OpenOffice.org 2.3 Review 227
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.
I've always wondered (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I've always wondered (Score:5, Funny)
It's great for adding utterly randomly defined entry paths for everything to spice up those more boring presentations; 10 points extra if you can keep a straight face while doing it while facing the execs.
Biggest change (Score:4, Funny)
Integration to 3rd party still nearly inexistant (Score:5, Insightful)
What continues to make OO on non-windows platforms a losing proposition is the lack of such APIs. Even if the GUI and underlying libraries supports them OO continues to do things of its own (not surprising considering Sun's involvement). KDE embedding and full integration, gnome integration, etc. There are present in a very rudimentary fashion. As a result OO continues to be limited to a universe of its own. This hinders both its development and the development of third party aps like Dia. It also at the end of the day puts it firmly into the niche proposition area. Until this is resolved this is exactly where it will belong. Sad...
Also true with other apps (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Integration to 3rd party still nearly inexistan (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I hold out more hope for KOffice, which is built on KParts. If KOffice 2.0 is as good as the developers say it will be, I will be switching.
OOo API docs need to be reorganized (Score:5, Insightful)
Incidentally, OOo also allows for the use of Python and other programming languages as well. However, while it might be my lack of Java-ness, it looks to me like the underlying problem is that the OOo API docs are mindbogglingly poorly organized. Say for instance you have an object of type TextCursor, and want to find out quickly what properties and methods such an object has. So you go into OOo's online API documentation and find the entry for TextCursor [openoffice.org] -- only to discover that you cannot tell what properties and methods this object provides. The docs show what *interfaces* it has, but while this might be exciting in terms of software architecting and discovering how OOo reuses its own code base, it doesn't offer a lot to anyone simply trying to make use of OOo objects. To actually find the methods and properties for any object, you'd have to click through each and every interface listing, which is hardly convenient or easy to use.
I strongly suspect that a reworking of the API documentation would give OOo a big leg up in terms of third party development.
Cheers,
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And make that KDE4/Windows as well... cygwin is a pain, it'd be a lot better if I can use KOffice on all the platforms I use. That goes for KDE apps in general - I doubt many people will make a "clean cut", they'll use Firefox, GIMP, OOo etc. only to finally figure out "hmm all my apps are there, I can just run Linux underneath" and end up with Gnome, not Ko
Nonsense (Score:2)
Nonsense. Most people don't embed anything except perhaps some images in their Word documents. And if they embed something it's an Excel spreadsheet or graph, and OOo allows embedding of OOo spreadsheets and graphs just fine, so they'd still be able to do that. In fact, it works a lot better. In OOo you can have a table with data an
OOXML Support (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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...
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Copyright (c) 2006, Clever Age
All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
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Link [microsoft.com] to read some more info.
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If it works, that isn't a huge problem, since you can just keep a Windows box connected to your mail server and have it automatically translate incoming documents.
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I see we have different ideas of "huge problem".
Thank You (Score:4, Insightful)
OO speed. Where is IBM Symphony source (LGPL)? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've always thought that a fork at OO 1.x would be good, as 2.x was where it got really fat.
Well IBM forked at 1.x. It's called Symphony.
But I cannot find any source of any part of Symphony.
This is an apparent violation of the LGPL.
Perhaps they are sending patches to open office, but that does not really satisfy the LGPL. The source of changed LGPL Symphony code must be publicly available.
Allowable under SISSL (Score:5, Informative)
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
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Check Symphony's License Before Use (Score:2)
Your personal information is fair game for whatever IBM sees fit to do with it.
"Such information will be processed and used in connection with our business relationship, and may be provided to contractors, Business Partners, and assignees of IBM for uses consistent with their collective business activities, including communicating with You"
The software is not Free.
* Read all about the "Proof of Entitlement" in the license.
* You may not redistribu
Incompatible rendering (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not a huge issue I guess, but it's certainly the reason that I still need to have MS Office installed in a VM. Highly over the top but a necessary step until OO can render stuff faithfully. My wife, for one, will not switch until it displays word docs correctly.
Is this just me having this problem as I never see other people complaining about it.
Re:Incompatible rendering (Score:5, Insightful)
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What is it about word processors that makes it inherently impossible to render documents properly on different machines? I mean, it seems to me that if the document format/specification is not capable of ensuring consistent rendering, then it is flawed and needs to be fixed. Otherwise, what's the point? You might as well use plain text.
