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http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Writer/ToDo#Lotus_WordPro_filter

The PPT file is a bit more than 1 megabyte and only one slide (out of 138 or so) contains a large WMF image. Granted, the computer I used to open the file isn't new (Celeron 900, 128M RAM, Windows 98), but I had to wait like 5 (five) minutes for the presentation to open just because of that WMF file, which had to be converted, too. And that was with OpenOffice.org 2.0.4. Seeing the file without having to open it in OOo and wait for a long time means using the PowerPoint Viewer.

The total time to open the file was about 15-30 seconds less with OOo 2.1. After exporting the WMF, I discovered that it was 36Mb in size.

I am going to download OOo 2.3 as soon as possible after its release, because I read that it contains a speedup related to images (specifically, a speedup of image lists, which may solve another problem I saw when using earlier 2.x.x versions).

For project management, you can use the recently-released "OpenProj"

http://openproj.org/

For Visio-like work, OpenOffice.org already includes the vector-drawing tool "Draw." It needs better templates and gallery items, but it's working fine as a Visio replacement in our office.

http://www.openoffice.org/product/draw.html

What you are saying is not very accurate. OpenOffice does have better accessibility support for Gnome than Windows, but still the support is much more than zero. Where the support is effectively zero is for KDE (Qt4 implements ATK, so this situation will change with KDE4).

More info

Here's my list: OpenOffice, e-Sword, Firefox, Google Desktop, TightVNC, Thunderbird, Picasa, AVG Anti-Virus, GIMP, IrfanView, VLC Media Player, FileZilla, 7zip

Stupid lame filter nuked my <ul>

Maybe.
Apple - iWork'08 under Tiger can import OOXML documents, but it does so in a roundabout way. It imports OOXML files into it's native format (.pages, etc), but it can't write OOXML. (Not to mention you have to export the document back to office format, rather than save as). TextEdit under Leopard is said to be able to read/write OOXML as well as ODF, but I can't confirm this. The iPhone is also said to be able to open OOXML as well.
Novell - Novell's OpenOffice is said to be able to handle OOXML (according to wikipedia), but I have not tried it myself. According to the same article, OO.o 2.3 (not Novell) is said to have an OOXML importer - so I guess that could cover Linux as well.
Palm - Datavitz DocumentsToGo
Java - No clue.
IP Issues - No clue
Easy to work with - Not my area of expertise. :-D

There is a native Aqua version of OpenOffice in the works that is already very good. It is much faster than NeoOffice too. It can be downloaded from http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/aqua.ht ml and is already really good, even though the message on that page is a little scary. Anyway, I've downloaded it and am quite happy with it.

Personally, I'd focus on Multimedia authoring, it's always been Linux's weak point.

First, audio composition and editing, as well as a Virtual DJ studio. The backend (ALSA + Jack) is brilliant, but the lack of synths, mixers and whatnot of the caliber of Absynth and Traktor (from Native Instruments) and Live (from Ableton) makes ALSA/Jack fairly useless.

raster graphics. As much as people keep repeating that Gimp is as complete as Photoshop, it isn't. CMYK support, 24 and 32-bit colour support, support for excessively large files, better tablet support, are all very much needed in a bitmap editor. I'd certainly throw much resources in Mr. kanzelsberger's direction, for work on Pixel Editor, which is a truly brilliant application.

Vector graphics. There really hasn't been a truly top-tier vector drawing application for Linux since Corel Draw 9 was briefly ported. Inkscape is neat, but it's far, far more useful as a GUI frontend to SVG editing than a full fledged Vector drawing application. Xara Xtreme has promise and potential, the Windows version of Xara was ever even quite close to being on par with Illustrator, Freehand, or Corel Draw, but it has promise and it's probably the best bet right now.

Text to columns is a known issue. OpenOffice.org will get support for this soon.

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Calc/To-D os/Usability

It is in the todo list for OOo 2.4

Coincidentally enough, Text-to-columns is now fixed, and was confirmed today. It'll be in 2.4.

http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4 040

Out of curiosity, will the upcoming Chart module for 2.3 fix that for you? They completely redesigned the charting UI. I didn't see anything that specifically mentioned variable use, though.

http://graphics.openoffice.org/chart/chart.html

Hopefully I can knock one of those right off your list. I use this to do the "Text to Columns" feature that OO doesn't come with stock.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group _id=87718&package_id=104183

OpenOffice does have VBA support, but it doesn't work for everything. Most sane scripts should run... anything an Excel "Wizzard" did probably is going to have a problem, though. There's a bunch of info on the OO site about what parts of the language they do support, and what's planned. Info on that at: http://vba.openoffice.org/

Share & edit Works Word Processor and Spreadsheet files with Microsoft® Office Word and Microsoft® Office Excel and vice versa. *MS Office versions 97-2007 Microsoft Works 9

There is absolutely no good reason to continue using this crap, even if it's free.

