[opensuse] Commercial office suites for Linux?
Frankly, I keep running into too many anomalies in LibreOffice vs. MS Office. Though I could run Office through Wine, I would rather have a native solution. I googled it to death, and couldn't seem to find anything. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Sat, 03 Mar 2012 23:38:40 -0800
Roger Luedecke
Frankly, I keep running into too many anomalies in LibreOffice vs. MS Office. Though I could run Office through Wine, I would rather have a native solution. I googled it to death, and couldn't seem to find anything.
Could you be a bit more specific about the anomalies? I haven't run into anything major and the minor things could usually be fixed with changes to settings or creation of macros. Tom -- Tom Taylor - retired penguin openSUSE 11.4 x86_64 openSUSE 12.1 x86_64 openSUSE 12.2-M# x86_64 KDE 4.6.00, FF 4.0 KDE 4.7.2, FF 8.0 KDE 4.7.9, FF 10.0 claws-mail 3.8.0 registered linux user 263467 linxt-At-comcast-DoT-net -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Sun, 2012-03-04 at 15:31 -0800, Thomas Taylor wrote:
Frankly, I keep running into too many anomalies in LibreOffice vs. MS Office. Though I could run Office through Wine, I would rather have a native solution. I googled it to death, and couldn't seem to find anything.
Could you be a bit more specific about the anomalies? I haven't run into anything major and the minor things could usually be fixed with changes to settings or creation of macros.
Certainly minor, but annoying. Worst thing really is inconsistent behavior. Hard to explain, I should have wrote it down while I was experiencing it. Trying out Lotus Symphony... and so far I like it. Still would need LibreOffice for dealing with MS formats, but looks like Lotus is a strong contender. I think I'll blog about it once I get used to it more. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 03/05/2012 01:23 AM, Roger Luedecke wrote:
On Sun, 2012-03-04 at 15:31 -0800, Thomas Taylor wrote:
Frankly, I keep running into too many anomalies in LibreOffice vs. MS Office. Though I could run Office through Wine, I would rather have a native solution. I googled it to death, and couldn't seem to find anything.
Could you be a bit more specific about the anomalies? I haven't run into anything major and the minor things could usually be fixed with changes to settings or creation of macros.
Certainly minor, but annoying. Worst thing really is inconsistent behavior. Hard to explain, I should have wrote it down while I was experiencing it. Trying out Lotus Symphony... and so far I like it. Still would need LibreOffice for dealing with MS formats, but looks like Lotus is a strong contender. I think I'll blog about it once I get used to it more.
Surely you know that OO is probably a descendent, or at least a very close cousin of Symphony. But Symphony has at least the nice finishing touches of a commercial product, not something hacked out in somebody's garage. --doug -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Doug wrote:
On 03/05/2012 01:23 AM, Roger Luedecke wrote:
On Sun, 2012-03-04 at 15:31 -0800, Thomas Taylor wrote:
Frankly, I keep running into too many anomalies in LibreOffice vs. MS Office. Though I could run Office through Wine, I would rather have a native solution. I googled it to death, and couldn't seem to find anything.
Could you be a bit more specific about the anomalies? I haven't run into anything major and the minor things could usually be fixed with changes to settings or creation of macros.
Certainly minor, but annoying. Worst thing really is inconsistent behavior. Hard to explain, I should have wrote it down while I was experiencing it. Trying out Lotus Symphony... and so far I like it. Still would need LibreOffice for dealing with MS formats, but looks like Lotus is a strong contender. I think I'll blog about it once I get used to it more.
Surely you know that OO is probably a descendent, or at least a very close cousin of Symphony.
The other way around - OO was originally StarOffice, and Lotus Symphony is now based on OO. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (4.0°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 07:43, Per Jessen
Frankly, I keep running into too many anomalies in LibreOffice vs. MS Office. Though I could run Office through Wine, I would rather have a native solution. I googled it to death, and couldn't seem to find anything.
Could you be a bit more specific about the anomalies? I haven't run into anything major and the minor things could usually be fixed with changes to settings or creation of macros.
Certainly minor, but annoying. Worst thing really is inconsistent behavior. Hard to explain, I should have wrote it down while I was experiencing it. Trying out Lotus Symphony... and so far I like it. Still would need LibreOffice for dealing with MS formats, but looks like Lotus is a strong contender. I think I'll blog about it once I get used to it more.
Surely you know that OO is probably a descendent, or at least a very close cousin of Symphony.
