Apache OpenOffice Releases Version 3.4 151
An anonymous reader sends word that Apache OpenOffice 3.4 has been released (download). This is the first release since OpenOffice became a project at the Apache Software Foundation. The release notes list all of the improvements, the highlights of which The H has summarized:
"According to its developers, Apache OpenOffice (AOO) 3.4.0, the first update since OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 from January 2011, now starts up faster than its predecessor and introduces a number of new features such as support for documents secured using AES256 encryption. The Linear Programming solver in the Calc spreadsheet program has been replaced with the CoinMP C-API library from the Computational Infrastructure for Operations Research (COIN-OR) project. As in LibreOffice 3.4.0, the DataPilot functionality has been renamed to Pivot Table, and now supports an unlimited number of fields. A new 'Quote all text cells' CSV (Comma Separated Values) export option has been also added to Calc. Other changes include improved ODF 1.2 encryption and Unix Printing support and various enhancements to the Impress presentation and Draw sketching programs."
Re:Apache ftw! (Score:5, Informative)
Ah dammit, i meant to say LGPL
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/license/ [libreoffice.org]
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BMO
Heap of junk vs. LibreOffice... (Score:5, Informative)
Horribly out of date vs. LibreOffice - see the comparison [gnome.org] - missing a ton of filters, barely interoperable with Microsoft Office, etc. etc.
Re:Heap of junk vs. LibreOffice... (Score:3, Informative)
Licensing ensures that it will stay that way. ApacheOffice code can be copied into LibreOffice (Apache License -> LGPL), but the reverse is not true.
Re:The Real Question (Score:5, Informative)
At this point the rebels are in control of more territory than the government - LibreOffice had integrated the Go-OO patchset.
Binary StarOffice export filters silently dropped (Score:4, Informative)
I can't say which I find less encouraging and less trust-inspiring, the fact that the support for writing StarOffice 5 binary formats (sdw, sdc, sda, etc.) has been dropped per se, or the circumstance that such a significant change has been introduced quietly and without even being mentioned in the release notes.
Did they hope nobody would notice, perhaps assuming that users of StarOffice binary file formats would have all died of old age by now?
Not all have, though, and some do even remember that StarOffice 5.2 used to have a feature set which OpenOffice and LibreOffice, more than ten years later, still do not completely replace, which is why some still keep their StarOffice 5.2 setup (working perfectly well on Windows 7 x64) alive, some alongside whatever else they may be using these days, some (like myself) even as their primary office application suite.