RE: [TCLUG:10692] StarOffice

["Schlough, Mark" <Mark.Schlough@nmb.norwest.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Christopher Palmer [SMTP:reid@pconline.com]
> Sent:	Wednesday, December 01, 1999 4:10 PM
> To:	tclug-list@mn-linux.org
> Subject:	Re: [TCLUG:10692] StarOffice
> 
> On Wed, 1 Dec 1999, Eric M. Hopper wrote:
> 
> > > Thankfully, there are more powerful machines to run more powerful
> software
> > > now.
> > 
> > 	There's no decent reason for a word processor to crawl on a
> > K6-300 with 32mb.  If it were a desktop publishing package designed for
> > something like newspapers, books, or magazine layouts, yeah, I could see
> > that not being quite beefy enough.  But a word processor?
> 
> I agree, except that I'll go farther. Consider TeX, which is appropriate
> for even the most daunting of page layout tasks. 
> 
	I wonder whether it's more appropriate to say that Tex is
appropriate for only the most daunting tasks.

	I guess you get what you pay for.  Many people are willing to pay
for results by purchasing fast hardware to compensate for a slow tool.
Others pay for a muscular tool with sweat equity, and run it on a slower
machine.  The net investment may or may not be the same.

> On a 386 with 8MB of RAM,
> a TeX job might take a long time, but it will finish, and the results
> will be beautiful. On a faster machine, it will go faster.
> 
	What user that would like SO would even consider using Tex?  Would
you want to spend that much time teaching said person how to code their
document.  People other than technicians and hobbyists have zero minutes and
zero interest in learning it.  You may want to call them luddite stupid for
not wanting to learn this, but I don't think they are.  Perhaps they are
learning other fun things, like Japanese, Hebrew, History, Car Maintainance,
Diaper Changing.....you name it.  There are not enough hours in the day to
permit someone the time to learn all this stuff and have time to interact
with.....a spouse, a co-worker, a showerhead, a fork and spoon.....

	You get the idea.

> StarOffice, on the other hand, will *not be usable* on a 386 with 8MB of
> RAM. And something tells me it can't do all the funky stuff TeX can, even
> on a super-powerful workstation.
> 
	I'd check on this to be sure.  

> This is not an issue of batch processing vs. interactive manipulation --
> consider what early Macs running PageMaker were capable of, with less
> hardware even than the 386/8MB in the example. Slow, perhaps, but not
> *unusable*, like out 'modern, more powerful' StarOffice.
> 
	'modern, more powerful' Star Office
	are those your words... I think.  Are you quoting someone?

> StarOffice is a step backward, plain and simple.
> 
	I am not defending the fact that SO is big.  However, to make such a
carte blance statement seems a bit, well, silly.

	Considering:
	* It reads/writes Word 95/97 documents.  You personally may not need
this, but thousands of people do.  It saves them the pain of purchasing
separate copies of software for home so that they can simply bring documents
that they inherit/receive and open them retaining most all of the
formatting.
	* It is $0.  This alone is another big deal.  PageMaker sure as hell
is not free.
	* It runs on Linux- OS/2 - Sun - Win9x.  So, if you have Winders
user, you may be able to move to Linux more easily.  So, as an evalgelical
tool, this is huge!

	So, to say it is a step backward ignores it's attributes, in spite
of it's shortcomings in speed.

	Regards,

	Mark

	Actually, if I were to learn a formatting language to use for
document composition, I'd be learining XML. (Which I actually am learning)
It separates content from presentation.  If I wanted to change a TeX, HTML,
or Word document's appearance, I'd have to muck around with the content,
even if the content changes.  No, thanks.  I'd rather design a new XSL
stylesheet and blast the data through that.  I just wish the XSL standard
would get finalized.