The other way around - OO was originally StarOffice, and Lotus Symphony is now based on OO.
Lotus Symphony is essentially an *older* version of OpenOffice.org with a new Eclipse based frontend, a few customizations... and not a lot more (although they did some bug fixing that didn't always make its way back into the OOo trunk). So, any file format/round-trip quirks in LS are highly likely to be the same as in the OOo3.0/3.1-ish timeframe (last time I know of that IBM took a snapshot of OOo for LS). On top of that, IBM has announced that they are dropping Lotus Symphony as it is now, and focusing only on Apache Open Office. See: http://www.edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/ibm-lotus-symphony-3.0.1-is-now... which states that the Eclipse overlay will no longer be a part of LS and any future releases of LS will essentially be Apache Open Office. There are no real top tier *commercial* office software packages available for Linux that are a prefect match for MS Office. You have OpenOffice.org (replaced by AOO), Apache Open Office (created out of the remains of OOo), LibreOffice (forked from OOo), Lotus Symphony (based on an old release of OOo, and discontinued), KOffice, Caligra Suite (based on KOffice), and SoftMaker Office, plus a smattering of others like gnumeric, AbiWord and so on. Outside of that, you have a few web based office tools.. Zoho, Google and Microsoft are prob the top choices (Oracle/Sun made and announced Cloud Office... but it was never released, and LIbreOffice has made noise about a cloud/web based office suite, but so far nothing is really available beyond tech demos from the last LibO Conference). SoftMaker Office is probably the only non-OOo office suite out there... and while it's pretty good... to be honest, it lacks a lot of what LibreOffice already has. It has odd issues running on 64 bit... it doesn't have a Presenter Console (last I checked)... and (again, last time I checked) if you're trying to evaluate it with the free version, you can't move files from one install of SMO to another... the files are locked to the install that created the files (buy a license and the restriction is removed). If you want MS Office in Linux, then look into Crossover from Codeweavers. The new version 11 of Crossover is due out sometime soon (I don't know a release date, but the Beta/RC cycle for 11.0 should be finished soon). They explicitly support MS Office, and each release really improves on the compatibility. Yes it's Wine, but they add on a lot of tweaks and extras on top of Wine to make things like MS Office install and work a LOT better. If you hang on just a little bit and try out Crossover 11.0 once it's released you might be pleasantly surprised at how well MSO is working. Bleh... I spent far too much time up to my neck in the world of open source office software over the past few years :-) It was fun.. and I miss working for OpenOffice... good times... oh well. C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Mon, 2012-03-05 at 09:00 +0100, C wrote:
On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 07:43, Per Jessen
wrote: Surely you know that OO is probably a descendent, or at least a very close cousin of Symphony. The other way around - OO was originally StarOffice, and Lotus Symphony is now based on OO. Lotus Symphony is essentially an *older* version of OpenOffice.org with a new Eclipse based frontend, a few customizations... and not a lot more (although they did some bug fixing that didn't always make its way back into the OOo trunk). So, any file format/round-trip quirks in LS are highly likely to be the same as in the OOo3.0/3.1-ish timeframe (last time I know of that IBM took a snapshot of OOo for LS).
Emphasis on old; LibreOffice is going to be far ahead of LS in terms of document compatibility. LO seems at this point to already be far ahead of OO. -- System & Network Administrator [ LPI & NCLA ] http://www.whitemiceconsulting.com OpenGroupware Developer http://www.opengroupware.us Adam Tauno Williams -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Sat, 2012-03-03 at 23:38 -0800, Roger Luedecke wrote:
Frankly, I keep running into too many anomalies in LibreOffice vs. MS Office. Though I could run Office through Wine, I would rather have a native solution. I googled it to death, and couldn't seem to find anything.
