office apps

[Chip Camden]

On Jun 06 2010 21:56, Chad Perrin wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 06, 2010 at 01:34:16PM -0700, Chip Camden wrote:
> > 
> > Does anyone have a recommendation for a lighter-weight office suite?
> > OOo is such a pig.  It takes a good minute to start it up and open a
> > spreadsheet.
> > 
> > Short of the full suite, how about just a spreadsheet program that supports
> > complex formulas and charting?  If it could also be used without X11 when
> > charting isn't needed, that would make my day.
> 
> It may be a little late to ask -- but I notice nobody else addressed the
> matter:
> 
> Does your OO.o replacement have to be somewhat compatible with MS Office?
> 
> If so . . . does it have to be two-way compatible?
> 
> There are options for one-way compatibility (e.g., catdoc for turning MS
> Word files into plain text), but for being able to interoperate to
> roughly arbitrary degrees with users of MS Office I'm not aware of
> anything other than OO.o, KOffice, and whatever GNOME's using, that would
> work for the purposes you described.  Maybe someone else can comment on
> the suitability of recent versions of Abiword and Gnumeric (for
> instance).
> 
> Ever since it essentially stopped being possible to install OO.o from a
> binary package on FreeBSD for me (at least without also installing Java),
> I've dreaded the day I will no longer have the venerable OO.o install
> from way back when and some jackass expects me to talk back and forth via
> MS Excel.  I loathe "applications" written in VBA, to put it mildly, and
> only my loathing for MS Windows and MS Office has kept that ancient OO.o
> install on one of my computers for so long.
> 
> -- 
> Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]

That's a very good point.

For most of what I need to do, it's not an issue.  But I do have clients
who send me Word docs, and one who requires that I send them specs in
Word format.  For that, I guess I'm stuck using some behemoth office
tool, if only for converting from a different format.  I'm currently
doing that work on a Windows workstation, but I'd like to limit my
involvement with Windows to only developing for it when I must.


-- 
Sterling (Chip) Camden | camdensoftware.com | chipstips.com | chipsquips.com