7 Best Alternatives To Microsoft Office Suite — 2019 Edition

In article , Dan Purgert
wrote:

| IIRC, the reputation was well earned -- the M68k and later PPC chips had
| better pipelines when it came to graphics processing than the Intel x86
| processors of the day.
|
Yes. But their reputation lasted far beyond that
time, for no reason. Some years ago a graphics shop
sued Apple after they bought Macs and found the
display's top setting was only 18-bit color/ 260K

I had a similar thing with a friend (or friend-of-a-friend). But it
came down to "yes, you _can_ get 24-bit color, if you get the high-end
display... but you chose the downgrade to save $100"

at least they didn't sue over it.

On 12/9/2019 9:51 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:

As I recall, ASCII characters were "only" 7-bit, because saving one bit
per character in the days of 300-baud modems was beneficial. But again,
memory is fuzzy


Yes, ASCII was 7-bit, but I don't think that was the reason. ASCII
started in 1963, and it predates the 300-bps PC modem, which began in 1977.



--
Ken

On 12/9/2019 10:11 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Ken Blake wrote:
On 12/9/2019 6:01 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

snip


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I don't know how anybody else feels about your PGP signatures, but I'll
tell you how I feel. I hate them. They add nothing to your posts and
just clutters them up. So I'd like to suggest that you stop
incorporating them in your messages.

Your request has been noted.

Please feel free to killfile me if the 12 lines are causing you that
much heartache.


I already felt free to killfile you. I didn't want to, because your
posts are often valuable. And they don't cause me anything like
heartache. That's why I tried to ask politely, rather than trying to
castigate you. I made a suggestion, rather than insisting.

--
Ken

On 12/9/19 9:48 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
On 12/9/2019 9:40 AM, Ken Springer wrote:
On 12/9/19 5:04 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:
Imo, the quality of the icon design has gone downhill over the last few
years. Not just Apple, but every where. They are no longer visually
intuitive.
Were they ever though? I mean, about the only one that I can recall
(ever) looking like what it's supposed to be is trash / recycle bin.

There will never be a UI that is intuitive all users. Simply not
possible. So icons need to be intuitive for the majority, or at least a
number of groups.

Take a look at the desktop icon for for File Manager from Windows 3.x:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Manager_(Windows)

Now look at W10's icon for File Explorer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Explorer

The purpose of File Manager/Windows Explorer/File Explorer is to
organize your files on floppies or hard drive, thumb drive, etc. Which
of those 2 icons do you think better represent where you are going to be
working by referring to something you've seen in your life?

Document icons used to have lines on them that indicated something in
writing. A folder icon looked like a partially open folder with
something inside, when that icon was selected or the folder was not empty.

The icons were also large enough to be easily identifiable. Not the
small things you see today.

Your trash can example is so accurate. The icon used to look like a 33
gal. trash can. As opposed to the square with a triangle on top as was
used by Gmail for some time.

I've seen some icons that actually had the text as part of the icon.


I use the smallest icons possible on my desktop and task bar, to provide
room for as many as possible. So, with a few exceptions, most of them
are unrecognizable. For most, I rely much more on the test accompanying
the icon.

It sounds as if you are like my sister. She has icons everywhere.
Tnhey bother me, I can never seem to find anything. So I use search
much of the time, and moving to hotkeys. Also, I've started using sleep
rather than shutdown. Get back to where I was much faster.

Could the icons be better designed to be more recognizable? For some,
yes. For others, I can't think of how. But I hardly care. Again, I rely
much more on the text accompanying the icon.

But lots of programs don't have text below the icons, anymore. And when
you have to start fiddling with the screen just to read it, the simple
solutions don't work. Those icons tend to stay the same.


--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 70.0.1
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

Ken Blake wrote:
On 12/9/2019 10:11 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Ken Blake wrote:
On 12/9/2019 6:01 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

snip


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ltCCZsUps01BTGZEPXGtY0VVeIUIiQ==
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I don't know how anybody else feels about your PGP signatures, but I'll
tell you how I feel. I hate them. They add nothing to your posts and
just clutters them up. So I'd like to suggest that you stop
incorporating them in your messages.

