'''OpenOffice''' is a great OpenSource alternative to MS-Office, highly compatible, and using documented open document formats. The Open Document format is outlined here: [http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/12572/OpenDocument-v1.0-os.pdf] [MHo] is using '''OpenOffice''' for as long as he can think (beginning with '''StarOffice for MSDOS'''...) and hardly ever had problems with it. One thing that could have been made better: OpenOffice is using a [Basic] dialect for programming. It seems to me that people have fun allways reinventing the wheels ;-) Why didn't they use [Tcl], ready for embedding in every application as it's perfect macro language? ([RS]: See [tcluno] for that...) But the situation of OpenOffice seems to be comparable with [Tcl]'s: the bosses responsible for buying software tend to prefer Microsoft Office as they tend to ignore [Tcl] ("Tcl? what's that? never heard... let us better use some 20 Gig compilers and runtimes with 10.000 dll's... and let us only use Microsoft tools because the other ones are sometimes buggy... (and free of charge ;-)" - hahahahaha). Time for a better marketing, I think! ---- [wdb] True spoken, but the main reason for taking B****C is probably, compatibility with other docs (older OOo, other MS docs). '''Some Links:''' * http://www.openoffice.org/ * http://de.openoffice.org/ * [Tcl & OpenOffice -translation from the French] ---- !!!!!! %|[Category Office Automation]|% !!!!!!