open office 641 executable

[Fraser Campbell]

On Tuesday 20 January 2004 11:46, Chris Aitken wrote:

> I tried to import a gnumeric preadsheet into an AbiWord .doc file - it
> wouldn't have it - no error - just no cigar. I have been happy with
> gnumeric and AbiWord up until now (I save sp[readsheets as Excel 95 and
> documents as Word, so compatibility is OK). But I can see that to run a
> business I may need a suite of integrated apps. Will OpenOffice be my
> solution?

If you expect to have people emailing you doc and xls files then openoffice is 
an excellent solution for being able to read them in Linux.  Beyond that I 
don't personally find openoffice that useful.

\begin{rant}
I learned the basics of TeX in a few hours back in 1994 and since then I use 
it almost exclusively for any document I have to write, be it a technical 
manual, a report or a simple letter.

The use of TeX frees your mind from the hassles of formatting; you say what 
you have to say, you spend close to zero time worrying about how it looks and 
you get a *very* professional result that is easily printed or converted to 
html, pdf and other formats.  In 10 years you will definitely be able to read 
your TeX files (they're ASCII), the same cannot be said for MS Office 
document (perhaps OO will prove better in this regard).

It is my belief that many people using GUIs spend as much time on formatting 
as they do with putting their thoughts on paper.  GUIs can be used 
effficiently, by using templates, but then I wonder what the point in the GUI 
is?
\end{rant}

If you're doing calculations in a spreadsheet and want to embed that in a 
document then openoffice is a reasonable way to go.  I'm not sure that I've 
embedded oocalc sheets in oowriter docs but I have done charts in oocalc (I 
think the charts use ooimpress).  I'm a little surprised that abi/gnumeric 
don't play well together.

> Also, I just installed OpenOffice 641 (I happened to have it on CD -
> I have only a slowdial connection to the Internet). I ran ./setup and it
> installed. But damned if I can find the executable. And both README anmd
> README.html are empty documents.
>
> I installed it to /usr/bin/openoffice.org641

I'm not sure about build 641 but I expect the executable that you're looking 
for is named soffice.  I would have installed in /usr/local/whatever/ or 
/opt/whatever/ but that doesn't really matter.

Just do a "locate soffice" and try running the programs that you find that 
way.

> So, I was expecting to be able to type /usr/bin/openoffice.org641/oo or
> whatever and have it run. No such luck.

In Debian you would type oowriter, oocalc, ooimpress, etc. but you aren't 
lucky enough to be running Debian or to have a highspeed connection ;-)

-- 
Fraser Campbell <fraser-Txk5XLRqZ6CsTnJN9+BGXg at public.gmane.org>                 http://www.wehave.net/
Georgetown, Ontario, Canada                         Debian GNU/Linux

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