Softmaker Office 2018 beta for Linux - free

[ssfc72]

Softmaker Office 2018 beta is available for download.

http://www.softmaker.com/en/softmaker-office-linux

Bill

[fox]

Yep, I've been testing it this week. Interface is much nicer than the older version, but like every other MS-compatible Linux office suite, the translations aren't perfect.

[William Park]

What's the history behind it?  Trying to compare SoftMaker vs LibreOffice, all google gives me is marketing talk.

[fox]

I don't know how old the company is, but they make PC as well as Linux versions of their office software. It's a German company, I believe. They have been around since at least 2012, but I think longer. It is proprietary software, but with a selling prince well below that of MS Office, and they make a free version as well. They also give the full version away free to university-affiliated folks like me, or at least they gave away their previous version for free. And they sell add-ons like fonts.

Comparing them to LibreOffice, their current version is more Microsoft-like. They also have an option track changes in documents in the margins, which I prefer because you can see the changes in the text without the changed stuff, and the proper paging is shown. For some reason, the only option for track changes in LibreOffice Write is inline, which I find distracting. (Even WPS Office allows tracking in the margins of the document.) Having said that, LibreOffice translations of MS Office documents has greatly improved, and they are now as good or better than any of the other Linux options.

[buster]

Not sure why it would be chosen over Libreoffice. I believe Softmaker's spread sheet doesn't quite handle ODF yet (though their word processor does). Don't think they have a database function either.

LibreOffice seems more universal, and everything about it is 'open'. It grows each year.

I use ODS almost exclusively unless someone writes back and can't open it. MS Office opens ODS now as well. (HTML format might be an option so it can be opened in a webpage.)

My own history is Lotus 1-2-3, MS Office, Gnumeric and KDE branches, OpenOffice and for years LibreOffice, if anyone cares. 

[fox]

What office program works best for you really depends on what you use it for. In my case, the spreadsheet isn't the issue; any one of the available spreadsheets, including gnumeric, are more than I need. But then I don't do anything all that sophisticated in a spreadsheet.

Word processing is completely different. I collaborate with people when I write manuscripts (meaning a lot of track changes), and the tables and figures in them do not translate well in MS compatible products. For this I need actual Microsoft Office, but the other products are getting better and better each year, and I look forward to the day that one of them can do what I need. I still use LibreOffice for documents I produce for just me.

Presentation programs are even more problematic. I have a lot of PowerPoint presentations for lectures and conferences. Open up one of them in any Linux presentation package and the odds are 10 to 1 that at least one slide will have a missing image or a mashed up appearance or both. Usually it's a lot more than one slide. So until these issues are resolved, no Linux office program can meet my needs and I thank the stars for Wine and the commercial wine-based software called CrossOver that makes it possible for me to run MS Office programs natively on my distro.

[buster]

Must say I compose mostly presentations and spreadsheet pages. Even the multi-paged and interconnected spreadsheets work well in MS. All my presentations have been done in Linux. Pretty well never send them anywhere.

By the way, don't you still have a job? Shouldn't you be lecturing or tutoring or marking or something?

[fox]

I'm marking as I'm typing this. 

[Jason]

Yep, I've been testing it this week. Interface is much nicer than the older version, but like every other MS-compatible Linux office suite, the translations aren't perfect.

Are the translations to/from DOCX format about the same, or better?

[fox]

I would say that so far, I don't see any improvements in them over the 2016 versions.

[Jason]

I would say that so far, I don't see any improvements in them over the 2016 versions.

Sorry, to clarify, I meant is the conversion any better than LibreOffice or about the same?

[fox]

In my experience, no. It seems to depend on the document though. Sometimes LibreOffice is best, sometimes WPS, sometimes Textmaker. Libreoffice has improved a lot in that regard since I became a Linux user.

[Jason]

Thanks, Mike. Was curious about how that was coming along.