Of course, I realise that most modern word processors probably don't live up to this ;)
Re:Incompatible rendering (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally, I imagine that it has to do with the fact that word processing files don't carry fonts with them. Even if the file specification were 100% open and implementable, most fonts are licensed in a way that doesn't allow them to be redistributed. As a result, you can only print the document and send paper around, or export to PDF which renders the characters as lines and fills but doesn't include the font information itself.
A desktop publishing package would have the same limitation, I would imagine, except the file formats might enable embedding the fonts (putting the license-compliance burden on the user), or a particular package might come with a standard set of fonts you can count on being available.
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While licensing restrictions may make it illegal to redistribute fonts, both wo
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Who's going to learn how to use proper DTP software, (which, sorry, is traditionally a real bitch for non-experts), when they can use a tool they are familiar with? The marketplace ha
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The
I'm surprised you haven't discovered how inconsisten
Re:Incompatible rendering (Score:5, Informative)
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...
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In any case, if you need a document to always look the same, then you really o
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There was a thread recently on the FreeBSD mailing list concerning Open Office. The discussion, as expected, devolved from "It's too big and bloated" to "Nothing else will work for me but program X". The reason most cited for "not working" was "it's too hard" to learn, which invited this amusing observation [freebsd.org].
Personally, I find Office packages fairly horrible to use or to maintain, and wordprocessors in general are inadequate by nearly every measure. It's a shame they've
Still Stuck at 65500 rows in Calc? (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, I do use more than 65,500 rows in Excel on a weekly basis to manage reports for people.)
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As for my abilities, you can google me. I'm pretty much out there.
Why I use > 655500 rows? I'm involved right now in a lawsuit which requires some ad-hoc data manipulation from a mainframe to be presented in a spreadsheet format. What I've been doing is getting a flatfile data dump from the mainframe, importing said file via DTS into SQL server, running a query to grab the data in a format I need using the criteria requested, and then importing the result
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Peace Frog? (Score:4, Funny)
ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!
Mail Merge (Score:3, Insightful)
They seem to have done some work on Mailmerge. Here's to hoping that it's usable, now. I wonder if they've also improved printing labels from a database. There are a number [openoffice.org] of closed [openoffice.org] issues [openoffice.org] in the OOo [openoffice.org] issue tracker [openoffice.org] where people have said "this doesn't work right" and the OOo team says, "Just do it this other, less-intuitive way."
The last it seems to be mentioned in the issue tracker, the target fix was changed from OOo 2.0 to OOo Later [openoffice.org]. That was in 2004, so I'm not hopeful.
Performance with documents containing images (Score:3, Informative)
*sigh* ... still no outline mode in OOo Writer. (Score:5, Insightful)
And before some n00b who's never written a 200-page document jumps all over me: No, the OOo "Navigator" does not provide an outline mode. It provides something akin to a re-organizable TOC in a floating window, but it doesn't provide the productivity enhancements afforded by inline hierarchical control within the editing window. This is one function that MS Word got right. For example, in Word I can start typing and make a list in normal text, click into "outline mode" and either use a key shortcut or a single click-drag to promote/demote some text to headings (while leaving other items as content), or re-order paragraphs of text or headings. To do the same thing in OOo's Navigator, I need to switch to a different window to reorganize headings, but switch back to the editing window to resume editing content. I also need to switch between two windows to split a heading into two sections, switch back to move it, and switch again to resume composing content -- something I can do with a CR and single mouse-drag in Word.
Word: type, type, drag, type, type, [enter], key-combo, type.
OOo: type, type, switch-window, drag, switch-window, type, type, re-style, switch-window, drag, switch-window, type.
Come on guys, suck up the Not-Invented-Here pride and adopt this one feature that MS got right! Or do it one-better and improve on the similar inline hierarchical editing from FrameMaker+SGML. Or innovate some collapsible tag interface from something like the old HotMeTaL from SoftQuad. (But don't trash the Navigator; it *is* useful for final proofing, just not composition)
-J
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J
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It's been requested numerous times, and has been on OOo's issue list since at least April 2002 -- see here [openoffice.org] for reference.
Cheers,
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Re:*sigh* ... still no outline mode in OOo Writer. (Score:5, Insightful)
It might be bizarre to many
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> Every release -- even a small point release like this one -- I hope that the
> OOo developers will add an outline mode to Writer. And every release I'm
> disappointed. I really like OOo, but this one missing feature keeps me from
> using it for serious work becuase it makes large document planning and writing
> production in Writer sloooooow.
I ranted about a year ago [ruwenzori.net] and found that I was not the only one. In spite of a five year old wishlist bug [openoffice.org], the recriminations have not fallen on deaf ears, and last February I heard some encouraging noises from the dev team [ruwenzori.net]. Outline mode is not coming soon, but some day maybe... I'm keeping the faith but meanwhile I hate to say that for now Ms Word is my outliner of choice.
