KOffice... compatibility?

[Calum]

just a quick question, does anybody know whether or not KOffice is compatible with M$ office documents? for both read and write purposes.
In particular i mean the .doc format. A lot of office programs can do .rtf, but not .doc which is why i ask.

So can it? what's KOffice's limitations in this regard?

Thanks to whomever answers in advance...

[badkarma]

afaik AbiWord is a better choice for reading/writing M$ Word doc's

[Calum]

the reason i ask is that i have no internet connection at home right now, broad or narrowband, and i want to get a linux office suite that's fully M$ office compliant, and i noticed that the british Linux magazine gives away KOffice on its cover CD this month, nowhere does it say if it's M$ compliant so i wondered if people know.
If i did have an internet connection, i'd probably get AbiWord and OpenOffice, but i don't  

[badkarma]

Are you sure AbiWord isn't included with your distribution?

[Calum]

maybe it is at that! is it "abiword" at the prompt?
i will check when i get home. i have a normal 2cd installation of red hat 7.0 (but i haven't really delved into cd2 yet, only used cd1 for the install.)

[ March 19, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

[Calum]

okay, abiword is on the red hat 7.0 cd2. it's an rpm so dead easy ( i still can't do those tar installs properly, well i kind of can, but i get so many dependency errors et c.) to install,
i opened it up and hey! it can *read* .doc files, almost (with a few errors) but as far as M$word saving compatibility is concerned, it can only *write* to .rtf files.
Those work on every version of word fair enough, but i'm really after proper full featured M$ office compatibility here. Openoffice would be the thing i reckon, but as i say, has anybody used KOffice? can it do what i want?
Abiword is good, though i'll certainly be keeping it around...

[badkarma]

I don't have any m$ word documents near so I can't verify the quality but KWord has the option of opening one. There is however no option to save as an m$ word document (why you would want that is beyond me though, just print to a postscript file and convert to PDF (or with KWord print directly to a PDF file) so the windblows users can read it)

A colleague of mine installed OpenOffice today but he just went home so I'll check that tomorrow....

[jtpenrod]

quote: Those work on every version of word fair enough, but i'm really after proper full featured M$ office compatibility here. Openoffice would be the thing i reckon, but as i say, has anybody used KOffice? can it do what i want?

I have a bunch of Word docs from my Win 95 days. While KOffice can render them, it isn't perfect. It will replace some symbols with'?' if it doesn't recognize them. Nor will it render a Word doc that has a picture included. However, I have found that Star Office has no problems with Word docs, even those that include pictures. I had Star Office 5.2 included with the Mandrake boxed set. Perhaps your distro includes it? If not, perhaps you can still get it for free, although I hear that Sun is going to stop that, if they haven't done so already.

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[ March 20, 2002: Message edited by: jtpenrod ]

[voidmain]

Out of all of them I believe OpenOffice is the best at rendering MS documents. It even handles PowerPoint files nicely. It isn't perfect on everything of course (depending on the complexity of the original) but it does a better job.

[Calum]

okleydoke, as i say, i can get KOffice from a cover cd and i would have to wait to get OpenOffice (which i gather is developed from the same thing as what StarOffice is).
As far as i know Sun have stopped the free distribution of StartOffice, and my distribution doesn't have it, no    if i remember the Mandrake box set has about 5 extra applications cds that i didn't get (i have turbolinux cd1, red hat cd1 and cd2 and a linuxworld.com.au applications cd with NO office software on it.  :mad:  )
I think i might get KOffice if it can output to pdf documents, i still haven't broached the whole *TeX thing yet, so i'm a bit of a novice to the whole thing of outputting to many formats.
Win* compatibility is quite important to me, i'd like to set up stuff so it's easy to port most things from one to the other. For things like emailing curriculum vitae and using (crappy windows) computers at the internet shop, it's most essential. And other stuff too.
That Steve Ballmer video by the way! i got the video as an mpeg, fine, but the mockup hitler version i could only find as a .rm and a .wmv file. Fine, except i can't play them on linux yet, i'll have to look into that.
I'm rambling. sorry.

Thanks for the thoughts chaps and chapesses, i'll get KOffice now, and get OpenOffice when i can.

[Calum]

I nipped in this morning to the newsagent and they had stopped selling the issue of Linux Magazine with KOffice on it! this month's has an "evaluation" copy of HancomOffice, which apparently saves to Microsoft formats and does all sorts of magic stuff. As well it should when it costs $99!!! The evaluation copy doesn't have half the features including the M$ saving facility.
Hmmph, what is the world coming to? everything i want to get is turning out to be costly, when it was free until very recently. This includes StarOffice and also Solaris 8. I reckon Sun want to pip Apple to the post and be the next Microsoft.
I'll just have to get a mate to download me OpenOffice when i can...

[ March 22, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]