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Mark Dempsey <dempseys3 -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
>I'm wondering whether anyone's been using Sun's Star
>Office (old or recent release), particularly as their
>word processor. Areas of concern:
>1. Reliability with longer docs.
>2. Use in collaborative work
>3. Compatibility with others using Word..
As you may know, StarOffice imitates MS Word fairly closely. On
the one hand, its header and footer system is less cumbersome,
but, on the other hand, it also buries style definitions far down
in the menus.
I have heard (but not personally confirmed) that it is only
slightly better than MS Word with longer documents. I don't
believe that it has any features that make it useful for
collaborative work, but, if you're using it under Linux, you
could easily use it with CSV or another versioning system.
As might be expected, StarOffice's compatibility with Word isn't
perfect. However, I have to say that its translation filters are
better than almost any I've seen. If you're doing fairlly
uncomplex documents, you shouldn't have much trouble, but you
should also remember that the perfect filter simply doesn't
exist, anywhere.
--
Bruce Byfield, Outlaw Communications
Contributing Editor, Maximum Linux
bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com | Tel: 604.421.7189
"Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery."
- Wilfred Owen, "Strange Meeting"
