“Mirror, mirror on the wall/ Who’s the prettiest suite of them all?” Suddenly it seems, the fierce contests to find the most popular computer `Office suite’ ? a combo-pack of softwares to perform common tasks like word processing, spread sheeting, presentation and e-mailing ? are to be replayed all over again, a decade after the first shakeout. Read the article at The Hindu. In other office news, Gobe now sells GobeProductive for a low price, while it seems that the new AppleWorks 6.2.7 is available for purchasing. Update: Native Abiword port for Mac OS X abandoned.
Get Set for Another ‘Office Suite’ Shakeout
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Most would say that the “office suite” market is overdue for a shakeout. Imagine that.
AbiWord is perfect for me. It has just the right amount of features and takes up about 12 MB of disk space. I can import most documents and it is available on multiple platforms: Windows, Unix and soon BeOS.
An added plus: it doesn’t have talking dogs or wizards to help me write an essay *cough* MS Office.
The problem with Office Suites in Linux is not so much the funtionality (Come-on .. how many times do you use an Office Suite? For what purpose?). The problem is that the fonts look inelegant overall. That makes it seem like MS Office is so far ahead. I wish somebody would do something about the fonts.
Also, remember that you can install Appleworks 6.2 on Windows.
http://manuals.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Manuals/software/0…
I would disagree with you on the fonts issue. For example:
http://segfault.slackware.co.nz/abiword.png
However, perhaps I am misunderstanding. What don’t you like about the fonts?
Regards.
Excuse me Boyo, but your comment is simply unfair. you link to an Abiword screenshot from version 1.9.0 which came out just two days ago, and which is NOT stable, but development version.
When you try to reply to people, do it for versions that are stable and that are coming with most distros by default. And that would be the 1.0.x branch. And there, you can show us all how ugly fonts look on AbiWord. Why did it take them so many years just to have fonts right? (and that version is not even out yet for public consumption)
Hey boyo…I found this on your website. I believe that’s what linux_baby is talking about.
http://segfault.slackware.co.nz/pictures/evolution.png
Okay, now I feel silly. This is what I meant:
http://segfault.slackware.co.nz/pictures/openoffice11beta.png
Okay, Eugenia, please mod my last one down. I did it again.
This is what I meant:
http://abiword.org/screenshots/gtk2crushed_jamie.png
http://abiword.org/screenshots/multi-lingual-spell.png
http://abiword.org/screenshots/gtk1crushed_aaron.png
http://abiword.org/screenshots/abi-grad.jpg
well what about this then.. i think the fonts look fine and render well..
http://www.vnet.ndirect.co.uk/ooffice.png
thats open office 1.0.3 not beta and works perfectly fine.. so what was the point again ?
Eugina:
He didn’t specify which fonts he was talking about. If you want I can supply screenshots I took in October – December 2002 of GNOME 2 with anti-aliasing enabled.
As to why it took so long. I honestly don’t know. I suspect, like all things, it comes down to coordination between all parties. I’m happy that its happened however.
Stephen Smith:
Yes, that is truly ugly. For what its worth, Ximian does have a version that uses fontconfig to get the same list of fonts as the other GTK2/KDE3 applications. Also, OpenOffice ships with an ancient version of freetype. Use your distro supplied version of freetype to get anti-aliasing.
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libfreetype.so <executable>
PS. That is not my website.
I am fully aware that the stable version of Abiword is GTK1 and therefore does not have anti-aliased fonts. However, that is not the case _now_ with the version of Abiword that will become the new stable version.
There’s no reason to spam me with images trying to prove that fonts sucked in the past on Linux. I _agree_. My point is that the situation has changed.
All things considered tho oo 1.03 does look butt ugly looks like a wine port.. uggghhh
that screen of abi word looks alright.. infact just check what version was installed with debian unstable by default heres a screen shot:
http://www.vnet.ndirect.co.uk/abiword.png
looks damn nice too. Even interface of abiword looks nice
AbiWord already runs on BeOS.
There’s no reason to spam me with images trying to prove that fonts sucked in the past on Linux. I _agree_. My point is that the situation has changed.
I have installed several Linux distros as of late (Mandrake 9.1, Redhat 9, Knoppix 3.2, Xandros, Lindows 3.0, Slackware 9, and probably one or two more I forgot about) and based on what I have seen, the situation has NOT changed. Though the default fonts aren’t as bad as they used to be,, they’re not great by any stretch of the imagination.
