StarOffice
Sun has acquired Star Division and is releasing StarOffice at no
charge. It has been installed on the gloworm cluster as
staroffice.
Capabilities
StarOffice is an office suite similar to Microsoft Office. It
includes applications for
- word processing
- spreadsheet
- presentation program
- draw program
- web browser, mail, etc. (i don't recommend using these)
StarOffice can read many (but not all) documents produced by (older
versions of) MS Office applications. Conversion is not always 100%,
but it should be usable to view/print most email attachments. I
believe that it is also immune to Word macro virus infestation.
Installation
The first time it is run, it will launch a wizard to do a "user"
customization/installation. Most of this should be
self-explanatory. For the three questionable dialogs, choose:
- Standard Workstation Installation
- No support for Java or JavaScript (it doesn't work anyway)
- Don't use the internet... (this is just for information regarding
proxies, mail servers, and news servers)
If you have an existing copy of StarOffice and you want to use the
cluster's version, you should delete/move
- ~/.user.rdb
- ~/.sversionrc
- ~/StarOffice
before trying to run the cluster's version. And, please remove your
old copy after you set yourself up to run the cluster's shared
version.
Known glitches
- StarOffice is big and bloated. The memory footprint is around
40MB. You will probably want to run it remotely on stjames
(blue-chalk has been to loaded with large jobs).
- java/javascript do not work
- web browsing is excruciatingly SLOW and prone to lockups
(don't use this as a web browser)
If there are other installation glitches, let action@gloworm know.
Please note that support of this package is very low priority.
action@gloworm.stanford.edu
Last modified: Wed Sep 1 11:36:02 PDT 1999