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I never even heard of this office packages company.
If the commenter is correct, then CNET really need to rethink their recommendations.
well I never heard of that product and if there is any truth of what the commenter states, I would not want to try it.
I really do not see any free office product that is better than LibreOffice. I have been using LibreOffice since it was just about to be released off of the "release candidate stage". Have been supporting LO since 3.3.2 or 3.3.3. I have been handing out brochures of one type or another promoting LO, and CDs and DVDs with LO on them since the spring/summer of 2011.
I believe that LibreOffice is better than MSO, not just a free alternative to MSO. I stopped buying MSO with the 2003 release.
So, I do not agree with your article.
I believe in LibreOffice and all of its pros and cons. I use it and promote it.
So, I have never heard of Kingsoft's office package. I have never seen any other articles stating that Kingsoft was a good or great free package.
Hi 
Kingsoft has been around for years but never got much market-share. I like the idea of tabs and quite like that it has a ribbon-bar. Tabs are not new. At least one other Office Suite used tabs but used them very differently.
Of course i prefer LibreOffice/OpenOffice/NeoOffice/Lotus Symphony, or Google-docs, or Caligra/KOffice or Gnome Office but it's good to see the alternatives to MS Office are beginning to be more widely recognised. When competition is fair LibreOffice rises to the top but it's still healthier for the market to have choices rather than be dominated by a single profit-making company.
Regards from
Tom
Hi
That comment looks like FUD to me. Where are the links to substantiate his claims? There is a lot of FUD about China at the moment. Perhaps some is true but western journalism has it's own biases so getting at the truth is a tad tricky.
Also it's not Cnet that are recommending Kingsoft. It's only the author's opinion. PLus it's got a question mark after it. If you search through Cnet you will probably find similar claims in titles of articles about LibreOffice
This page in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_office_suites
shows Kingsoft has been around since 1988 and is available for Windows and Gnu&Linux (incl Android). LibreOffice's first release date is listed as 2010 which just shows how tricky it is to adequately report on such things. Many people would say the first release of LO is the same as OpenOffice and that should be the same as StarOffice's first release date over a decade ago. I just had to do a little editing there myself but if you check the history you can see that the lines about Kingsoft have been unchanged for ages, possibly years.
Regards from
Tom
Hi
The MS Office Eula makes similar claims on the rights of work produced
using their software. MS owns your work! You don't! It'd be
interesting to see that one stand up in court though. Too many
precedents exist where MS has not fought to enforce that part of their
own Eula. So, I can't imagine any judge anywhere allowing that. Hmm,
maybe MS have changed their Eula since i last read it thoroughly about a decade or so ago.
I too wouldn't touch Kingsoft with a barge pole. I want to steer towards using formats that will be
around and usable in a few years time. I want to be able to open
documents maybe 10-20 years from now without having to struggle against
malware and without having to try to find long-dead versions of long
dead software produced by a company that may not even exist by then.
What i tend to find is that people use all sorts of rubbishy excuses for why they 'cant' move away from certain software. They moan and grumble
about petty issues in an alternative they have been handed but then go
and find some other alternative that they feel more in control of because they chose it. Once they have made the break away from that certain software they become more reasonable about looking at other
alternatives realistically.
One of the commonest grumbles i hear about LO (at the moment) is that it
uses the old interface and not the nice new ribbon-bar. So, 'obviously' LO is old! (Easy to see how FUD develops, right?). Kingsoft neatly
deal with that and such grumblers can now be pointed towards that as an
alternative. Of course when i do that i will still be quite disparaging about the ribbon-bar specifically and about proprietary software (and
formats) in general but at least now i can sound like it's not "just sour grapes",
just because LO hasn't got it. Now i can be seen to be offering genuine choices rather than trying to herd people in a direction they might not want to go.
Of course any fool that does escape the one trap by jumping into another
is still able to completely jump free by trying out LO at some point in
the future. Perhaps by then they will be ready.
Regards from
Tom
If I recall, I tried Kingsoft a few years ago, and found it woefully deficient for my needs. I don't recall specifically what the issue(s) were, but I recall concluding that it couldn't hold a candle to LO.
As to the Ribbon, I pray LO never adopts it. A short while ago, we had a discussion about using paragraph styles. In my experience with my technology students, the Ribbon tends to encourage direct formatting of paragraphs by having the formatting commands readily available. Yes, the Ribbon is easy; yes, it is (generally) well organized. But, that very ease and organization steers a person into thinking that the Ribbon is the *only* way to work, and thus the user never learns to appreciate the great advantages to using styles. Yes, styles are found on the Ribbon, but in such a way that many users haven't a clue as to what they mean or how to use them. I much prefer the hierarchical listing of styles docked to right side of my document.