If you don't think you need outline mode, then it is just that you have no idea what efficiently working with big documents is like.
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And let's not forget proper word/char counts (Score:2)
Well, I guess this might make it two features that MS got right -- OOo's word/char count is appallingly inadequate [openoffice.org], and effectively keeps the software from being adopted by many academic and professional writers. Proper and comprehensive word/char counts are absolutely vital in any truly usable word processor, and such functionality is glaringly absent from OOo -- despite users having pointed [openoffice.org] this [openoffice.org] out [openoffice.org] numerous
All these changes and yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
... I still can't add a word to the dictionary with just one click. Try it for yourself, you'll see. Make a typo, right-click on the word once the squiggly red underline appears. It gives suggestions, and not an "Add" menu -- but a submenu. So me, the uncaring user, just wants to add this to the dictionary. I pick "Add" submenu, then I am faced with a choice. "soffice.dic", "standard.dic" and "sun.dic". Um... what? Why should I care? What happens if I pick the wrong one? Is there a wrong one? Why do I have to make this decision? Screw this, I'm going back to MS Office! (Okay, slight hyperbole with that last.)
Unfortunately, this is a classic example of why open source software designed for mass use needs more contributors familiar with basic usability concepts. This way, end users could spend less time playing with their dics, and more time accomplishing their goals.
Yeah, I agree. (Score:2)
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Suggestions: dices, dicks, disc, discs, dikes, dice, dices.
Not Impressed (Score:2)
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However, I stand by my statement that Microsoft compatibility is key for widespread adoption of OO. For an organization to consider switching from MS Office to OO, they have to consider more than a side-by-side product comparison, user training, and license cost; they have to consider the fact that they already have a huge number of documents in MS Office formats. If OO cannot read or write to these files e
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more self promotion and lies (Score:4, Interesting)
1) It's much slower now - even though they told us they were breaking into components to make it faster - the joke is on you.
2) listening to feedback - yeah - look at their response on basic statistical analysis. Search their bugs for statistics, error bars and regression and you'll see that it's been 5-6 yrs and STILL no ability to put the equation on the chart.
3) They are SO far behind MS it's ridiculous.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not an MS lover by any stretch but I use OO day-to-day and I recently sat down in front of Word 2007 and thought,
1) this will really make it easy for newbies to create nice documents
2) creating nice documents is really easy
3) too bad they won't adopt ODF as they'd clean house with Office '07.
Seriously, I've lost faith/hope in OO. Just look into GO-OO and you'll understand that things move glacially slow with OO development. Maybe IBM's 35 person addition will help but I forsee more pissing contests than actual work getting done.
Vista is a joke but Office '07 is a really nice product because it DOES make it REALLY easy to create nice looking documents. I added a picture to a test.doc that I was working on and was blown away with all the cool things that I could do with the image. In short, really easy to create nice looking documents - Isn't THAT what a good word processor should do???
Anyhow, I've lost faith that Sun will actually listen to the users of their software and, if they do, it'll be after the user has left out of frustration due to waiting.
OOo 2.3 crashed on me last Friday.... (Score:2)
But anyway, my review of OOo 2.3 Writer (and Math) (Score:2)
OOo 2.3 Writer:
+ handles complex mathematical formulas
+ produces a very nice
+ allows for complex text formatting and precise placement of diagrams
+ It has macros!
+ It will open documents written in many formats.
+ It saves your document in many, many formats.
but
- Quite often the display is not refreshed and you have no idea anymore, what the page looks like. It reminds me a bit of the olde versions of Finale, but there you had
Filters (Score:2)
Is Open Office still bloated? (Score:2)
My number 1 improvement (Score:2)
It's these kind of usability tweaks that Microsoft is so much better at, I'm afraid, and it's the kind of thing they need to put a lot of work into if they really want to take on Office.
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I have only one question. . . (Score:3, Insightful)
I think Open Office is a wonderful gift to computing, but that one element makes my eyes bug out. I cannot stand having the page react with tectonic adjustment whenever I scroll down beyond a certain point. Maybe some people don't mind this, but it drives me bonkers. I spent a long time looking through an older version of OO, but was unable to find a toggle switch to turn off this feature. --Does the new version of OO allow one to type like a civilized human being who doesn't like his marbles rattled half a dozen times every page?
-FL
Re:New version, huh? (Score:4, Informative)
* Not having a user definable number of columns (instead sticking with the old 256).
One more bug (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you think you would get zero? No, you get -0.00000000000000036082.