I make up a monthly newsletter for a non-profit group to which I belong. I have tried for several years to convert to some software which I could run on linux, in favor of using WinSomething and MSOfficeSuite. I have tried to use each of the various Office Suites available for linux, and they all seem to come up short. Softmaker Office seems to be the best I have used, but even it comes up short when I start to make up the cover page graphics. I have posted bugs on the LO/OOo problems that still aren't fixed after a couple of years of waiting. I do have Office 2000 installed with Wine, but it is a little flaky and just isn't reliable enough for me. I have tried crossover office in the past and it wasn't much better than Wine. Maybe it has improved by now. Adobe Acrobat 6 installed in Wine in the past, but it won't install now with the present Wine. So I can't use the Wine installed programs to make up the newsletter in MSOffice then convert it to pdf for emailing. My best solution so far has been to install WinXx in VirtualBox, with guest extensions so that I can use it full-screen. I use Office2000 and Adobe 6 in that virtual machine without a hitch. Not exactly Linux, but at least I am not selecting Windxxx in the Grub list of operating systems. The WinXx disc I have wouldn't install in my computer after I have upgraded the motherboard and cpu for the second or third time anyways even after slipstreaming new drivers. Besides, WinXx and the Office2000/Acrobat 6 is getting to be pretty old software. They do install in VirtualBox without a hitch, and run fine. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 14:05, Mark Misulich
I do have Office 2000 installed with Wine, but it is a little flaky and just isn't reliable enough for me. I have tried crossover office in the past and it wasn't much better than Wine. Maybe it has improved by now.
Just popping back in to say... it has improved a lot. I haven't tested Acrobat 6 (I don't own licenses for any Adobe products so can't test them) but MSO is working very nicely (a few bugs still but they are being worked out). Check out the upcoming Crossover 11.0 release.. won't cost anything other than a little time and any feedback they get on usability with things like Acrobat will help.
My best solution so far has been to install WinXx in VirtualBox,
This is my preferred solution - it's only practical though if you've got enough RAM. If you want to to run without draining your system resources, you really need a minimum of 4GB RAM on the host... 8GB or more is better.
guest extensions so that I can use it full-screen.
Or run it in seamless mode. Your MS Office install looks like it's managed by your Linux window manager. Can be a bit heavy, but of you've got enough computer behind it, it's fine. C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Am 05.03.2012 14:05, schrieb Mark Misulich:
On Sat, 2012-03-03 at 23:38 -0800, Roger Luedecke wrote:
Frankly, I keep running into too many anomalies in LibreOffice vs. MS Office. Though I could run Office through Wine, I would rather have a native solution. I googled it to death, and couldn't seem to find anything.
I make up a monthly newsletter for a non-profit group to which I belong. I have tried for several years to convert to some software which I could run on linux, in favor of using WinSomething and MSOfficeSuite. I have tried to use each of the various Office Suites available for linux, and they all seem to come up short. Softmaker Office seems to be the best I have used, but even it comes up short when I start to make up the cover page graphics. I have posted bugs on the LO/OOo problems that still aren't fixed after a couple of years of waiting.
I do have Office 2000 installed with Wine, but it is a little flaky and just isn't reliable enough for me. I have tried crossover office in the past and it wasn't much better than Wine. Maybe it has improved by now. Adobe Acrobat 6 installed in Wine in the past, but it won't install now with the present Wine. So I can't use the Wine installed programs to make up the newsletter in MSOffice then convert it to pdf for emailing.
My best solution so far has been to install WinXx in VirtualBox, with guest extensions so that I can use it full-screen. I use Office2000 and Adobe 6 in that virtual machine without a hitch. Not exactly Linux, but at least I am not selecting Windxxx in the Grub list of operating systems. The WinXx disc I have wouldn't install in my computer after I have upgraded the motherboard and cpu for the second or third time anyways even after slipstreaming new drivers. Besides, WinXx and the Office2000/Acrobat 6 is getting to be pretty old software. They do install in VirtualBox without a hitch, and run fine.
Hi, did you try Scribus? Karl -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Hi,
did you try Scribus?
Karl Hi, yes I did. I think it is supposed to be similar to MSPublisher. I am very limited on how large the file size can be since I send the newsletter to members on dial-up isp's. I found that both Scribus and MSPublisher made a larger file size than what I was able to produce in Word. Scribus and MSPublisher are both great products, but for my
particular circumstances Word worked best in comparison. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Mark Misulich said the following on 03/05/2012 08:50 AM:
Hi,
did you try Scribus?
Karl Hi, yes I did. I think it is supposed to be similar to MSPublisher. I am very limited on how large the file size can be since I send the newsletter to members on dial-up isp's. I found that both Scribus and MSPublisher made a larger file size than what I was able to produce in Word. Scribus and MSPublisher are both great products, but for my particular circumstances Word worked best in comparison.
