cut/Copy/Paste, also with other applications.
• Find/Replace.
• Ruler: Paragraph indentation, Indentation of first line, Tabs. Copy/Paste Ruler.
• Page breaks.
• Tables: Insert Table, Row, Column. Changing the column width of tables with their ruler.
• Symbols and accented characters are fully supported.
• Hyperlinks.
• Saving a document in HTML format.

Microsoft Office Viewers

1. Excel Viewer 2003
2. PowerPoint Viewer 2003
3. Visio 2002 Viewer
4. Visio 2003 Sample: 20 Sample Diagrams
5. Word Viewer 2003

Humor

Annoyances.org - Hidden Settings in MS Office 2000

Etc

p-nand-q.com Python MS Office

Here are some hints on using the Win32COM extensions for Python to write scripts, that use Microsoft Office Components. Thanks to Mark Hammonds excellent work, you don't need to bother with VB any longer and can automate Office from THE BEST PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE IN THE WORLD.