Re: [tlug] OpenOffice.org1.0.2

[Charles Muller <acmuller@example.com>]

Jonathan wrote:

> Office XP
> won't even install under Wine (it checks for the existence of a real Windows
> install) and Office 2000 isn't all that stable/functional under both a recent
> Wine snapshot and the latest Codeweavers release (the number one problem is
> getting it to save files; it thinks the filesystem is read-only and I haven't
> gotten around that yet.  Found a hack for the source that helped some people,
> but it has not yet solved the problem for me.  Also, it tends to just hang
> frequently), so I'm still searching here.


Although I've been able to get away from using MSWord for my own work, I am in a
position where I have to handle incoming papers from my colleagues, which
are inevitably in Word. If I am in a position to refuse, I do, but often I
can't. So, I have recently spent quite a bit of time trying out all these options.

After going the route of OO, SO, Wine, Crossover, and
VMWare, I recently settled on Win4Lin by Netraverse, using which I was able to
install Win98 inside RH 8.0, and then Japanese O2K, and some other useful Windows
software.

The people at Crossover told me that it would handle Japanese O2K, but when
it didn't, they changed their minds and said they never said so. On the other hand, Win4Lin was only $30
more than Crossover and gives you a whole Windows-inside-Linux, rather than
just MSO. It installed fine, runs well, and is pretty flexible in
terms of configuration options. Also, I got very quick responses from the support
staff to questions I had on configuring pre-existent Windows partitions.

My main gripe with it is that it creates a modified kernel which you need to
boot up into. No problems with that, but it means that you can't use the
latest kernel, and if you're on Red Hat Network, the lights keep flashing to
tell you that you have to upgrade your kernel. The original kernel is still
there on the GRUB menu, but there's no point in using it if you might want
to use Win4Lin in that session.

Even though it's ridiculously expensive, I
figured I would try VMWare for 30 days, but it wouldn't install with the
latest kernel on RH 8.0, and the support people never answered my mail. So much for that.

> I've heard the filters under Star Office are much better, but don't have SO
> around to try it.  Does anyone have it?  How good are the filters, in your
> experience?  Also, it is stable? 

I have found it to be stable if I am working with short papers that only
contain iso-8859 characters. As soon as I try to do mixed international
scripts (and I don't do much that is not like that), both SO and OO get
buggered up pretty fast.

Chuck

---------------------------
Charles Muller  <acmuller@example.com>
Faculty of Humanities,  Toyo Gakuen University
Digital Dictionary of Buddhism and CJKV-English Dictionary [http://www.acmuller.net]
H-Buddhism List Editor [http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~buddhism/]
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