![]() For high-end publishing and top-tier use, Open Office just isn’t as good or as useful as the propriety alternatives. However, at the same time, I found that I couldn’t install my shiny new copy of Photoshop Elements without finding the magic number on one of the sheets of paper I’d not paid any attention to when I unboxed my scanner a few days ago. I _am_ dedicated to the Free and Open Source software movement, and will chose to use those tools whenever I can, but Open Office keeps failing me and breaking my heart.įor example, today I learned that Open Office doesn’t have a version of Microsoft Word’s OUTLINE mode, which is a mode that I find absolutely essential when creating a properly formatted speech from just random thoughts floating around in my head. It is exactly for the same reasons that you love NeoOffice that I continue to harp on Open Office. One-click export of PDF being standard? Interoperability? Thanks Open source! You certainly have the historical perspective in the FOSS movement to understand the contributions that the software has made to today’s proprietary software. But an office suite? It sounded like a movie with a cruel twist: “You get to work on open source software! By the way, it’s an office suite!” So the real innovation to me is the disruption in the status quo, being the alternative, the “here, this is free, it’s not perfect but may fit your needs just fine” compared to the polished commercial product filled with restrictions and hoop-jumping.īig thanks goes out to the NeoOffice guys, as well as the OpenOffice folks, and all that contribute to open source software. ![]() ![]() Years ago I was really excited about open source software that came out that dealt with things I did every day, text editing, web serving, graphics work, etc. And I can install the software that does it on as many machines as I want, and not have to worry about license keys working, or buying more copies, or having to pay for upgrades, or any of that crap. Today you can send me a Microsoft Word document, and I can open it, and get that precious text out of it. ![]() Believe me, try as you might to ask people to send you plain text files, or even RTF files, they just don’t get it. For the last 10 years I’ve been building web sites for clients, and sometimes those clients send me Word documents, from which I need to wrestle out the text. Honestly, I’m coming at it from an entirely different direction that Gabe, so I’m in no way trying to discount his opinion, I’m just pointing out that different people have different needs. Sometimes innovation is found in just being an alternative. It even handles Microsoft formats the the Mac version of Office can’t handle! I do use it for simple document creation, but I could use other tools for that as well. To me, it’s pretty much a viewer/converter. For all I know, it completely sucks in every other respect. Still, $25 for unlimited copies?) Anyway, the only features I care about is that it can open all those damn MS Office file formats. This means I can install it on the 10+ Macs that I manage for $0 (in reality, I donated money to NeoOffice because I do find it valuable, and want it to flourish. I do not compare it to MS Office the way you might. I am very close to being 100% happy with NeoOffice (which is an offshoot of OpenOffice, for Mac OS X.) I left a comment there, but thought I should expand on it here. ![]() Gabe wrote a post about his recent experiences with Office Suite software. ![]()
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