[luau] MS Office, WordPerfect, StarOffice

[Alvin Murphy]

W. Wayne Liauh wrote:

> I have been frequently challenged as to why I am so stubborn about 
> WordPerfect and "ignoring" StarOffice/OpenOffice. It is very difficult 
> for me to explain the reason w/o further inviting the wraths. But 
> there was an article in Wall Street Journal which may somewhat explain 
> why:
>
>
>
> ====================================================================
> The Wall Street Journal
> MOSSBERG'S MAILBOX
> By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
> July 25, 2002
>
> Q: In your column last week, you complained that Microsoft charges
> families too much for Office XP and doesn't allow families to install
> a single copy of Office on multiple PCs. You made good points, but
> instead of begging Microsoft to do the right thing, why didn't you
> tell people to switch to the free office suite, OpenOffice, or Sun's
> very similar $75 suite, StarOffice, or to the WordPerfect suite?
>
> A: That's a good question, which I received in various forms from
> dozens of readers. Here's my answer.
>
> In the case of the WordPerfect Office suite, it's also fairly
> expensive and also is licensed on the same one-copy-per-PC model
> Microsoft follows. (You can put it on a second PC, but can't use it
> on both machines simultaneously.) Corel , WordPerfect's maker,
> doesn't enforce this license via "activation," the way Microsoft
> does, but you are still violating the license if you buy one copy and
> use it to upgrade an entire family's computers, unless there are only
> two and you constantly police their running of WordPerfect, which is
> absurd.
>
> In the case of StarOffice, which is essentially identical to the free
> OpenOffice, you are given a family license that covers five PCs. But
> I reviewed the new 6.0 version of StarOffice (equivalent to the 1.0
> version of OpenOffice) recently and found it too complicated, quirky
> and buggy to be a reliable replacement for Microsoft Office for
> mainstream, nontechnical users (read the review).
>
> Believe me, if WordPerfect drastically cut its price, and/or offered
> a family license, or if the OpenOffice/StarOffice product were
> simpler and more reliable, I'd be glad to recommend them as
> alternatives.
>
> Write to Walter S. Mossberg at mossberg at w... 
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/corelinvestors2/post?protectID=029233066112093198218242203102229017071179066034> 
>
> =======================================================
>
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>
Wayne, I agree with you. There is just no substitite for wordperfect. 
You have just scratched the surface. Wordperfect has a very simple, 
intuitive, macro language that is easy to learn and use. Moreover, it 
has a macro recorder that lets the beginner record keystrokes and then 
edit the results. VBA and all the variants are much more difficult to 
learn. OpenOffice seems to have an obscure language that is derived from 
StarBasic and has no similar recorder. There are a few examples macros 
to learn from and a few websites, but I think the process of replicating 
the abilities of my wordperfect macros will be very difficult indeed. It 
is true that the api is available but this helps only very good 
programmers. I think until they come out with a recorder, I will not be 
able to use it for serious work.