Software that I am working on includes a database interface that is built in Lotus Approach, Lotus WordPro, and some in Lotus 123 part Lotus SmartSuite. I chose Approach years ago because of its user-friendliness. No other end-user database product can claim to be as featured AND as user-friendly to the intended audience: end users. Unfortunately, IBMand Lotus seem tohave no intention of recompiling the SmartSuite kernels to be less dependent on the currently-dominant operating system.

That forced me to adapt my 123-based spreadsheets to OpenOffice.org. OO.o has some very nice features (some of the charting features are nice but the chart editing process is stressful). but they don't integrate well with Lotus Approach, the databse application. It may be possible to use KDevelop or other tools to simulate and emulate Lotus Approach, but that would involve a large amount of programming. OO.o has "Base", but it has nowhere near the functionality of Approach.

As for word processing, OO.o has "Write", but I cannot seriously and comfortably use it for master documents as done in WordPro. In WordPro, one selects an existing document or creates a new one and then links or imports other new or existng documents into the "master" or main document. In WordPro, each document linked retains its own formatting, unlike in Write, in which formating of a linked document is subordinated to the main document. This has unfortunae and irritating consequences, particularly when the other documents were meticulously and painstakingly produced. Moreover, in WordPro, one can apply headers and footers that can be directly edted by merely inserting the cursor. What is very nice about WordPro is that each linked (as opposed to inserted) document gets a tab (similar to the tabs in spreadsheets, but in LWP, the tab is at the top of the document and cannot be relocated) which the user can rename, and then the user can drag left or right to reposition the document's relative location for reading and printing purposes. Word Pro also gives several options for viewing and simultaneously editing documents in a preview mode of choice.