Even importing MS fonts and using those, it doesn’t help a whole lot.
However, I have seen several screenshots of fonts looking great in Linux, so I know it’s possible, but it doesn’t seem simple (and I mean simple as intuitive) to fix and definitely is not ‘fixed’ out of the box.
i don’t want to nitpick but can we , when we discuss distributions, say the distributions name or use verbs, linux is just a kernel. hyped kernel at that.. please?
Abiword all the way. Gnumeric for spread sheets.
The only problem is neither are OS X native. Abiword was coming to OS X, but the lead OS X developer just stated he will no longer develope anything on Apple systems.
Anyways, I think it will be an interesting battle to watch… of course it is only interesting if M$ takes losses. Not as much if companies are backstabbing each other for a coveted second place which makes Apple’s marketshare look huge.
The Gobe “low” price is $50. That’s considerable more than other alternative office suites, which are normally in the $20 range.
For Windows users, if you just need to write letters or short reports, many users could get by with Wordpad, which is included in the OS.
AbiWord is OK, but there are better freeware word processors, including ProSuite602, OpenOffice, Atlantis Nova, and many others. But for alternative operating systems (BeOS, QNX…) Abi seems to be the best we can get.
Later,
Bob
get a life, who to hell wants to argue which WP is prettier??????
Perhaps, what I consider to be properly AA fonts and what I consider to be nicely AA’d are different…
Could you post a screenshot of a default out of the box installation that you find lacking?
Thanks.
Re: Robert
Personally I am running Debian Unstable with the 2.4.21 kernel and XFree86 4.2 and GNOME 2.2.
Now that Gobe is selling again, are they ever going to ship me the Linux version I paid for?
“Now that Gobe is selling again, are they ever going to ship me the Linux version I paid for?”
That’s like having a friend who you thought dead have a miracle recovery and then go up to him right after and say – “about that $20 you owe me…”
This “Out of box” thing is getting a little silly. Why does every discussion have to go off-track to focus on users who never change the defaults? A large percentage of computer users are *not* newbies. They have no problem reading some instructions to fix a particular problem. “Out of box” WinXP is ugly, irritating, and blinky-blink. When we have discussions about the suitability of WinXP, you don’t ignore facts like theming, changing important registry values, installing Cygwin, etc. Similarly, making unqualified statements like “Linux fonts are broken” just don’t make any sense. I consider fonts being broken to mean that you cannot get good fonts in Linux. I’m staring at some very nice fonts, so that’s obviously not true. Now, is it broken out of box? Maybe in some distros (it wasn’t in Gentoo) that is the case, but that’s a very different statement. Let’s try to keep some perspective, ‘k?
AbiWord for BeOS is back on track again, the next release will be the 1.0.6 version. The “patchapplier” said that its still not really useable, but its getting better.
http://abiword.com/information/news/2003/awn139.phtml
i’ve used OO.org Open Office at work. Its really good and so much more than i would ever expect it to be. Would i use it home???
Noway, it takes like 2mins to load, another 2 mins to save.
Would please someone explain me why it works that slow? why OO.org opens and saves that slow and MS Office not.
observation.
On this machine (a pc, at the office) abiword 1.9.0 starts up in 1.027s But, Gedit, gnomes native texteditor starts in 4.090s .
the test was made on a p3 450MHz w. 128MB of ram. gentoo w. gnome 2.2
‘time gedit’
‘time abiword’ was the commands I used.
fairly interesting, oh and btw, interesting note , Abiword produced documents én masse today since we wanted to try to see if we could get office XP to open Abiword produced .doc files.
guess what, out of 9 tests, on 3 windows machines, office XP could open the File created by abiword..
I was very impressed by that.
oh and yeah, it preserved my test styles.
no tables or anything to that effect was used.
i rember him, he ported xpdf to beos.
poor guy got toasted by be, then by apple, now he gets roasted on /.
steved took him out this time:
http://www.houghi.org/jargon/steved.html
he should switch to b.e.os
I just tried to load a document into Abiword and it made a right mess of the tables. And I couldn’t see the tables button to correct it.
Long live gobeProductive!
slackware: An added plus: it doesn’t have talking dogs or wizards to help me write an essay *cough* MS Office.
