The StartX Files: Word to the Wise: Wrapping Up and Picking a Winner

By: Brian Proffitt
Friday, November 30, 2001 03:28:06 AM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/3928/1/

None Dare Call it Settling

I have been thinking a lot about my uniqueness in the universe this week. Turning 35 will do that to you. It's not quite old enough to have a mid-life crisis, but not exactly one of those party-with-the-boundless-energy-of-youth events, either. It is just enough of an event to pause and take stock in the world around you--before getting pleasantly toasted with a bottle of good Merlot.

Compounding this problem of uniqueness is the fact that I have been informed of the existence of yet another Brian Proffit who is also a technical writer (on wireless communications). Between me, the OS/2 guy, and now the wireless guy, that makes three Brian Proffit(t)s running around writing about things computer-ese. I am used to getting confused with my OS/2 colleague and the New Guy has often been mistaken for one of us. We are contemplating showing up at Comdex next year with T-shirts that say something along the lines of "I'm the other Brian Proffitt" or "I have an Evil Triplet."

Still, even though we share names and occupations, we are all very unique people in our own rights. So, freakish as this coincidence is, it's not exactly a world-shattering event.

The value of uniqueness hit me in another way this week. As I sit down to pull together this review, I am recalling a recent John Dvorak column I read about LindowsOS, a new operating system venture being put forth by Michael Robertson and the rest of the Lindows.com firm. In the column, Dvorak is rather upbeat about the prospect, which is more than he usually is about Linux-related projects. Personally, I don't hold this against him, since he has his opinions and I have mine.

There are two sentences from that column, however, that keep reverberating in my head (along with so many other things in such a large, echo-y space): "...But the Lindows team still must make its OS run the key versions of Microsoft Office. Once the Lindows team starts talking about running StarOffice applications, then you'll know the developers have failed."

Of course, the immediate knee-jerk reaction I had when I read that was to send scathing messages to Dvorak and the rest of his Ziff-Davis cronies decrying him as being a paid shill for the Microsoft Establishment. I quickly gathered up my righteous indignation and prepared to launch my flame attack...

...until I realized he may have had a point. At least with his perceptions.

Over and over during this Word to the Wise mini-series, I have made direct comparisons between the word processor applications I looked at and how they interact with and compare to Microsoft Word. Many readers called me on this, raising accusations of shill on their own. My response has always been the same: for better or worse, Word has become regarded as the gold standard for word processors--particularly in the business world. For any word processor to have a hope of pulling customers away from Word, such applications are going to have to at least be the equal of Word in terms of features. Stability, speed, and open standards are all going to be secondary to feature set. This is not necessarily the Right Thing, but it is the reality of a working in a capitalist market, where people always want to get more for their money.

This is not a happy concept for devotees of Linux and Open Source to embrace. In a perfect world, people would judge a product based on its overall quality and its lack of proprietary standards. In such a world, Linux and its application set would fare much better than they are today.

Instead, we live in a world where a (fictional) product like GNUWrite would be fast, small, stable, and free but hardly anyone would buy it because (non-fictional) products like Word can come up to potential GNUWrite customers and say things like, "yes, GNUWrite is fast, small, stable, and free, but can it create an index?" That's a good question, these potential customers think, especially after Microsoft makes the ability to create an index the most important thing in the world. The customers go back to the GNUWrite developers and put the indexing question to them.

"Er, no..." the GNUWrite developers puzzledly reply, since they know that in their experience, only a handful of users would ever need to create an index. "Oh, well, thanks!" the customers cheerfully reply as they march off to fork over their hard-earned money to buy Word so they can create their bloated, proprietary-format documents--that have no indexes and never will.

This is the unfortunate reality that we live in, one that Dvorak recognized in his statement about StarOffice. Even though we, as Linux users, can point to any one of our favorite word processors and say without hesitation that "[insert word processor] is more than enough to serve my needs as a first-class word processor," the overall perception of Linux-platform office suites is that because they are not as feature rich, they are somehow sub-par.

I am not advocating that we start cranking out applications that are overloaded with features, just so we can match commercial applications feature for feature. That would be the easy way out, since there's no secret formula to plugging in useless features for an application. This methodology, while simple to implement, would be an anathema to everything Open Source and Free Software represents.

