(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Removed free trial period is over now

ttuuxxx

TERRIFIC! I have used SoftMaker Office in Windows for years and always felt I needed to pay for it as it is that good and FAST -- and I don't want the developers to starve and stop making this great small replacement for the likes of MS Office. SoftMaker does a great job with DOC files.

I have used the Linux version in other Distros but it will now be a breeze for me to install it in Puppy...

ttuuxxx,
Excellent work -- I was wondering how little it could be made as I noticed there was lots of stuff in there that could be taken out!

Note about that free licence, offer expires December 31, though MU mentioned they might be interested in a special deal for Puppy, if we create a puplet with Softmake Office in it.

ttuuxxx...... downloading and try..

BarryK wrote: Note about that free licence, offer expires December 31, though MU mentioned they might be interested in a special deal for Puppy, if we create a puplet with Softmake Office in it.

yes.. its will be a good solution for puppy, it will be removed abiword and open office as main and second office tools..

abiword too simple and openoffice too heavy..

if we create a puplet with Softmaker Office in it.

That is a great project for someone over Christmas - combining NOP
or Quirky or 4.31 with Ttuuxxx's pet

Softmaker could easily do it themselves . . .
I will write to them

Lobster wrote:

if we create a puplet with Softmaker Office in it.

That is a great project for someone over Christmas - combining NOP
or Quirky or 4.31 with Ttuuxxx's pet

Softmaker could easily do it themselves . . .
I will write to them

I PM'd Mark(MU) a couple of days ago with regard to doing a Dpup version with Softmaker replacing Abiword/Gnumeric...if we can get Softmaker to come to the party, I already have a Dpup484 with SMOffice 2008 included, we just have to sort out the licensing etc.

Hi Jeff et al,

Let's be careful here as the web page states the following....

What is not permitted?

It is not permitted to resell the SoftMaker Office 2008 license or to offer the download on download sites.

On an aside I like it so far and will see if our local historical society may be interested in SMO.

Let me know how the licensing pans out as I don't want any big hairy guys showing up on my doorstep.

Good work,
Eric

Bonjour à tous,
Here is for Christmas, Toutou Linux 4.3.1-beta (French version of Puppy 4.3.1), with Softmaker Office 2008. Total iso files with french localization files 141 Mb.
SoftMaker Office suite (only french locale) is 27 Mb.
Not yet available for download though.
Waiting for license information.
Cordialement

I had no further reply yet, the messages in Barrys Blog reflect the current state.
I don't expect a reply this year, as I think they are busy with the charity campaign and christmas.

I also hesitated to create stripped down versions, because it is proprietary software.
I even was uncertain about offering downloads of pre-packaged versions of the charity version, because of the disclaimer mentioned by amigo.
But after the positive reactions before mentioned in the blog, I think this will be tolerated.
(and it is not altered, and the readme.htm encourages to download the original installer in addition).
This is always somewhat difficult, and also one reason, why I encouraged Softmaker to contact Barry, to clarify in detail what will be allowed and what not.

There are implications - if Softmaker allows to bundle the Office with Puppy - what does this mean for derivates based on Puppy?
May the office be included - or not?
May parts of the software be removed (special languages) - or not? Proprietary software often is very restrictive in this concern, on the other hand SoftMaker was tolerant in the past.

We have similar problems with other software - it was an issue with Java (before it was relicensensed), it still is an issue with Flash, and Ati and Nvidia drivers that we "strip down" and repackage for easier installation and to save space in the small savefiles.
In the past, the companies never officially gave us the "ok", but they also never investigated. I think, some may not be allowed to say "ok", because their own license would not allow it. An official permission could have implications on existing contracts. So I think, some tolerate it "silently". But this is just a guess.

I had no request yet to remove the download that I offer, and that was announced in the blog.
I sent SoftMaker the link to the blog via mail, but I did that, before I added the download. So maybe they did not read that part yet.

So I actually wait, if there will come a detailed offer in january, or if Barry reports, that he is discussing details with SoftMaker.

Happy christmas from northern germany, Mark

This what I wrote to Softmaker - I sent to the tech support guys:

Guten Tag

One of our Puppy Masters has cut the Free Linux 2008 Softmaker
in half and made it into a .pet (Puppy Linux installable package)
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 018#374018

It is quite permissible for Softmaker to provide demo disks
of a complete Puppy Operating System with Softmaker, as an ISO
and this is quite easy to do
A wizard is included with Puppy Linux

Woof Woof
Lobster

We are a top ten distro, so Softmaker usage
would go up if included in Puppy in a lite format

If anyone would like to translate my rather confused English to German, here are the addresses
http://www.softmaker.com/english/impress_en.htm

Is a database app included?

DaveS wrote:Is a database app included?

yes all 3 apps are included. I just removed locals and there extras, I didn't reduce any functionality.
ttuuxxx

Bonjour à tous,
Sorry to annoy you ttuuxxx, but there is only Textmaker (wordprocessor), PlanMaker (spreadsheat) and Presentation (slide presentation).
Cordialement.

Softmaker are working on a database
It is in alpha and only for Windows

http://www.softmaker.com/english/dm_en.htm

if Softmaker allows to bundle the Office with Puppy

It is an ideal showcase for them. Allowing Softmaker to show
support for open software and standards as they become the norm.

I think we are likely to hear something in the new year as Mark says.
Do write to them if you would like to see such a combination.

Actually I think Lobster had the right suggestion that Softmaker could do it themselves.... Its easy enough to create a puppy remaster. The devs at Softmaker could do that and even offer a special GPL version .pet. Usually when a software dev offers their product free of charge, its because they are planning a major overhaul of it. If that is the case then they probably should GPL this version next year.

Thanks for this. I've been looking for something better than Abiword yet not as huge as Open Office.

Looks good

but I'm having trouble validating. I used the validation details emailed to me when I downloaded the full package at their website but they dont seem to work on the puppy version.

*******
Cancel that - - I'm being stupid - the first number I got was for windows version - went back and got linux one and all fine!
********
I'm glad about this. Abiword cant cope with long documents of 60 or more pages on my eee - I sometimes need to look over these for work OO is fine I hope this does the job.



cimh
901 puppeee

I used this a bit more today and found out it can't handle stuff saved in abiword's native format. I don't know if that matters to anyone, but I thought I would mention it.

--Ken

kenbanistu wrote:I used this a bit more today and found out it can't handle stuff saved in abiword's native format. I don't know if that matters to anyone, but I thought I would mention it.

--Ken

and if that happens just open it in abiword then save it as rtf or doc and then open it in SO 2008.
ttuuxxx

Good - Textmaker is able to handle a large 0.5mb doc file very well some of the tables have an unwanted black line going down them but other than that the document loads quickly and looks fine.

Abiword - just dies - it does a very poor job of bringing up the first page but with text boxes in the wrong places - after that nothing.

So if you need to access larger more complex files this looks really good. a very interesting alternative to open office - lets see what the company thinks about this but it must be good for them - I'd never heard of them before.

cimh