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Review: SoftMaker Office 2006

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Hurricane John Page Icon Posted 2007-07-09 3:18 PM
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rgisondi - 2007-07-09 2:41 PM

Both version.

Like most of the user I prefer HPC because I have to write long test on the moove typing fast.

Unfortunately the 900C has a wonderful keyboard but with Texmaker you can type only slow otherwise you miss part of words, and you have to pay attention and correct all the text step by step. All this in painful.

Softmaker says that the problem is under the focus of their programmer, but for now they haven't found any solution.


They've been working on that problem since 2002......so far their solution has been - don't type so fast! D'oh
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C:Amie Page Icon Posted 2007-07-09 4:22 PM
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Oh well, so I'm tate to the party on that bug.. actually now that people are mentioning it, I have a very hazy recollection of seeing the problem myself under the original release of TM2002.

Are people saying that this is simply a MP phenomena? I assume not.
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RTFM Page Icon Posted 2007-07-09 5:55 PM
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Oddly enough, it looks *just* like Abiword.... "borrowed" source maybe?

http://www.pcselfhelp.net/images/reviews/abiword/a1-full.jpg

Also the MP9xx is known to having keyboard lag/missing key presses. Something to do with the keyboards priority being set to low in CE.

Cheers.
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Encore *_guest_*
Encore *_guest_* Page Icon Posted 2007-07-10 7:51 AM
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mmm, that a disapointment. guess it'll be a case of making the bulk in RTF and formatting usong a desktop word processor...
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chiark Page Icon Posted 2007-07-10 11:21 AM
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Thanks for the review Clinton. Of particular interest to me is change tracking: I use this all the time at the moment as I am writing formal business documentation that needs signoff and change control applied. The other "interesting" thing will be to see how well it copes with embedded objects that WinCE can't possibly hope of understanding. Fingers are crossed that it'll just leave them be.

RTFM, that's a pretty offensive conjecture you're making there: SoftMaker have been developing their office suite for years, and have invested massive amounts of effort into it. To insinuate that they're "borrowing" FOSS stuff incorrectly is stunningly rude.

It's *just* like AbiWord in the same way that Abiword is *just* like MS Word. ie. it isn't. It's a word processor. Icons, layout, rulers, menus, status bar are all there but different.

Edited by chiark 2007-07-10 11:29 AM
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clintonfitchdotcom Page Icon Posted 2007-07-10 12:54 PM
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chiark - 2007-07-10 10:21 AM

Thanks for the review Clinton. Of particular interest to me is change tracking: I use this all the time at the moment as I am writing formal business documentation that needs signoff and change control applied. The other "interesting" thing will be to see how well it copes with embedded objects that WinCE can't possibly hope of understanding. Fingers are crossed that it'll just leave them be.


Chiark, thanks for the comments. I use Change Tracking all the time as well and I've been quite impressed with it in TextMaker. Frankly, I can't find any difference between it and Word and when you save a document in Word format in TextMaker, it keeps the changes tracking on - nice touch. The only thing it doesn't do is put who made the change if you change formats.
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chasmanor
chasmanor Page Icon Posted 2007-07-10 2:38 PM
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Just tested myself with Office 2006. 85WPM (for three minutes). No lag at all. I use this program all the time, as I am a writer, and have never had that problem on either 900c or Jornada.
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chiark Page Icon Posted 2007-07-10 3:53 PM
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been playing, and gosh something I'm doing is blowing it up nicely. Even with 70MB of RAM allocated, I'm getting memory errors... On a 34 page, 1MB document. Admittedly, there's a lot of embedded stuff in there which might be really causing the issues.
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Sch01ar Page Icon Posted 2007-07-10 5:30 PM
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In my own experience, and I'm aware that I seem to be the only person saying this, but ... I find memory problems and crashing on opening files not infrequent occurances. Also TM 06 is too slow for me. Sure it runs swiftly on the Smartbook, but on the Jornada it is noticeably slower than 2002. NEC performance is worse; I ebayed a 900c but the typing bug makes it unusable for me. Again my experience with Softmaker support - the big 2002 version row a year ago on their boards, which CMONEX will recall - differs considerably

On the plus side, the PC versions of both Textmaker and Planmaker are great, the best Office replacements I've found. Also working in the native .tmd files (for Text Maker) makes it a little nippier; but the .tmd file format has changed between 2002 and 2006 versions. This means if you've got a MIPS HPC as well as ARM you can't use .tmd reliably to share files, as MIPS support has been discontinued.

