I installed the 30-day trial of WPS Office on a Windows 10 Technical Preview (apparently to have a significant update announcement in a couple of hours).
It is very impressive. The desktop UI is very clean and, while it is unique, there is a great deal of familiarity. It was enough for me to wonder if it is a derivative of AOO, but I think not. For one, the only formats supported are its native WPS, which I haven't explored, and all of the well-known Microsoft Office formats for text, presentation, and spreadsheet, both OOXML (aka, Office 2007-2010 .DOCX, .PPTX, and .XSLX) and the .DOC, .PPT, and .XSL (aka Office 97-2003 or -XP). When you open any of the three apps the first thing you see is a large spread of available template icons. The available forums and other support arrangements seem pretty appealing. I have no sense of the level of traffic or quality of user-provided support. The program has a small footprint and seems very clean. Startup is snappy too. I've done nothing to check on format fidelity and interoperability. It's pretty clear that the target market is the CJK area and North America, and perhaps other locations outside of Europe where ODF support is pretty much a required check-off item or where users don't care, they want Office interoperability more than anything else. I should go back and look at all of the languages the site supports. After the 30-day trial, the app will reduce to a free-to-play basic version or can be converted to a subscription model. This will put it head-to-head with Office 365, and WPS does provide their own cloud storage support. I used it with OneDrive instead, and that worked just fine too. I should see how well the .docx I made opens with the Microsoft Office Word Web App. -----Original Message----- From: Dennis E. Hamilton [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2015 08:40 To: [email protected] Subject: Cloud and Device Office Productivity Offerings I just saw this comparison on ZDNet: <http://www.zdnet.com/pictures/does-microsoft-offer-the-best-android-office-suite-android-office-app-showdown/>. That led me to look into WPS Office. It is cross-platform and apparently focused on interoperability with Microsoft Office binary formats (.doc, .ppt, and .xls although I see that OOXML and PDF are also supported in current releases) although it has its own proprietary format. It is already internationalized: <http://www.wps.com/it/ios/> (demonstrating my favorite second language). The software is produced by Zhuhai Kingsoft Office Software Co., Ltd. in China and appears to be very suitable in the China-Japan-Korea sphere, having arisen from Chinese-language word-processing software originally introduced on DOS in 1988 (and unrelated to Microsoft Works), <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WPS_Office>. [ ... ]
