wine + free softmaker office suite fast/uses low resources

Word processors, spreadsheets, presentations, translation, etc.
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Patriot
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#16 Post by Patriot »

Hmmm .....

jakfish,
jakfish wrote:........
http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=73036

It's a legit, free copy of softmaker 2006 for linux in deb (I've registered it through the app's registration link, and softmaker automatically sent me a key; the same deal as ashampoo, et al). ........
Thank you for the link, very much appreciated. Got my registration done too. I've been using softmaker for years ..... Looks like I can drop abiword now ...


Rgds

mcewanw
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softmaker 2006 for linux

#17 Post by mcewanw »

Linux version, albeit the 2006 softmaker office.

But that is interesting. I'll download it and give it a try. Might be the best solution for Puppy if printing won't work properly with Textmaker 2008.

I've also been experimenting with the windows version of Foxit pdf reader running over wine, because the Linux version of that needs Xorg 24 bit colour and my old laptop uses 16bit colour only. The windows version of Foxit runs over wine at either 16bit or 24bit colour.

Having said that, I've found something much better, in fact, the best pdf reader I've ever used on Linux so far (albeit via wine since it is a MS windows program): PDF-Xchange. It is GREAT! Comes as a portable app for USB or as an installable. I've started a new thread about it here:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 107#356107
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jakfish
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#18 Post by jakfish »

Patriot--

Re: softmaker for linux 2006--have you figured out any way to increase size of menubars, menu fonts, etc.?

Jake

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chrome307
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#19 Post by chrome307 »

Hi there, thanks for all the info provided thus far on how to get this app working with Puppy.

What I would like to know is how I can 'associate' my *.doc files with Textmaker.

eg

I right click on the *.doc file and then select 'Set Run Action' and then I am offered the choice to drag and drop an application into the dialog box or I can enter a shell command.

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks

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chrome307
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#20 Post by chrome307 »

jakfish wrote:Patriot--

Re: softmaker for linux 2006--have you figured out any way to increase size of menubars, menu fonts, etc.?

Jake
I'm using TextMaker 2008 with the service pack ( Rev 505 ), in this build you can change the icons etc by

Tools - Options - Appearance - then tick use large icons ( requires restart ).

If anyone wants the service pack it can be found here:

Service Pack for SoftMaker Office 2008

http://www.softmaker.net/down/ofw505.exe

All you need to do to upgrade is simply point in the direction of your Office 2008 directory. Gives the option to backup your files too.

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#21 Post by jakfish »

Thanks for the tip about the large icons. Can I assume that menu font, etc. remain fixed?

Jake

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chrome307
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#22 Post by chrome307 »

I think so, not sure how to change the size of the menu fonts.

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#23 Post by jakfish »

Running SM 2008 through wine (as done in the beginning of the thread) is far more flexible, visual-wise, because wine is so flexible. Just don't print :)

Jake

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TextMaker viewer 2009 reads docx

#24 Post by mcewanw »

@jakfish

I also noted with interest the following linked from the Linux softmaker office 2006 link you provided:

http://www.officeviewers.com/

It's a link to TextMaker viewer 2009. The interesting thing about that is that it views docx format files too (presumably SoftMaker Office 2009 will do that too when it comes out...).

I rather like using the versions of these products over wine (rather than native Linux), particularly if they run as portable apps, because that way I can carry them to windows machines in, for example, my local library too (as well as having Puppy Linux on the same usb stick for those occasions I can boot into it).

I'm surprised that Textmaker 2008 isn't printing properly for you (just don't have a printer to check that myself) since you say the other softmaker 2008 apps print okay. Just wondered if your downloads were okay.

Here are the md5sums for the install files I downloaded, in case you want to check that:

# md5sum ashampoo_office2008_310_fm.exe
d1dad0069dcb96b56848364c51d43f0f

# md5sum ofw505.exe
d6d7964ce5969dbac0e8bcd41015b793
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jakfish
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#25 Post by jakfish »

Hi, mcewanw--

Aren't you having the same problem printing, albeit CUPS-PDF? If I'm not mistaken, aren't you freezing as well?

Since I can print via current 2008 install in XP, and intermittently (though rarely) in puppy/wine/TM, it'd be strange if it were a bad download, though stranger things have happened :)

Jake

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#26 Post by jakfish »

Thanks for posting those md5sum's--I checked mine and mine are the same as yours.

Jake

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don't have a printer to try that

#27 Post by mcewanw »

jakfish wrote:Hi, mcewanw--

Aren't you having the same problem printing, albeit CUPS-PDF? If I'm not mistaken, aren't you freezing as well?
No, as I've mentioned above somewhere, I don't currently have any printer so I couldn't test that part of the functionality.

