Geoffrey Heard wrote:
> At 12:48 PM +0100 14/02/11, Erik Richard Sørensen wrote:
>> Yes, Papyrus stopped with the ver. 12.5.6 in 2007, but they released a 
>> new probably German only Papyrus Office 2011 v. 17.0.2 dec.23 2010, so 
>> at least in German it's still alive.
> 
> They have told me that translation is their problem, Erik. They seem to 
> be nice people who are willing to talk. How is your German? Maybe you 
> should give them a call.

I have been looking at the Papyrus eventually for a Danish translation, 
but part of it is still carbon only and not fully cocoa, - and I don't 
have a good and reliable RCSC translator. - Unluckily I missed the sales 
out on CodeWarrior Gold Editon which is the only one usable for such a 
big integrated app like Papyrus... And my German is about as good as my 
English, but not for a translation from German computer language into 
English - hardly from German to Danish. Computer expressions are so far 
from the English as Danish is from Greek..-)

>> The other 'Big German' - RagTime is still around, but nearly only used 
>> for top-professional use nowadays.
> 
> It's very expensive; in fact, overpriced I would say. And it is not 
> really a WP, as NWP is, rather a total office and publishing package so 
> it is no threat to NWP.

Well, I donot agree here. RagTime /is/ expensive, but think on hwo much 
you get... A textprocessor, an illustration application, a 
post-production application, a spreadsheet + more - all built into just 
_one_ application. By buying RagTime you can dismiss apps like 
Pagemaker, Illustrator and InDesign, and only keeping Photoshop as a 
graphics editor - or in your case - just keep Canvas.:-)

The only 'problem' with RagTime is that the learning curve is very, very 
steep - quite a lot worse than Quark. You /must/ know nearly all 
shortcuts - else RagTime will be very slow working with. - I've been 
using RagTime right since ver. 3.x and am now at ver. 6.0.3, which works 
fine on Leopard. I don't intend to upgrade to the latest ver. now that I 
donø't make that much for others anymore.

>> MarinerWrite and MarinerCalc are also around. Latest ver of Write is 
>> now ver. 3.8 and something like ver. 5.6 for Calc. I know they are 
>> working on a brand new and totally rewritten cocoa version, but they 
>> want to do it right from the buttom.
> 
> Okay -- so they could threaten NWP/NWE's market -- but only when they 
> come out with their Cocoa version.

Maybe.:-) - When I began to translate their MacGourmet Deluxe I also had 
to translate the user guide - a nearly 100 page PDF in A4 size. For this 
I needed the resources and I therefore got that file made in _pages_ of 
all - not in MarinerWrite, because MW doesn't support links neither 
internal nor external... OK, it can be done using AppleScript, but this 
will give such monsterious work and not even guaranteed that it will work...

I wrote to my contact and asked why on earth they didn't either use 
OpenOffice or NisusWriter Pro for that work, but Pages? Huh! I've had so 
many problems making this translation that you won't belive it.:-( - He 
answered me very politely that they were thinking of buying a NWP, but 
then Apple suddenly gave them a copy of iWork 09. - So I had to go out 
and buy iWork 09 myself, since my old ver. 07 was incompatible with 
iWork 09 files...

>> OK, there of course still are the three large compeditors - NeoOffice, 
>> OpenOffice and StarOffice. These three are doing great and as far as 
>> I'm aware of now have more than a 1/3 of the market totally seen on 
>> all platforms. I use the OpenOffice on both Mac and Windows and it's 
>> really great to know that no matter /where/ the docs are created they 
>> will always be the same no matter on which system you open and edit 
>> again.
> 
> Wow! I didn't think they had penetrated that far. There is very low 
> penetration in Australia, I would say. Some years ago, I tried to get a 
> bunch of non-profits to adopt them rather than pay squillions to 
> Macrosith but to my amazement, they wouldn't make the (slight) effort. 
> Personally, I'm not in love with the look and feel of them although I 
> have NeoOffice on board for specific. non-WP tasks.

The reasons that they've reached that far are all the Linux based 
systems around now. - And here in Denmark more and more county offices 
are now using OpenOffice instead of M$O - and thereby also saved lots 
and lots of millions of dollars of our taxes.:-)

The new and totally OS X native versions of both OpenOffice and 
StarOffice for MaC are so macish that you won't think of it when using 
them. Hereto also now come that the handling of both Semittic and Asian 
languages through the CTL (Complex Text Language) are so close to for 
example NisusWriter Pro that you can open a .odt file made in either 
StarOffice or OpenOffice directly in NWP _without_ having to correct 
that much. - And also those two can open more file types than NWP...

Last year I persuaded an incarnated Windows and MSO user to try the 
OpenOffice 3.x for Windows, and she was really impessed of what it can 
do - and "It's even easier to use than WordPerfect 6".:-) - Next step 
here is to persuade her to buy a MBP, but /that/ will be a hard job.:-))

Cheers, Erik Richard

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Erik Richard Sørensen, Member of ADC, <[log in to unmask]>
NisusWriter - The Future In Multilingual Text Processing - www.nisus.com
Openoffice.org - The Modern Productivity Solution - www.openoffice.org
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