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Originally Posted by jerryeng I downloaded Aqua Scribus and Open Office, but haven't done much with them, because what I tried was unsuccessful. I used a MS Publisher file I had made and saved in my PC as a postscript file because I wanted to make it into a pdf file. I put it in my powerbook and tried to open it in Scribus. I could only see the first page which frustrated me. I thought maybe I could see if it was all there in Preview and to my delight it was not only all there, but automatically changed to pdf! I had had my powerbook a year and had hardly used it (too busy on the PC), but this experience won me over and I have used the Mac a lot more since then.
I also wanted to use those "powerful data base tools" in Open Office but have not found any way to get a data base in it without deleting the book data base it seems to have; that looks like it would be nice to use. Also rewriting a data base in order to have it on my Mac is not very appealing. I have a file in MS Access which I would love to get in there. I tried copying it in the PC, to Excell, thinking I could get it in that way but have found no way to do it. (I also don't have my email addresses on this machine because I haven't gotten around to doing that Address Book! I'd like an easier way to bring in my PC email directory from Thunderbird.)
I read a guide on Access, but don't need such a powerful COMPLICATED data base. Actually what I really want is a data base like the old AppleWorks from the Apple II days! |
If you want a more fully functional version of OpenOffice, try NeoOffice (
http://www.neooffice.org/). I use it mostly for wordprocessing, especially for my resume since it has by default a tighter-lined font (more lines/page than MS Word), plus click one button and your document is printed to PDF - very convenient. I have not used the spreadsheet software very much, though, it doesn't handle Excel spreadsheets with charts well at all - they might have to be recreated inside OOo. Presentation software works pretty well, opens up all PowerPoint slides with formatting issues, but everything is there. I have never used any database features - didn't know any existed.
The main advantage of using NeoOffice as opposed to OpenOffice is that NeoOffice is a natively engineered version of OOo written in Java; i.e. it opens much faster on my Dual 2.7 Ghz G5 than the X11 version. I was very skeptical of trying this since I didn't want different versions of OOo floating around on my computer, but after trying it I'm hooked - it loads fast and is stable.