Virgil
Hi
I also dislike the ribbon-bar. It's faster and easier to hunt around menus to find things you don't use all the time and/or can't remember exactly where they are or can't figure out the 'MS way of thinking' in order to find. Plus people often see things that are unfamiliar and occasionally explore and thus learn new capabilities.
However that's not the point. A lot of morons now demand the ribbon-bar and can't cope without it. A lot of them seem to think a program is old and rubbish if it doesn't have one. "Why should i use the old looking one instead of the posh new one?" [errr, because it's better and easier to use and you won't make such a nightmare mess of things as you normally do].
Kingsoft fills that demand and might be a useful stepping stone on the migration away from dependence on MS. I wont be using it myself, if i can possibly avoid it, but it's up to the morons to decide what they want to use even 'if' that turns out to only be temporarily. LO is better so most of them will eventually migrate the whole way. Getting people to move is tough but once they have started it's easier to keep them going.
Regards from
Tom
It may be a coincidence, but when MSO started to use the ribbon I found that I could not use Styles effectively any longer. I doubt any of the actual functionality went away, but I kept getting lost trying to do things I had been doing previously. So I also hope LO never goes there.
Regards,
Hi all:
I have installed Kingsoft in my Android Tablet because at this moment I
think is the best option in that plataform and we don't have LibreOffice
or OpenOffice for Android. But I didn't know that they have a version
for windows.
I didn't use it a lot because I use my tablet for others things, but
when I used it, its perfomance is good.
Of course, until I remember it doesn't have all the features that
LibreOffice or OpenOffice have (At least as I rememberd and I didn't use
my last update of this program in my Tablet to know is it it is true as
I tell you)
Regards,
Jorge Rodríguez
Hi
The MS Office Eula makes similar claims on the rights of work produced
using their software. MS owns your work! You don't! It'd be
interesting to see that one stand up in court though. Too many
precedents exist where MS has not fought to enforce that part of their
own Eula. So, I can't imagine any judge anywhere allowing that. Hmm,
maybe MS have changed their Eula since i last read it thoroughly about a decade or so ago.I too wouldn't touch Kingsoft with a barge pole. I want to steer towards using formats that will be
around and usable in a few years time. I want to be able to open
documents maybe 10-20 years from now without having to struggle against
malware and without having to try to find long-dead versions of long
dead software produced by a company that may not even exist by then.What i tend to find is that people use all sorts of rubbishy excuses for why they 'cant' move away from certain software. They moan and grumble
about petty issues in an alternative they have been handed but then go
and find some other alternative that they feel more in control of because they chose it. Once they have made the break away from that certain software they become more reasonable about looking at other
alternatives realistically.One of the commonest grumbles i hear about LO (at the moment) is that it
uses the old interface and not the nice new ribbon-bar. So, 'obviously' LO is old! (Easy to see how FUD develops, right?). Kingsoft neatly
deal with that and such grumblers can now be pointed towards that as an
alternative. Of course when i do that i will still be quite disparaging about the ribbon-bar specifically and about proprietary software (and
formats) in general but at least now i can sound like it's not "just sour grapes",
just because LO hasn't got it. Now i can be seen to be offering genuine choices rather than trying to herd people in a direction they might not want to go.
I was talking to a professor a few days ago. He does not like the newer versions due in part to "the way they keep changing the interface and how to do things". I made sure he know about LO. He loved the multi language part as well.
I did not like the "ribbon" menu system either. Sure, the type of interface that LO uses has been around for years, but that does not mean you need to change it. "Refreshing" or redesigning the interface, just because you can, is not a reason to. One of the good things about LO as it went from 3.3 though 4.0 is the way the interface does not change, or has a slow change so it does not "stand up and slap your face" with the changes. Once you learn "what is where" and how to do things, changing that will cause problems. Sure the interface could use some enhancements, like the "persona" addition, but to keep our users happy, you must not make the users relearn how to do things or where are the menu options are now located.
.
Hi
+1
Good to see another professor that is not a moron about soemthing outside of her/his specialism!
Regards from
Tom
Kracked_P_P---webmaster wrote:
<snip>
I was talking to a professor a few days ago. He does not like the newer versions due in part to "the way they keep changing the interface and how to do things". I made sure he know about LO. He loved the multi language part as well.
I did not like the "ribbon" menu system either. Sure, the type of interface that LO uses has been around for years, but that does not mean you need to change it. "Refreshing" or redesigning the interface, just because you can, is not a reason to. One of the good things about LO as it went from 3.3 though 4.0 is the way the interface does not change, or has a slow change so it does not "stand up and slap your face" with the changes. Once you learn "what is where" and how to do things, changing that will cause problems. Sure the interface could use some enhancements, like the "persona" addition, but to keep our users happy, you must not make the users relearn how to do things or where are the menu options are now located.
