jeremy.marzhillstudios.com/_content/OpenOfficeorg-||-A-real-competi-2005-11-7.yml

title: OpenOffice.org || A real competitor to Office?
time: 2005-11-07 06:59:30
tags:
    - Open-Source
    - OSS-Apps
    - Reviews
content-type: html
content: |
OpenOffice.org Is it a real competitor to Office? Well now that depends on how you define competitor. Lots of people define competitors to MS Office by the level of interoperability with Office. This has the effect of ruling out pretty much every non microsoft product out there. I'm going to take a slightly different look at the picture. The real question here is can <abbr title="OpenOffice.org">OOo</abbr> (eg. OpenOffice.org) do everything you need your office suite to do. This is a real world look at what you really need and whether <abbr title="OpenOffice.org">OOo</abbr> does it and does it well. So lets get on with the review shall we? <!--more--> The list of things your office suite needs to do can be summed up fairly easily. There is the basic functionality that the average home user or small business requires. Then there are the advanced features that the power users and task automaters want. And finally there are the enterprise class features that large organizations want. Here is my semi-detailed list. <ul> <li>Basic Functionality <ul> <li>Write and Format Text Documents</li> <li>Create spreadsheets to track and analyze numbers</li> <li>Create Presentations</li> <li>Create and embed Diagrams and Illustrations</li> </ul></li> <li>Advanced Features <ul> <li>Connect to Databases and use their data</li> <li>Automate Standard and repeatable tasks</li> <li>Creation and Use of Templates for common document look feel</li> <li>Extend the functionality of the app with scripting and or plugins</li> </ul></li> <li>Enterprise Class Features <ul> <li>Share and Publish Data</li> <li>Enforce Document Standards</li> </ul></li> </ul> I hopethis will be a useful review that helps you determine if you can use <abbr title="OpenOffice.org">OOo</abbr> on your desktop at home or at work. <strong>OpenOffice.org Writer</strong> When you think about it word processing hasn't really had or needed much innovation since the first <abbr title="What you see is what you get">WYSIWIG</abbr> editor came out. WordPerfect 5.1 pretty much had all the important formatting features all sewn up along with a lot of the power user features as well. In fact Word 97 was pretty much the top of the word processing evolutionary chain. As for Writer, it has all the elements needed to edit and create documents. You can format them just as easily as Word. You can integrate data from other sources. You can create complex documents and Layouts. So does Word, WordPerfect, and just about every other Word Processing app out there though too. How does a Word Processing program stand out in such a market? While Writer may not have anything earth shattering to offer it does have some pretty nice features to make the task of editing easier. Particularly when working on large complex documents. All the standard word processing features are there including spell checking, multiple fonts and sizes, positioning, lists, and tables. However, Writer does offer something not present in most of the other word processing applications, the Stylist and the Navigator. No doubt inspired by the XML underpinnings of the OpenDocument format, these two features help Writer stand out from the crowd. The Stylist makes using and keeping track of styles easier than ever. It harnesses the power and flexibility of CSS and brings it to the Word Processor. The concept is simple. You can create a library of styles for you document and edit them from a central location. All your headers, all your lists, even your paragraphs can be modified at once. If you change your text-body style in the stylist then every place in your document that uses the text-body style will change at the same time. You can edit them and keep track of them, all from one location. You can even use them again in later documents. This time saving feature comes in very handy and after a while you will wonder how you ever got along without it. The Navigator makes finding that paragraph you need to edit a little easier. It shows you the structure of your document. Need to find that section on grandma's pumpkin pie recipe? Find th