There can be a reason if you are unfamiliar with - or uncomfortable with - what passes for home user support in open source.

When you are Microsoft you can afford to put up a bright, colorful, Works home page, post a quarterly newsletter, create unique, customized, tutorials, templates, clip art, fonts, etc.

There will no geek-speak, not the faintest whiff of the patronizing attitude that pisses off the "luser."

In open source, the public face of your project tends to look more like this or this.

From what I gather the answer is no. There are alternatives to those two products, but that's a different kettle of fish. Here's some OO.o compatible alternatives if you're game to try and replace the whole lot.

Do you have a link to the Linux version? How about the Mac version?

1995 called and they want their stupid baseless rhetoric back. http://support.openoffice.org/index.html a quick look over here shows community AND commercial support. Gee whiz! Even Sun a very well known company is shown. I didn't to anything magic getting this page. It's under the Support section. Now that i've gone through that point. How many people REALLY fucking call up microsoft support.

  I've been working IT and fixing computers on the side for the last 5 years (move over to development, much better move) and trust me unless things are REALLY bad no one really calls up Microsoft. Unless the operating system starts going ape shit and murdering microsoft will not be called. Microsoft Office crashes? They will shrug it off as "those darn computers" or "darn windows" and just keep going or they will uninstall and reinstall, their 3rd option will be to call up the nearest computer geek, which will usually do some crapware scan, a full uninstall and a reinstall and fix it. Businesses on the other hand, they will be more inclined to call support and the support is there. Home users however, it's always the computer to blame because it's a cryptic complex black/beige box.

Price is an argument that is being thrown around a lot here but you know maybe the freedom of knowing you don't have a crippling EULA and that if you buy a new computer you don't need to buy a new copy or if there is an activation , worry about that. Yeah a lot of people care about price and usability as they should be but there is always software freedom to consider. ( I am not RMS )

Just follow the instructions on this page. ;)

1. Someone will fix some bugs. If someone feels like it. Maybe... Someday... (Pack a lunch... the 8618 open defects in the issue list, spanning several years, takes a while to open.)
2. The next version might emulate half of the look and feel that MS office had 5 years ago. Poorly. Oh, is that memory? I'll just take that.
3. If it takes you more than 5 years to get comforatble with a product, this is the one for you. We'll never change a thing. And we'll keep up the same level of support forever! (See item #1.)
4. And a bonus... it's Open! So the other two OO users can read your documents too! For "Free"!

Right here.

Honestly, if this outfit can't be bothered to Google (the keywords I searched for were "openoffice" and "roadmap"), let 'em have MS Office. They deserve it.

(Also, OpenOffice is not the only alternative. I use Koffice, but YMMV.)

'you have no idea where open-source products are going, whereas vendors like Microsoft provide a roadmap for the future.'

'you have no idea where open-source products are going, whereas vendors like Microsoft provide a roadmap for the future.'

A quick look at http://about.openoffice.org/index.html reveals

Sun continues to sponsor development on OpenOffice.org and is the primary contributor of code to OpenOffice.org.

So, as MightyMait so eloquently put it, you're saying Sun Microsystems is a bunch of amateurs and/or hobbyists?

Wow, that was last updated 10 months ago and forecasts development all the way through... uh...

What are you talking about? The roadmap was updated July 9th, 2007. Try looking at the "Roadmap of ongoing 2.x/3.0 development."

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Features

I am a big advocate of open source solutions, but I have to agree with the author of the parent post. I have some minimal experience with OO Writer, and I had to throw it out because I immediately encountered a very serious flaw. One of the most basic features that one typically needs and expects to work ("Select All") does not always work. When I went to report this bug, I discovered that it has already been reported to bugzilla almost 5 years ago! Furthermore, the developers had it marked as Closed/WontFix. You can read more on this bug and the whole sad story here (http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id= 7747).

"'you have no idea where open-source products are going, whereas vendors like Microsoft provide a roadmap for the future.'"

Perhaps someone should send them this: OpenOffice Road map

Hey, take it easy on these guys, they're an automotive association, not computer wizards. You can't expect them to know where to look for road maps...

