OpenOffice.org 2.3 Review

Peace Frog writes passed us a link to an in-depth review of the newest version of OpenOffice. Instead of just the normal bug fixes, 2.3 has added several new features. Examples include: "A bunch of new and enhanced features like restoring the user-defined movement path in Impress and applying better default print settings in Calc. Check the release notes for complete information from OpenOffice.org. A significantly different chart tool. New extensions provided by Sun and other vendors. You will need to run 2.3 for the extensions to work. Read more about the new extensions on the OpenOffice.org web site." The general impression from the review is that the OO team is doing an excellent job of responding to feedback from previous releases.

Re:New version, huh?

[speaker of the truth]

To try to change this from simply a troll to a constructive post, why not mention the things they coded wrong this time? I'll start:
* Not having a user definable number of columns (instead sticking with the old 256).

OOXML Support

[SpiritGod21]

I think this is unrelated to 2.3, but I was excited to see yesterday that Novell now has an OOXML Translator [novell.com] for OO.o. I was going to have to buy Office 2007 for my fiance soon because she needs to open .docx files that are emailed to her regularly. Now I don't have to bother.

Whatever you say about Novell, I appreciate their work.

Re:New version, huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

That said, could they write a cross platform back end, and then a frontend for each supported system?

This kind of thing has already been done, in the form of wxWidgets for example.

Re:OOXML Support

[Koohoolinn]

M$ has has a compatibility pack that allows you to open MSOOXML on earlier Office versions. No need to upgrade yet.

Link [microsoft.com] to read some more info.

Re:New version, huh?

[Perl-Pusher]

The parent troll conveniently ignored the fact that OO was a commercial product, sold to sun the subsequently open sourced. OpenOffice.org didn't write the original code, neither did Sun. Marco Börries at 16, dropped out of high school in Germany to establish 1984 to sell Star Office under the corporate name Star Division. The fact that it is still around today and competing with Microsoft is an amazing feat in itself.

Re:OOXML Support

[kjkeefe]

As near as I can tell, this not only requires you to be running either Windows or SUSE distros, it also requires you to run OpenOffice.org Novell Edition. "What the hell is that," you ask? That's a good question...

I have OO.o 2.3 installed and I tried using their extension anyway. Didn't seem to work...

Novell is losing browny points for this one...

Re:OOXML Support

[SpiritGod21]

It looks like Ubuntu has one available in .deb [blogspot.com], but I haven't had time to look at the licensing. Was going to install the .rpm using Alien, but I guess I don't need to.

Re:New version, huh?

[farkus888]

X11 isn't monolithic anymore, it was modularized starting with version 7.0. my personal memory usage for an idle X desktop dropped by almost 100 meg with either xfce or gnome when I switched, almost a year ago now as I recall.

Re:Still can't open a CSV file in Calc. Sigh.

[MightyMartian]

A pretty minor bug, me'thinks. There's a perfectly good accepted extension for comma-delimited files, it's called CSV.

Performance with documents containing images

[Masa]

I don't know, what they did to OOo, but when I upgraded from the 2.0.2 to 2.3.0, the performance of the Writer dropped dramatically. I have a document, which contains 20 500x500 pixel images distributed over 30 pages. The scrolling from one page to another is awful. It takes from 5 to 20 seconds to switch from one page to another. This delay seems to be pretty random but consistent at the same time, because it doesn't matter if I already have visited both pages and I'm working between these two pages, the delay still varies between the 5-20 seconds each time. I didn't have this problem with the 2.0.2 version. Now I'm considering downgrading back to 2.0.2.

Allowable under SISSL

[soullessbastard]

Disclaimer: I am one of the founders of NeoOffice [neooffice.org].

Being based on OOo 1.x, IBM does not need to release the source code for Symphony. OOo was originally dual licensed both under LGPL and the SISSL [openoffice.org] license. SISSL allows companies to make completely closed source forks, only providing notice of the original vendor and SISSL license. This license was one of the primary motivating factors for why we forked and created NeoOffice, to prevent companies from making a commercial product whose improvements couldn't be shared back with all the volunteers that had worked to create it.

Closed source forking is also our reason for using full GPL since it guarantees everyone's freedom to access the code. Not even LGPL provides that ability since commercial closed source proprietary code can still be incorporated provided it's in a shared library. Only the full GPL provides enough protections to ensure that everyone must cooperate and that no one can make key parts of the project rely on closed source solutions.

ed

Re:OO speed. Where is IBM Symphony source (LGPL)?

[Anonymous Coward]

They forked before OO.o went LGPL only. It used to also be under the Sun Industry Standards Source License, which didn't require the full source to be made public.

Re:Still can't open a CSV file in Calc. Sigh.

[Count_Froggy]

Have you tried READING THE HELP file??? Calc CAN open a CSV file as a spreadsheet. It works differently than Excel, but why is that a problem; Excel does it WRONG. By definition, a CSV file IS a text file and unless you provide other guidance in the File Open dialog, why would you expect it to do other than what it is programmed to do?

Re:Still can't open a CSV file in Calc. Sigh.

[ozmanjusri]

You totally misunderstood the problem and gave a very bad response. He does not care what the extension is used at all. He wants to use Calc to edit csv files.

Rename file.txt to file.csv.

Understand now?

Re:Still can't open a CSV file in Calc. Sigh.

[juhaz]

You totally misunderstood the problem and gave a very bad response.

No, you totally misunderstood the problem and gave a very bad response.

He does not care what the extension is used at all. He wants to use Calc to edit csv files. It won't let him do this.

Of course it lets him do this, it just does not do it automatically because the file is wrongly named and calc can't read his mind to know that it's actually in csv format and not text as it claims. Therefore he has to select "text csv" file type from the open dialog, or rename the file as others suggested.

Re:CALC and semicolon/comma issue

[Count_Froggy]

HUH, you need a little history; Excel did it differently than Visicalc, Smartcalc, THE Spreadsheet, or even Microsoft's own Multiplan. It was intentional on Microsoft's part to break compatibility so you would have difficulty going back to another product. OOo returns to the standard used by all other apps.

Re:*sigh* ... still no outline mode in OOo Writer.

[xra]

For a 200 pages document, nothing comes near LaTeX.

Re:Incompatible rendering

[TheRaven64]

In any case, if you need a document to always look the same, then you really only have one choice. LaTeX.

Not true. You also have troff, Framemaker, and a host of other DTP tools. Granted, LaTeX is the one I would choose, and the one I used for my book, but it is not the only one.

Re:Incompatible rendering

[jabuzz]

Where it breaks down is easy, it depends on the default printer. Try switching between a laser which is 300dpi based and an inkjet that is 360dpi based, and watch your document formatting go to pot :-)

The problem comes from the way the TrueType font render works. When you ask for say 12pt Times New Roman what you actually get back depends on the device you are rendering to. The hinter fiddles with the font so that it looks good and in the process changes the metrics...

Re:New version, huh?

[zurtle]

All my reports are readable by Windows machines (you may have heard of PDF files).

As for .doc: bad idea. Professionally, anyway. I've worked in a few places that don't allow documents to be sent as Windows .doc files because of the possibility clients can turn tracking on and see previous changes including possibly sensitive data that has been "deleted". It's a good practice that students should follow too.