Your request has been noted.

Please feel free to killfile me if the 12 lines are causing you that
much heartache.


I already felt free to killfile you. I didn't want to, because your
posts are often valuable. And they don't cause me anything like
heartache. That's why I tried to ask politely, rather than trying to
castigate you. I made a suggestion, rather than insisting.

I took the "I suggest you take it off" bit the wrong way then.

This is the only group where anyone's made comment about it; I'll try to
remember.



--
|_|O|_|
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5 4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281

On 12/9/19 10:41 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
On 12/9/2019 10:11 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Ken Blake wrote:
On 12/9/2019 6:01 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

snip


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ltCCZsUps01BTGZEPXGtY0VVeIUIiQ==
=BAg7
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


I don't know how anybody else feels about your PGP signatures, but I'll
tell you how I feel. I hate them. They add nothing to your posts and
just clutters them up. So I'd like to suggest that you stop
incorporating them in your messages.

Your request has been noted.

Please feel free to killfile me if the 12 lines are causing you that
much heartache.


I already felt free to killfile you. I didn't want to, because your
posts are often valuable. And they don't cause me anything like
heartache. That's why I tried to ask politely, rather than trying to
castigate you. I made a suggestion, rather than insisting.

Didn't there used to be a rule, or at least a gentleman's agreement,
that sig files shouldn't be more than 4 lines?

Mine is slightly larger, but easily fixed.

--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 70.0.1
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

David the Lying Stalker of Devon wrote:

On 09/12/2019 14:41, Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:
David the Lying Stalker of Devon wrote:

On 09/12/2019 01:21, Beauregard T. Shagnasty - still wriggling!
David the Liar of Devon wrote:
Amazing what happens when the truth is told!

It certainly is. You should start sometime soon.

[rest not worthy of a reply]

Other readers of Usenet groups will ...

..see your constant lying and stalking.

They won't! 'Cause I don't - but *YOU* do!

See? You reply with a *lie*!

*WHY* does a Linux aficionado promote a website discussing Windows?

You are the one who is promoting it. Don't you realize that?

*NO*! That would be your cohort known as 'Shadow'.

You fail to acknowledge that 1) Shadow is not my cohort, and 2) every time
you stalk me unbidden you generate more responses, such as he
Message-ID:
Otherwise I (and he and others) would NOT be posting the link to your
"special page".

It is *all* on you.

[snip rest of lies and innuendos not worthy of reply]

--
-bts

On 2019-12-09, Ken Springer wrote:
What about the Linux distros that are "Long Term Support"?

I run Ubuntu LTS, which has 5 years of support. I think commercial
versions of RedHat are supported for 10 years. Likewise for free
CentOS, which is compiled from RedHat sources with RedHat branding
removed.

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Blake (Posts from Google Groups killfiled due to excess spam.)

NSA sedition and treason -- http://www.DeathToNSAthugs.com
Don't talk to cops! -- http://www.DontTalkToCops.com
Badges don't grant extra rights -- http://www.CopBlock.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

In article , Dan Purgert
wrote:

I don't know how anybody else feels about your PGP signatures, but I'll
tell you how I feel. I hate them. They add nothing to your posts and
just clutters them up. So I'd like to suggest that you stop
incorporating them in your messages.

Your request has been noted.

Please feel free to killfile me if the 12 lines are causing you that
much heartache.


I already felt free to killfile you. I didn't want to, because your
posts are often valuable. And they don't cause me anything like
heartache. That's why I tried to ask politely, rather than trying to
castigate you. I made a suggestion, rather than insisting.

I took the "I suggest you take it off" bit the wrong way then.

This is the only group where anyone's made comment about it; I'll try to
remember.

i remember seeing comments about it in other groups.

