But... - Mac-Fan No 1

...this copy doesn't cost some hundred bucks and it's a little bit more than just a text editor.

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Sunday, September 21 2008 @ 11:44 PM PDT

Break the habit - michaelmarsden0

Achtung - Microsoft Scheiss!

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Monday, September 22 2008 @ 01:54 AM PDT

Break the habit - Jeff Mincey

Apart from being free of charge, there's another advantage to this product -- it supports an open standard of document formats. There is every reason to support a product which is good quality, non-proprietary, compatible with Microsoft Office anyway, and FREE.

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Monday, September 22 2008 @ 04:48 AM PDT

Break the habit - chiasm

Your egregious plug for iText notwithstanding (if you're the developer, fake a comment and give 5 stars to your own product but try to keep it somewhat clean and don't bash others), OO and NeoOffice give those of us who HAVE to be compatible with M$ Office other viable options. Most of us do not work in islands where small text editors are sufficient and 60,000+ cell spreadsheet don't exist.

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Monday, September 22 2008 @ 06:14 AM PDT

Break the habit - peterqb

I've been using NeoOffice, based on OpenOffice, and although it is slow it does open Word & Excel files without problems. A very few odd formatting errors may occur, but these are so rare as to make the program worth using.
How closely compatible is iText with those standards (.doc and .xls are standards, and you cannot operate effectively without reading and writing these formats)? I did have a quick look, and it did not seem to be fully compatible. For the same reasons, I rejected Apple's own iWork.
NeoOffice can read the new x files (.docx .xslx etc) too, although writing to them is very slow indeed. This is a great advantage if someone forgets to save their file as .doc or .xls

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Wednesday, October 01 2008 @ 02:50 AM PDT

Break the habit - plaintiger

yeah, i gotta say: i don't like the fact that OOo is modeled after a suite of lousy Microsoft software (forgive the redundancy) either - it is a bit like letting a guy with no principles serve as your young son's role model just because he's the only adult male around - but neither can that state of affairs delude me into thinking that MS Office's job could be performed by two text editors. that's just preposterous. you *are* aware that we're discussing an office suite here and not just a word processor, right?

i'm also well aware of how many individuals and enterprises rely heavily on MS Office, for better or for worse, and so must admit the value, to them, of modeling OOo after it. i too would rather OOo had a much friendlier and more elegant design and wasn't so reminiscent of a suite of apps i never liked put out by a company i never liked, but i understand why that's not the case: the developers want OOo to serve as a viable replacement for that nasty but firmly-entrenched software, and to do that, OOo must have the features of MS Office, and those features must be located in places where would-be adopters can find them. we can hope that once OOo has gained a solid foothold in the business world, the developers - their eyes still fixed on the ideals that gave rise to OOo in the first place - will start to gradually make it better, friendlier, prettier, more elegant and more usable. but they first have to get into a position from which they can call those shots, and in order to do that, they have to replace MS Office, and in order to do *that*, they have to give OOo the functionality and same basic design to which Office users have become accustomed.

my personal preference has been to use iWork for a very reasonable $79.00, and since i don't do a lot of collaboration with others, nor does my work involve the churning-out or processing of a lot of documents, iWork is more than sufficient for my purposes...but i still see the value of OOo, still have it in my apps folder in case i want it for something, and am still glad it exists. i see it as a shining promise of a brave new post-Microsoftian world the rise of which i fully support. and i certainly *don't* see it as an overgrown text editor.

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Monday, October 13 2008 @ 12:22 PM PDT