Take advantage of the 30 day trial and see if you really need this. I've got 2002 and 2006 loaded on all my machines for the odd document that needs them, but at the end of the day it's just a file viewer to me.
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cmonex Page Icon Posted 2007-07-10 6:28 PM
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RTFM - 2007-07-09 11:55 PM

Oddly enough, it looks *just* like Abiword.... "borrowed" source maybe?

http://www.pcselfhelp.net/images/reviews/abiword/a1-full.jpg


i dont find much similarity there... strange idea that they'd copy abiword. very strange. how did you think of this at all? heh, as someone else suggested, then maybe abiword copies ms word.
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RTFM Page Icon Posted 2007-07-10 7:18 PM
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Wow, people take things wayyyyyyyy to seriously around here. Did anybody notice the at the end? Apparently not. So much for senses of humor.

But since a few opened a can of worms i might as well rant for awhile... Sure Abiword tries to copy ms word, the world needed a free word replacement... However there is no available source for ms word. Abiword was written from scratch, TM may also be written from scratch, but with the availability of Abiwords source, there is a good chance bits may have been borrowed. Without seeing TM's code, we will never know.

Doesnt it strike you as a bit fishy that Abiword has its own format .abw... and TM has .tmd? Ms word doesnt have .msw At any rate, was suppose to be a joking comment, but honestly, its a dog eat dog word and code gets recycled more than most of you non coders will ever know. There is a 50/50 chance i'm right, or maybe even wrong. We will never know unless TM goes open source. On that note, who cares, at least they are still making HPC software. Props to them.

Anyway, until anybody can prove otherwise, quit flaming. There is a reason i live in America.. FREEDOM OF SPEECH.

Sch01ar: I applaud you for giving your 'own' experience. Every time i post about mine i get the same answer.. " That never happens on mine" .." you did something wrong " etc etc etc.

Cheers.
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Desertway Page Icon Posted 2007-07-10 9:09 PM
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I have had a number of problems with Textmaker on the J720. It runs very slowly. It also crashes when I try to load a document from a large directory. This is with a J720 upgraded with 728 chip.
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cmonex Page Icon Posted 2007-07-10 10:43 PM
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RTFM:
maybe it didnt occur to you that maybe it indeed doesnt happen on the device the person who answers owns.

as for the msw argument, i always thought tmd is like pwd. so maybe textmaker copies pocketword.

btw, i dont think softmaker can risk doing that.
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H2OGuru Page Icon Posted 2007-07-10 11:30 PM
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I have the same problem of the lagging keyboard. I posted on their support board like others have. It's irritating. But it does not seen as bad on 2006--but it is still there. I only notice it on a 900C. I have two of them and both behave the same way.

Still, I like their software and I have confidence that they wil eventually fix the problem.

H2OG
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chiark Page Icon Posted 2007-07-11 4:35 AM
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Wow, people take things wayyyyyyyy to seriously around here. Did anybody notice the at the end? Apparently not. So much for senses of humor.


Ah, OK, a smilie negates slander. That's all right then.

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but with the availability of Abiwords source, there is a good chance bits may have been borrowed

Don't judge everyone by your own standards.

You are suggesting that SoftMaker has broken the AbiWord licensing terms and have borrowed btis from their source: you are bringing their whole product, approach and professionalism into question. If you can't see why this is an extremely damning thing to say, well, I'm not going to convince you otherwise...

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Abiword has its own format .abw... and TM has .tmd

I shall refrain from passing comment on that.

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word and code gets recycled more than most of you non coders will ever know.

Code reuse is one thing. Stealing source, breaking licensing agreements is another.

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There is a 50/50 chance i'm right


No there isn't. There's a 50/50 chance when you toss a coin that it lands heads. As to whether a highly regarded company has broken licensing laws and borrowed open code, well, that isn't anywhere near 50/50. Just because there's two options doesn't mean the options are equal.


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We will never know unless TM goes open source

Again, baseless. You could try asking them. I daresay they've got standards to ensure that their code is untainted. By implication, you're assuming every proprietary piece of software is tainted and asking them to open up to prove otherwise. That's an amazing position to hold.

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On that note, who cares, at least they are still making HPC software. Props to them.

Very gracious of you.

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Anyway, until anybody can prove otherwise, quit flaming. There is a reason i live in America.. FREEDOM OF SPEECH.

Oh gosh, here we go again. If you want to write baseless accusations, set up your own site to do it. Publishing such offensive rubbish as you've written can cause the publisher problems. HPCfactor has recently taken heat over information published, and it's not a nice position to be in.

I love the American way of toting "FREEDOM OF SPEECH", normally in capitals. With freedom comes responsibility...

Now back to the topic.

Edited by chiark 2007-07-11 5:02 AM
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