What is it you send out? The MS-word .doc file? The Scribus sla file? As I've said, as many people have pointed out, different versions of MS-Word format differently. I hope you send out a system independent format such as a PDF. The thing I like about PDF is that it looks *exactly* like you want it to look on any destination machine. Its why so many people use it for publishing. That's not to say some PDF generators are awful. But that's not the problem; there are plenty of tools to do cleanup. Just as you can use 'tidy' to clean up the abysmal HTML that MS-Word produces ... -- "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Mon, 2012-03-05 at 10:17 -0500, Anton Aylward wrote:
Mark Misulich said the following on 03/05/2012 08:50 AM:
Hi,
did you try Scribus?
Karl Hi, yes I did. I think it is supposed to be similar to MSPublisher. I am very limited on how large the file size can be since I send the newsletter to members on dial-up isp's. I found that both Scribus and MSPublisher made a larger file size than what I was able to produce in Word. Scribus and MSPublisher are both great products, but for my particular circumstances Word worked best in comparison.
What is it you send out? The MS-word .doc file? The Scribus sla file?
As I've said, as many people have pointed out, different versions of MS-Word format differently.
I hope you send out a system independent format such as a PDF. The thing I like about PDF is that it looks *exactly* like you want it to look on any destination machine. Its why so many people use it for publishing.
That's not to say some PDF generators are awful. But that's not the problem; there are plenty of tools to do cleanup. Just as you can use 'tidy' to clean up the abysmal HTML that MS-Word produces ...
I use Word 2000 to produce my document, then I convert it to PDF with Acrobat 6. I have tried every combination of file from Word,OOo and LOo, Scribus, MSPublisher, then convert it to PDF in several ways. It always comes out as a smaller file if I use Word then Acrobat, than any other combination to produce it. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Le 05/03/2012 13:14, Mark Misulich a écrit :
I have tried every combination of file from Word,OOo and LOo, Scribus, MSPublisher, then convert it to PDF in several ways. It always comes out as a smaller file if I use Word then Acrobat, than any other combination to produce it.
so the problem is converting a document to the smaller pdf possiblme. There are several ways to produce it. Could you link us to an example (dummy) of the document you produce? thanks jdd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Hi,
so the problem is converting a document to the smaller pdf possiblme. I can't see a problem there.
If some PDF documents created from the same source are relevant bigger than others, the only reason for this can be embedded data, like fonts or images. In LO you can change if and how much images should be compressed an in which resolution they are saved. Playing with this should result in small and good enough quality PDFs! -- Greets, T. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Thorolf Godawa said the following on 03/05/2012 01:17 PM:
Hi,
so the problem is converting a document to the smaller pdf possiblme. I can't see a problem there.
If some PDF documents created from the same source are relevant bigger than others, the only reason for this can be embedded data, like fonts or images.
In LO you can change if and how much images should be compressed an in which resolution they are saved.
Playing with this should result in small and good enough quality PDFs!
I forgot to ask: Which version of PDF? 1.2, 1.3 or 1.4? You can run the Linux tool 'pdffonts' on the two different files, one produced with MS-Word and one produced with OOo/LOo. Pdffonts will tell you which fonts are used and which are embedded in the file I know that the PDF is supposed to be 'optimal', but there are many ways of rearranging the sections and internal pointers which will alter the way its displayed (e.g.sequence) and there are tools that can "optimise" this. I've not experimented to see if they make a significant difference to file size. Hmm http://www.alfredklomp.com/programming/shrinkpdf/ http://www.ubuntugeek.com/ubuntu-tiphowto-reduce-adobe-acrobat-file-size-fro... -- "I don't mind a parasite, I object to a cut-rate one" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Mark Misulich said the following on 03/05/2012 07:14 AM:
On Mon, 2012-03-05 at 10:17 -0500, Anton Aylward wrote:
[...]
I hope you send out a system independent format such as a PDF. The thing I like about PDF is that it looks *exactly* like you want it to look on any destination machine. Its why so many people use it for publishing.
That's not to say some PDF generators are awful. But that's not the problem; there are plenty of tools to do cleanup. Just as you can use 'tidy' to clean up the abysmal HTML that MS-Word produces ...
I use Word 2000 to produce my document, then I convert it to PDF with Acrobat 6.
There are many parameters that can be set in that conversion, aren't there. These will affect the size of the result. Could you tell us what those settings are? Could you also tell us the resulting size.
I have tried every combination of file from Word,OOo and LOo, Scribus, MSPublisher, then convert it to PDF in several ways.
Perhaps you could try the same with OOo/LOo and its internal PDF publisher and tell us the settings you used and the resulting file size.
