Open Source Office Suite Evaluation Form (DRAFT)


MS Office XP/2003 (Ref)

StarOffice 7.0

Open Office 1.1

Notes


No compiled version of OO 1.1 for OS X yet. Will work on that at some point and publish this on support.bio.upenn.edu for other Mac testers

Installation



• Installed OO 1.0.3 under Mac OS X 10.3.1 (X11 1.0 final) on 1.4 GHz Power Mac G4 with 896 MB system memory and 64 MB Radeon 9000 graphics card


• Four-component installation proceeded without incident


• Ran the OO startup script and I needed to point XDarwin to X11 binary in Applications folder


• To add a shortcut in X11, pull down the Applications -> Customize menu; click on Add Item and add:


- "OpenOffice 1.0.3" to Name

- "/Applications/OpenOffice.org1.0.3/ program/soffice &" to Command


• OO started in about 6 seconds

Ease-of-Use



• To change Metric to US measurements, pull down the Tools -> Options -> Text Document -> General menu


• To change default document source folder (e.g. when File -> Open is run) pull down the Tools -> Options -> OpenOffice.org -> Paths menu


Cannot cut and paste between OS X and X11 environments

Native File Compatibility



• Basic spreadsheet preserved font selection and cell functions (source spreadsheet from Excel v.X)


• PowerPoint presentation fonts selection and layout was preserved; no antialiasing, however, and font kerning was different (source presentation file from PowerPoint v.X)

Printing



• To change default printer, pull down the File -> Printer Settings...


Printer must be added in OS X's Print Center application first; cannot add printers from OO

Import/Export

• Excel v.X could not open OpenOffice 1.0 Spreadsheet document


• PowerPoint v.X could not open OpenOffice 1.0 Presentation document


• Export to OS X-native PDF converter (Printer) was successful and quick


• Export of presentation to HTML was successful but some font display problems made end result ugly. Also, export to HTML places code and graphics in whatever folder the initial index.html file is saved in, so making a new folder to save all the source files is a good idea beforehand

Support
Documentation
Help



• Help was slightly confusing but seemed accurate

Features



• Toolbars in all the right places

General Stability



• Seems stable so far

Display Issues



• No display problems so far

Font Management



• Bridges to OS X-native system fonts

• Does not appear to bridge to "Classic" TrueType fonts (e.g. those extra fonts from Microsoft Office v.X)

User Interface



• Seems like using Office 97 or Office 4 for Mac

Patch Management



NA

Word Processor



NA

Spreadsheet



• OpenOffice-native spreadsheet opened via double-click

Presentation



• OpenOffice-native presentation opened via double-click

Database



NA

Other Apps



NA