platforms, including Microsoft Windows 9x, Microsoft Windows NT, and several varieties of UNIX, including Linux. Applixware is commercial software, but much less expensive than Microsoft Word. Currently, Applixware for Linux is priced at $99 (US); you can purchase it from the Applix web site, http://www.applix.com/. Print documentation and support programs are also available, at additional cost. If you prefer to try before buying, you can download a feature-disabled demo version; however, the download is quite large (over 38 MB) and therefore time-consuming (over 3 hours at 28.8 Kbps) unless you have a high-speed connection to the Internet.
Applixware includes eight main components:
Once you've installed Applixware, you can run it by starting X and using a terminal window to issue the following commands:DISPLAY=localhost:0 /opt/applix/applix
If you installed Applixware to a directory other than /opt/applix, you'll need to adapt the second command accordingly.
When Applixware starts up, it displays a window containing the Applixware main menu, shown in Figure 8.1. From the toolbar of the main menu, you can simply click to launch Words, Graphics and Presents, Spreadsheets, Mail, or Data. Alternatively, you can click on the asterisk icon, causing Applixware to display a menu, as shown in Figure 8.2.
Figure 8.3 shows the Words application. Words includes a spelling checker and supports document templates, tables, multimedia, and live links to Applixware and third-party documents. Moreover, it lets you import and export a variety of document formats, including Microsoft Word 2.0, 6.0, 7.0/95, and 97.
Figure 8.4 shows the Presents application, which lets you create presentations in a way that resembles that provided by Microsoft PowerPoint. Presents provides features such as transitions and animation, HTML export, and templates. Its drawing tools let you draw lines, curves, and shapes, and perform other operations, such as rotations and fills. Presents can also import and export PowerPoint presentations and a variety of other document types.
Although a Linux application, such as Words or Presents, may be able to import a Microsoft Office document, the application may not be able to handle the full range of document and object types that can be embedded in an Office document. Some document and object types, for example, require access to a host application that runs only under Microsoft Windows.
Moreover, some Linux applications do not currently support all the styles and options of their Office counterparts. For example, if a document uses Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications, the document will probably not function correctly under Linux.
If you plan on moving documents to and from Office, you may want to save your documents in a portable format (such as RTF), rather than a Microsoft proprietary format. This will significantly improve the chances that your document will work correctly both in Windows and Linux.
Figure 8.5 shows the Spreadsheets application, which provides functions similar to those of Microsoft Excel. Spreadsheets lets you create ordinary spreadsheets as well as 3D charts and sheets, and supports live links to objects created by Applixware and third-party applications, including Applix Data, which provides access to relational databases. Spreadsheets implements Applix's Extension Language Facility (ELF), which lets you add custom functions to the hundreds of built-in functions. Spreadsheets can import and export a variety of document types, including Lotus 1-2-3 (WKS, WK1, WK3, and WK4 files) and Microsoft Excel 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 7.0/95, and 97.
Another popular Linux desktop suite is StarOffice, a product of Sun Microsystems. StarOffice is available free of charge from Sun's web site, http://www.sun.com/products/staroffice/. The download is about 70 MB, requiring over 6 hours at 28.8 Kbps. The office suite is also available on CD-ROM, for a cost of $9.95 plus shipping and handling.
StarOffice includes an extensive range of applications, including:
To install StarOffice from a StarOffice CD-ROM, log in, mount