Instead, it becomes necessary for us to keep building on the quality of Linux's application set and, at the same time, implement a marketing strategy that simply says to these potential customers, "yeah, we know [insert closed-source software here] has all of those nifty features, but do you really want to pay for something you're never really going to use?"

Proponents of Windows will immediately label this as getting users to "settle" for something less, but in reality, Linux will be getting people to come over to a platform that is something more: where users have much stronger say in the features of an application than any consumer of a closed-source application ever would.

Such an approach would have to get some of us to swallow our pride. After all, we don't want Linux applications to be perceived as "less" than Windows applications--ever. Again, it would not be a question of "more" or "less." It's a question of which platform is better suited to the customer's needs. The more/less argument is a losing game for either side, as U.S. carmakers found out to their dismay in the 1970s, when they initially launched ad campaigns that ridiculed the tiny little foreign cars that were invading "their" turf. Japanese and German marketers did not take the bait and repeatedly emphasized their products' price and fuel efficiency. Their message began to be heard over the US car manufacturers' and the rest was history.

In many ways, Linux is in a similar position to the Japanese carmakers at that time. What we must not do is take the Microsoft bait and try to beat them at their own game. In that case, Linux would surely lose. And, Linux applications would cease to be unique; they would be clones of Microsoft software. Linux developers must instead keep an eye on the competition and tailor their applications to meet the needs of potential customers.

It's a fine line, but one I think we can walk. The current crop of word processors reviewed here, for the most part, gives me a positive feeling that Linux can succeed on the desktop eventually.

AbiWord 0.7.14

Available from: http://www.abisource.com
Version reviewed: 0.7.14 for Linux/Intel
Version currently available: 0.9.4 for Linux/Intel
License: GNU General Public License
Cost: Free to download as binary or source

Of course, looking at the AbiWord 0.7.14 release for Linux, you'll immediately notice the interface's similarity to Word. Built with the GTK libraries, AbiWord molds very well into the GNOME 1.4 interface on which it was tested. (It also worked well on the KDE2 environment, though there were some screen refresh problems in the left-margin ruler.)

This level of detail shows up throughout the application. There are features missing from AbiWord (some of them that I believe are fundamental) but only once did I see evidence of this in the interface itself. Besides this one glitch, the menus and toolbars were seamless in form and functionality.

AbiWord has some font problems apart from the inheritance of Linux's font issues. Most glaring was the program's complete crash whenever I tried to apply color to any passage of text. This is that glitch I was talking about earlier. Now, in fairness, the version number does indicate a pre-production product, and if this is the only glitch to be found (and for me it was), then AbiWord can be forgiven the slip-up.

Printer support was seamless with the printer queues I had set up, and color support was available, too.

Overall, the tools presented in the two main toolbars were the usual gamut of word processing tools. There was even an Extra toolbar where applied font features like strikethrough and line spacing and leading buttons resided. I missed the ability to customize the toolbars, but only a little bit.

Image insertion needs a bit more help, since you can only insert aniline images, and only .png, .bmp, and .svg formatted-images at that. Hey, I'm all for the GIF boycott, but if you're going to let bitmaps in, why not GIFs and JPEGs? Autotext insertion was available, too, though there was no way to customize the passages. Style formatting is on the menu, but according to the message dialog box that pops up, it is not available yet. Tab management is in place, and works pretty well.

What leaped out at me as a fundamental feature that needs to be added was table creation. There was simply nothing along these lines, which is unfortunate. I hope AbiWord adds this functionality soon. Also on my wish list is indexing and table of contents creation and revision marks. There's no grammar checker or thesaurus, either, but it'll be cold day in you-know-where before I'll wish for those.

One feature that AbiWord has that Word will never have is the ability to emulate the vi and Emacs keyboards, making it a nice migration point for those of you who are text editor jockeys.

An area where AbiWord really shines is file compatibility: all sorts of open and common file formats are used by this application. Even the AbiWord native format (.abw) is XML-based, so could easily be picked up by other applications' filters, should their developers put forth a little effort. Until then, rich text format documents can be opened, as well as: .rft, .txt, utfs, .html, .wml, .dbk, and Word's .doc. The DocBook functionality made me giddy, and you can save files in that format, as well. You can save in all of these formats I've listed, save the .doc format. But what really filled me with glee is the fact that you can also save documents in LaTeX format and PalmPilot .pdb format, giving you a lot of mobility for your words.

