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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!news.mathworks.com!fu-berlin.de!zrz.TU-Berlin.DE!loch.in-brb.de!bolzen.in-berlin.de!news.all.de!luthien.in-berlin.de!wagner From: wagner@luthien.in-berlin.de Subject: Re: What would it take to replace MS Office? X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Organization: 'Holistic Computing Services' Message-ID: <Dz7ppJ.ICz@luthien.in-berlin.de> References: <53nca4$shi@agate.berkeley.edu> Date: Sun, 13 Oct 1996 11:39:18 GMT Lines: 40 bob prohaska (bob@nemesis.its.berkeley.edu) wrote: > 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. > Opinions? You might want to have a look at the Andrew toolkit, a graphical user interface development system, that comes with some nice and easy-to-use application programs, like editors for text, graphics, spreadsheets, a multi-media message system, etc. It was developed by folks at Carnegie Mellon University and IBM and is free of charge. I think it should be contained in the ports of FreeBSD; at least I have installed a package called auis-6.3.1. You've got to dig deep into the documentation to find all the things that have got to be changed and corrected for a useful installation (like producing postscript with ghostscipt, correcting all the special characters and how they are typed in, and so on), but it's worth it. I know of a company here in Germany that uses FreeBSD workstations with the Andrew toolkit for their daily document processing at shops and back offices. Try it and tell me of your impressions. Olaf -- /\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ || Olaf Wagner | wagner@luthien.in-berlin.de (private) | || Sanderstrasse 13 | olaf@logware.de (work) | || 12047 Berlin | phone: 49 30 623 36 35 | || Germany / Deutschland | please don't call before 9 o'clock | \/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////