The other Office

Abstract

PEOPLE WHO teach technology courses often debate the utility and ethics of teaching students to use software that they either won't buy or can't afford to buy. Microsoft Office, which costs from $250 to $400, is a good example. Many schools and universities have institutional licenses for Microsoft Office, but many do not license the program for home or off-campus use. Furthermore, if a student does buy a computer, Microsoft Office may or may not be bundled with the computer (the bundled software may be Works instead of Office). OpenOffice is a readily available, free alternative to Microsoft Office. Unfortunately, the tech press often ignores this powerful suite of programs, so finding reviews of it is difficult. The reviews I have found are positive, and the software is even used by several large corporations, including Novel. OpenOffice is software, which means it has been developed over time by volunteers, much like Mozilla, FireFox, and Opera. Some years ago, Sun Microsystems purchased the rights to develop its own version of MS Office, but open-source development continues by the organization that originally wrote the software (www.openoffice.org). I won't be reviewing Sun's Office, at least not in this column. OpenOffice was originally developed for the Unix operating system, which is at the heart of Mac OS X. OpenOffice is currently available for the following operating systems: Windows 2000, NT, and XP; Linux 2.2.13; and Mac OS 10.3 and 10.4. Downloading and installing OpenOffice varies by type and version of the operating system, so you'll need to be careful. You really have to be sure to download the version that matches your operating system exactly. Before I continue, a disclaimer is in order. My Mac has AppleWorks 6, Microsoft Office 2004, and now OpenOffice 2.X software. I prefer to use AppleWorks, though I am sometimes forced to use Microsoft Office. In general, I write in AppleWorks and if need be I save my document as an MS Word file. If people send me MS Word documents with a lot of tables, then I am forced to use Word. To write this column, I downloaded and installed OpenOffice, but I admit that I have not used it extensively. So far, I have used only the word processor called Writer and the presentation program called Impress. The other programs in OpenOffice are Calc, Draw, Base--a database manager--and Math. I would suspect that math teachers would find many more uses for Math than I will, since it lets you create mathematical formulas with ease. In a future column, I might be in a position to share my views on the rest of the OpenOffice suite of software. Here's how to download and install OpenOffice on a Mac. A more general discussion of the software itself follows. First, keep in mind that Mac OS X, which comes with installer software, does not include uninstaller software. So if you botch the install, you will have to hunt around for an uninstaller. For more information on uninstalling Mac software, I recommend you visit Indiana University's helpful knowledge-base pages at http://kb.iu.edu. Before you can run OpenOffice on a Mac, you will need to install X11, which is a Unix Window Manager that is totally compatible with Mac OS 10.3 and 10.4. Installing on a machine running OS 10.4 requires that you use the installer that came on the system discs. To use the system discs, you go to Install Bundled Software Only, find X Code Tools, and install X11.user.dmg. Don't install X11 SDK.pkg. After you have completed this step, download OpenOffice. On my Mac connected to the university network, the download of 140 MB took about 15 minutes. (Incidentally, both the website and the software are called openoffice.org.) I believe that installing X11 on a Mac running OS 10.3 can be done without the system discs. Once you launch OpenOffice on a Mac, Writer will be opened. From there, you can move to the other program modules by using the New button, which is located on the top left of the tool bar underneath the File and Edit menus. …