And speaking of mobility, recall that I mentioned HTML formatting. AbiWord does a nice job of creating simple Web pages without (thank the Deity of your choice) all of that extra nonsense Word shoves into its HTML documents.

AbiWord is a word processor that in a few respects looks it 0.7.14 version-age. And there's no getting around it, these shortcomings will need to be fixed before version 1.0. But there are a lot of areas where AbiWord has positioned itself very well against the product it is emulating. I look forward to seeing more out of this strong open source project.

Applixware Words 5.0 for Linux/Intel and Anyware Desktop 2.0

Available from: http://www.vistasource.com
Versions reviewed: Applixware Words 5.0 for Linux/Intel and Anyware Desktop 2.0
Version currently available: Same

License: Commercial
Cost: $99.00 US

I have often heard Applixware as a whole described as "quirky." I would not ascribe such a label to it at all, and certainly not to Words. Words is built around the Word interface model, which, along with WordPerfect, are the two predominant interface templates most word processors on any platform seem to follow. There was nothing unfamiliar with neither the interface nor its controls.

Everything about Words is simple and clean, so what few differences that do exist between it and Word are easy to figure out. There is not a lot of complexity in this application, but I do not say that like it's a bad thing. In an age of overblown megaapps, a nice quick tool that gets the job done is a welcome change. And this is a quick tool, too--if you are willing to wait for the rather pokey startup time. Once Words and the rest of the applications get going, you're off to the races.

Word processors need to help users commit their words to paper--real or virtual--and not much else. They don't need to be desktop publishing applications, they don't need to be image viewers, or Web browsers. They just need to make text look presentable. Words has little problem meeting this expectation. In fact, it does a lot more than you would initially think.

A quick tour of the menus and controls reveals a lot of features that would satisfy even the power user: mail merging is available (which was easy to configure), as is multi-column and image layout. I like the way you could manage the styles in Words, too. I played around with the forms editor, which was not too difficult to learn, and I thought the HTML output was good (definitely a lot cleaner than Word's metatag-fest).

Cross-application work was good, with .DOC and .RTF files opened readily. You should have little trouble sharing files with your Microsoft-bound colleagues, though don't look for a lot of collaborative tools. It seems Words will indicate a change has been made with revision mark in the margin, but no revision marks within the text itself. I spoke to a VistaSource developer who indicated that this could be a new feature introduced in later versions of the application.

With GTK+ 1.2.6 compatibility, Words is a great fit for the GNOME desktop, which seems to be lagging a bit for native word processor offerings.

In all, I found Words to be a very reasonable facsimile of the Microsoft application it emulates. It also works very well with the rest of the Anyware Desktop suite--another solid point in its favor.

What can be improved in this application? More collaboration and revision tools would be a great idea and more format filters are always welcome. Making the Words application available again as a separate product again would be a good idea, too. In fact, I would suggest making Words a freeware product to increase its market penetration and entice users to purchase the remainder of the Anyware products. But that's just me talking.

gwp 0.3.2

Available from: http://terror.hungry.com/products/gwp/, ftp://ftp.hungry.com/pub/hungry/gwp/
Version reviewed: gwp 0.3.2
Version currently available: gwp 0.3.2
License: GPL
Cost: Free

To call gwp the GNOME Word Processor, which is what the acronym means, seems a bit generous. gwp was originally a part of the Hungry Programmers project, a collection of software that includes Lesstif. Somewhere along the line, gwp got pulled into the GNOME Project, presumably to enhance the GNOME Project's productivity tools. At least, that's what it says on the gwp Web site.

At first glance, gwp's most likely counterpart is seemingly gnotepad, Kedit, or WordPad (in the Windows realm). And for that kind of functionality, gwp can serve you well. It has a clean interface for font management and paragraph alignment and it is just the thing to pop off the quick note or two.

Where the real power of gwp is supposed to comes in is with its capabilities to produce documents in its XML-based native file format. Using XML (eXtensible Markup Language), gwp can move beyond the traditional typesetting methodology of creating text documents and into a structured-document format. In structured documents, chapter headings are always given the same style, based on the fact that they are chapter headings. Looks become secondary to the structure of the document.

