Question for Linux users

[IronYuppie]

I'm a big Mac user & have a question for all of you Linux users.  What do you do when someone gives you a disk or you get an e-mail with a MS Word document on it?  Is there a program that lets you open it?  I'm totally anti-microsoft, but sometimes you just have to use a Word document, ya know?  That's why I'm all about Mac. . .no MS sh*t you don't need, but you have word and excel when you need them.

Thanks

IronYuppie

[psyjax]

quote:Originally posted by IronYuppie:
I'm a big Mac user & have a question for all of you Linux users.  What do you do when someone gives you a disk or you get an e-mail with a MS Word document on it?  Is there a program that lets you open it?  I'm totally anti-microsoft, but sometimes you just have to use a Word document, ya know?  That's why I'm all about Mac. . .no MS sh*t you don't need, but you have word and excel when you need them.

Thanks

IronYuppie

Well this is not the right forum, but you revel your true newbi-ness thrugh these statements    

Anyway, you can ask the people sending the .doc to save it as .txt or .rtf (regular Text or Rich text that TextEdit under OSX can read). You can also download XFree86 and the word processor AbiWord which opens Word files, but you probably would freak out messing with that stuff now. Im not trying to patronize, I'm just saying you'll be dealing with pure UNIX to get XFree86 running under OSX, I barely can do that stuff myself.

Anyway...

You can buy AppleWorks which saves and loads word just fine, is an excelent word processor, is small, and is not M$. ApplWorks is IMHO one of the best comercial word processors and spanks all over MSWord.

If you just want to crack the .doc open and don't care about formating or some garbald headers, open it using BBEdit lite, it's available free from bare bones software. It's an excelent program, opens anything you want, it's also great as a C code editor. Make sure you set the text to Soft Wrap or it will go straight across the screen    

But that's about it. The simplest solution would be getting AppleWorks, which I highly recomend.

[ March 29, 2002: Message edited by: psyjax ]

[jtpenrod]

quote:  What do you do when someone gives you a disk or you get an e-mail with a MS Word document on it? Is there a program that lets you open it?

I used Win 95 for over five years. During that time, I acquired quite a few Word docs that I've saved to diskette. There are quite a few Linux programs that can handle this. KWord can open these docs and display them in a legible manner. There are other programs such as: Abi-Word, and Anti-Word that will also render them. However, the best I've had so far is Star Office. I can open all my old Word docs and display them perfectly: no '?' characters for unknown or ambiguous Word symbols, and those docs that have embedded pictures will show those pics just like they appeared when opened with M$ Word. This isn't a problem at all.
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[ April 02, 2002: Message edited by: jtpenrod ]

[psyjax]

err.. Ok I was confused, I understood he was asking Linux folks for MacOS help   .... my bad...

Or... well damn, who were you asking IronYuppi?

[IronYuppie]

Acutally I was just curious what Linux apps could open word docs under linux. . .not what OSX can run, I a just threw out that I'm mac user becasue I'm a geek.  I got some good answers, tho.  Sorry about that question, I worded that wrong.

thanks guys

IronYuppie

[voidmain]

http://www.openoffice.org

[Master of Reality]

staroffice

[gnomez]

There is a new product from CodeWeavers called "Crossover Office" I think that lets you run MS Office 97/2000 almost perfectly on your Linux computer.
Too bad it costs 50 something dollars.
On the other hand, if you have a copy of office lying around, why not, staroffice now costs money anyway.
Here's the URL for those who are interested:
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/office/

[ April 01, 2002: Message edited by: Garden GNOME ]

[voidmain]

StarOffice costs money but not 300-500 bucks like MS Office. On the other hand Open Office is the free version of Star Office.

[Calum]

openoffice is free, and reads and writes .doc files, i've heard. not got it yet, but i do have abiword. it's also free, and i found it on the install cd of turbolinux 6.1, it can open .doc files, but can only save as .rtf files which lose some of the formatting from word 97 and later so i believe.
There will probably be excel and acces clones too, i reckon openoffice will be the bolloxx for that sort of thing! (i can't wait to get it myself!)
Hey, i just found out about this program here. It emulates M$ office 2000 (except Access) and Lotus Notes 5 on linux operating systems. it costs $55 though, but the review seems to think it's good.
i heard macs can run linux... why not set up a dual boot with linux on a small part of yr drive and see how you like it?
it's for hobbyists though, so don't bother if you haven't got the inclination or the time...

[ April 02, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

[voidmain]

And if you have to use Windows I would suggest the Windows version of OpenOffice as well. It's runs very well in Windows. It's just like MS Office but without the drain on the wallet.