Re: [PLUG] Netraverse LUG Sponsorship Program

["Arthur S. Alexion" <arthur@alexion.com>]

On Mon, 2002-12-16 at 21:57, W. Chris Shank wrote:
> On Mon, 2002-12-16 at 21:03, Arthur S. Alexion wrote:
> > On Mon, 2002-12-16 at 07:48, Tobias DiPasquale wrote:
> > > On Sun, 2002-12-15 at 21:23, Arthur S. Alexion wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > C'mon, isn't there some windows program that you would rather not do
> > > > without on a regular basis, but have gotten to the point where you can
> > > > do most of your work in Linux?  Win4Lin and VMWare are a nice way to
> > > > spend your day in Linux while using that one vertical market windows app
> > > > that you really need to use.
> > > 
> > > Which would be??? What is it that you need to use every day that you
> > > can't find a suitable replacement that is native Linux? Let me know and
> > > we'll see if we can find something for you.
> > 
> > Time Matters legal case management software.  It's like a super
> > PIM/Document Management System/MailMerge/Billing System/MUA (I don't use
> > this component) and probably more (http://www.timematters.com/).  Under
> > pressure from some active Linux supporting customers, and a joint
> > venture with Toshiba to market a server appliance, there is now a Linux
> > server, i.e. the back end can run on RedHat 7.2 with Postgres or mySQL,
> > but the clients are still all windows based.
> > 
> Have you attempted running this under wine? How many other lawyers would
> be interested to pay for this functionality under wine? Perhaps you can
> form a coalition and fund the development? 

I haven't, but others have without success.  I don't know about the
Crossover Office stuff, though.

> 
> > As my practice has moved from civil litigation to criminal trials, I
> > have found that I could do with less desktop power and more
> > portability.  I duplicated the stuff I need the most on my Palm Pilot. 
> > The Palm already handles the contacts, the calendaring, and the
> > deadlines, and I have created a pretty respectable case management
> > database for everything else I need (including billing) using a
> > commercial PalmOS RDBMS formerly called thinkDB.  Though thinkDB was
> > just sold by its developer, ThinkingBytes to Dataviz (ThinkingBytes
> > wanted to go totally MS.NET/PocketPC) and renamed "Smart Lists to Go",
> > the Desktop component and synching conduits are still limited to
> > Windows, meaning that, if I want to print, report on, or manipulate my
> > data, I need windows.  I have an ongoing quest to find a Palm based DBMS
> > that will sync with a Linux based desktop, and so far, have failed.
> > 
> Evolution is a pretty good calendaring and contact management -
> especially if you centralize with an LDAP. I think 1.2 has palm syncing
> capability - but I don't have a palm - so I haven't tried?

I looked at this and moved back to jpilot for synching the basic phone
book, calendar, todos and memos.  Curiously, Evolution doesn't sync the
memos; jpilot does.  jpilot does better backups, too.

But the basic apps aren't the problem.  There are a few good linux
solutions for that.  My problem is synching custom palm databases.  I
don't even care what database software I run on the Palm, as long as it
syncs with my Desktop data.  Very few windows solutions here, and none I
have found for Linux.


> 
> > The other Windows program that I find indispensable is QuickBooks. 
> > GNUCash may or may not be a replacement for Quicken, but even Quicken is
> > not a replacement for QuickBooks.
> > 
> I seem to recall crossover supporting Quickbooks now. But you can find
> out for yourself at www.codeweavers.org.

www.codeweavers.COM indicates that Crossover supports Quicken, but no
mention of Quickbooks.  I sent them an email to find out if its an
oversight or whether it is not supported.

> 
> > There is no Acrobat for Linux, just a reader and basic, featureless
> > creator.  No support for forms creation (or form data saving even),
> > annotations, digital signatures, navigations, etc.
> > 
> OpenOffice.org supports printing directly to pdf. Also, I find that
> printing to Postscript (ps) then running ps2pdf acceptable. I've even
> heard of people writing cron scripts that automatically convert any ps
> files in a particular directory to PDF- so you would basically print the
> file to a standard location and it would be converted in a matter of
> minutes.

I don't want to rehash this, but the PDFs that I create using ps2pdf
(which I do a lot) barely scratch the surface of the capability of the
PDF format.  Like I said, "No support for forms creation (or form data
saving even),annotations, digital signatures, navigations, etc."  Not
even close.

> ..
> 
> > I will be very grateful if you could fill any of these needs with an
> > Open Source, Linux replacement (or improvement)
> 
> How grateful?

Depends.

-- 
Arthur S. Alexion <arthur@alexion.com>
Arthur S. Alexion LLC

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