It always comes out as a smaller file if I use Word then Acrobat, than any other combination to produce it.
Are these compressed or uncompressed PDFs? Are there images in them? Did you compress the image ? And after producing a couple of files by those different methods could use you the PDF 'acroread' viewer and File -> Properties -> Fonts -- Marketing is the science of convincing us that What You Get Is What You Want. -- John Carter -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Am 05.03.2012 14:50, schrieb Mark Misulich:
Hi,
did you try Scribus?
Karl Hi, yes I did. I think it is supposed to be similar to MSPublisher. I am very limited on how large the file size can be since I send the newsletter to members on dial-up isp's. I found that both Scribus and MSPublisher made a larger file size than what I was able to produce in Word. Scribus and MSPublisher are both great products, but for my particular circumstances Word worked best in comparison.
Hi, if you export to pdf, the filesize should not be bigger than any other program. But of course the size of your images is crucial. Usually 72 or 96 dpi are more than enough for electronic distribution. If I understood you right your main problem is the title page because you want it to be more "fancy" than the rest of the document. You can create a nice frontpage in Scribus and the rest in OO. Karl -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Karl Sinn said the following on 03/05/2012 08:32 AM:
did you try Scribus?
Good point. Sometimes we get too focused on the mechanisms and forget the objectives. Perhaps the objective isn't MS-Office/Word compatibility, not least of all since different versions of MS-Word show incompatibilities (??bug fixes??) with themselves. I've seen/heard many complaints that documents produced in one version don't print out exactly the same using another ... different page breaks, automatic spacing and things like that. Perhaps the problem is that MS-Word tries to be all things; not just a 'front office typists word processor' but a desktop publishing system. I've seen people use Word and Powerpoint to do graphics design when they should have been using a graphics tool instead. Why? Because they were familiar with it, I suppose. There are tools and templates from Avery that let you make up things like business cards using MS-Word. That's OK if you just want something very simple and basic. But when I tried to do something more sophisticated - but still "just text" - word-as-desktop-publishing (and OOo) couldn't cut it. I used scribus instead. In due course I used the results of scribus to order cards from Staples - they had a special on and it worked out cheaper than buying Avery stock and inkjet ink. Was the quality better? I'm not enough of an artist to tell. But after a couple of hours learning curve with scibus I felt it was easier to put things exactly where I wanted them and make things look like I wanted. Scribus has templates for newsletters and stuff and stuff. But lets face it, there's also HTML and PDF. How do you want to present things? Yes, I expect business cards to be printed out, but precious little else. Most of the physical mail I get is flyers and adverts. I read the news on the 'Net. I pay bills on the net. Do you expect people to print out the newsletters you send them? Did you print out the Suse newsletters that Sascha Manns sent each month? They were PDF and HTML, I don't recall what tool he used to produce them. The bottom line is this: There are better 'desktop publishing' tools available than MS-Word. For most values of "better". -- The biggest problem a security consultant has is getting managers to perform regular risk assessments. They don't want to hear that it's an on going process. The attitude was "why bother if I can't just check it once and be done with it". -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 15:13, Anton Aylward
fixes??) with themselves. I've seen/heard many complaints that documents produced in one version don't print out exactly the same using another ... different page breaks, automatic spacing and things like that.
That can even come down to printer drivers. You can open up a new document on Office 2007... create/edit/layout the contents. Move that document to another computer running Office 2007 but with a different printer driver as default and the layout will change (I used Office 2007 as an arbitrary example here... could be any equivalent versions). Then add to the mess by changing Office version and you have yet again a whole new layer of incompatibility or changes. Try creating a presentation in PowerPoint2010 with nice transitions etc.. then open that same document (if you can) in Office 2003... you won't have the exact same presentation anymore. People are using any number of combinations of MS Office and printer drivers. Anything you create in MSO has a good chance of being borked in any other random version of MSO. You will find the same level of oops in LibreOffice. The latest LibreOffice is much improved over previous version - it even can open Visio files now. You should find less incompatibility between LO and MSO... although.. Office Open XML (docx, xlsx etc) and MS Office still has interesting hidden layers of WTF built into it that will periodically reach out and smack you when you're trying to round trip a document.... my pet peeve is... set up a spreadsheet in LibreOffice, export to xls or xlsx... open in MS Office 2010, make an edit, save... now open that document in LibreOffice again and all your formulas will have been stripped out by MS Office when it saved. Not LibreOffice's fault.. it's MSO being annoying. C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
C said the following on 03/05/2012 09:29 AM:
On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 15:13, Anton Aylward
wrote: fixes??) with themselves. I've seen/heard many complaints that documents produced in one version don't print out exactly the same using another ... different page breaks, automatic spacing and things like that.