What I did have trouble with was exporting to pdf, but that was what I solved by telling wine (via winecfg) to use the native windows version of t2embed.dll instead of any wine built-in one.

As far as printing goes, I have tried "printing" out to a file (there is a checkbox in the print dialog for that) and that seemed to work fine for me. Perhaps you could try that on your system. Perhaps that file version of the print could subsequently be sent on to the printer itself as a workaround to the print problem? (perhaps piped through some other program?)

By the way, I finally managed to download the Linux version of Softmaker Office 2006 and registered it (via my slow dialup modem!). Good to have, though I do agree that the fonts are terrible in that version; I much prefer the windows versions running over wine.
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#28 Post by jakfish »

I had forgotten to include results of print-to-file, which works for me as well in SM 2008/wine. Rather than the hassle of a print-to-file, another way would be to work on SM 2008/wine, but print out on SM 2006/linux. Or print out on MS Word 97.

Yes, it's a bummer that SM/linux menu bars, etc. are so hard-wired. Funny, since that goes against the inherent flexibility of linux.

Jake

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#29 Post by mcewanw »

Something very odd going on for me when it comes to the print function of Textmaker 2008. Print to file did work, but it isn't now! Yet export to pdf works everytime. I'm pretty sure if print to file is consistently working so should CUPS printing (though I could be wrong about that). I need to find out when and when not print to file works - for a moment I thought it was something to do with ownership or permissions, but I can't fathom what is going on at all right now. I fired up Abiword and tried out all the combinations: since I don't have an actual printer it successfully prints to different file types (PS and PDF). So why not Textmaker 2008 I ponder...
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playdayz
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#30 Post by playdayz »

Thanks for some fun for a rainy day. I was able to get a free full copy of Ashampoo Office 2008 for Windows with this link from early in the thread and also upgraded to SP505.
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/07/1 ... ey-number/

I was also able to get a free full copy of Softmaker Office 2006 for Linux through this link from earlier in the thread. One should note that the url where the software ultimately resides is named "pirateladds" but on the other hand, one *is* registering the software.
It's a legit, free copy of softmaker 2006 for linux in deb (I've registered it through the app's registration link, and softmaker automatically sent me a key; the same deal as ashampoo, et al). I used deb-to-pet, then pet-to-sfs. THAT version prints fine, though it's 2006 vs. ashampoo's 2008, and 2008 has Presentations, which 2006 lacks.

http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=73036

I have dealt with Ashampo before and the marketing is very creative. I find it amusing. They give away a freebie and/or a free 30 day trial, and then they email you about registering or upgrading with the price going down with each email. I think I bought their Burning Studio for 7.99. I remember I could have bought Office for 4.99 but I didn't need it. I remember wondering where they got their software.

Office 2008 seems to run fine in wine, after copying the program folder from Windows. It is running as win98 for what that might be worth, though it also ran as XP. It is not especially light though, because of wine, TextMaker is 22 processes and about 20MB. OpenOffice Writer, for comparison, is 6 processes and 17MB. Additionally 2008 in wine does not open any faster than OpenOffice--2 years ago that would have been hard to believe, but OpenOffice has gotten a lot faster (I am using Ubuntu go-openoffice in Puppy 4.3.2). I have not tried to do any printing which I can see is a problematical.

Textmaker 2006 for Linux also is running nicely. It is very light, only 2 processes and about 6MB. For comparison, AbiWord is 1 process and about 5MB. I am sorry to say that AbiWord has never worked for me. Every time I try to use it, it does something so stupid that I give up; for instance, last time i tried, I saved an html document from AbiWord and then AbiWord would not open the very document it had saved, saying it was corrupt! I am hoping that maybe Softmaker does the same kind of marketing as Ashampoo and they will send me emails lowering the price for Office 2008 to something reasonable, given that AbiWord and OpenOffice are both free. Even if all I can get is 2006 for Linux, that is a competitor to AbiWord, imho; I would just have to see how it held up under use

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#31 Post by jakfish »

I'm intrigued by your numbers on the processes, etc. Though SM 2006 isn't as easy on the eyes, your research shows it may be easy on the CPU.

I'm typing this on SeaMonkey 2.0, a very fast browser, but with equally unattractive fonts and menu bar. Whatever it is, it's catching :)

Jake

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TextMaker 2008 plus wine - how many processes does it use?!

