[ Thanks to Steve
Emms for this link. ]
“Word processing represents one of the most frequent uses of a
computer in a business environment. The preparation of documents,
brochures, memos and articles is a cornerstone of computing; any
operating system must have a wide selection of word processing
tools if it is going to appeal to the corporate market. Only a few
years ago Linux was found lacking in this department, having a very
limited choice of tools to use; with only the historic UNIX tools
being available. For example, although LaTeX is a highly
professional document preparation system it is aimed at the
scientific community, and not at the corporate market. The
situation has changed; there are a number of quality office suites
that include word processing facilities which are a match for the
popular Word.”
“For a word processor to appeal to the corporate market it must
have a wide support for industry standards. Star Office currently
supports ODBC3, Active Data Objects (ADO), HTML, and RTF
import/export support, IMAP4, XML ICAL, and CDE import/export
support. More importantly, a word processor in a corporate setting
must have quality import/export filters to read Microsoft’s Word
documents. The latest version of StarOffice Writer has vastly
improved filters to read Word documents. They are not perfect but
do make a good job of viewing these documents. In addition
StarOffice Writer does support Microsoft Office 2000 features, OLE
objects, Visual Basic for applications script preservation and
more. Complicated Word documents are well handled by StarOffice
Writer.”
“WordPerfect for Linux requires a powerful workstation to run
on. Corel recommend at least 64MB of RAM with 450MB of hard disk
space. These hefty requirements are in part due to the reliance
made on using Wine (an implementation of the Windows APIs).
Although Wine is still considered alpha software, WordPerfect is
reasonably stable. Stability of a word processor although important
is not critical. WordPerfect 8 does not require the use of this
Windows compatibility layer and could represent a solution where
only a word processor is needed.”