A lot of people seem to think that OpenOffice is lacking some features, meaning it is less capable than Microsoft Office. (Particularly in the conversion threads, but others as well) Obviously these people have never tried to write a maths paper in Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office's only way to render functions is with Equation Editor which is slow and cumbersome, especially for large / complicated functions. My current Maths Paper (Grade 12 Maths C (Advanced Maths)) Consists of about 2 Pages of Text (Intro + Method) and then 3 Pages of complex Algebra, followed by 2 pages of Graphs, Tables and Text (Results, conclusions) While the maths is < than half the paper, The ability to make good looking functions is obviously important. It's ability to render the equations (OOCalc), combined with it's lack of quirks (eg, Word 2000 is apparently unable to drag pictures with the 'Inline with text' wrap mode, even if there is no text on the page) and it's User-Interface (eg, Customizable hotkeys, the fact that it looks real as opposed to that whacky 'XPish' Office XP interface) makes it by far the superior word-processor in my opinion.

So, pray tell, what is it missing?

Personally I just write everything in latex nowadays. It usually sets out everything beuatifully. MS office used to drive me to the point of throwing the computer out the window...luckily the computers were locked down so they couldnt be stolen from the university...

Mark

I've been trying to learn Open Office since I started a couple of months ago and thus far, it seems to be going fairly well. Can you tell me if there is a package similar to MS Access? I would like to be able to work with several inter-related databases, but have no idea where to start in Open Office or if there is such a feature. I'm sure there is, I just can't seem to locate it.

SgtBob

Access similarities will come in OOo 2.0, they're currently only available in the StarOffice version with Adabas.

p.s. Have fun sending your friends sxw-files, I can open doc's, but they can't open sxw's? How strange...

just get a spread sheet program ... theres quite a few if you don't think theres one in OO

anyways ... the only thing i wish is that OO looked more like the GIMP, i don't like the way every word processor ever made seems to be a knock off the same user interface .... but if it looked more like GIMP (small main window for to tools, and separate other windows for word/working stuff the person is working on ..) .... that might look nice

Moloko: *sigh* its M$ office we are talking about here, the office programs are made to not even be compatible with other versions of itself! (doc versions) .. how dare you think M$ would waste there valuable time making the users life sooooo much easy and same from viruses to add support for something they didn't make? if they wouldn't even add support for something they did make! ... now thats strange

Oh you know, those wonderful features like inserting a stock ticketer in your document. Microsoft if the king of creating purposeless features that no one uses. Its quality, not quantity that matters, and OO has quality. I would love to see OO beat M$ Word. I hate having to save and send things in .doc format just because some fool still uses M$ Office.


I don't have a problem with the way OO looks. I don't like the GIMP multiple window interface. If everything was wrapped in one main window then I could deal with it. Instead whenever I use GIMP I make sure that I use a seperate virtual desktop because I usually open several images at once and screen real-estate goes very quickly.

Meh I think most of the arguements result in: "MS makes it so its crap" kinda thing. I feel MS Office is much more powerful then OO especially Excel. Word is quite a bit more powerful IMO too.

OO also looks pretty much like Office 2000/97.

As for math editing. I never had a problem with Word I found it more easy to use then OO. But I prefer the tried and true way of pen and paper.

Thats what happens when one person is using the industry standard and someone else is not. He is not a fool.

I think I understand about the spreadsheet aspect, but what I would like to see is a package that works with several databases where similar data is available in each of the DB's. In business, it is best if using databases to have the same information in only one so that you aren't duplicating the data across several DB's, i.e., if you have 3 DB's each with the name, address and common data in each, MS Acess or Wordperfect Paradox permits pointers to this data so that duplication and PC space is minimized. I'm sure there is some similar feature in the Linux world - I just have to find it.

SgtBob

Could you please be more specific? What features? What makes it 'more powerful'? Or perhaps that should be the other way around - Are there some limitations in OO.o's Spreadsheet / Wordprocessor which make them not as good as MS Office?

I hope you do not mean MSOffice being an "industry standard"?

Have you ever thought of what makes something a standard? Some official, mutual consent between more than one manufacturers and the users of the product. I do not think that MSOffice would have ever been officially accepted by other office software producers as an industrial standard. MSOffice is simply the product (and property) of a monopoly on the office software market. Not more, not less.

I have not used MSOffice for years, though the licence of Office XP is in my drawer. I rather use OO.

A big drawback, however: WinXP does not seem to do a document search neither on StarOffice nor on OO documents. (Some of my colleagues s[u]ck a lot because of this.) I wonder why, as Win98 did it at least on StarOffice documents. I wonder if this the fault of WinXP or OO.

What makes it a standard is that its a format almsot everyone uses for everything. Thats what I meant. So if you are using it at work people are more likely to use it at home. Therefore you can't call someone a fool simply because they aren;t using what YOU want them to use. its not silly. If 90% of everyone out there is using Office then you should expect to have to save it in an office format.

That is simpyl what I meant.

Try opening the "Writer" or any other Open Office program and hit "F4" key. That will bring up a database. It's an ordinary database as Access. You can easily drap and drop the content of a database table into the writer without any problems. However, I could never link OO database with any other thing, as Java or C... but oh well, there's always mysql for serious stuff

ms office is better, but openoffice is a great alternative.

for a bussiness, the amount of apps in mso are amazing and much better than OOo, they also provide better integration with other programs so exchanging info between offices in different physical locations is easier.

OOo is free and less buggy. and if you tweak the memory, it is actually faster than ms office.

oh, and powerpoint is a huge dissapointment in OOo. someone should write a linux app like keynote, but compatible with ppt format.

it is silly if they expect the docs to be portable ... theres only a few portable formats i know of

ascii and tex (only because it can be transformed into almost any useful format) and pdf (i say this is industry standard ... a lot of people use it, pretty much any OS with a gui can view it) and thats all the portable document formats i know of

Well so far as the commercial industry goes almost everyone uses MS Office. I'll agree that PDF's are definitly a portable document. But almsot everything can read a .doc format as well. Linux OO can read it. Macs MS Office can read it, Palm Documents to Go can read it, Pocket PC's have words on it, Blackberry can read most MS Office formats as well and Windows WordPad and MS Office can read it. So it seems pretty portable to me?

And can as many interfaces read OO own format? I don't think so

But like I said before the person want MS to fail (which is wishful hoping IMO) just because he doesn't like saving things in a format that it uses and called someone a fool because they use MS Office and not what he uses. And I countered it by basically saying a hell of a lot more people use MS Office the OO and its foolish to expect never having to save something from a less portable format to a much more portable format. And frankly frankly IMO no one should be able to call anyone a fool just because of the software they use.


I am not saying OO is a bad program at all. I think its a great alternative I just feel its not quite up to snuff with Office 2k3 or XP. But maybe thats just because I am so used to Office and not OO. I don't know I was not happy with OO's spreadsheet program (The graphi editor felt too....basic I don't know felt like iI was back using Excel 97) or its slide presentation program.