The talking dog is in Explorer in Windows XP. Office has clippy (there is a dog, but it is easier turning CLippy off than changing assistant). In Office XP, Clippy is turned off by default.
As for essays, you don’t need wizard, just choose an empty document. However, if you are writing something that needs to be professionally formated, for example, a memo, an official letter, a resume, a report, a thesis, and the sort, wizards can save you a lot of time.
boyo: There’s no reason to spam me with images trying to prove that fonts sucked in the past on Linux. I _agree_. My point is that the situation has changed.
When is AbiWord 2.0 coming out? Tomorrow? The day after? Some time in the future? Cause frankly, I don’t know too many office workers willing to risk their productivity with unstable products.
Dariusbut it doesn’t seem simple (and I mean simple as intuitive) to fix and definitely is not ‘fixed’ out of the box.
I definately have to agree. I took some 2-3 days to properly configure my fonts (than threw it all away a few days ago for disk space, but that’s an entirely different story altogether).
That’s considerable more than other alternative office suites, which are normally in the $20 range.
Pirated office suites or completely bankrupted/defunk/unporfitable office suites?
Bobthearch: For Windows users, if you just need to write letters or short reports, many users could get by with Wordpad, which is included in the OS.
Wordpad is hardly enough for most people. Unless your “many users” are those who need to write a letter in, oh, once in three-four months?
Bobthearch: AbiWord is OK, but there are better freeware word processors, including ProSuite602, OpenOffice, Atlantis Nova
ProSuite602 (which is PC Suite now) is hardly nice – it is completely unintuitive, it is not worth the effort. OpenOffice.org is not a suitable competitor to AbiWord – they aren’t for the same market at all to begin with. OOo is bloated, slow, not as unintuitive as PC Suite, but still unintuitive. Nova on the other hand is plain unstable for me at least. I like the interface though, however ugly and bulky it is.
However, I like another altenative, YeahWrite, but I lost touch with it, and the last time I used it, it was a long time ago.
Funk: That’s like having a friend who you thought dead have a miracle recovery and then go up to him right after and say – “about that $20 you owe me…”
I never bought a product because the company was my friend. I’m not required to help a company. The company should help themselves.
Has anyone tried WP Office 11? I’m thinking of trying that out but I’m not sure.
Rajan, I found one review of it here http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1020106,00.asp and it scored about the same as WP 2002. Its not out until the end of the month. I’ve always like WP as a word processor – WP 8 for Linux rocks – and I would have liked to see it rated higher.
As a student, for the bulk of my work I’m using AbiWord. I’ve tried OO and frankly it’s not only bloated but overly complex. And Word simply has too many features which annoy me.
I use AbiWord for simple stuff, and LaTeX for bigger texts. AbiWord is a pretty nice little word processor; the features you use, and none of the bloat.
I’d like to see some other software made with the same spirit as AbiWord, like eg. a simple vector drawing program, simple presentations maker, …
Of course there’s still KOffice, but I find that (all of KDE actually) too bloated&slow to be usable.
And suites like OpenOffice, StarOffice and such, well… if they’d only do some effort to make their software portable so that us non-linux users could use them too…
But then again, they’re probably both too bloated to fit my needs.
But that’s just my 0,02 euro
On gnome.org a while back, I saw a link to a screenshot Ximian’s version of OpenOffice (still in development). If you haven’t seen it, I would _highly_ recommend hunting it down.
It was _BEAUTIFUL_. I don’t say that often about Linux software, but it just destroyed “regular” OpenOffice in the looks department. Totally moved to GTK2, the menus looked normal, the icons were great, and supposedly, start-up time had been greatly reduced. I am eagerly awaiting Ximian Desktop 2 – Evolution is a phenomenal program, and I think Red Carpet has a lot of potential. If they include Ximianized OpenOffice, it could be the start of the Linux desktop revolution. Just kidding, but I do think it’ll be pretty sweet.
That said, once you open OpenOffice, it only takes a second to load stuff afterwards. About the only thing it’s missing is an Access lookalike, and prettier graphics. I’ve also had problems printing envelopes, but I am unsure who exactly to blame it on. For the price, OpenOffice is a great suite.
-Erwos
That’s like having a friend who you thought dead have a miracle recovery and then go up to him right after and say – “about that $20 you owe me…”
Point taken. Glad to see you selling again Gobe. Now, about that Linux version you owe me…