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Good Office suite for Linux

gute Nachrichten für alle Linux-Anwender: SoftMaker Office 2016 für
Linux ist fertig und wird ausgeliefert!

Das neue SoftMaker Office für Linux besitzt dieselben 400 Verbesserungen
wie SoftMaker Office 2016 für Windows – von kleinen Verbesserungen wie
dem "Dark Theme" und der Unterstützung für 4K-Monitore bis zu großen
neuen Features wie Pivottabellen, Arbeitsblättern mit einer Million
Zeilen, Diagrammen in TextMaker und Presentations, EPUB-Export zum
Erstellen von E-Books, erweiterten PDF-Exportmöglichkeiten u.v.m.

Ergänzt werden diese um linuxspezifische Verbesserungen wie die
OpenGL-beschleunigte Bildschirmdarstellung sowie – erstmals unter
Linux – den vollständig integrierten Duden Korrektor in SoftMaker
Office Professional 2016 für Linux.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Standard und Professional

Bereits mit SoftMaker Office Standard 2016 für Linux erhalten Sie die
vollständigen Programme TextMaker, PlanMaker und Presentations sowie die
SoftMaker-Add-ons für Thunderbird.

SoftMaker Office Professional 2016 für Linux ergänzt diese um
hochwertige Sprachwerkzeuge:

- Duden Korrektor, die beste deutsche Grammatik- und Rechtschreibprüfung
- Duden: Deutsches Universalwörterbuch, d-a-s deutsche Wörterbuch
- Duden: Großes Fremdwörterbuch, das Fremdwörter verständlich macht
- Vier Langenscheidt-Wörterbücher für Deutsch/Englisch, Deutsch/
Französisch/Deutsch, Deutsch/Italienisch und Deutsch/Spanisch

Weitere Informationen:
http://www.softmaker.de/

16 CommentsSorted by Oldest First

Sehr geehrte SoftMaker-Kunden,

wir haben heute morgen einen Newsletter an Sie geschickt. Nur: diesen
hätten Sie gar nicht bekommen sollen, denn Sie haben sich aus unserem
Newsletterverteiler ausgetragen.

Der Fehler entstand durch einen Fehler bei der Datenselektion. Wir
hatten ausschließlich die Kunden angeschrieben, die gerade keinen
Newsletter haben wollten. Die Kunden wiederum, die den Newsletter
abonniert haben, haben den Newsletter nicht bekommen.

Dieser unerwünschte Mailversand ist ärgerlich, und daher bitten wir
um Entschuldigung.

Wir treffen Maßnahmen, damit sich das nicht wiederholt.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Ihre
SoftMaker Software GmbH

Thanks a lot for posting the info on SoftMaker Office!

I've been using that office suite for almost six years on Windows now, and it can really replace MS Office.

Cheers,
Martin

 

Yeah, I read very good reviews. One of my reasons to migrate from Windows to OS X and not to Linux, was the availability of Office for Mac. If I would have to make the decision now, I could consider Linux with Softmaker.


BTW: Perhaps it's a good idea to investigate whether Softmaker can be set as preview app (Translation > Action > Preview document) as an alternative to Office.

I don't know about Linux, but on Windows, CT's "Preview document" feature opens the standard program for the target file format. On my system, for MS Office files, that's the programs of the SoftMaker Office suite. So instead of Word and Excel, TextMaker and SoftMaker Presentations are opened. I haven't tried with Excel preview files, but they should be opened in PlanMaker without any problems.

 

From a thorough German review (C't 2/16): Die Linux-Version von SoftMaker Office 2016 überzeugt durch eine hohe Geschwindigkeit und vor allem durch den problemlosen Do- kumentaustausch mit Microsoft Office. Wer unter Linux Word-Dokumente, Excel-Tabel- len und PowerPoint-Präsentationen in den aktuellen Dateiformaten bearbeiten will, findet derzeit nichts Besseres. Hier ist SoftMaker Office LibreOffice weit überlegen
Thanks Hans, that looks very interesting! Off to check it out!

 

Sorry to disinter this ancient thread, but in case anyone else comes across it, I recently tried Softmaker Office and, sorry, but for a translator dealing with third party documents it's shit.
It completely trashes the document formatting and in addition I couldn't see any advantages over LibreOffice. I was looking to replace a very old version of MS Office which I run in a Windows VM, but this is definitively not the answer!

