Re: [Sheflug] Re: Open Office

[José Luis Gómez Dans <nospam [at] sheffield.ac.uk>]

[sorry, I just had to hop in to slag office software off :-D]

On Mon, Dec 04, 2000 at 10:34:13PM +0000, Richard wrote:
> No, don't gedit :)  I need most of the features in a good word
> processor complete with pictures and all else.  I nearly always use
> most of the features.  Went through a city & guilds office skills

	I think the last useful WP I used was WordPerfect 5.1 in the
Amiga (available from Corel for the linux console, I am told).
Presumably, the Dos version was as good as the amiga one. This run off a
floppy (880k), 1 meg RAM and at 7.14MHz. Faster than *office. Then, I
came to terms with what my alma matter offers as a benevolent MS offer.
After a couple of longish dissertation written in the provided
facilities, I gave up and ended up in the friendly shores of TeX,
coconuts on the sand next to the waterline, and \'s next to my $...

> course to do that.  So, I don't understand what the problem is.  Why
> do I need to use a programming tool instead of an office suite which
> is what I really need ?

	Most people don't need an office suite. Most people need a
facility to write letters. memos and reports. These things have a common
format that you don't need to tweak (most of the time). If you need to
do posters and typeset newspapers, then you don't need an office
package, you need a DTP one (again PageSetter II for the Amiga, an
absolute winner. I copied it into the same floppy as wordperfect, and
there was a little database in as well. And there was free space!)

> used for that task.  Emacs and vi weren't designed to produce nice
> finished documents that look like something that came out of MS
> Office.  And so, I don't use them for that purpose.  I don't have a
> use for MS software and so I use a well designed and well finished
> office suite that is produced for Linux and several other platforms. 

	vi? and *emacs are not designed to produce documents. They are
just text editors. I am using vim at the moment to send this e-mail, I
use xemacs for gnus-net :-) and programming, and I have been spotted
doing A0 posters with scary equations and plenty of figures as well.

	I don't really see much point in using Linux if what you want is
an office package ŕ la MS. In that case, the original is bound to be
best. That is the appropriate tool for the job IMHO. SO/FreeO are just a
copy. Of course, SO works on Solaris and in Linux, but why use solaris
(or Linux for the matter, or freeBSD)? Apart from a religious choice, of
course. That is a very pragmetic approach to matters.

> would never have been produced.  Star Office is one of those and works
> very well on some very slow machines which are about 400MHz in speed.

	Hardly slow as i see it. A P200 is a great piece of kit. I'd
like to know what those 400 MHz are spent on (and I'm not re-compiling
SOffice with -pg on!). As I see it, it's better to keep the old system
than to bloat hardware for the sake of software. Most people around here
have already shifted to lyx and aren't looking back. 

	Just my usual rants.
	José
	
-- 
José L Gómez Dans			PhD student
Tel: +44 114 222 5582			Radar & Communications Group
FAX; +44 870 132 2990			Department of Electronic Engineering
					University of Sheffield UK
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