(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Best Office Suite Late 2012? Poll - not including Kingsoft, Calligra, Ability Office.

I chose Libreoffice but i don't use it often. Used to use openoffice, but i think libreoffice looks better. They are pretty much the same underneath the looks aren't they ? and of course it's free. I keep forgetting how amazing it is that puppy/linux is free and so is the software.

darrelljon:

Office 97.....Chris.

haha yeah, I quite like Office 97 myself, but no OpenDocument support?

They have all got quirks but Office 97 is/was optimum. Microsoft have dropped down the curve in every version since.

The only problem with Office 97 is that it is not available for Linux!

I vote for something that does not exist:

LibreOffice97 - An Office97 clone for Windows/Linux with odf as default.

LibreOffice

ICPUG wrote:They have all got quirks but Office 97 is/was optimum. Microsoft have dropped down the curve in every version since.

The only problem with Office 97 is that it is not available for Linux!

I vote for something that does not exist:

LibreOffice97 - An Office97 clone for Windows/Linux with odf as default.

That would be amazing.

darrelljon wrote:

ICPUG wrote:They have all got quirks but Office 97 is/was optimum. Microsoft have dropped down the curve in every version since.

The only problem with Office 97 is that it is not available for Linux!

I vote for something that does not exist:

LibreOffice97 - An Office97 clone for Windows/Linux with odf as default.

That would be amazing.

Yes, the only shortcoming of Office 97 is that it's pre-Internet in design and doesn't respond to live links; you can't click on something marked http:// and get directed to a website.

There probably is no perfect one. LibreOffice takes a lot of beating in most ways but it's too big and unwieldy IMO to load up just to write a short note, whereas Abiword isn't but that still seems to have some bugs and I've had crashes when I've tried to cut and paste into an Abiword window. I'm using Softmaker Office 2008 (the free one) at the moment which is good for most purposes.

Never use live links in a document myself anyway. An early version of SoftMaker is probably a good compromise. But a FOSS solution would be great.

Colonel Panic makes an interesting point regarding Office packages and short notes.

In the Windows world I have always used Wordpad for short notes and Office for documents. I also use notepad for one or 2 liners that don't need formatting or as a temporary storage for something I will transfer to another application later.

In Puppy land I have not written too many documents (since I am restricted from firing up anything other than Windows at work). I have never experienced the Abiword bugs but that is probably because I don't write douments in it. I have used it for short stuff OK.

It seems to me from all the comments that if you want to write documents in Puppy land then you need LibreOffice. Perhaps the recommendation should be that Abiword is restricted to short notes and then the functionality that causes these bugs to appear will probably not be used.

tbh, I find abiword slow. Wasn't there a cut-down lite version of something?

This is not to be taken the wrong way (as I'm sure some will anyhow) but, there seems to be a continued view of what I commonly refer to in presentations of "something for nothing".

Although it is diminishing very rapidly even in the LInux world, there is and never was a something for nothing. So, without further ado, we should NOT continue to focus on size as any measure of usefulness. We must stop measuring any products usefulness by its size that is shipped. In order to get functionality, it must be coded. Once something is released and you want to add more functionality, it MUST me coded. And, with this increased functionality it WIILL increase the size in most cases (unless of course, if someone takes the time to completely redesign based upon some new hardware instruction knowledge or some new development approach).

There is another trend which DOES exist in the development world among the major vendors. Its the UI. There is a common practice in the industry to change UIs to be a differentiator of one version of a product to its next version. This is characteristic and it is normal. But, the human experience often times must go thru an adjustment mode to get on-board with the UI change that we face when moving from one version to another (or even from one product to another in the same industry).

Looking at the sales of technology that we find in/out of the office space, it is apparent that PCs that most all of us have today, do NOT resemble anything we used in the last century. I am getting calls all the time from associates who have 2006+ PCs that they want to discard. So this means that minimally I will get a 1GB+ which is "enormously" more RAM than a PUP with ANY OFFICE product would need to run the Internet centricity of PUPPY Linux.

That being said, this brings up right up to the title of this thread. All of us have a preference for tools that we find useful and appealing for the task at hand. Since we are using current PCs, we should be selecting the Office Suite that matches what can help us most meet our individual needs (remember PUPs are still a single ID-user desktop).