 

I've been using SoftMaker Office on Windows for almost seven years now, and I haven't had a single case of "completely trashed formatting" of third-party documents. According to my experience, SoftMaker Office is far superior to LibreOffice as far as MS Office compatibility and ease of use are concerned?

amos, did you try SoftMaker Office on Windows or on Linux? And what version did you use? Was it the current one (2016)?
Perhaps the problem you had was actually a problem with fonts not being installed -- though actually, I can't imagine that. On my computer, SoftMaker Office doesn't trash the formatting even if a substitute font is displayed.
I tried it on Linux. Certainly I didn't have the fonts used in the files installed, but I wouldn't expect Softmaker to change the fonts in this case. (The fonts are installed in my Windows VM. On opening the files edited in Softmaker in MS Office in the VM, it transpired that the fonts were indeed changed.) You might call that expected behaviour, I don't. (And it's not unusual to receive files with customer's own fonts.)

 I'll give you that it beats LibreOffice (which is a dog) for ease of use. But it's not a replacement for MS Office when dealing with customer files, which is what it claims to be.

Have you tried installing the MS fonts on your Linux system? Perhaps that'll do the trick (just a guess).

Here is a helpful article about installing MS fonts on Linux (at least I as a Linux newbie found it helpful). 
1 person likes this

One method that works regardless of GNU/Linux distribution is to add any (additional) font you want to use on a specific user in the ~/.fonts folder (simply create it if it's not there). After restarting an application, the fonts are recognized and usable.


Beware of having too many fonts "installed" as it can slow down operation.


If you have a Windows installation (even VM), you can copy the font files from there (although for some later Windows font versions, usage of Microsoft fonts outside running Windows system is prohibited by EULA, if the EULA is valid in you country that is)


Notes:

~ = the tilde means home folder so /home/nameofuser/.fonts

On many file managers, Ctrl+H toggles hide/unhide hidden files (those starting with a dot). Otherwise, check in the View menu.


Thanks to both of you for the helpful tips on fonts.
Perhaps I'll try Softmaker again one day, as compatibility of the older MS Office wanes.
Do you send client files edited using SoftMaker only back to clients? Have you never experienced any problems?
Also, what about customer's own fonts? When I edit files containing customer's own fonts In MS Word, the fonts are unchanged (even if I can't view them). This is a bit of problem with SoftMaker, no?

 

I currently mostly work on LibreOffice 5, with Microsoft Office 2010 running from Linux through PlayOnLinux and on a Windows VM as well.


LibreOffice helps with all internal files (CVs, bookkeeping, exporting billingual document for review, tracking changes, glossary management, etc.) and most docs received (simple excel files, or non complex formatting .doc/.docx). I just open them on MS Office for a final review if need be or for an occasional CodeZapper.


The rest, I manage with MS Office. I also have WPS Office installed (but only use it occasionally) and currently testing SoftOffice, so I can't yet report on their usage yet.


Some helpful extensions for LibreOffice:

Antidote (if you have Antidote for Linux, that is!)

Languagetool (grammatical (and spellchecking) review for other language pairs than EN-FR)

If no Antidote and mainly using French as target language, I recommend Grammalecte over Languagetool

Linguist (detailed word count, unrecognized words by spellchecker, list words by frequency, complete word list)

MultiFormatSave (save as odt, docx, pdf, etc. all at once or selectively)

Alternative Find & Replace for Writer

Copy only visible cells (for Calc)

Export As Images (for Impress or Draw)

ExportToGlossary (to quickly export XLSX or CSV glossary as TXT, intended for OmegaT but compatible with Cafetran from what I know)


I can't find an option in SoftOffice to disable "font replacement" feature, only to disable already installed/recognized fonts. LibreOffice offers a configurable font replacement feature, but does not change a font if you don't set it up for it. An Office program should definitely leave the fonts as they are unless you specifically ask it to replace them! This is a not go for sure.


If they are non critical, you might try to extract embedded fonts from a PDF. There are some online services for that, or applications such as FontForge can help you do it. I never ventured to do it so far, so can't report on that either. If it's critical for DTP etc., would have to see with the file provider...



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