Came across this article at PC World:

First Look: IBM's Symphony Office Suite
Free suite does much of what Microsoft Office can do and costs nothing.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,138188/article.html

And here's the link to the IBM site:

http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.jspa

Not an endorsement, just passing along.

I did download this some time ago. I find the potential intriguing because it has IBM behind it (read support for companies who are afraid to use an open source document format without it). But it will never gain any traction with me unless they package it and integrate it with Lotus Notes. Scripting would be a major plus as well as a database.

It will be interesting to keep an eye on it and see where it goes.

Tom S.

I have downloaded this suite and tried it. It sure looks nice. One drawback seemed immediately apparent. There doesn't seem to be any outlining function in the word processing component... unless I missed it.

I don't think this suite is likely to challenge MS Office at all. The question is, how does it compare to other low cost/no cost office suites, such as OpenOffice and Ability?

Steve Z.

For me having IBM behind it is a disadvantage rather than an advantage. IBM took Lotus over when its software was competitive and let it all die. This looks like an attempt to resurrect the (slightly updated) Lotus Office suite as a free version. I don't think Microsoft need be worried.

I have never found any free office suite which can compete to any depth with MS Office. They will do 90% of what 90% of people require, but I have large and complicated documents and free or low-priced alternatives to MS Office just can't manage them. OpenOffice cannot open large documents that even older versions of Word has no problems with, and Ability had to admit to me that their suite wasn't as compatible with MS Office as they claimed after I sent them bug after diffference after bug after failure.

I won't even be trying this one, I'm afraid ...

Graham

Tom S. wrote:

I did download this some time ago. I find the potential intriguing because it has IBM
behind it (read support for companies who are afraid to use an open source document
format without it). But it will never gain any traction with me unless they package it
and integrate it with Lotus Notes. Scripting would be a major plus as well as a
database.

It will be interesting to keep an eye on it and see where it goes.

Tom S.

I agree with your comment about IBM. I would point out, however, that they didn't stop supporting Lotus and the support is what IBM is selling here. If companies invest in using the suite, they will probably always have the support to go with it. The programs, themselves, are basically a repackaged form of Open Office. If any open source programing organization is stable, its that one. So the program, itself, is unlikely to stop being developed.

Steve, the program should have an outlining component. I can't imagine Open Office would have left it out.

Tom S.

Graham, you may wish to experiment with more recent versions of OpenOffice. I've actually found OpenOffice to be more compatible with some older Word documents than Office 2007. I don't use either product any more, but I keep OpenOffice around for opening old documents. Even for Office 2007 users, it's worth keeping around for those times when you have compatibility problems with legacy Office documents.

-- Chris


Graham Rhind wrote:

OpenOffice cannot open large documents that even
older versions of Word has no problems with, and Ability had to admit to me that their
suite wasn't as compatible with MS Office as they claimed after I sent them bug after
diffference after bug after failure.

I won't even be trying this one, I'm afraid
...

Graham

Chris,

What office suite do you use?

Steve Z.

Chris Thompson wrote:

Graham, you may wish to experiment with more recent versions of OpenOffice. I've
actually found OpenOffice to be more compatible with some older Word documents than
Office 2007. I don't use either product any more, but I keep OpenOffice around for
opening old documents. Even for Office 2007 users, it's worth keeping around for
those times when you have compatibility problems with legacy Office documents.

--
Chris


Graham Rhind wrote:
>OpenOffice cannot open large documents that even

>older versions of Word has no problems with, and Ability had to admit to me that their

>suite wasn't as compatible with MS Office as they claimed after I sent them bug after

>diffference after bug after failure.
>
>I won't even be trying this one, I'm
afraid
>...
>
>Graham

Graham Rhind wrote:

"... but I have large and complicated documents and free or low-priced alternatives to MS Office just can't manage them. ..."

Graham,

Do you really use`a single Word file for large and complicated documents? From my personal experience and that of some colleagues, I'd be terrified that a corruption in one part of the file would damage the entire document.

-c

Cassius wrote:

Graham Rhind wrote:
"... but I have large and complicated documents and free or
low-priced alternatives to MS Office just can't manage them. ..."

Graham,

Do you
really use`a single Word file for large and complicated documents? From my personal
experience and that of some colleagues, I'd be terrified that a corruption in one part
of the file would damage the entire document.

-c

Absolutely. Before I moved it to Whizfolders my second book was in a single Word document - 1100 pages. I admit that at that point Word was straining and slowing significantly, which is why I cut into into chunks and put it into Whizfolders. That Word file could not be opened in any other word processor I ever tried - they fell over due to the size of the document.