That can even come down to printer drivers. You can open up a new document on Office 2007... create/edit/layout the contents. Move that document to another computer running Office 2007 but with a different printer driver as default and the layout will change (I used Office 2007 as an arbitrary example here... could be any equivalent versions). Then add to the mess by changing Office version and you have yet again a whole new layer of incompatibility or changes. Try creating a presentation in PowerPoint2010 with nice transitions etc.. then open that same document (if you can) in Office 2003... you won't have the exact same presentation anymore.
People are using any number of combinations of MS Office and printer drivers. Anything you create in MSO has a good chance of being borked in any other random version of MSO. You will find the same level of oops in LibreOffice.
Which is why, if I want to have control over the presentation of anything I send out, I use PDF. -- Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are held to discuss it. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 15:58, Anton Aylward
People are using any number of combinations of MS Office and printer drivers. Anything you create in MSO has a good chance of being borked in any other random version of MSO. You will find the same level of oops in LibreOffice.
Which is why, if I want to have control over the presentation of anything I send out, I use PDF.
Use HybridPDF and you win :-) Just FYI to anyone unaware of HybridPDFs... this embeds an ODF file in the PDF. It looks like a regular PDF to anyone who opens it with Acrobat Reader/Ocular etc, but if you open it with OOo/LibreOffice or other HybridPDF capable office application, you get the original embedded ODF file... which you can then edit/save/export as a new HybridPDF. This is a fully documented part of the PDF ISO standard.. not some wild extra. C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 15:58, Anton Aylward
wrote: People are using any number of combinations of MS Office and printer drivers. Anything you create in MSO has a good chance of being borked in any other random version of MSO. You will find the same level of oops in LibreOffice.
Which is why, if I want to have control over the presentation of anything I send out, I use PDF.
Use HybridPDF and you win :-)
Just FYI to anyone unaware of HybridPDFs... this embeds an ODF file in the PDF. It looks like a regular PDF to anyone who opens it with Acrobat Reader/Ocular etc, but if you open it with OOo/LibreOffice or other HybridPDF capable office application, you get the original embedded ODF file... which you can then edit/save/export as a new HybridPDF.
This is a fully documented part of the PDF ISO standard.. not some wild extra.
C. If I'm not mistaken latest versions of LibreOffice allow you to save
C wrote: the .odt as .pdf/.odt document. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 3/5/2012 12:05 PM, upscope wrote:
C wrote:
On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 15:58, Anton Aylward
wrote: People are using any number of combinations of MS Office and printer drivers. Anything you create in MSO has a good chance of being borked in any other random version of MSO. You will find the same level of oops in LibreOffice.
Which is why, if I want to have control over the presentation of anything I send out, I use PDF.
Use HybridPDF and you win :-)
Just FYI to anyone unaware of HybridPDFs... this embeds an ODF file in the PDF. It looks like a regular PDF to anyone who opens it with Acrobat Reader/Ocular etc, but if you open it with OOo/LibreOffice or other HybridPDF capable office application, you get the original embedded ODF file... which you can then edit/save/export as a new HybridPDF.
This is a fully documented part of the PDF ISO standard.. not some wild extra.
C. If I'm not mistaken latest versions of LibreOffice allow you to save the .odt as .pdf/.odt document.
Yes, he mentioned that, and it does work. You pretty much have to drag and drop the pdf on LO, because its not normally set up to open PDF. Its pretty cool, but unless you know its been saved that way there is no way to tell other than try to open it. My only complaint with LO is the obtuse places they have hidden some of the functionality which makes it seem less capable than it is. -- _____________________________________ ---This space for rent--- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Monday, March 05, 2012 03:49 PM John Andersen wrote:
On 3/5/2012 12:05 PM, upscope wrote:
C wrote:
On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 15:58, Anton Aylward
wrote: People are using any number of combinations of MS Office and printer drivers. Anything you create in MSO has a good chance of being borked in any other random version of MSO. You will find the same level of oops in LibreOffice.
Which is why, if I want to have control over the presentation of anything I send out, I use PDF.