I have been using the OO/LO office suite since OO.o 1.x and now I am using LO 3.6.6. (I have not tried LO 4.0.x, since I am still waiting for that less-buggy 4.1.5+ version to be released.) However, I have found the incremental changes to the user interface refreshing. OO.o and now LO, have made great improvements in this area with each release. Nothing to make me go back to school to get my degree on how to use it, but the changes made the functions much easier to use and more intuitive. To me, that is a big plus. I want to be productive, not have to re-learn user interfaces with each new release. Although I am a retired electronics engineer, I am _not_ a techno-geek who has to have the latest and greatest all the time. You won't find me waiting for hours outside an Apple store to buy the latest iPhone. If it works, don't "fix" it is my motto.
Girvin Herr
<snip>
My last version of MSO was 2003.
I ran OOo back in those early days as well, and went to LO back just before they switched from the first RC version to the first "full release" version back in late winter 2011. I currently use 4.0.3 on both Ubuntu and Win7 systems.
I like the fact that the LO interface, as a whole, has not changed. Yes, there are some added things, like the 1 or 2 page view and some other things. But it looks mostly like it has been for that past year or two. No need to relearn where the needed menu option has been relocated. No need to figure out how to do needed options, since the process has not changes or the change is slow slight is seem like no change at all.
The one big complaint I have heard about MSO is the fact they seem to change how you do things, after you get use to doing it their "new" way after the last change. I know many business people have stated that every time a new MSO is "bought" [or now rented] for their company users, they have to spend time and money while the users learn how to do the things they need to do with the changes that MSO has made in the interface and the steps to do the needed options.
I need to relearn the interface for Paint Shop Pro X5, when I used version 5 since the XP days. But since I can not get v5 to install on Win7 Home Premium that my laptop has, I had to upgrade it and relearn the new interface. Same with PSP 5 or X5 vs. GIMP. The time it takes to relearn how to do the things that comes very easily to me with the old interface, well it is very frustrating to say the least and has taken 2 to 5 times longer to do the things I want/need to do.
So if people feel that way about the MSO interface changes, and want to use one that is easier use and clearer to understand, then they need to use a package - like LO - that does not have major interface changes. I hope no one decides to revamp/refresh LO's interface to the point where our users will have the same frustrations as they did with the constant changes that MSO seems to relish in.
I wasn't going to comment on this thread, but I just had to use Word10
again for a company spec, and I have to say...
One of the things about the ribbon that I find so annoying is that it
hides information.
Yes, it is organized in a way that some people find convenient and MS
obviously loves - for now.
But especially w.r.t. formatting and styles, I have the worst time
using it and most often resort to a nifty plugin that some brilliant
entrepreneur wrote and distributes for free that emulates the old
menus.
Specifically, I have trouble with two pieces of the styles.
One is that I can't tell from looking at even the expanded menu which
style the cursor paragraph is in. I'm pretty sure it is not my eyes or
color scheme, there's just no indication at all. It is also difficult
to see what the font and font-size are at a glance. All of these are
easily and prominently visible in the formatting toolbar that is
standard at the top of every document (in LO and any MSO before 2007).
The other is when I want to use a style that isn't on the menu, but I
know is available. I've never been able to figure out how to find
them, where in the pre-ribbon menu system, I just click on the style
down-arrow on the formatting bar and poof. Even if it's not there, I
can click on the formatting styles icon on the same bar and it is
trivial to make everything show up. The ribbon just doesn't present
this capability, or it is so obscure that finding it is an adventure
all its own.
There are many other things I dislike about the ribbon. The main one
is that the fundamental window toolbar style and
every-other-imaginable-kind-of-window-except-Chrome menu bar have been
around since the dawn of (all?) windowing systems, so around 30+
years, but MS just couldn't make it better, they had to mangle it
completely and use the 2007 and newer versions to force users into
their new world.
Whatever happened to meeting the users' needs, rather than mandating
their changes?
</soapbox>
Maybe I'm just a traditionalist, but I've seen the whole gamut from
CP/M (and older) to now, and the ribbon made a change that was
unnecessary, cryptic and only barely and narrowly easier to use than
the menus.
Foo.
Cheers!
MR
Hi
+1
Those things probably are there but it's a pain trying to find anything. 2007 is even worse than 2010!
I know one of them is that you have to keep going back to the "Home" tab in order to see the font, font-size and maybe paragraph-style at the cursor's location. What has always annoyed me about MSO is that style might change 4 times in 4 characters beside each other, possibly even within a single word. But that was 1 of the things we were grumbling about in the styles thread fairly recently.