I've never had a single corrupted Word document, but naturally I have a strict and comprehensive backup routine, so even if I did have I would never lose more than 1 day's work.

If my Whizfolder's files now became corrupted I would have exactly the same problem. Again, I rely on my backup for that contingency - but Whizfolders has also proved very stable.

Graham

Wow! I can't imagine writing a 1100 page book in Word. For documents of that length, I'd encourage you to investigate tools specifically designed for that kind of job, such as LaTeX, FrameMaker, DocBook, or any of the variety of SGML tools. Not just for speed and usability reasons, but also because long documents tend to have advanced needs (e.g. multiple tables of contents, a main table of contents and then tables of contents by chapter, multiple appendices, heavy cross-referencing, cross-referencing between footnotes, etc.), and in my experience Word tends not to be reliable when using those features in combination, even for documents in the 30-50 page range. Most of the long document-oriented tools tend to be bulletproof in comparison. There's something to be said for consistently reliable, less aggravating tools.

-- Chris


Graham Rhind wrote:

Absolutely. Before I moved it to Whizfolders my second book was in
a single Word document - 1100 pages. I admit that at that point Word was straining and
slowing significantly, which is why I cut into into chunks and put it into
Whizfolders. That Word file could not be opened in any other word processor I ever
tried - they fell over due to the size of the document.

At the risk of flogging this one to death, and just for the sake of completeness, my book does not contain multiple tables of contents, footnotes, multiple appendices, cross-referencing and so on. It does contain a table of contents but that is added at a later stage after conversion to pdf.

So those parts of the process are never a requirement - just the storing and manipulation of the text, tables and graphics. Word (and I'm talking about Word 2000 and its predecessor) has a clever way of opening large documents by opening only part of them and then opening other sections later as you scroll down. Other programs try to load the whole document in one go, which meant in my case I could have decorated my office whilst waiting.

And, as I mentioned, I don't find Word aggravating and I do find it reliable. Naturally it won't suit everybody, but what software does?

Graham

PS - I'm just starting my fourth book - in Word :-)

Chris Thompson wrote:

Wow! I can't imagine writing a 1100 page book in Word. For documents of that length, I'd
encourage you to investigate tools specifically designed for that kind of job, such
as LaTeX, FrameMaker, DocBook, or any of the variety of SGML tools. Not just for speed
and usability reasons, but also because long documents tend to have advanced needs
(e.g. multiple tables of contents, a main table of contents and then tables of
contents by chapter, multiple appendices, heavy cross-referencing,
cross-referencing between footnotes, etc.), and in my experience Word tends not to
be reliable when using those features in combination, even for documents in the 30-50
page range. Most of the long document-oriented tools tend to be bulletproof in
comparison. There's something to be said for consistently reliable, less
aggravating tools.

-- Chris


Graham Rhind wrote:
>Absolutely. Before I moved
it to Whizfolders my second book was in
>a single Word document - 1100 pages. I admit
that at that point Word was straining and
>slowing significantly, which is why I cut
into into chunks and put it into
>Whizfolders. That Word file could not be opened in
any other word processor I ever
>tried - they fell over due to the size of the document.

Graham Rhind wrote:

At the risk of flogging this one to death, and just for the sake of completeness, my book
does not contain multiple tables of contents, footnotes, multiple appendices,
cross-referencing and so on. It does contain a table of contents but that is added at a
later stage after conversion to pdf.

it must be very strange book without any of the basic features ...

So those parts of the process are never a
requirement - just the storing and manipulation of the text, tables and graphics.
Word (and I'm talking about Word 2000 and its predecessor) has a clever way of opening
large documents by opening only part of them and then opening other sections later as
you scroll down. Other programs try to load the whole document in one go, which meant in
my case I could have decorated my office whilst waiting.

- writing 1000 pages document in word, you must be either masochist or bill gate's relative.
- books typeset in word are ugly, it's a fact

Take advice from Chris, for example in Latex, you'd be typing just text, and all of the formatting is done automatically by the software when your work is compiled.

And, as I mentioned, I don't
find Word aggravating and I do find it reliable. Naturally it won't suit everybody,
but what software does?

You were saying that no office suit could convert the M$ documents properly. Well, it's not their problem, it's because of proprietary M$ formats! Now you have a chance to test and start working with free soft (for example Open Office which is great) that implements open document format ... take that chance and soon you'll see you never get back to M$ office

PS - I'm just starting my fourth book - in Word :-)

can you post a link to any of your books? Is it on Amazon or google books for a preview?