Use HybridPDF and you win :-)
Just FYI to anyone unaware of HybridPDFs... this embeds an ODF file in the PDF. It looks like a regular PDF to anyone who opens it with Acrobat Reader/Ocular etc, but if you open it with OOo/LibreOffice or other HybridPDF capable office application, you get the original embedded ODF file... which you can then edit/save/export as a new HybridPDF.
This is a fully documented part of the PDF ISO standard.. not some wild extra.
C.
If I'm not mistaken latest versions of LibreOffice allow you to save the .odt as .pdf/.odt document.
Yes, he mentioned that, and it does work. You pretty much have to drag and drop the pdf on LO, because its not normally set up to open PDF.
Its pretty cool, but unless you know its been saved that way there is no way to tell other than try to open it.
My only complaint with LO is the obtuse places they have hidden some of the functionality which makes it seem less capable than it is.
The Open File dialog box pull down has a PDF option in the list. But if I'm understanding this correctly, the pdf has had to have been saved as a hybrid file for this to work. That's a great capability, but Word users in the Windows world? - we get pdf's all the time created by Word that we have to manually duplicate the text from. I tried editing the pdf imported into Draw, and that's unnaceptable. Maybe I'm missing something . . . -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 03/05/2012 12:59 PM, Dennis Gallien wrote:
On Monday, March 05, 2012 03:49 PM John Andersen wrote:
On 3/5/2012 12:05 PM, upscope wrote:
C wrote:
On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 15:58, Anton Aylward
wrote: People are using any number of combinations of MS Office and printer drivers. Anything you create in MSO has a good chance of being borked in any other random version of MSO. You will find the same level of oops in LibreOffice.
Which is why, if I want to have control over the presentation of anything I send out, I use PDF.
Use HybridPDF and you win :-)
Just FYI to anyone unaware of HybridPDFs... this embeds an ODF file in the PDF. It looks like a regular PDF to anyone who opens it with Acrobat Reader/Ocular etc, but if you open it with OOo/LibreOffice or other HybridPDF capable office application, you get the original embedded ODF file... which you can then edit/save/export as a new HybridPDF.
This is a fully documented part of the PDF ISO standard.. not some wild extra.
C.
If I'm not mistaken latest versions of LibreOffice allow you to save the .odt as .pdf/.odt document.
Yes, he mentioned that, and it does work. You pretty much have to drag and drop the pdf on LO, because its not normally set up to open PDF.
Its pretty cool, but unless you know its been saved that way there is no way to tell other than try to open it.
My only complaint with LO is the obtuse places they have hidden some of the functionality which makes it seem less capable than it is.
The Open File dialog box pull down has a PDF option in the list.
Yeah, but try that with a non HybridPDF and you usually get an pop-up error box. Best case is it contrives to open it as a LO-Draw object full of text boxes. It would really be nice if you could filter the list of documents by selecting only the HybridPDF documents. I suppose for the windows world this might require an additional extension, but Linux should be able to tell by inspection. Copying text is a pain. Often printing and scanning it works better. -- Explain again the part about rm -rf / -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 21:59, Dennis Gallien
The Open File dialog box pull down has a PDF option in the list.
But if I'm understanding this correctly, the pdf has had to have been saved as a hybrid file for this to work. That's a great capability, but Word users in the Windows world? - we get pdf's all the time created by Word that we have to manually duplicate the text from. I tried editing the pdf imported into Draw, and that's unnaceptable. Maybe I'm missing something . . .
The PDF has to be explicitly created as a HybridPDF for the functionality to work. A standard PDF is just a PDF without any embedded source document.... as far as I know, MS Office and the Acrobat printer drive don't (yet?) support creating or editing Hybrid PDFs. It is a part of the PDF ISO standard, so it's not just some invention or hack with OOo/LibO. When you're working on PDFs you've received from customers, you can use tools like pdftk (and the pdftk-qgui) to manipulate vanilla PDFs. There is also pdfedit (dependent on qt3, but you can install that in openSUSE 12.1.. I haven't seen any negative effects so far from doing that) which gives you the ability to fully edit and manipulate PDF contents. If the text in the PDF is real text and not scanned text, you can even export the raw text and then open that in LibO/OOo to do whatever editing you need - beats copy/pasting page by page. C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 03/05/2012 05:05 AM, Mark Misulich wrote:
My best solution so far has been to install WinXx in VirtualBox, with guest extensions so that I can use it full-screen. I use Office2000 and Adobe 6 in that virtual machine without a hitch. Not exactly Linux, but at least I am not selecting Windxxx in the Grub list of operating systems. The WinXx disc I have wouldn't install in my computer after I have upgraded the motherboard and cpu for the second or third time anyways even after slipstreaming new drivers. Besides, WinXx and the Office2000/Acrobat 6 is getting to be pretty old software. They do install in VirtualBox without a hitch, and run fine.