I'm just really glad i can stick with LibreOffice for pretty much everything now.
Regards from
Tom
Kracked_P_P---webmaster wrote:
<snip>
I need to relearn the interface for Paint Shop Pro X5, when I used version 5 since the XP days. But since I can not get v5 to install on Win7 Home Premium that my laptop has, I had to upgrade it and relearn the new interface. Same with PSP 5 or X5 vs. GIMP. The time it takes to relearn how to do the things that comes very easily to me with the old interface, well it is very frustrating to say the least and has taken 2 to 5 times longer to do the things I want/need to do.
Ahh! The Gimp. Great program and I do have some use for it. However, learning it has a _steep_ learning curve for me and, frankly, sitting at the screen and reading the online manual is not what I would prefer using my limited time for. There are several "learning" books out there, but which one is the best one I need to learn The Gimp? That is my problem with it. Once or twice I fiddled with it and got it to do somewhat what I wanted, but it wasn't very intuitive and I feel it could do so much more for me. If I could just get a good book on it and sit down and play with it...
Girvin Herr
<snip>
Hi
I use it for significant chunks of my working day but i've never read-up about it. I don't need advanced features but every once in a while i explore a bit and learn a bit more. Hmm, that's not entirely true but i don't spend long looking things up and tend to focus on reading only to achieve a specific task.
Regards from
Tom
<snip>
I too wouldn't touch Kingsoft with a barge pole. I want to steer towards using formats that will be
around and usable in a few years time. I want to be able to open
documents maybe 10-20 years from now without having to struggle against
malware and without having to try to find long-dead versions of long
dead software produced by a company that may not even exist by then.
You just hope the formats will be around 10-20 years from now. There's no guaranteed the current ODT format will even be viable then. Similar to the way desktop design interfaces are basically horrible on cell phones and tablets (IMO), all of it can change almost overnight with hardware changes.
I stopped installing LO on the free computers I occasionally rebuild. Why? Because I guessed the odds were the recipients would be more familiar with the Office interface, or their friends that helped them would. And my goal was to make it easy for them.
Plus, too many LO bugs that just pissed me off. <sad smile>
What i tend to find is that people use all sorts of rubbishy excuses for why they 'cant' move away from certain software. They moan and grumble
about petty issues in an alternative they have been handed but then go
and find some other alternative that they feel more in control of because they chose it. Once they have made the break away from that certain software they become more reasonable about looking at other
alternatives realistically.
You're pretty much right here, Tom. It seems that while users will look at 5, 10, 15 different TV's, they don't do that with software or computer systems. And that probably has a lot to do with the fact you can't find anything in the stores to look at.
I used to do this, got far, far away from that, now going back to looking for the computer "tools" that work for me. At the moment, I'm trying the demo of a program for writing, and if things keep working out the way they seem to be, you won't see me using Writer, Word, or any other "standard" office suite word processor ever again.
One of the commonest grumbles i hear about LO (at the moment) is that it
uses the old interface and not the nice new ribbon-bar. So, 'obviously' LO is old! (Easy to see how FUD develops, right?). Kingsoft neatly
deal with that and such grumblers can now be pointed towards that as an
alternative. Of course when i do that i will still be quite disparaging about the ribbon-bar specifically and about proprietary software (and
formats) in general but at least now i can sound like it's not "just sour grapes",
just because LO hasn't got it. Now i can be seen to be offering genuine choices rather than trying to herd people in a direction they might not want to go.
I get tired of hearing this ribbon argument over and over again. Some people like it. Some people don't. If you want to appeal to the most users on this aspect, give people a choice. MS does, you can hide the thing. I've not used Word regularly since 2003, so I can't say whether the menu interface that appears when you hide the ribbon is as functional as its predecessors.
<snip>
Hi
ODF is implemented the way it's documented as an ISO standard. A lot of programs use the same implementation. According to devs it's fairly easy to write something that can read it.
Where programs have variations on their implementation those tend to be written up as bug-reports (and gets fixed) or added to the file about what the "Extended" means in "ODF 1.2 (Extended)".
So, it's all clearly documented and is true to it's documentation. That is all the reverse of all other formats
In future years if you talk about trying to access large amounts of Rtf files, or DocX, then you need to know which version of the format, which version of the Office Suite, even which OS was used to create the files. Documentation about the format wont help much because implementation is so far away from it.
Wrt the ribbon argument, i'm glad it's over. If the 'must have a ribbon' they can have Kingsoft [shrugs]. The reason for LO to have one has now vanished because there is an alternative to MSO that has one. People will get tired of Kingsoft and may be more receptive to LO.
Regards from
Tom
And LO are doing it now. LO4 already drops previous file compatibility, if AOO maintains that compatibility I will be looking hard at it.
Steve