OT: OpenOffice not 100% compatible?

Can you "print" it to .PDF with PDF Creator?

I'm running Word 2003 at work. Try File:Open, click on the file in the dialog box, BUT, see the little down arrow to the right of the Open button? Click it, and try "Open and Repair".

I don't have Word 2003. Maybe the repair option would have helped but why does a file that is fine and fully compatible with older versions of Word have to be "repaired"?

Compatibility with older versions is a serious problem with Word. Most of the old stuff from my DOS-Word days can be read in but loses any formatting and is peppered with special characters. IMHO they could have done a better job there.

BTW, PDF is what I did and that worked. So would have any popular graphics format.

Regards, Joerg

It can be caused by a number of reasons. Most common cause is using floating elements and other advanced editing features. If the physical page size is different (yes, this may vary between different printer drivers), then everything gets shifted and the layout is 'lost'.

OpenOffice is a Java application. Therefore it will always be slow, hungry for resources and never become a succes. The original Staroffice was distributed as a binary. Sun messed it up big time by choosing Java which is already a sinking ship.

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Hello Nico,

Well, I'd assume that good SW wouldn't just lose everything but give you a warning when something rolls off the sides. That's what my EDA stuff does, can't be rocket science.

Oh man. Why did they do that? Maybe I should swallow hard and keep using Word then. I had tried WordPerfect a few years ago but didn't like it much either. Guess there ain't that much else if you have to remain file-compatible with clients.

I miss DOS-Word :-)

Regards, Joerg

All that you have said is true. Now compare the relative ages of the packages from the 2 vendors. [1] How many tries did it take to get things "correct" in M$ Office? [2]

The version-dependent annoyance which is the main topic of this thread is the most obvious flaw in the M$ product and its "standard". If M$ can't even hit the target, should others be expected to get it correct 100%? [3] . .

Frankly, *usually* the inverse is noted WRT OOo: When MS-Office won't open a M$-format document, the usual fix is to open it with OOo and save it again. [4]

There appears to be a solution on the horizon (if folks will adopt it): Move away from the .DOC "standard" [5]:

(Of course M$ is going to do everything possible to break OpenDocument Format compatibility.) Remember "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run."?

The bad news for Joe Average is that the OpenDocument Format plug-in isn't available to him yet.

. . [1] as well as what you paid for them.

[2] Like THAT is not STILL an issue. [3] As Nico's post suggests, combining *content* with *formatting* in a proprietary binary protocol is a recipe for disaster. The use of Cascading Style Sheets with HTML is an acknowledgement of a better concept for these things. [4] If you do revert to the M$ product, you may find that keeping OOo around for exactly this reason could save your butt. (Just once will be worth the purchase price. Heh.) [5] Which everyone in the know realizes is only a "standard" IF YOU SPECIFY A VERSION NUMBER.

None of the above is true.

From

"Most of OpenOffice.org is written in C++. However, new features can be added using Java, Python, StarBasic, or JavaScript."

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Hello Jeff,

So, newer means not-so-good? I have three versions of Word. One is around 6 years old but muffled in order not to use and of the "new and improved" features. The next is about 10 years old, and another is over

15 years old. The 15 year old one is the most stable :-)

One. (The installation)

No, but I thought a sheet with only one drawing on there and no other text ain't all that complicated.

That's what I have heard. But twice I have seen it the other way around.

I am willing to pay a reasonable price. I paid for all the MS stuff so there is no reason why OO couldn't have a license fee as well. But as long as it is completely Java based I guess I wouldn't go for it anyway.

Then programs should not let people do that or at least beep a warning.

I'll keep it for a while. It does have a nice slide show creator which I like better than PowerPoint.

Now here is the puzzler. MS seems not to be able to maintain backward compatibility with their MS-Word line. However, another group, the creators of MS-Works do a much better job. I am using Works for my business books and the reason is simple: I can still read files that I created in 1889 with any version. I can even create a new file in the latest version and have it stored in a format that is understood by the old DOS-Works. I have tried it and to my amazement it really worked. Also, no matter how hard I pounded on it Works never froze up on me once in 17 years. Word (and OO as well) freeze all the time. No idea why but I believe there could be a distinct difference in design quality between those two groups in Redmond. I always felt that difference, even in DOS days. Word did crash on occasion while the Works word processor never did. Then they began shipping Works bundled with Word and sure enough that WP reliability ended for me.

Regards, Joerg

Then why is is so much slower than Word (which already is quite slow for my taste)?

Regards, Joerg

You can buy it as StarOffice from Sun. I do not know if it is better in the speed or compatibility departments, or that the difference is just bundling.

Thomas

It doesn't seem slow to me. I have a fast machine and if MS Word is any faster (I wouldn't know never having felt inclined to pay that much money for 'office' software) it wouldn't improve my productivity.

If you mean slow to start then maybe because you are running that office quicklauncher thing (in Start Menu/Startup) which loads most of office into memory at logon and keeps it there.

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If you want *fast*, then WordPerfect 5.1 and Lotus 1-2-3 on DOS are the way to go!

Should be blazing fast on today's machines. Run them from a RAM-disk on startup.

Adding "features" increases the odds that backwards-compatibility will be broken as new bugs are introduced. With M$, historically, the odds increase even more... .

...as your empirical results support. . .

I should have said "How many tries did it take M$..."

--and as I did say, they're still working on that. . .