Yup, I use Virtualbox with Win-XP for those work-related things that won't ever be compatible by design too. But you have to be very careful if you ever connect your vbox guest to the Internet without making sure that Windows and third-party applications are up-to-date with all the security fixes. In particular, the Adobe products (Acroread, Flash, etc) and Java have to be current or you'll be owned by the Chinese or the Russian Mafia in no time. Further, you have to manually remove old versions of Java, Acroread, etc. These old versions are still vulnerable and can be leveraged by malware to take over your system if they're still in the "Add /Remove Programs" tab. Regards, Lew -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 3/4/12 1:38 AM, Roger Luedecke wrote:
Frankly, I keep running into too many anomalies in LibreOffice vs. MS Office. Though I could run Office through Wine, I would rather have a native solution. I googled it to death, and couldn't seem to find anything.
Just a couple of wild cards to throw into the mix. I wonder if MS Office 365 will work on Linux. (No I'm not joking, it could solve the problem). Its web based, and you likely won't be doing any active directory stuff so it might. Was $6USD per mo last I checked. Also, has anyone gotten Apple's Pages to run on Linux? They probably have the binary locked down tight, but it could run? Just a couple of out of the box thoughts. Jim F -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 15:35, Jim Flanagan
Just a couple of wild cards to throw into the mix.
I wonder if MS Office 365 will work on Linux. (No I'm not joking, it could solve the problem). Its web based, and you likely won't be doing any active directory stuff so it might. Was $6USD per mo last I checked.
According to this: http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/v3-co-uk-labs-blog/2086291/office-365-mac-linux yes as long as you don't need Office Communicator. C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 03/05/2012 08:35 AM, Jim Flanagan wrote:
On 3/4/12 1:38 AM, Roger Luedecke wrote:
Frankly, I keep running into too many anomalies in LibreOffice vs. MS Office. Though I could run Office through Wine, I would rather have a native solution. I googled it to death, and couldn't seem to find anything.
Just a couple of wild cards to throw into the mix.
I wonder if MS Office 365 will work on Linux. (No I'm not joking, it could solve the problem). Its web based, and you likely won't be doing any active directory stuff so it might. Was $6USD per mo last I checked.
Also, has anyone gotten Apple's Pages to run on Linux? They probably have the binary locked down tight, but it could run?
Just a couple of out of the box thoughts.
Jim F
As the Johnny English movie put it - "Don't go zthere" So you have the web to create, etc. BUT, what happens if you can't get access to the Web - YOU ARE F__CKED !!!!!!! NO THANK YOU !!!!!!!!!!!!!! Duaine -- Duaine Hechler Piano, Player Piano, Pump Organ Tuning, Servicing& Rebuilding Reed Organ Society Member Florissant, MO 63034 (314) 838-5587 dahechler@att.net www.hechlerpianoandorgan.com -- Home& Business user of Linux - 11 years -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 2:38 AM, Roger Luedecke
Frankly, I keep running into too many anomalies in LibreOffice vs. MS Office. Though I could run Office through Wine, I would rather have a native solution. I googled it to death, and couldn't seem to find anything.
Roger, My solution in my office is to remote desktop into a corp. terminal server and run office there. I know that is not a great "linux" solution, but it works for me. fyi: I also have issues the other way around. I have one app I run that has a WebUI interface. It produces a nice little html table of results that I need to send to my clients. I can copy/paste that from firefox to oocalc with no issue, and the table layout is very nicely maintained with rows and columns. Not true with Excel. Another example, with gmail and html based emails, I can copy / paste a simple table from oocalc to firefox and have a nice looking email with a table in it. Again, not true with Excel. So I find I need oocalc routinely as well as MSO. Greg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
participants (19)
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Adam Tauno Williams
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Anton Aylward
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C
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Dennis Gallien
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Doug
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Duaine Hechler
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Greg Freemyer
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jdd-gmane
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Jim Flanagan
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John Andersen
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jsa
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Karl Sinn
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Lew Wolfgang
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Mark Misulich
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Per Jessen
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Roger Luedecke
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Thomas Taylor
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Thorolf Godawa
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upscope