As such, it would be nice if we in 2013 begin a evolution from how PUPs are packaged, adding a feature that provides some local building at initial ISO setup time for the Office package(s) the user would like to be in his system. This evolved installation approach should, maybe, also extend to browser(s) that the user would like to have, as well.

Again if in 2013 someone(s) of this community begins to embark on such an approach, they, too will be criticized at some level about the size because there are still too many of us who come to Puppyland from the last century when we did NOT have the PC or Internet technology that we are using, today.

I hope we continue to find ways to not only exploit the physical technology we have in our PCs and Internet, but that Puppy also continues to evolve to take advantage of this.

It seems that some Word Processors in the past, provided options to make there WP look like other WPs on-screen. But in the cases I have seen in the past most users have not attempted to use this because of some very obvious reasons.

Personally, I like both OpenOffice, and I like LIbreOffice, and I like GOffice, and I like KDEoffice, and I like Word Perfect and I like Lotus...YEP, I have used them all, but I am NOT an authority who can do critical comparison of any of them. I mainly use some of their very mundane features of open-type-save-close. But, resultingly I expect stability (which is very spotty in Abiword), an easy to navigate UI, and speedy to initial opening screen (which sometimes has more to do with the underlying OS, than the Office package) and its integration with its components and the systems components.

All this really means "can/will Puppy evolve" to provide either a better included office package (much like what @PlayDayz did with his add-on to "Puppy") or a selection technology providing an initial selection of office technology via the Internet initially or via the ISO initially). We have to wait and see what is on the developer's plates in 2013; that is continual upgrade of whats already in Puppy along with a renewed acknowledgement of the PCs and the technology all of us now have.

Here to help

@gcmartin

It would be nice to see AbiWord's developed further (or maybe just more stable). Small packages are are easier included by default, bigger ones are more of a problem. However, OO or Libre as a SFS seems like a good compromise to me?

TheYoungOne wrote:I chose Libreoffice but i don't use it often. Used to use openoffice, but i think libreoffice looks better. They are pretty much the same underneath the looks aren't they ? and of course it's free. I keep forgetting how amazing it is that puppy/linux is free and so is the software.

People felt Oracle was holding back OpenOffice, so the Document Foundation was formed and OO forked to LibreOffice. Improvements were made to the code base. Since many of the coders had left OpenOffice Oracle decided instead of competing it would give the code to the Apache Foundation. So possibly the code bases with diverge further, or maybe they will share code, since both Apache and Document Foundation seem reasonable?

http://www.grobmeier.de/apache-openoffi ... LzXc67qfHk

One thing you could do is install Wine and run something like Textpad for Windows in it (the 4 series is excellent but I believe the later versions have some issues apparently), saving the documents you create in UNIX textfile format which is an option in Textpad.

There are also some very good lightweight Windows word processors which are based on Wordpad but with added functionality, such as Jarte and UltraPad.

I really can't say, for what I do I mostly use Abiword. It is much like the old ms works. I mostly use office suites to read email attachments.
Cheers

If I'm gonna use WINE I'm just gonna use Office 97 for an office suite and Ted for WP.

I like LibreOffice best. For me it is compatible with all the stuff I formerly did in MS Office, word, excel and access.

The latest version is very fast. Don't see any reason to go back to the MS stuff.

The one weakness all the Linux office suites I've tried have is that they can't open a Powerpoint presentation file with an embedded media file. Not even the latest version of Softmaker Office can do it.

Thankfully it's something I don't need to do at the moment, so I'm not overly concerned about it.

Will MS Office97 Pro work with wine?
I seem to recall being able to use Word from it with wine.

And I have to agree that embedded stuff in a PowerPoint file does not work correctly in libreoffice.

Yet another reason for me to try MS Office97 Pro with wine just to see.

8-bit wrote:Will MS Office97 Pro work with wine?
I seem to recall being able to use Word from it with wine.

And I have to agree that embedded stuff in a PowerPoint file does not work correctly in libreoffice.

Yet another reason for me to try MS Office97 Pro with wine just to see.

You said what I meant to say - they can open the Powerpoint file, but they can't play any media files inside. I'll try to be clearer in future. I don't know the answer to the Office97 question.