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  From: Adam Hawes <adam@overfiend.freeservers.com>
  To  : Anthony Clarke <tcents@kadina.mtx.net.au>
  Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 23:10:47 +0930

Re: Applix Office and SOHO Apps

Anthony Clarke wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> I am a new Linux user (or would realy like to be) and am looking
> for good usable applications for SOHO use.
> Specifically I want a general office suite (well integrated) and
> a REAL publishing application
> preferably with a WYSIWYG interface. (no comments please about "real
> men don't use WYSIWYG"  :-)
> 
> I have seen ads for Applix Office and visited their site.... it
> looks good.
> 
> Has anyone had experience with the above or recomendations?

Hi all.

I have used both Staroffice and Applix for preparing fairly large
reports.

Staroffice has a reasonably nice looking Windows 95/MS Office based
interface to it. This is good for someone who is farmiliar with 
Winblows and Microsloth products and does not want to use something 
that looks different.

Staroffice includes document filters that read and write MS Office
formats - however I know from experience that MS Excel 97 will simply
die when it reads an Excel file (any version) saved by Staroffice.

Staroffice included most of the features found in the MS Office suite,
and its applications can definately keep up with MS in terms of useless
features that you will never use <g>. My girlfriend uses Office 
exclusively at work, but she could work quite happily with Staroffice
without much of a learning curve.

Staroffice is also just like Win95/Office - it takes forever to load
and tries to use all the memory that is there + a little more. It
seems to swap to disk a lot too while I am working. For the record,
I have a P233MMX with 64M SDRAM, and Linux + X + WindowMaker uses
about 1/2 of it after bootup... so there is pleanty free...

Applix has the same sort of applications as Staroffice. It does the
same sort of things, but the interface is vastly different and takes
a little getting used to. The fundamental flaw with Applix is its
impurt filters though - it cannot import/export to MS very well,
without losing a lot of formatting/font info. It also doesn't use
X fonts (as far as I know) so you are limited to the fonts that 
come with it. If anyone knows how to make it use fonts from the 
X-Server, please let me know.

Applix takes less than half the time to load than Staroffice and 
doesn't swap to disk as much. 

I know that Applix handles large documents with a lot of graphics
quite well, as I regularly use it to do such work. Staroffice seems
to work well under similar circumstances but I have not used it
enough to really gauge its performance.

WYSIWYG in Staroffice seems better than Applix, as it can be 
configured to display the page layout view. Applix does similar,
but it occasionally displays things slightly differently to the way
they will come out of the printer. The major good point about Applix
is that it uses the standard Linux print system to print with lpr, or
whatever system you have configured your system for printing.
Staroffice seems to use a system similar to Windows where it installs
a driver specific to your printer and then prints directly to it..
Correct me if I am wrong there.

Both packages offer very good integration with their individual 
components, so you can easily import a spreadsheet into a
word processor document in either.

On another note, Applix offers much more online help, and comes with
a users guide. I find getting help in Staroffice to be much harder
than getting help in Applix, and even harder than getting help with
a MS app... And the 70meg download of Staroffice is annoying if you
have a dialup connection... it took me two days to get the whole thing 
'cos it kept dropping the connection.

This is just my personal opinion of the two office suites. Both are
about as good as each other, but you have to pay for Applix. The 
package you choose depends largely on what you need it to do. Applix
probably works better for large, complex documents, but Staroffice is
free, and offers tight integration with its completely enclosed 
desktop system. 

It might be worth waiting until Corel release all of their office suite
for Linux (at least they say that they are wokrking on it). I have
had a look at Wordperfect, and that looks to be a very promising
wrd processor. If it functions like the Windows versions, we have
a lot to look forward to. If you want to see a few screenshots
of either Applix or Staroffice, have a look at my webpage.

Hope this helps you make up your mind on the office suite of choice.



-- 
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  Adam Hawes                                 hawe0006@flinders.edu.au
  Flinders University                  adam@overfiend.freeservers.com
                                                         ICQ: 2492016
                   http://overfiend.freeservers.com
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