Does gwp pull its XML alter ego off? Sad to say, no. Style controls are not at your fingertips on the interface and I kept getting a consistent set of errors when the fonts tried to load. Some deep research on this problem came up with a three-year-old message on a mailing list that recommended a switch to Debian, which I thought was a bit cynical to say the least.

Nor does it look like gwp will be enhanced in the near future. The last update of the application was in 1999, with no sign of activity in the near future.

There are some indications that gwp still lives on in one form or another. Hints have been found that gwp's XML capabilities may be getting some new life in the Bonobo component model, if only to work with Gnumeric's XML-based file format.

gwp appears to be one of those many Linux applications that got off to a fair start but was then co-opted by a larger product and essentially removed from the software realm for the purposes of using it for parts. This is one of the consequences of working with a notoriously free software environment--one that we see every day. I would have liked to see what would have come from continued development on gwp. Speaking as a documentation specialist, the world could always use more XML tools.

HancomWord 6.0

Available from: http://www.hancom.com/
Versions reviewed: HancomWord 6.0 Alphas 1/2
Version currently available: HancomWord 6.0 Alpha 2
License: Proprietary (Korean Copyright)
Cost: Free

The version of HancomWord I did the majority of this review was the version found in Beta 1 of HancomOffice 2.0. This translates to HancomWord 6.0 Alpha 1. The Final Beta of HancomOffice was released last week. Unfortunately, I regret to say that there were no Alpha 2 release in the Final Beta of HancomOffice at that time.

For instance, HancomWord Alpha 1 's interface is something to behold, especially in KDE. This makes sense since HancomWord, like the rest of HancomOffice, is based on the Qt libraries. Fonts on the interface are crisp and clean and the whole thing is pretty well put-together. Unfortunately, in the Final Beta, HancomWord's (which is still tagged as Alpha 1 in the application, despite what the Web site says) fonts were completely out of kilter.

In whatever edition, HancomWord's initial screen throws a lot of toolbars at you from the get-go, so it was a bit cluttered. Since you can collapse the toolbars with a single click of the control bar, though, this was not a big deal. Tools are well-placed, and there are certainly a variety. From spell-checking (which HancomLinux states does work in Alpha 2) to a really nifty little indexing tool. Table creation and graphics file manipulation was easily managed as well.

Since this is a beta version, some of what I point out here are beta issues that should go away. For instance, HancomWord has no Help system yet, nor is TrueType font management for the documents in place yet. The import filters, which were promised to be ready in Alpha 2, are not really in place either.

Actually, this might not be a filter issue. It's hard to tell, since neither revision marks tools or styles are present in either version that I looked at. The only style in the default version of the beta is Normal. You can, however, add your own styles with a Style tool that I thought was very well made. I am relatively sure that more styles will be included in the gold release of HancomWord, but knowing that Style tool is there will still be a big plus.

KWord 1.1

Available from: http://www.koffice.org/
Version reviewed: KWord 1.1
Version currently available: KWord 1.1
License: GPL
Cost: Free

There is no denying that KWord (and the rest of the KOffice suite) has made some significant strides in its evolution to KOffice 1.1. The interface is well-integrated with the K Desktop Environment, as you would expect, and the application itself is fast and stable. However, there are still some outstanding concerns that need to be addressed.

From a tool level, this application is a bit on the light side when stacked up against contenders like OpenOffice and AbiWord. Right away, I had problems with the navigation icon bar that sits off to the left side of every KOffice screen to let you access either KOffice components or documents. This is a really good idea, but in practice it proved awkward, because in KWord there are additional tools over on the very far left of the screen. I clicked the navigation bar twice accidentally while working in KWord, and ended up with extra open documents that I did not need.

If you call up KWord separately, I have since discovered, this is not a problem.

Font support was okay, in that the fonts were anti-aliased as they should be. But the display was really small by default. Trying to read 10-point type at 100% was a squinting exercise. There are ways to adjust this (most notably by increasing the size of the default font in KDE), but a new user will balk at having to figure them out.