... oh, wait...

What, then, might this page be about?

http://development.openoffice.org/releases/

"'you have no idea where open-source products are going, whereas vendors like Microsoft provide a roadmap for the future.'"

Perhaps someone should send them this: Open Office Roadmap

I don't think it could be any more clear or easier to find....

I think OpenOffice should sue them for trademark infringement

OpenOffice should sue them? Don't you mean OpenOffice.org should?

(See here, under "Trademark", for what I'm talking about.)

I am not a Microsoft fan and I believe that we have a perfectly good standard office format (ODF) and don't need another.

But... when there are so many good reasons to oppose OOXML (eg it isn't open when part of the spec says "do it like Word 97" [I paraphrase], ignores other existing standards such as SVG and invents whole new languages) there is no reason to make up new criticisms. Apart from the specification not being open, I can understand that this XML-based format, originally designed for use in Microsoft Office, can be called Office Open XML.

Whilst on the subject of confusing names, remember that Open Office is actually a trademark owned by someone else entirely. The office suite used by most free software users is called OpenOffice.org.

I am not a Microsoft fan and I believe that we have a perfectly good standard office format (ODF) and don't need another.

But... when there are so many good reasons to oppose OOXML (eg it isn't open when part of the spec says "do it like Word 97" [I paraphrase], ignores other existing standards such as SVG and invents whole new languages) there is no reason to make up new criticisms. Apart from the specification not being open, I can understand that this XML-based format, originally designed for use in Microsoft Office, can be called Office Open XML.

Whilst on the subject of confusing names, remember that Open Office is actually a trademark owned by someone else entirely. The office suite used by most free software users is called OpenOffice.org.

Since our HR department does everything in Excel, this tool would probably do the entire job.

If you look at the list of bugs, some are quite nasty.

        * You cannot print
        * PDF export does not properly work as thetext won't show on the page right
        * Starting OpenOffice.org from a shared folder does not work
        * Copy and paste does not fully work
        * OpenOffice.org will crash after quitting
        * Some text is not drawn in places like Impress
        * Impress will not recognise multiple monitors

I download a lot of "beta" and "Alpha" software. I have never seen piece of software released that the developers knew it constantly crashes.
If is so rough that I found two typos in the known bugs.

http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/aqua.ht ml

They spent years twiddling their thumbs why people asked them to port OpenOffice to OSX. They had a X11 version of OpenOffice, but X11 is not the standard for Macs, it's an option. They waited a while longer for the Openoffice API's were changed. NeoOffice showed them up a little, and now more people are buying Macs, and they were wondering what's going on with OpenOffice.org. They questioned the Sun's steering committee's influence. So, succumbing to pressure, they, and a lot of hardworking volunteers, created an alpha.

So, they proved their point. Technically, they are making progress. Software often has a lot of bugs when it's released, but usually not a known repeatable crash. It appears that they met some kind of self-imposed time limit.

Okay, so it allegedly doesn't use X11, but you still need to have it installed?

That's because you're looking at the page for the existing OOo X11 port.

The actual page for the Aqua port says nothing about requiring X11.

In order to run the OpenOffice.org you need to have X11 installed.

You could try Open Office, it's an Open Source alternative to grapics-editing/word-processing. The Gimp is a powerful little graphics editor that FP notes will do CMYK. You can also check out audacity for audio editing.

Note: these afromentioned products are usually considered mediocre by some, but the good things are that these products are not owned by a vendor-lockin, DRM entrenched, royalty grubbing, patent whoring, corporation. They are freely available, free to copy, free to use, and free to be developed by anyone in the world. You can even write, or contribute to, the code yourself if you are so inclined. A model based on worldwide collaboration is simply better than one developed behind closed windows.

The management and pricing systems of proprietary software is unprincipled. The ethics and
support methods are abhorrent, un-reliable and un-reasonable. The entire system reeks of snake-oil. These things may not be relavant to you, and I would complain some more, but I've run out of retorts. If you don't like what I've said, maybe go do a bittorrent search for porn and your mom. It's there, trust me.

So the format does exactly what it should: it makes it abundantly clear what's contained within, in a way that can *trivially* be parsed out with any compliant XML library

What's the point of this? I'm sort of taking a liberty in paraphrasing your argument, but it seems to come down to the claim that an open XML format that is human readable is somehow better because

XML, for all of its efficiency faults, can be extremely clear even to the human eye, especially when coupled with a good schema definition.

