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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mira.net.au!news.vbc.net!knews.uk0.vbc.net!newsfeed.easynet.co.uk!easynet-uk!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!howland.erols.net!agate!nemesis.its.berkeley.edu!bob From: bob@nemesis.its.berkeley.edu (bob prohaska) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: What would it take to replace MS Office? Date: 12 Oct 1996 06:02:44 GMT Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 26 Message-ID: <53nca4$shi@agate.berkeley.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: nemesis.its.berkeley.edu Summary: Can FreeBSD offer what Win95 and MS Office do? Keywords: MS Office, personal productivity, word processing X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Hi all, This is an admittedly inane question, motivated by acute boredom. Having used Macintoshes, WinDoze, A/UX, WinNT, OS/2 and 386/FreeBSD, I'm left wondering what it would take to provide the functionality of Win95 plus MS Office on FreeBSD for the usual run of things people use personal computers for. That would seem to be mostly document preparation. As a marketing gimmick, FreeBSD might be well served by an installer option titled "Office Droid" which downloaded and configured (very important!) software to provide roughly the functionality of MicroSoft Office. It needn't be "What you see is what you get", but it would have to do the same job, meaning good-looking output on PostScript or PCL printers. The ability to easily insert graphics in documents (something easier than \special in TeX) would be highly desirable. I've never felt the need to do this, owning a Mac 8-), but I'm becoming curious as to whether FreeBSD and its collection of ported software offers the required tools given the gradual decline of Apple's fortunes and my growing dislike of MicroSoft. Opinions? bob