File management was one area where KWord seemed to do better at. Opening existing or creating new documents was a snap and easy to manage, as I really liked the comprehensive dialog KWord has to create new documents. I did find a glitch in the filtering process, however. Word documents could not be opened with the Open tool, but you could get them open with the New tool. According to KWord developer David Faure, this is due to a glitch if you have the binary that was compiled in kdelibs-2.1. He recommends that you recompile the app under kdelibs-2.2.

Speaking of filters, yes, KWord will open a Word document, and other proprietary formats as well--but it will just do that. Styles came across in name only and were not accurately conveyed in KWord. Revision marks and other collaborative features were also lost. Saving back to Word is impossible, as you can only save to KWord's format and AbiWord.

LyX 1.1.6fix3 for Linux

Available from: http://www.lyx.org/
Version reviewed: LYX 1.1.6fix3 for Linux
Version currently available: LYX 1.1.6fix3 for Linux
License: "Quasi-GPL"
Cost: Free

LyX is pretty easy to get a hold of, when you want it. You can point your FTP client to the LYX FTP site and grab tarballs and RPMs of the binaries and source of the latest version in a snap. The RPM I downloaded for LyX 1.1.6fix3, which is the latest stable version, came in at a easy to swallow 3.8 Mb, so it's not a monster to download at all.

Once you get LyX up and running, you will be pleasantly welcomed by an application with a clean interface and smart layout. In a few minutes, however, you may be scratching your head and wondering what the heck to do next.

Even for someone who's had exposure to this type of application, the simple LyX interface will initially offer few clues on how to put a document together. Pure word-processing mavens may completely choke on it and label the application as unusable.

That's because this application uses a completely different method of setting documents up than a word processor. If you try to hold it to the same standards as a word processor, yes, you will be disappointed. So, you need to throw out all of your preconceptions right at the get-go and start treating LyX as something different.

The best way to begin with LyX is to read its well put-together documentation that comes with the application. Notice I did not say review, nor peruse. I said read, and I meant it. It is not a situation where LyX is overly complicated. On the contrary, once you adapt to the LyX Way, the application is pretty simple to use. It's just that you will need to know the LyX approach to doing things.

One big, big change for word-processor users is going to be the complete separation of what's in the document and how the document will look. The main workscreen of LyX is where you enter the content and frame the styles for the text. If you want to see how the document will look, you have to call up a separate display window, which will show the document in the native DVI format, PostScript, HTML, or PDF. This takes a bit of getting used to, since many of us are so used to instant gratification with font style applications. In LyX, you have to wait for a while for the document to be displayed as it will appear in the final format.

How long depends on the target format. I displayed a test document in DVI and it took a very long time to initially open the display window. Once the document was displayed, however, then any changes I made in the content window would be instantly shown in the display window--after I clicked the Update button in the display window. This manual updating is something else that takes getting used to.

I do not point these features out as criticisms of LyX. Rather, they are meant to be realistic guidelines for what LyX will and will not do. With all of these different paradigms, would I recommend LyX to a word-processor junkie? Probably not. But would I recommend it to an IT staff that needed to do some serious documentation work for their company? You bet your sweet bippy, I would!

As far as interoperability is concerned, LyX is available both on Linux and Win32 systems, and can produce documents within the PDF and HTML formats. There is a Word import feature in LyX, but it did not work on my Linux machine.

LyX will never be the ultimate replacement for a word processor, although its got some of the same tools, like spell checking. But for superior document creation, LyX moves way beyond word processing, with excellent figure and table management (though table creation is not for the faint of heart). Not to mention very powerful table of contents and indexing tools. LyX is designed to create professional documents, and that's the area in which it will certainly excel.

Beyond its innate abilities, LyX has one more interesting feature for Linux users: the ability to present the same interface no matter what desktop environment is running. Known as GUI Independence (GUII), this feature will enable LyX to be right at home on KDE, GNOME, or whatever.

LyX is something that you will want to look at if you have a real need to start managing your documentation in a highly structured way.

StarOffice Writer 6.0 Beta

Available from: http://www.sun.com/staroffice/6.0beta/
Version reviewed: Sun StarOffice 6.0 beta, Writer component
Version currently available: Sun StarOffice 6.0 beta, Writer component
License: Proprietary
Cost: Free

With the release of the new 6.0 beta, it appears that Sun as removed one of more contentious features in StarOffice: the StarDesktop. Also gone is the ubiquitous "Star" label in front of every component, so instead of StarWriter, it's now called just Writer.