I'm not sure I want to dignify some of these comments with a reply, but here goes:

quant wrote:

it must be very
strange book without any of the basic features ...

William Shakespeare managed without footnotes and indices. It is a reference book and is structured in such a way that only the chapter names are required to find the required data, as each chapter has the same structure. Indices and tables of contents would cause problems anyway because it is currently published as a pdf instead of hard copy, and the page numbers are dependent upon the size of paper being used if printed. The book therefore has no page numbers. And nobody has ever complained about its layout - in fact, in a survey of users I did last year nobody wanted the format or structured altered. So there we are - I make no apologies for the for the form the book takes - not all books are academic tomes.

writing 1000 pages document in word, you must be either masochist or bill gate's
relative.
- books typeset in word are ugly, it's a fact

Neither, and that perhaps proves my point that Word could manage the task very well - I have a very low tolerance to software glitches, as you'll know from my feelings about Ultra Recall, for example. I'll hop products as soon as they give me problems. As I mentioned above, the book is published as a pdf, not typeset, but we all know that definitive statements about beauty and ugliness are not grounded. As it happens the book has to use a single font because it contains data in hundreds of languages, and only one font set allowed me to do that. Personally I don't like the font or the layout very much, but it's for reference and nobody cares as long as they can get their information from it.

You were saying that no office suit could
convert the M$ documents properly. Well, it's not their problem, it's because of
proprietary M$ formats! Now you have a chance to test and start working with free soft
(for example Open Office which is great) that implements open document format ...
take that chance and soon you'll see you never get back to M$ office

With respect, I did not apportion any blame as to the reason for incompatibility between office suites. As I also mentioned I HAVE tested all of these programs - OpenOffice, Ability and Lotus (older version). They were not up to the task I set for them. As I also said, other software will suit other people for what they require. Not me.

can you post a link to any of your books? Is it on
Amazon or google books for a preview?

Yes, but that wouldn't be useful to this discussion because in all three cases the publisher has typeset the hard copy versions and added tables of contents, indices and so on according to their own house rules. They typeset in a program other than Word, obviously (and made a right hash up of it), but I supplied the data in Word and that is how I maintain the files (as in one case the book is updated and released every 6 months). That book's software link page is at http://www.grcdi.nl/book2.htm - there's a sample from the book there, but that's been printed from Whizfolders, not Word.

I get a little weary of constant Microsoft bashing just for the sake of it, and I don't really want to get into one of those discussions. My point was that alternatives to MS Office are not always as all encompassing as they claim and are not in all cases a worthy alternative.

Graham

to find the required data, as each chapter has the same structure. Indices and tables
of contents would cause problems anyway because it is currently published as a pdf
instead of hard copy, and the page numbers are dependent upon the size of paper being

the chapter numbering/references to page numbers, indexes, ... it's all done automatically in any decent soft (by changing the page format/size/... all the references would be updated)

The book therefore has no page numbers.

no comment, this is where the conversation ends ;-)

I work for a small, nonprofit publisher. We prefer to receive manuscripts in either RTF, plain text, or Word files. We then put them into Word to go through the copy editing phase. We discourage authors from doing any formatting of their text themselves, because in most cases that all has to be stripped out anyway.

I am not sure, but I suspect, that we are pretty typical of most publishers (though perhaps not academic publishers). So I would suggest that authors not worry about the formatting abilities of the writing software they use, and just find the software that feels most comfortable and aids in the actually writing and re-writing of the work.

Steve Z.

This is actually an interesting discussion. That Word barely can sort of handle the task by only loading portions of the document at a time is beside the point, really. The reason you're having various degrees of speed issues using most conventional word processors to edit a document of this size is precisely because they're not tools designed for this kind of job.

Think about it... a 1100 page document, in terms of text content, is only about 500,000 words, or about 2.3 megabytes of text. That should be nothing for a modern computer to deal with. I open text files of that size in text editors all the time, and applications dealing with orders of magnitude more data in other contexts don't have to resort to kludges like only loading a portion of the document. That conventional word processors can't slice through documents of this size like butter is because they're designed for a particular task: small to medium size documents with unstructured formatting, and all the internal bloat that comes along for the ride.

Most of the long document tools use a different approach, with text being the core thing being edited, and styling and advanced features being attached through some method of tagging (as if you stripped out all the formatting stuff in Word except the styles drop down box). Whether the final layout it done by the publisher or by the user is really an orthogonal issue, though it usually gets dragged into these debates.