On 2019-12-09 11:55 a.m., Dan Purgert wrote:
Ken Blake wrote:
On 12/9/2019 10:11 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Ken Blake wrote:
On 12/9/2019 6:01 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

snip


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ltCCZsUps01BTGZEPXGtY0VVeIUIiQ==
=BAg7
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I don't know how anybody else feels about your PGP signatures, but I'll
tell you how I feel. I hate them. They add nothing to your posts and
just clutters them up. So I'd like to suggest that you stop
incorporating them in your messages.

Your request has been noted.

Please feel free to killfile me if the 12 lines are causing you that
much heartache.


I already felt free to killfile you. I didn't want to, because your
posts are often valuable. And they don't cause me anything like
heartache. That's why I tried to ask politely, rather than trying to
castigate you. I made a suggestion, rather than insisting.

I took the "I suggest you take it off" bit the wrong way then.

This is the only group where anyone's made comment about it; I'll try to
remember.




It really does not bother me but I am always curious as to what it
means, Surely it must serve a purpose.

Thanks Rene

On 12/9/2019 10:55 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:
Ken Blake wrote:
On 12/9/2019 10:11 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Ken Blake wrote:
On 12/9/2019 6:01 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

snip


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ltCCZsUps01BTGZEPXGtY0VVeIUIiQ==
=BAg7
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


I don't know how anybody else feels about your PGP signatures, but I'll
tell you how I feel. I hate them. They add nothing to your posts and
just clutters them up. So I'd like to suggest that you stop
incorporating them in your messages.

Your request has been noted.

Please feel free to killfile me if the 12 lines are causing you that
much heartache.


I already felt free to killfile you. I didn't want to, because your
posts are often valuable. And they don't cause me anything like
heartache. That's why I tried to ask politely, rather than trying to
castigate you. I made a suggestion, rather than insisting.

I took the "I suggest you take it off" bit the wrong way then.


OK, thanks for understanding now. Perhaps I didn't do as good a job of
being polite as I meant to.



This is the only group where anyone's made comment about it; I'll try to
remember.





--
Ken

On 12/9/2019 10:56 AM, Ken Springer wrote:
On 12/9/19 10:41 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
On 12/9/2019 10:11 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Ken Blake wrote:
On 12/9/2019 6:01 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

snip


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ltCCZsUps01BTGZEPXGtY0VVeIUIiQ==
=BAg7
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


I don't know how anybody else feels about your PGP signatures, but I'll
tell you how I feel. I hate them. They add nothing to your posts and
just clutters them up. So I'd like to suggest that you stop
incorporating them in your messages.

Your request has been noted.

Please feel free to killfile me if the 12 lines are causing you that
much heartache.


I already felt free to killfile you. I didn't want to, because your
posts are often valuable. And they don't cause me anything like
heartache. That's why I tried to ask politely, rather than trying to
castigate you. I made a suggestion, rather than insisting.

Didn't there used to be a rule, or at least a gentleman's agreement,
that sig files shouldn't be more than 4 lines?


"Rule" is too strong a word. But yes, it was and still is a usenet
standard. It can't be enforced.


Mine is slightly larger, but easily fixed.


*Slightly* larger doesn't bother me a lot, but since you mentioned yours
I'll make a quick comment about it:

I'm not interested in what operating system, browser, or
newsreader/e-mail client you use, nor what versions they are. But since
having that in your signature makes it only slightly larger, I hardly
care. As a matter of fact, I didn't notice that it was over four lines
until you mantioned it.

--
Ken

On 12/9/2019 10:49 AM, Ken Springer wrote:
On 12/9/19 9:48 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
On 12/9/2019 9:40 AM, Ken Springer wrote:
On 12/9/19 5:04 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:
Imo, the quality of the icon design has gone downhill over the last few
years. Not just Apple, but every where. They are no longer visually
intuitive.
Were they ever though? I mean, about the only one that I can recall
(ever) looking like what it's supposed to be is trash / recycle bin.