But don't be fooled into thinking that this means that StarOffice has dramatically changed its underlying structure. StarOffice is still not a true suite of applications. This is still one big-ass binary that is pretending to be a suite of separate applications. It does a great job pretending, mind you, to the point that if Sun could ever figure out how to reduce the resource problems, no one is really going to care if StarOffice takes up one binary or 212.

But that resource problem is still there, so the monster binary is still a concern. For instance, StarOffice was taking up five threads on my machine and about 64 Mb of system resources to open a 30-page Writer document. Opening other document types, such as an Impress slide show, just spawns another window from the same central binary and eats up more resources.

Others have commented that the speed of this new beta is faster than earlier versions. I think it is, too--but only to a point. Initially loading the StarOffice application, no matter which document type you're opening, still takes quite a while, and I saw no negligible differences between this procedure in StarOffices 5.2 and 6.0. I did, however, notice a significant speed increase in the functions of the application itself. Windows popped open much faster, menus snapped into place very quickly, and documents opened from within a running component of StarOffice came up nice and fast. In this respect, Sun has lent some much-needed speed to this application.

There has been little change to the Writer interface from versions past. The Navigator and Stylist pop-up controls are still there, lending Writer users easily accessed tools when they need them. This is nothing new for WordPerfect users, since Writer and its incarnations have always borrowed heavily from WP's interface. Again, I have noted a strong decrease in the amount of time it takes to perform actions within StarOffice components and Writer is no exception.

I was pleased to see styles applied instantaneously and much better responsiveness in AutoCorrect and AutoSpellcheck activities. The only gripe I really had with Writer was the fact that these component windows seem to be directly controlled from the StarOffice interface, which means you can pull them out of the way from the open StarOffice window. Instead, they get truncated on the sides of the open window, which is kind of annoying.

But StarOffice's Writer has one feature that makes it shine above almost all of the others. It is one thing to say that a word processor like StarWriter 5.2 is compatible with almost everything because it has document filters for almost every file format ever invented. But it is quite another to say that StarWriter is fully compatible. That's because, in an era of collaborative documentation, it is no longer simply enough to be able to open a Word document in StarWriter and say "StarWriter is compatible with Word."

This statement could never hold water because there is simply too much extra information stored in a .DOC file on a regular basis that other word processors could not get at. I see this every day while writing and editing chapters for a publishing industry that refuses to leave the so-called safe confines of Microsoft Office. Annotated text, revision marks, comments--these are all elements that are constantly used in all kinds of business documents, not just publishing. And this was all the kind of information that only Word itself could cope with.

Until now.

Because now StarOffice 6.0's Writer component can handle this kind of information: and it can handle it near-flawlessly.

After opening some heavily revised and commented documents for an upcoming edition of Red Hat Unleashed, I found that all of the comments and revision marks had come over perfectly. Reviser information, such as who, when, and what was revised, migrated perfectly. Comments were perfectly converted to Writer's Notes, which could be easily found with the Navigator control. Styles also migrated with ease, and maintained all of their properties when opened in Writer.

Hidden fields that appeared in the original Word document also came over when opened in Writer, though I could not figure out how to make them visible beyond a simple gray marker, yet. They were unaltered, though, as I opened the document again in Windows later and the hidden fields appeared once more in their original format.

In fact, the migration worked both ways. All of the revisions I made within Writer to the Word document were later there in the document when I opened it in Word itself. The date, time, and reviser information was also accurate. The same was true for Notes and styles I created within Writer--they showed up just fine as Comments and styles back in Word.

If a member of a collaborative team wanted to use StarWriter before, she would have little clue what prior revisions were made to the document and when. Nor would her colleagues know what changes she had made--even if she worked with the document exclusively in the Word format. Today, the transition of a collaborated document from Word to Writer and back again is nearly perfect in the maintenance of comments, notes, and revision marks.

Writer is a very good word processor on its own merits. The collaborative abilities I have mentioned here make it a great word processor.

But there is one other word processor in this series that I think surpasses even this.