OpenOffice.org's dependence on the Java Runtime Environment has been grossly overstated: http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:4Wc6WaUyOmQJ:61.211.239.14/~i-mode/px/x.cgi?MoN=g%26UoN=software.newsforge.com%252Farticle.pl%253Fsid%253D05%252F03%252F22%252F204244+2.0-requires-a-JRE-for+In-addition+zz-zz+As-of-version-1.1.4-*-*-*-*-*-*-*+basic-office-functionality-continues-to-be-unaffected . .

Agreed--but tarring third parties with that brush when they're just trying to support what alrerady exists and when it was M$ that established the baseline (and continues to make it difficult for others to make compatible products

--through closed standards, a moving target, and broken code) seems unfair to OOo and those others. . .

Wow. You're older than I thought. ;-) . .

They improved it to death. Microsoft: Failure is not an option--it comes bundled. 8-) . . nospam has made a point that I meant to include: If the M$ Office stub is loaded into memory at boot (the default), Office gets an advantage re: load times. OOo looks better when the playing field has been properly leveled.

Hello Jeff,

To me that's a management problem. Instilling a go-go-go mentality usually runs contradictory to quality. Feature creep is a major danger for most products. One look at the automotive industry and everyone will see what I mean. The consumer wants quality and not a ton of gizmos.

Most of my business life I had to battle feature creep, usually duking it out in a friendly but firm way with the marketing folks. I made sure my engineers had sufficient time to test, test, test. The result was top notch quality, our stuff didn't break or freeze. And guess what, my first contact with marketing lead into marriage. The others couldn't believe it at first. Still married...

It is better to admit to and accept certain incompatibilities and be honest about it. IOW, let the program signal "incompatible format - cannot read". Showing nothing in parts of a document is outright dangerous. Just imagine sending off a contract and the other party sees things in there that you don't, and then signs it. I can't have a software that does that.

Again, a comparison to the auto industry can help: Toyotas, Hondas and so on have a lot less features than , they cost quite a bit more and enjoy excellent sales while are constantly whining. So what is it that Toyota, Honda and others do right?

:-)))

My old rule: If there is no drop-dead reason to upgrade then don't.

The same goes for my lab. There is some quite ancient stuff running in there and all in good repair. Yes, including a tube voltmeter. Sure enough one day a client called and said "Our digital stuff goes haywire since they changed the flight path. Ahem, we know it's heavy but could you bring that analog RF millivoltmeter on your next visit?"

There is no MS-Office on the PC where I run OO. Just MS-Works and MS-Word. When I look in the Start Menu neither of these is listed.

Regards, Joerg

I believe you are referring to Sun's office application suite, which is 'StarOffice'.

Your speed (or lack of it) might have something to do with your O/S and/or the particular Java runtime you have installed.

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Paul Hovnanian     mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
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At some point it becomes necessary to behead all the architects and
begin construction. -- Abi-Bar-Shim (Project Mgr. - Great Pyramid)

I recently downloaded and installed OO to try to use for my invoices, which they expect to be a Word 2000 doc. Well, I opened the doc, saved it, rebooted, opened it in Word, modified it, saved it, rebooted in Slack, opened it in OO, and it was just fine.

Then, I opened my spreadsheet, (.xls), which I use during the week to track my hours, and in MS Xcel and Word, I can copy a block I have formatted, and paste it into a table and it pastes one cell per table cell. But OO pastes a whole new table, and the margins were off. )-; So, maybe another day.

Incidentally, I didn't find it terribly slow.

Thanks, Rich

Hah! I must be in the same time-warped category as you. I ran WinWord 6.x for years under WfWg and then 98SE. Finally, on a newer box, I installed WinWord97 as my Office2000Pro set didn't want to properly install.

Where I worked a while back, they upgraded the entire outfit to WinWord2000. I often did drawings in '6 and '97. I did one set of drawings in '2000 at work and emailed them home to do more work with them, only to find they were "scrambled" when I looked at them in '97.

I suspect MicroShaft's main problem is thinking that new features are what distinguishes their product from any competition, or simply the need to add features because they want to put a later label on the product. Backward compatibility isn't on their radar.

(snip)

If you distribute contracts in an editable format then the other party can change anything they like before signing it.

Distributing documents in .DOC format without the specific intention of allowing the recipient to edit it them is stupid.

The documents may carry virii.

They can contain all kinds of other embedded information which may be confidential. There was a recent stink about peer review of scientific papers where the authors of comments which were supposed to be anonymous were identified by embedded data.

There is the danger not only of incompatibility with associated software versions but also installed fonts and printers.

They may be grossly inefficient. Some idiot sent me a quotation as a 2MB+ email attachment which contained a 1 page word document. When I converted it to PDF (which is what I usually do with such documents) the file was less than 10kB.

PDF is a much more appropriate format for non-editable document distribution, and as it happens, can be generated directly by OpenOffice applications.

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Hello Budgie,

Go to Tools -> Options -> Compatibility and switch everything possible to '97 compatibility.

Their marketeers do not seem to understand how much business that is costing them. I do not upgrade anything unless I absolutely have to. Golden rule of the house, period. But I know many who liked some new features yet shied away from an upgrade because of all the issues they fear that would cause. Like potentially not being able to edit older stuff. Every one of those cases was a lost sales opportunity for Microsoft. IMHO that is not a very smart business philosophy.

Regards, Joerg