Re: Free office ! IBM Lotus Symphony

[qsrvbas@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

Chuck Lewis wrote:
>    4. Re: Free office ! IBM Lotus Symphony (Chuck Lewis)
>
> They honestly think that list would not cause some folks major problems ?

Chuck:

I'm pretty sure they don't care. I sure don't. Though MS Office is 
what's used in our 'office', I use OpenOffice on all of my personal 
systems. I fully expect never to use MS Office anywhere it's not required.

While there are plenty of things that MS Office can accommodate that 
OpenOffice doesn't, there are more things in MS Office that I have no 
need for nor any interest in. So far, there is nothing I've personally 
missed in OpenOffice. I'm just not that far into all the bells and 
whistles. The existing range of options provides more than I need.

Besides, I'm simply not going to pay for MS Office. I send basic 
donations to the OpenOffice organization, just to contribute. But I 
don't have that option with MS Office -- it's pay all or nothing and get 
what you pay for.

Further, for the past couple of years, various little bits of MS Office 
(and probably worse, Outlook) have started to be intrusive. There are 
starting to be too many little things that I actively _dislike_ and 
haven't managed to get turned off. I realize that there are probably 
options or settings or preferences or tools or whatever they might be 
called that I can change, but there have become so many of them 
scattered in different places that I no longer want to search them out.

E.g., I can't stand Outlook when it changes "System i" to "System I" 
every time I type it. And I'm getting ready to seek out and destroy that 
freakin' "chatting paper-clip" pop-up thing that's reappeared on a newer 
PC in MS Office. I somehow shut it off in my previous work PC; now I 
have to figure it out again.

Anyway, I'll sure give this beta of Symphony a test run. And I'll keep 
my eye on it as it grows. For its first appearance in this form, it 
doesn't look too bad.

Tom Liotta

> -----Original Message-----
>
> I installed it at home last night and at work today.  Have only played a
> little bit, but it seems really promising.  I opened the most complex
> spreadsheet we have (multiple worksheets, cell formatting, auto-update 
> links
> among all the sheets, macros, etc).  The auto-updating worked great, the
> only problem I found was the VB macro did not work.
>
> Symphony would replace Excel, Word, and Powerpoint.  Thunderbird would
> replace the email capabilities of Outlook.  How about an open source 
> PIM to
> replace that portion (Calendar, Tasks, Contacts) of Outlook?  And the 
> price
> is right.
>
> Could get interesting the next couple of years.  If the marketplace 
> accepts
> and embraces ODF, that could cause a real problem for Office, don't you
> think?
>
>
> < I found the following in the Symphony help.  I formatted it a bit to 
> make
> it more readable. >
>
> About Converting Microsoft Office Documents
> ===========================================
> IBMR LotusR Productivity Tools can generally open MicrosoftR Office
> 97/2000/XP documents. However, some layout features and formatting
> attributes in more complex Microsoft Office documents are handled
> differently in the productivity tools or are unsupported. As a result,
> converted files require some degree of manual reformatting. The amount of
> reformatting that can be expected is proportional to the complexity of 
> the
> structure and formatting of the source document. The productivity tools
> cannot run Visual Basic Scripts, but can load them for you to analyze.
>
> The following lists provide a general overview of Microsoft Office 
> features
> that may cause conversion challenges. In general, these should not affect
> your ability to use or work with the content of the converted document.
>
> Microsoft Word
> ==============
> AutoShapes
> Revision marks
> OLE objects
> Certain controls and Microsoft Office form fields
> Indexes
> Tables, frames, and multi-column formatting
> Hyperlinks and bookmarks
> Microsoft WordArt graphics
> Animated characters/text
>
> Microsoft Excel
> ===============
> AutoShapes
> OLE objects
> Certain controls and Microsoft Office form fields
> Pivot tables
> New chart types
> Cell Formatting Conditions
> Some functions/formulas
>
> Microsoft PowerPoint
> ====================
> AutoShapes
> Tab, line, and paragraph spacing
> Master background graphics
> Grouped objects
> Certain multimedia effects