I personally wouldn't mind seeing a version of Word optimized for long documents, but I doubt it will ever happen.

-- Chris

Graham Rhind wrote:

So those parts of the process are never a
requirement - just the storing and manipulation of the text, tables and graphics.
Word (and I'm talking about Word 2000 and its predecessor) has a clever way of opening
large documents by opening only part of them and then opening other sections later as
you scroll down. Other programs try to load the whole document in one go, which meant in
my case I could have decorated my office whilst waiting.

And, as I mentioned, I don't
find Word aggravating and I do find it reliable. Naturally it won't suit everybody,
but what software does?

OK Graham, I looked at the sample pages from your book. All I can say is that I will never play Trivial Pursuit with you! ;) All in all, your work seems like a very valuable reference for anybody having interaction with people in more than one country. A very impressive data set that you have assembled.

--Ken

Chris Thompson wrote:

This is actually an interesting discussion. That Word barely can sort of handle the
task by only loading portions of the document at a time is beside the point, really. The
reason you're having various degrees of speed issues using most conventional word
processors to edit a document of this size is precisely because they're not tools
designed for this kind of job.

Think about it... a 1100 page document, in terms of
text content, is only about 500,000 words, or about 2.3 megabytes of text. That should
be nothing for a modern computer to deal with. I open text files of that size in text
editors all the time, and applications dealing with orders of magnitude more data in
other contexts don't have to resort to kludges like only loading a portion of the
document. That conventional word processors can't slice through documents of this
size like butter is because they're designed for a particular task: small to medium
size documents with unstructured formatting, and all the internal bloat that comes
along for the ride.

Most of the long document tools use a different approach, with
text being the core thing being edited, and styling and advanced features being
attached through some method of tagging (as if you stripped out all the formatting
stuff in Word except the styles drop down box). Whether the final layout it done by the
publisher or by the user is really an orthogonal issue, though it usually gets dragged
into these debates.

I personally wouldn't mind seeing a version of Word optimized
for long documents, but I doubt it will ever happen.

-- Chris

great reply!

I also had a look at your book, Graham. Your book actually is a database. You could maybe ask some database specialist to look at it, and they'd create a database from your book. Then you could sell it in a database format ... or you could have it online, and customers could query (for a fee) data they would require. For example someone would be interested only on Address format from any country ... others would like to see all info about certain county ... all these would be simple queries to the database with output on the website. Or maybe another tool could be address formatter ... user would input address, choose country ... and your website would return the address formatted for a given country ... and many other stuff like that ...

Thank you Ken.

Quant: I am a database specialist and did weigh up whether to store the data in a traditional database form or in this text form. I asked my customers what they wanted and with one exception none wanted an online version or the "ask question and get an answer" version that you suggest. That is the reason that I use my head as the database (with a lot of help from Whizfolders), and why I maintain the data in book form.

As for tools for creating, for example, a correctly formatted address from an incorrectly formatted one, that's precisely what the customers who buy my book do with the information :-) I myself don't have the technical knowledge to do that online, and I think it's wiser not to compete directly with my customers ....

quant wrote:

I also had a look at your book, Graham. Your book actually is a
database. You could maybe ask some database specialist to look at it, and they'd
create a database from your book. Then you could sell it in a database format ... or you
could have it online, and customers could query (for a fee) data they would require.
For example someone would be interested only on Address format from any country ...
others would like to see all info about certain county ... all these would be simple
queries to the database with output on the website. Or maybe another tool could be
address formatter ... user would input address, choose country ... and your website
would return the address formatted for a given country ... and many other stuff like
that ...

Graham Rhind wrote:

Thank you Ken.

Quant: I am a database specialist and did weigh up whether to store the
data in a traditional database form or in this text form. I asked my customers what they
wanted and with one exception none wanted an online version or the "ask question and
get an answer" version that you suggest. That is the reason that I use my head as the
database (with a lot of help from Whizfolders), and why I maintain the data in book
form.

As for tools for creating, for example, a correctly formatted address from an
incorrectly formatted one, that's precisely what the customers who buy my book do
with the information :-) I myself don't have the technical knowledge to do that
online, and I think it's wiser not to compete directly with my customers ....

maybe, your customers are too traditional, internet is the future. You could bring your data to a much wider audience, because they could get particular info they require for a smaller fee. You don't know ... people might like it very much, and maybe one day google will buy it from you and include it in their services, and you'll get rich :-)