There will never be a UI that is intuitive all users. Simply not
possible. So icons need to be intuitive for the majority, or at least a
number of groups.

Take a look at the desktop icon for for File Manager from Windows 3.x:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Manager_(Windows)

Now look at W10's icon for File Explorer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Explorer

The purpose of File Manager/Windows Explorer/File Explorer is to
organize your files on floppies or hard drive, thumb drive, etc. Which
of those 2 icons do you think better represent where you are going to be
working by referring to something you've seen in your life?

Document icons used to have lines on them that indicated something in
writing. A folder icon looked like a partially open folder with
something inside, when that icon was selected or the folder was not empty.

The icons were also large enough to be easily identifiable. Not the
small things you see today.

Your trash can example is so accurate. The icon used to look like a 33
gal. trash can. As opposed to the square with a triangle on top as was
used by Gmail for some time.

I've seen some icons that actually had the text as part of the icon.


I use the smallest icons possible on my desktop and task bar, to provide
room for as many as possible. So, with a few exceptions, most of them
are unrecognizable. For most, I rely much more on the test accompanying
the icon.

It sounds as if you are like my sister. She has icons everywhere.


No I don't. I only have them at the edges of the screen, so can see them
around the Windows that are there.


Tnhey bother me, I can never seem to find anything. So I use search
much of the time, and moving to hotkeys. Also, I've started using sleep
rather than shutdown. Get back to where I was much faster.


I use neither sleep nor shutdown. My computer stays on. The only time I
turn it off is when I go away on vacation.



Could the icons be better designed to be more recognizable? For some,
yes. For others, I can't think of how. But I hardly care. Again, I rely
much more on the text accompanying the icon.

But lots of programs don't have text below the icons, anymore. And when
you have to start fiddling with the screen just to read it, the simple
solutions don't work. Those icons tend to stay the same.


Programs have text below the icon? No, I'm not talking about programs
having text below the icon. I'm talking about the text that *I* put
under the shortcut icons on the desktop.


--
Ken

On 12/9/19 11:34 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
On 12/9/2019 10:49 AM, Ken Springer wrote:
On 12/9/19 9:48 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
On 12/9/2019 9:40 AM, Ken Springer wrote:
On 12/9/19 5:04 AM, Dan Purgert wrote:
Imo, the quality of the icon design has gone downhill over the last few
years. Not just Apple, but every where. They are no longer visually
intuitive.
Were they ever though? I mean, about the only one that I can recall
(ever) looking like what it's supposed to be is trash / recycle bin.

There will never be a UI that is intuitive all users. Simply not
possible. So icons need to be intuitive for the majority, or at least a
number of groups.

Take a look at the desktop icon for for File Manager from Windows 3.x:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Manager_(Windows)

Now look at W10's icon for File Explorer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Explorer

The purpose of File Manager/Windows Explorer/File Explorer is to
organize your files on floppies or hard drive, thumb drive, etc. Which
of those 2 icons do you think better represent where you are going to be
working by referring to something you've seen in your life?

Document icons used to have lines on them that indicated something in
writing. A folder icon looked like a partially open folder with
something inside, when that icon was selected or the folder was not empty.

The icons were also large enough to be easily identifiable. Not the
small things you see today.

Your trash can example is so accurate. The icon used to look like a 33
gal. trash can. As opposed to the square with a triangle on top as was
used by Gmail for some time.

I've seen some icons that actually had the text as part of the icon.


I use the smallest icons possible on my desktop and task bar, to provide
room for as many as possible. So, with a few exceptions, most of them
are unrecognizable. For most, I rely much more on the test accompanying
the icon.

It sounds as if you are like my sister. She has icons everywhere.


No I don't. I only have them at the edges of the screen, so can see them
around the Windows that are there.


Tnhey bother me, I can never seem to find anything. So I use search
much of the time, and moving to hotkeys. Also, I've started using sleep
rather than shutdown. Get back to where I was much faster.


