London Fixed-gear and Single-speed

does anyone have any good recommendations for an open source word processor for the macbook? it seems that they dont come with any form of word when you buy it and i dont want to have to buy anything.

Open Office (openoffice.org)

thanks, im just checking it out now.

erm they do come with text edit

very simple word

is it your mac cherry popping?

It's a good one if you want a straight replacement for MS Office.

There's a spreadsheet, word processor and presentation package in there, and they all work exactly like the MS versions.

it is my first mac, so that would be a yes mr flickwg. so far so good, it all seems to work ok, although it did take a while to get the net to work, but that was a problem with the netgear wireless thing, not the mac.

also there should be a mac office test drive which you can use for 30 days, so you have leopard?

Pages on the Mac, it's the apple equivalent of Word

no i think it still has tiger, but apparently i can download leopard for about £6 now, i forgot how much it will cost later on.

just saw that text edit thing, seems like i wont be downloading open office just yet then. but i was thinking of getting gimp for it, anyone have any comments about that?

Google has an open source word processor as part of their online thing

http://docs.google.com/

Gimp is a little bit more difficult to use than Photoshop, but I think it's just as powerful (I'm not someone who does alot of image manipulation but it's always been adequate for me (after rtfm)). I've never tried it on a Mac. It runs fine on Windows, and obviously brilliant on Linux. One of the complaints about OpenOffice on a Mac is that it doesn't fit in with the rest of the Mac interface-- if this sort of thing annoys you you might try neooffice.

Also, spocalc is a bit of a pain in openoffice (by the way d0cA, it didnt work even with your advice!)

If you want photoshop i could get you CS2 easily, maybe CS3 with illustrator/dreamweaver etc too within a week or so. whisper if you're interested. For free, obviously.

Those two are all you need.

TextEdit is plenty good enough for normal word processing

And iWork has Pages (word processing / layout) Numbers (spreadsheet) and Keynote (presentation) for less than Microsoft Office.

Pages is alright, it's more suited to desktop publishing.

I use *gulp* MS Office on a student license. The Mac version is far better than the Windows one, although I'm dreading Office 2008.

Although if you're writing long documents use LaTeX...

http://www.tug.org/mactex/

Takes a while to get used to but very powerful.

Or Open Office is 100% free and compatible with over 95% of features in Microsoft documents, so you can work on MS Office created files and the people you give the files to will never know that you are using Open Office.

I don't understand the need to pay for something when an excellent alternative exists that is totally free.

I'm not sure I should really be saying that given one of my clients, but there you go. Best tool for the job, happens to be the lowest priced one.

Sometimes people get a bit political about other issues on this forum so I guess it's my turn...

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One of the clearest areas in which the corporate approach to producing something has many problems is software. I believe that everyone's computing experience would be better if Open Source were the default option and proprietary software were only used as a last result in special cases. There are many reasons for this, but, basically, as the man says, "Software wants to be free" (as in dom). Micro$oft got to where they are partly by turning a blind eye to people giving each other free copies because it allowed them to build up that large user base. Giving away software only helps the big boys. Using open source software helps everyone. Apple's only not evil yet because they're smaller.

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Sorry for that but I didn't start this thread and I think there's a connection between fixed gear riding and being politically progressive, and I'm often surprised how few otherwise progressive people and people who espouse an anti-corporate ethos pay so little attention to the importance of open source.

There's a recompiled version of OpenOffice for OSX called Neo Office. That's a lot nicer and faster.

how is riding a fixed gear bike connected to being politically progressive?

Think he means riding a fixed is connected to being particularly aggressive!

Thas what I have herd as well. IT is ment to be fine if you just kearn Gimp but worse if you know photoshop well and try to migrate.

I only ever draw penis on photos so I don't need any thing fancy.Word to Latex, bit of a bitch with graphics at times, or take some getting accustomed to but but the quality of document makes anything made in word look like a school project.


[quote] fuzzbrain:
Sometimes people get a bit political about other issues on this forum so I guess it's my turn...

**************************************

One of the clearest areas in which the corporate approach to producing something has many problems is software. I believe that everyone's computing experience would be better if Open Source were the default option and proprietary software were only used as a last result in special cases. There are many reasons for this, but, basically, as the man says, "Software wants to be free" (as in dom). Micro$oft got to where they are partly by turning a blind eye to people giving each other free copies because it allowed them to build up that large user base. Giving away software only helps the big boys. Using open source software helps everyone. Apple's only not evil yet because they're smaller.

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Sorry for that but I didn't start this thread and I think there's a connection between fixed gear riding and being politically progressive, and I'm often surprised how few otherwise progressive people and people who espouse an anti-corporate ethos pay so little attention to the importance of open source.
/quote]

Word to that.

i think i see what you mean fuzzbrain, but i dont think it applies to just fixed gear riders, but all who use bikes as their main means of travel.
thanks asm, im going to download gimp and see what thats like, if that doesnt work then ill get in touch.

Yeah, I found sorting out graphics the hardest part. I've had people ask how I get my lab reports looking so good!

"I think there's a connection between fixed gear riding and being politically progressive"

i'm really not sure about this, more of a connection between FG and political apathy, masquerading as some kind of form of progressive belief.

Nor am I. I'd go as far as saying there is no link.

Don't we have a torie candidate on here who rides a fixed condor? Hardly progressive.

and, going by the 'what do you do' thread, a shitload of people whose line of work is anything but progressive.

and we all probably support sweatshop labour, as most bike parts are made in the far east in hovels by children wearing rags.

yes, true.

i think i better curb my rant there and then... everyone seems really nice and friendly and caring, which is important in this world we live in.

I'm pretty sure that Mouse isn't ACTUALLY a tori candidate. It was just the amusing caption he put under his (pretty preppy) photo.

Man,this shit is f *cking priceless!

well put it this way, im not politically apathetic, i just choose to display and take part in political activities which are outside the mainstream of politics, an area of politics i despise and have utter contempt for. as for riding fixed, it feels faster than any other bike iv ridden, is a lot more fun and although it has plenty of space for upgrading and such, i find there is alot less maintenance compared to my geared road bike. also i think the asthetics of the bike itself are very nice as well. as for the mac, well i suppose i was bought in by the whole design of it, and everything i do on it could be done on any other machine, but oh well. the open source stuff all links back to my view that as a society we would all be a lot better off if we all shared skills and such so that we could all work on programs and such together and cooperate to make things better rather than having a few people competing and copy writing everything and everyone else suffereing as a result of other those peoples greed.

Like I said,priceless!

+1, stick it through TextMate and it's a monster. It isn't for everyone, though. But I got into it just by writing letters, and it looks a lot better than anything else can produce.

I am completely apathetic :).

... I mean :|