Also, =850*77.1 should give you 1000000 like in Excel 2007, but it gives you 65535.
Re:New version, huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Word is inefficient for what I need to do. I reckon more university students should learnify it. Bibliographies, indices, TOCs... what more does one need?
I admit it hasn't got the easiest learning curve, but if you're at a postgraduate level, I assume you've got some brains
Re:New version, huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, but it is too bad you have no clue what developing and releasing a project the size of OO involves.
If you had any class whatsoever, you'd be thinking that it is nice that this free project is being improved (not to mention released in the first place), and as such provides you with an opportunity to leverage other people's work to reduce your own workload.
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you'd be thinking that it is nice that this free project is being improved (not to mention released in the first place)
Actually it isn't free. Its developed by both paid and volunteer coders so that Sun can have good PR as well as free developers for their proprietary StarOffice. While its nice of those volunteer workers to give away their time to both a free and non-free product, the ones in charge are certainly not doing this out of the niceness of their heart. So there is no need to be grateful to Sun for OOo or even think its nice of them. Would you think it nice that Microsoft produced a new version of Office?
Re:New version, huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Come on. From the perspective of the developer, nothing is free. Time has value, if nothing else. One can spend it in ways other than developing software. But to the user, in this case the software is available at no cost, and that is the sense I was using "free" in, as I think you (and everyone else) know very well. The fact that software costs the developer something, and then is given to the end user, is precisely the reason that any reasonable person would see value in, and be positive about, such a transmission of work product.
I certainly would if they gave it to me without charging me money, yes. I might think so anyway, if it saved me more than it cost me.
Heck, I think it is nice when there's a new and/or improved GIMP or Photoshop, and these, each in a different sense, compete for attention with one of my my own sources of income. It isn't all about who makes more money or higher sales / distribution numbers. To a large degree, it is about what benefits the users receive. YMMV, but that's definitely how I see it.
Re:New version, huh? (Score:5, Informative)
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Surely the use of native widgets would make cross platform apps much harder to develop...
That said, could they write a cross platform back end, and then a frontend for each supported system?
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No, Never, No WAY... I have used MFC and it stinks on ice. It is buggy and just a terrible frame work. We just found a new but in MFC that would cause our application to crash when it got on unexpected message from a touch pad driver. Yea the driver had a bug but MFC shouldn't have crashed from that message. So you should stay clear of MFC even on Windows.
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Yes, yes there are skins that look something like Windows or Mac, but they are just skins
Actually, they're not. They are, in many cases, complete reimplementaitons of the view objects. Apple did a lot of work with Swing on OS X to get the look and feel right.
It doesn't change the fact that the shortcuts are all wrong, the menus have the wrong layout, and so on though. There is only one way of doing a good cross-platform GUI, and that's to have a clean MVC separation and write a different view for each platform. Unfortunately, good implies expensive.
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Rename file.txt to file.csv.
Understand now?
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Re:Still can't open a CSV file in Calc. Sigh. (Score:5, Informative)
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He was talking about a CSV file HAD to have the CSV extension for OOo to understand it as CSV. The original poster has a file named
If you change the
I have been using this fe
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My beefs with OO.o presently center around Calc and speed. Calc takes over a minute to launch on my computer, and I have one spreadsheet which I converted from Excel (now in OO.o format), not terribly complex, which will freeze up for about 30 seconds when performing relatively simple calcuations.
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Re:CALC and semicolon/comma issue (Score:4, Informative)
Re:what does this have to do with linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
A historically popular, proprietary piece of BBS software for the IBM PC offered a (very popular) mailbox facility. There were rumours flying around that a future version of the software would allow the BBS sysop to charge for electronic mail messages. Charging would be by the letter; with spaces, digits and punctuation marks specifically excluded. The "elite" users responded by crafting readable messages entirely out of non-chargeable characters in order to demonstrate the absurdity of such a proposal.
Even if the facility was ever incorporated into the software, it was never actually used in real life. It's also worth pointing out that in those days, disassembling and editing binaries was by no means unfeasible.
Meanwhile, a group of immature kids who fancied themselves as "hackers" (at the risk of being called out on a "No True Scotsman" phallacy, a true hacker has more in common with a squatter than a burglar) picked up the wrong end of the stick and displayed their ignorance by continuing to craft messages out of "free" characters. The true elite laugh at them.
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Back on topic, the grandparent's complaint is something that bugs me too. The StarOffice suite originally ran on commercial UNIX and Windows. It was later ported to Linux, and somehow ends up in the 'Linux' category. Linux and Free Software are different; I use a lot of Free Software, but don't use Linux.