Re: [Sheflug] Re: Open Office

[Craig Andrews <nospam [at] fishbot.org.uk>]

> 	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!)

Hear hear

> 	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

Not necessarily the best, but probably the most familiar.

> 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.

'Cos its better ;-)

> 	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

Indeed. My main box is a k6-2/450, but I also have a P100 and P233
(laptop) which are marvellous devices. Using emacs (GNU variety), and
various things (LaTeX for one) I can knock out some pretty decent
stuff! SO doesn't run on my laptop at all (well, it does, but the 'Please
wait' message takes 10 minutes to appear. Yes, I did wait to see what
happened :-)

I use a text editor, typesetter, spreadsheet (gnumeric), drawing program
(sketch, nice software that) and octave for just about everything. And
because its all stored in open standards (ascii text mostly, even the
printouts are postscript) they are almost guaranteed to work with any
other Linux based tool, so I can do some pretty clever stuff too, if I
felt like it..

> than to bloat hardware for the sake of software. Most people around here
> have already shifted to lyx and aren't looking back. 
> 

KLyx has a nicer GUI.

> 	Just my usual rants.

Ditto,

Craig

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