The only thing that XML has over a binary format is "clearness to the human eye". If you have a binary structure that has a sense of hierarchy and each node can contain content and properties then you've got the same thing, except faster and more efficient. The only "problem" is that it's proprietary, but not horribly so. The file format has been reverse engineered by OpenOffice and it's available for the world to see: http://sc.openoffice.org/compdocfileformat.pdf

Furthermore Microsoft has the specs to the Office 2007 XML file format available on MSDN, along with a variety of schemas for parsing it: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338205. aspx

Equation writers are historically very bad, especially industry leader Mathtype; they're proprietary, clunky and generally unfriendly. OpenOffice Math is suitably primitive, forcing users to type their equations in a non-standard markup language before they are rendered.

Enter Office 2007 with a new and much improved equation editor. Like WordPerfect has for years Microsoft has included a crippled yet somewhat capable version of MathType, complete with ads for an improved version (that's not so improved), However, in Office 2007 Microsoft has bothered to create a very new and streamline equation editor. Furthermore, it blows out the market for MathML generation tools in terms of ease of use. Coupled with new first class support for managing Works Cited and other academic essentials, Word is an outstanding academic word processing program.

Lets review, Word 2007 is:

• User friendly for the non-computer geek (yes, that's right, not every academic is a computer science geek)
• Optimized for serious academic word processing without a huge learning curve, complete with generous pricing for academic endevors
• Open, standards compliant equation editor
• The best word processor ever (okay, that admittedly arguable and a larger debate)

Yet these journals want people to use inferior software. I can only conclude that these publications are either new-technology-phobics, insisting on using obsolete Word software (odd, considering the nature of Science). Or they're pushing an agenda, as indicated about comments to use "ODF". It seems strange that they'll accept ".doc" and suggest that people use older software even though ".docx" is far more open and free to use in other software. Perhaps they're trying to dissuade people from even trying Office 2007 to see that it's vastly superior to freeware alternatives and even previous versions of Office...

Especially Microsoft software

But seriously... Why didnt they choose Open Office? It is the OBVIOUS choice.

(from [ooo-announce] )
Subject: [ooo-announce] Press reports regarding "SB/BadBunny-A" virus

There has been press comment recently about the "SB/BadBunny-A" virus
affecting OpenOffice.org reported by an anti-virus company.[1]

Industry best practice would have been for the anti-virus company to
report the virus to the OpenOffice.org security team before making this
information public. Unfortunately this did not happen in this case.
OpenOffice.org will issue a detailed analysis once a copy of the virus has
been received. However, due to the volume of interest in the media, the
Community would like to issue the following comments, based on the
information available.

Macros are a useful part of any office suite, allowing users to automate
repetitive tasks. These tasks include potentially destructive actions such
as modifying and deleting files, which is why macros are of interest to
virus writers.

It is possible in any capable macro language, including those in
OpenOffice.org, to write simple 'virus-like' programs. Currently,
OpenOffice.org follows industry best practice to mitigate the risk. If the
software detects macros in a document being opened, by default it displays
a warning and will only run the macro if the user specifically agrees. In
any macro-capable tool, it is essential to verify the origin and
authenticity of the document before executing macros. To this end,
OpenOffice.org has also included advanced digital signature capabilities.

The OpenOffice.org engineers take the security of the software very
seriously, and will react promptly to any new issues. To do this, they
require access to the source code for the alleged virus. From information
currently available, it is unlikely that this new virus contains any novel
features which would require a software patch. Technically, it is not even
a virus, as it is not "self-replicating" - with OpenOffice.org's default
settings, it cannot spread without user intervention.

However, the OpenOffice.org community repeats the consistent message from
security experts that users should never accept files from unknown
sources. For any security issue, please visit OpenOffice.org's Security
Team page [2] and send a note to (mail removed by poster).

[1] http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/sbbadbunny a.html
[2] http://www.openoffice.org/security/

There probably should be a 'Get OpenOffice' campaign just like the 'Get Firefox' campaign when Firefox 1.0 was released.

*ahem* The name is OpenOffice.org .

OpenOffice.org is probably the easiest one to implement, and it has the benefit of even returning money to the district in the form of lack of licensing fees.

K-12 Linux is harder to implement, but can save a district a *LOT* of money, because it makes hardware last a few years longer, and cuts out licensing costs. (And if you have a dedicated volunteer publicize an "install day" to the local Linux User Groups, you can get lots of install labor for free. Hell, it'll even have the side benefit, if you write Microsoft telling them of your impending switch, of having Microsoft donate software to you for the few computers that you want or have to keep on Windows.

