| Testing StarOffice 6.0: Great features, less buggy. |
by Lawrence F. Povirk (June 14, 2002)
There's clearly a lot riding on StarOffice 6.0. Despite several entries in the field, lack of professional-quality productivity software is still cited as a prime barrier to adoption of the Linux desktop.
Having struggled with the StarOffice beta for several months, it was with as much trepidation as excitement that I ordered the 6.0 multiplatform retail box, on sale at Linux Central for $69.99.
Installation
A glance at the manuals sounded some ominous notes. The User's Guide "describes primarily the functions of the Windows version", while the Setup Guide cites a need for a "window manager (e.g. GNOME)" under Linux. Windows and Gnome!? Surely the typical user, if there is one, is a Windows refugee running Linux with KDE (like me).
In any case, however, installation, even on my slightly outdated Red Hat 7.0 system, was a snap. If you wanted, you could do it without typing a single character. There's supposedly an upgrade mode that keeps your old settings, but it doesn't seem to work going from 6.0 beta to 6.0, so best to check "delete all files" when removing the beta. At first I did not, and it asked me whether I wanted to replace each of ~3000 files. This at least gave an opportunity to see how many of the program files had been changed, based on size -- maybe 20-30%, implying that someone's done a lot of coding since the beta.
Launch
The glacial loading of both 5.2 and 6.0 beta (a full minute on my machine) had been a real drawback. With 6.0, it's down to 36 seconds, which feels like a huge difference. Launching the Help screen, opening documents, and saving them in the new .xml-based format, is likewise faster than in the beta, though still a bit sluggish.
Otherwise, the programs are quite responsive. Editing complex graphics, for example, actually seems a little faster in StarDraw under Linux than in CorelDraw under Windows.
Cut-and-Paste
A major irritation of the beta was that cut/copy-and-paste worked only within the StarOffice suite, at least under KDE. Happily, this seems to have been fixed. Ctrl-X/Ctrl-V or menu-based text pasting works between Star and other X apps that support it. You can also select text in Star and middle-click into consoles or apps which support that convention. The only thing you can't do is middle-click into Star.
Star's integrated architecture has its downside (slow loading) but it's great being able to compose a graphic in Draw, then copy-and-paste it (or any part of it) directly into a document in Writer. If pasted as a Drawing, it can be reopened instantly for further editing in Draw, with just a double-click.
Bugs Begone
To me, the real test of StarOffice 6.0, however extensive its features, was how well they'd managed to track down and squash the many bugs in the beta. Most were gone :o).
A 60-page downloadable .rtf application form that always made the beta crash, was opened successfully, with just a few missing special characters (probably need those MS TrueType fonts). A particular graphic in a Word document from a colleague, that was scrambled when imported in the beta, was now reproduced faithfully. Nonbreaking hyphens now work as advertised. The beta also tended to crash when saving very complex documents to the native .sxd format, but I've yet to induce a crash, by any means, in 6.0. The "Open" function now remembers the last directory you opened a file from and takes you there, and it hides the system folders by default, removing another major annoyance.
Just two glitches: - Star supposedly supports SANE, but it still can't see my scanner, maybe some sort of glibc problem associated with my outdated system software;
- The "Resolution" setting for bitmap exporting in Draw doesn't actually change the resolution of the export; instead, the drawing is always exported at 75 dpi, then the size is reduced to match the requested resolution. As far as I can tell, there's no easy way to produce higher-resolution bitmaps. With publishers often demanding graphics at 600 or even 1200 dpi, this is a serious deficiency, at least for professional users.
One final disappointment: the promised third-party WordPerfect filter is apparently available only in the Windows version.
PDF
Two days after installation, someone asked me for a letter of recommendation in .pdf format. Should I slink back to a Windows machine, or try it in Star? With high hopes but little confidence, I composed the letter with StarWriter, imported and resized a scanned color .bmp letterhead and a .jpg signature, did a PostScript print-to-file, ran ps2pdf under Ghostscript, and finally tried to open it in xpdf. To my surprise, it all came through perfectly.
A Credible Threat?
So is StarOffice now a threat to the desktop monopoly? Industry experts are already confidently dismissing it, but it certainly is several steps above anything any of the previous Linux challengers. Moreover, its sophisticated drawing tools make it more than just a cheaper substitute for that other office suite.
StarOffice isn't perfect, but it is serious software, suitable for hard work in the real world. You can't credibly claim it's not worth $76.
 About the author: Lawrence F. Povirk, originally from Pittsburgh, does research on DNA repair and teaches pharmacology and toxicology at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA.
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