I use neither sleep nor shutdown. My computer stays on. The only time I
turn it off is when I go away on vacation.



Could the icons be better designed to be more recognizable? For some,
yes. For others, I can't think of how. But I hardly care. Again, I rely
much more on the text accompanying the icon.

But lots of programs don't have text below the icons, anymore. And when
you have to start fiddling with the screen just to read it, the simple
solutions don't work. Those icons tend to stay the same.


Programs have text below the icon? No, I'm not talking about programs
having text below the icon. I'm talking about the text that *I* put
under the shortcut icons on the desktop.

Some do, some don't, some are optional. And maybe to be clear, I'm
talking about the icons in a window associated with a program.



--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 70.0.1
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

"Dan Purgert" wrote

| email program. Yet OE6 is arguably better than current
| products despite being 18 years old. The program folder
| is 4 MB. TBird is 90 MB, stuffed with dotnet crap, but no
| help file in sight. Even the Mozilla people don't seem to
| have full docs for things like prefs.
|
| OK, but how much of the OE stuff is crammed "somewhere else"? I'm only
| asking, because I know that it's a little more "deeply integrated" than
| Tbird.
|
| Not that I think ~90MB is hiding out there.
|

Fair question. It seems to be mostly self-contained, but
if I were dealing with HTML email it would be different.
Then it uses the IE libraries: shdocvw, mshtml, etc.

|
| It's not difficult to write software that runs on
| all Windows versions -- backward and forward. That's
| like being able to write a program for current Linux and
| have it work on RedHat 4 seamlessly, with no additional
| support files or adjustments needed.
|
| Depends what the software is written in. I mean, as long as you're not
| relying on some library that isn't available in RHEL4, it's quite likely
| to work. Same with Windows, of course -- I mean, if I write something
| that relies on whatever the current dotnet is, it's probably not going
| to work in winXP.
|
No. But you can stick with the API and in that
case it might run on Win95 if you need it to. Dotnet
is a mess all its own.

| Linux support is typically 18 months. When I want
| to install anything it needs numerous updates of system
| files. Ridiculous stuff like 6.143.213.77 isn't good enough.
| It has to be 6.143.213.88.
|
| That sounds very much like your only experience is with either "rolling
| release" distros, or the "testing" releases of otherwise "stable"
| distros (such as the three "short-term" releases Ubuntu puts out between
| their 5-year-support "LTS" ones).
|

Mandrake/Mandriva and Suse. I used to try them
periodically to see if they were usable yet.
My test was whether I could set it up without having
to use a console window or rummage around in /etc,
and whether I could get a good, easy firewall that
would allow me to block all in/out traffic by process.
It always fails on all counts. (No, iptables is not a
usable, easy firewall.)

| ha, that sounds like my dad. Always disparaging what I did in my free
| time, regardless of how good my grades were, or how little "free time" I
| actually had between school / work / after-school stuff. "Oh, you're
| playing on the computer ~again~" (as I'm trying to learn to program, or
| whatever ... or yes, sometimes playing games).
|

I suppose it always looks like unhealthy obsession to
the outside observer. When I first discovered I could
write my own scripts and software I was crazy for awhile.
Missing sleep. Taking off from work and staying up until
4AM, then starting again at 11. I learned a lot but it
was an oddly obsessive mental state. I was addicted to
concentrated, linear thinking at the very limit of my
capacity -- as a kind of high.

| down into /etc to change a program setting? Or maybe you
| just regard that as simple? In Windows it's been almost
|
| As opposed to C:/PROGRA~1 ? Ultimately they're both the start of
| hierarchies where you find config files.
|
No one has to do that. You just go to Tools-
Options. Except with things like Firefox. Most
Windows software has a UI for all available settings.

| Never was part of that -- the oldest I remember interacting with (and by
| proxy of "hey what's this thing?") is a mimeograph machine. Though I do
| know of the old photo-sensitive typeset machines.
|

Ah. That word recalls to me the sweet smell of that ink.