(Disclaimer, K-12 Linux was created and is actively developed in the high school I attended, so I may be a bit biased; although I graduated way before the project started.)

Yes, there are *some* people who will not produce information-products (including software, music, images, or what-have-you) if they cannot globally enforce copy restrictions. Agreed. Such people should, IMO, go in to a different line of work. That is perfectly acceptable for a very simple reason: there will be more than enough people who find good reasons to produce such works in the absence of copyright restrictions. Some people will find an alternative means of making money off freely-duplicated works, and others just because they are altruistic.

Remember that people pay good money for their hardware, and copyright restrictions mean they cannot make full use of it. Copyright isn't actually a "freedom" for the person producing a work....people will still be completely free to produce works without copyright restrictions. Copright may be a "benefit" to the producers of a work (though in practice it is not; it is only a benefit to the distributors of the work, but I won't get into that here), but to call it a "freedom" is incorrect. Copyright law is a restriction on freedom to everyone in the world, and if such a freedom is going to be globally sacrificed, there had better be a damn good reason for it.

The only reason you have given is the false premise that without these restrictions, no-one will produce knowledge-products. Not only is this false in theory (since some people will produce stuff for free, and since some people will find ways of making money off knowledge-products in the absence of copyright restrictions), but there are lots of examples of businesses that make money off a free end-product, and of profoundly useful products made without any profit motive. And there are more where those came from.

That last set of links is pretty important. Google gives all of its services away for free, and yet has a market cap of over 100 billion. Not only are there business models built around free products, but they are very profitable and fiercely competitive.

Also check out this and this. Copyright is still there, but it is unenforced upon the consumer. It will be interesting to see how this selective approach to enforcement will pan out.

It is true that a farmer who gives away his crops for free would go broke, and if farmers could not legally force people to pay for their products then there would be no farmers. However, this observation not apply to information products. Information is fundamentally different from physical products, and business models surrounding it wind up taking a different form than traditional business models (a form which includes a free and/or freely redistributable product).

What we are dealing with is a new kind of abundance. Oxygen is an abundant resource, (anyone can get it for free because it just never runs out). Traditional capitalistic wisdom says that it is not possible to build a business around such resources, and further that no one will produce them because of that. Information is also abundant, once it exists (since it can be duplicated at zero cost by anyone). But it is also strangely non-abundant, since it's initial production requires an expenditure of resources. Traditional capitalistic models have a very hard time categorizing it...is it abundant or isn't it? Copyright law is an attempt at forcing it in to the "limited" category so that the traditional models wil

the original dispute was over the license - see the faq and the license in dispute:
http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/faq.php
http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/sissl_license.h tml

I chatted with Ed a long time ago (email, I think) after several separate groups and individuals were all attempting to port OOo 1.0, including myself, which I believe was eventually abandoned due to data model incompatibility. I forget the exact details, but I think it was OSX's problem with weak binding (this is X.1 and X.2 we're talking about) and OOo using multiply defined symbols in their plugins and requiring dynamic weak binding. X didn't have that problem, so only the X version was released.

Those guys (Ed and Patrick) are way ahead of the OOo port, so it's most likely going to be around for some time, Sun or not. Its a sad story, but its really too bad the Neo guys and OOo couldn't work together, but there's something political going on.

Here's some oblig. links:
NeoOffice: http://trinity.neooffice.org/
OOo: http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/index.h tml

In the FLOSS arena, I've long been a fan of joint copyright assignment, such as the one used by Sun and OpenOffice.org [pdf]. I'm not sure if there are any potential pitfalls for doing this in the client-freelancer scenario. But, in theory, it gives both parties carte blanche to do what they want.

There might be something else out there, like an Acrobat Reader style OOo plugin, but this extension looks interesting: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Firefox_O DFReader_extension

I only glanced at it, but it seems to send the ODF file through an XSLT stylesheet, effectively turning your document into a web page. It's still in development, though.

Never mind, I found it. The problem was that my open office version was in German and I don't know German.

When I create a Form in OOo 2.2 and export it to PDF, the resulting form cannot be read by Acrobat Reader or Foxit Reader. The reported bug 70143 was labelled invalid. Do we have to buy Acrobat Pro to be able to produce PDF forms?

http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=7 0143

Thanks

There is a glossy brochure high level summary here and a gory details hacker version here.