office systems on Unix

[KIMBLEP%UTSIV1.BITNET at cornellc.cit.cornell.edu]

We currently run All-in-One on our VMS system.  Does there exist Unix
software which has anything like decent office facilities? If you
have had first hand experience with one, we would much appreciate
any experiences yoy could share.

A little background for the "Unix has it all" crowd:
it is precisely the fact that Unix has so many facilities
and so many ways of using them that is intimidating to
people like our All-in-one users; they are typically neither computer
literate nor interested in becoming so. Yet they need convenient
Email, word processing, printing, filing, scheduling, etc.
Office systems provide proven ways to accomodate (I need a speller)
such individuals with minimum training and little additional
job stress.

We are happy with All-in-one in so far as it meets the criteria expressed
in the previous paragraph. However it is much too slow, it does not
use the native file naming nor directory structure in a natural way,
it requires entirely too much specialized knowledge and training for
systems programming, it is too expensive and we can't make it available
on Unix or Ultrix machines.  In short it makes our office workers happy
and our systems programmers mad.  As one of the latter I can't see why
a Unix or VMS system couldn't provide a solution which is portable and equally
attractive to both groups. But has anyone ACTUALLY done this?

As usual, will summarize to the net if sufficient interest.


Ken Kimble      _._ ._. _._
UTSI
Tullahoma, TN 37388