Top of the List: OpenOffice Writer 638C

Available from: http://www.openoffice.org/
Version reviewed: OpenOffice 638C, Writer component
License: LGPL, SISSL
Cost: Free

OpenOffice was born of the source code from StarOffice 5.2 just over a year ago, on October 13, 2000, when Sun formed OpenOffice.org. The source code, written in C++, is now a part of one of the largest open source projects ever conceived. The work has been divided into several teams, with each team's manager guiding the direction of newly submitted code. Ultimately, anyone can take the open source and make anything out of it--including another office suite, if they wanted.

This is how StarOffice is the parent of OpenOffice. But StarOffice is also the child of OpenOffice as well. Since the inception of OpenOffice.org, Sun has reincorporating the efforts made by the OpenOffice teams into their own development of StarOffice 6.0. With the release of StarOffice 6.0, the first fruits of the OpenOffice project have been harvested.

Parent, then child. This is the nature of the StarOffice-OpenOffice relationship. Of course, looking at the applications together might make you think they are actually twins. But they're not

The first big difference you will see when pulling down the latest binary for OpenOffice (which is build 638C) is that it is smaller than the binary for StarOffice 6.0 beta. Granted, a 76.9-Mb file is no skinny Minnie, but compared to the jumbo 118 MB installation file for StarOffice 6.0, there is a significant amount of download time to be saved here.

Once installed, many of the same performance issues I noted with the StarOffice beta were present on my 400 MHz Celeron SUsE 7.2 platform. Namely, the suite is slow to initially start and only slightly faster in starting individual components after that. Function wise, one could hardly complain about the speed. Files opened quickly, dialog boxes snapped open nicely--again, very similar to how StarOffice performed.

I was also very heartened to see that OpenOffice Writer had the same file filtering capabilities I raved about for StarOffice. In hindsight, this was to be expected, but since I have not been following OpenOffice as well as I should, I was secretly worried that the ability to open and save Word documents and track all revisions, annotations, and comments at the same time was something Sun had slipped in for their beta alone and had not yet propagated back to OpenOffice. Not to worry, it seems.

Early observers of OpenOffice might remember that many of the features from StarOffice 5.2 were cut out of the first builds of OpenOffice, such as the Help system and spell checking. This was done because these tools were initially third-party applications. The Help system has been completely revamped and, while the interface is identical to StarOffice 6.0's, it seems that build 638 of OpenOffice has slightly more help entries than than its counterpart. Spell-checking, in case you were wondering, is back as well.

The interfaces are almost identical for StarOffice and OpenOffice. But there is one significant difference: font-handling. In this, OpenOffice appears to lag behind just a bit. Is this enough to kill off any chance of using this application? Certainly not. In fact, based on what I have seen with these two applications, I am more inclined to recommend OpenOffice over all the other application in this series, including StarOffice.

This is a near thing, mind you, but I think that even though StarOffice has a slightly more polished feel to it right this very moment, this situation will clearly not remain static. As good as StarOffice is now, it is not likely to change much after the final version of 6.0 is released. Sun, in the hopes of getting this product out to the masses, simply cannot update StarOffice as often as OpenOffice. It would drive their potential corporate customers insane, to say the least. So, StarOffice will represent a solid office suite for the corporate users who don't need a lot of version updates.

But for those of us who like to be on the cutting edge, I recommend OpenOffice. Because, even with the very minor font concerns I have with this application, I know that it will be updated with new features a lot faster than I will see StarOffice 6.1.

OpenOffice represents the future, not just in terms of the latest gadgets and gimmicks--but in the way software should be developed. And, though I harbor no ill will towards Sun, I sort of like the idea of directly helping out an open-source project.

Looking Ahead

So that, as we say in the business, is that. Eight word processors were featured in this year's run of Word to the Wise. If I did not include one that was your favorite, you have my apologies, and my encouragement to talk up the application for next year's list.

In the meantime, in my ever-expanding quest for great Linux desktop applications, The StartX Files will begin a new mini-series of columns starting next week that will focus on spreadsheet applications. The tentative list of applications I will look at include:

• Abs
• Calc (StarOffice and OpenOffice)
• HancomSheet
• Gnumeric
• KSpread
• NExS
• Spreadsheets for AnyWare Office
• xspread

If I missed one, feel free to chime in with your favorites so I can include them. And be here next week for the first installment of (drum roll) Between the Sheets!