Re: [edlug] Scottish Executive: Staroffice

[Mark de Vries <m.a.devries@xxx.xxx.xxx>]

I have tried both Star Office and Open Office. I have the impression that the 
most important difference is their compatibility with MS Word documents. With 
both programs you can read and save Word documents, but when there is a lot 
of formatting in the word document, with tickboxes, figures and formulas, 
then OpenOffice does not suffice. The most complicated forms, like the one on 
this link for example ; http://www.srs.ac.uk/srs/userSR/user_forms2.html
go almost perfect with StarOffice, although it is still recommended to put 
this into PdF format when such a form is finally submitted, because it can 
happen that some text does fit in the boxes in the StarOffice version, but 
not in the MSWord version. for more basic processing OpenOff. should be fine.

Differences with Powerpoint and Star/Open- Office presentations software are 
stronger. The formulas are not compatible for example, but having said that, 
even between two different installations of Powerpoint there are differences 
in the way your presentation will look like. Again for doing the presentation 
it would be good to save it into a ps or pdf format, but I do not know if 
there are suitable viewers to project the pdf/ps slides on the screen.

Mark.


On Monday 10 May 2004 06:55, Peter G. Hancock wrote:
> Out of interest, does anyone know how staroffice and openoffice compare?
>
> My local computer shop says a significant part of the cost of a
> refurbished computer consists of licence costs for the software.  The
> guvner has tried to persuade punters to have whichever of blah-office
> runs under windows, but they refuse because they want their home PC to
> have the same software as their PC at work, down to the exact same
> word-processor.
>
> Some questions on blah-word:
>
> 1. How do you make a document with blah-office?  I'm serious, I've
>    never actually figured out how to do it.  I have written documents
>    with Word, but only when someone has always made a template magically
>    available.  Where do I get some useful templates, eg for letters,
>    and how do I put them in my "path"?
>
> 2. Half the time I spend using Word is wasted trying to understand
>    its concepts of list-entry and paragraph.  They seem to be of a
>    completely different kind from the concepts in latex/markup languages.
>    What is the logical structure of a Word document, particularly
>    as regards (bulleted) lists?   (I understand that the idea of
>    a "document" is very big in Windows: is there a Grand Unified
>    Architecture of Documents?)
>
> Hank
>
>
>
>
>
>
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