StarOffice

From openSUSE

About

StarOffice is Sun Microsystems' commercial office suite. As of version 8, StarOffice supports the OpenDocument standard. StarOffice stems from the codebase developed by OpenOffice.org with some additional features.

The version sold in East Asia is known as StarSuite and is functionally identical to StarOffice, with full file interchange and compatibility, but includes language and font support for Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Features

The program includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software, drawing tool and database. StarOffice supports the XML file format, including (as of StarOffice 8) the OpenDocument standard, and can generate PDF and Flash formats. The program comes with templates, a macro recorder, and a Software Development Kit (SDK).

Proprietary components in StarOffice that are not in OpenOffice.org include:

• several font metric compatible Unicode TrueType fonts containing bitmap representations for better appearance at smaller font sizes
• 12 Western fonts and 7 Asian language fonts (including support for the Hong Kong Supplementary character set)
• Adabas D database
• StarOffice-only templates and sample documents
• large clip art gallery
• sorting functionality for Asian versions
• file filters for additional older wordprocessing formats (including EBCDIC)
• commercial spell checker (note that OpenOffice.org does include a spell checker as well) and thesaurus
• StarOffice Configuration Manager
• Macro Converter for converting Microsoft Office VBA-macros to StarBasic

StarOffice 7 had file filters for WordPerfect, while OpenOffice.org did not. OpenOffice.org 2 added file filters for WordPerfect, so now both programs have filters for the format.

There are also differences in the documentation, training and support options, and some minor differences in the look and icons between the two programs.

Other differences include: StarOffice only supports 10 languages (compared to over 25 for OpenOffice), and StarOffice is only available for the Windows, Linux, Solaris operating systems (while OpenOffice is available for 8 operating systems).

eWeek Labs published an independent evaluation of StarOffice 8 in September 2005 and reported, "we were pleased with the suite's word processing (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc), presentation (Impress) and database (Base) functions. In addition, we experienced generally good results opening and creating Microsoft Office-formatted documents with StarOffice... whether StarOffice 8 can succeed as a wholesale or partial replacement for Microsoft Office will depend on the organization thinking about making the switch." They noted that, "converting complex documents between the two suites' formats will in some cases require tweaking to preserve document appearance. In addition, while StarOffice 8 can be extended through macros and scripting, much like Microsoft Office can, these extensions won't migrate to Microsoft Office without being rewritten. However, StarOffice ships with a Macro Migration wizard that will aid in the migration of Microsoft Visual Basic macros to the StarOffice Basic macro language." They report that StarOffice has a "significantly lower per-user license costs for the Sun suite—$70 for a downloadable version of the product, compared with about $500 for Microsoft Office Professional Edition... [and] perhaps just as important as licensing costs is cross-platform support, and StarOffice clearly beats Microsoft Office here."

History

StarOffice was originally developed by the German company StarDivision, founded by Marco Börries in 1986. The development of the integrated StarOffice started at the end of 1994. Until version 4.2 StarOffice was based on the platform independent c++ class library StarView.

The company and the rights to StarOffice were acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1999 for US$73.5 million, as Sun was seeking to compete with Microsoft Office. Sun soon offered StarOffice 5.2 as a free download for personal use.

Sun then went through a similar exercise to Netscape's release of Mozilla by open-sourcing most of the StarOffice codebase. The resultant open source codebase is developed as OpenOffice.org and is contributed to by both Sun and the open source community. Sun then takes a "snapshot" of the OpenOffice.org code base, integrates proprietary and third-party code modules and markets the package commercially.

In September 2005 Sun released StarOffice 8, adding support for the OpenDocument standard and a number of improvements (based on the OpenOffice.org 2 code).

Pricing and licensing

Traditionally, StarOffice licenses have been sold for around 70 USD, but in 2004, Sun planned to offer subscription-based licenses to Japanese customers for about 1,980 JPY (19 USD) per year (Becker, 2004). P. Ulander, a desktop products manager for Sun, acknowledged that Sun planned to expand subscription-based licenses to other countries, as well.

Sun uses a per-person license for StarOffice, compared to the per-processor licenses used by most software companies. A person can install the software on up to five computers. For example, a small business owner can have the software on his laptop, office and home computers. For another example, if you have both a Windows and Linux computer, you can install StarOffice on both computers.

Sun offers educational licensing to academic institutions and individuals for the cost of the media or of a download. They also offer free Web-based Training and an online tutorial for students and teachers, free support services for teachers including educational templates for StarOffice, and significantly discounted tech support for schools.

See Also

• OpenOffice.org
• KOffice
• OpenDocument

External Links

• StarOffice Home
• StarOffice Educational licenses
• StarOffice vs. Open Office comparison (PDF file)
• "StarOffice 8: StarOffice 8 Is Office's Toughest Rival Yet", Jason Brooks, eWeek Labs Review, September 27, 2005