#32 Post by mcewanw »

Running TexMaker Office 2008 using wine-lite-1.1.30 on Dell CPx laptop with Pentium III, 450 MHz CPU and 256 MB RAM on Puppy 4.3

Prior to running Textmaker 2008:

From output of top (since like better free it shows buffers and cache being used) ->
Mem: 125784K used, 128716K free, 0K shrd, 17828K buff, 76232K cached

free memory + buffers + cache = 128716K + 17828K + 76232K = 222776K

tail of ps command showing current highest process numbers:

6271 root 0:00 top
8567 root 0:00 sleep 2
8568 root 0:00 busybox ps

After starting up Textmaker 2008:

From output of top ->
Mem: 178000K used, 76500K free, 0K shrd, 18712K buff, 113452K cached

free memory + buffers + cache = 76500K + 18712K + 113452K = 208664K

So TextMaker running uses: 222776 - 208664 = 14112K RAM

tail of ps command output showing the new processes after top (6271):

6271 root 0:01 top
8750 root 0:05 TextMaker.exe
8754 root 0:01 /usr/bin/wineserver
8760 root 0:00 C:\windows\system32\servi
8762 root 0:00 C:\windows\system32\wined
8797 root 0:00 C:\windows\system32\explo
8800 root 0:00 rpcss
10039 root 0:00 sleep 2
10040 root 0:00 busybox ps

Ignoring the sleep 2 and busybox ps at the bottom of each ps output (since occurs both before and after running TextMaker), it can be seen that TextMaker 2008 with wine is only using an extra 6 processes.

Immediately after a reboot, Textmaker loads in twelve seconds on this old Pentium III 450 MHz, 256M RAM machine, and in eight seconds when then closed and restarted. IMO there is no way Open Office would come anything near to that! (even the go-OO version) But I'll try OO again sometime to be sure.

TextMaker subsequently runs fast and smooth on this old clunker of a machine (OpenOffice was always very slow and stuttery when I've tried it in the past, and Abiword on here still is - though less I think than OO used to be).
Textmaker 2008 quite accurately (it seems to me) also displays the complex MS word formatted documents I've looked at (Abiword certainly struggles there and OO is far from perfect I think).

I thus doubt OO will be anything like as "good" as Textmaker 2008 on an old machine like this, but I hope I'm wrong.
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Re: TextMaker 2008 plus wine - how many processes does it u

#33 Post by mcewanw »

mcewanw wrote: So TextMaker running uses: 222776 - 208664 = 14112K RAM
Of course, the above is arguable! I'm working on the assumption that the OS itself will take and allocate buffers and reserve as it sees fit - I'm not sure how much in the way of buffers and cache the app itself actually "needs" (for simplicity, I'm presuming it is a dynamic factor such that the app itself will actually keep running with very little in the way of buffers or cache). But if you have a better tool for measuring all this sort of thing, I'd be happy to know, particularly happy to know how it does its calculation (I guess they all rely on /proc/meminfo figures).

But at the end of the day, the important thing for me is that Textmaker 2008 runs quite well on this pretty slow and low resourced machine. Will Open Office? I don't know (but rather expect it to be much less satisfactory). Definitely would like to try the go-OO version since it is supposed to be at least a little faster and lower on resource demand than standard OO.
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A few of links on free, htop, RAM and swap

#34 Post by mcewanw »

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... =209643808

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 712#215415

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 982#154307

http://sourcefrog.net/weblog/software/l ... e-mem.html

freeupram script attached (just a one line shell script as described in the first link above). Use at your own risk (I've never had any problems with it though...:-)
Untar it into /bin

Usage:

In a console (i.e. command line), run free and observe the results.
Run freeupram
Then run free again and see the difference
Attachments
freeupram.tar.gz
regains RAM used by cache and buffers
(165 Bytes) Downloaded 810 times
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#35 Post by playdayz »

Ignoring the sleep 2 and busybox ps at the bottom of each ps output (since occurs both before and after running TextMaker), it can be seen that TextMaker 2008 with wine is only using an extra 6 processes.
This is interesting . It looks like we are getting different results depending on our method of measurement. I am using htop which I should have said. Lots of people have prepared htop for puppy it looks like, I think this one might be the pet I am using -> http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 80&t=43022

I start htop and see how many processes are running and how much memory is used and then I start the program and see what the changes are. (I am using Puppy 4.3.2 the uPup build, so the Processes and RAM usage are higher than usual to begin). I wait a bit for things to settle after starting a program.

Code: Select all

            Processes      RAM
Idle                  26         70

2008 Wine        44         89

2006 Linux        28        78

AbiWord  Linux  27        76

Go-oo Linux      32         90

2008 Linux        27        79
It is too much to hope that these columns will come out right. The real winner, imho, is Softmaker Office 2008 for linux, it starts up like lightening and has a small footprint, but US 79.95/Euro 69.95??? No way. I wish Ashampoo also sold Office 2008 for Linux because Ashampoo is having a sale until OCT 31--anything for $10.00, just in case someone wanted to buy the Windows version.

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