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• The framework and getting it more modularized, so that various large projects making their own branded software will only use the components that they need. The situation is best described here, here and here.
• File format support and compatibility. This is mostly related to Office Open XML (known as MS Office 2007 format). That work is rather extensive, because so far there's some stuff that is yet to be done wrt pre-MS Office 2007 formats, while OOXML support needs continuous improvement and is still raw at places.
• Mac Aqua port. So far, OO.o had to be run through X11 on Mac OS X.

One of the best things framework-wise they did so far is getting the extensions system working. Michael Meeks is right about the number of committed developers; the extensions system should now make it easier for third party developers to create required functionality that can be quickly added, while taking some heat off the main developers. The extensions system also made it possible to ditch the bulky and inflexible way dictionaries were managed.

The Linux kernel
The benefit of running the latest 2.6.xx kernel instead of 2.4.xx is better overall security, resource management and better hardware support. The Linux 1.x tree probably doesn't support ext3 and other advanced stuff, because that depends on newer libraries, which in turn want a newer kernel to function. If you still want to run something on a very old machine, then perhaps give any of the *BSD's a try. That's how I see it.

• The framework and getting it more modularized, so that various large projects making their own branded software will only use the components that they need. The situation is best described here, here and here.
• File format support and compatibility. This is mostly related to Office Open XML (known as MS Office 2007 format). That work is rather extensive, because so far there's some stuff that is yet to be done wrt pre-MS Office 2007 formats, while OOXML support needs continuous improvement and is still raw at places.
• Mac Aqua port. So far, OO.o had to be run through X11 on Mac OS X.

One of the best things framework-wise they did so far is getting the extensions system working. Michael Meeks is right about the number of committed developers; the extensions system should now make it easier for third party developers to create required functionality that can be quickly added, while taking some heat off the main developers. The extensions system also made it possible to ditch the bulky and inflexible way dictionaries were managed.

The Linux kernel
The benefit of running the latest 2.6.xx kernel instead of 2.4.xx is better overall security, resource management and better hardware support. The Linux 1.x tree probably doesn't support ext3 and other advanced stuff, because that depends on newer libraries, which in turn want a newer kernel to function. If you still want to run something on a very old machine, then perhaps give any of the *BSD's a try. That's how I see it.

• The framework and getting it more modularized, so that various large projects making their own branded software will only use the components that they need. The situation is best described here, here and here.
• File format support and compatibility. This is mostly related to Office Open XML (known as MS Office 2007 format). That work is rather extensive, because so far there's some stuff that is yet to be done wrt pre-MS Office 2007 formats, while OOXML support needs continuous improvement and is still raw at places.
• Mac Aqua port. So far, OO.o had to be run through X11 on Mac OS X.

One of the best things framework-wise they did so far is getting the extensions system working. Michael Meeks is right about the number of committed developers; the extensions system should now make it easier for third party developers to create required functionality that can be quickly added, while taking some heat off the main developers. The extensions system also made it possible to ditch the bulky and inflexible way dictionaries were managed.

The Linux kernel
The benefit of running the latest 2.6.xx kernel instead of 2.4.xx is better overall security, resource management and better hardware support. The Linux 1.x tree probably doesn't support ext3 and other advanced stuff, because that depends on newer libraries, which in turn want a newer kernel to function. If you still want to run something on a very old machine, then perhaps give any of the *BSD's a try. That's how I see it.

• The framework and getting it more modularized, so that various large projects making their own branded software will only use the components that they need. The situation is best described here, here and here.
• File format support and compatibility. This is mostly related to Office Open XML (known as MS Office 2007 format). That work is rather extensive, because so far there's some stuff that is yet to be done wrt pre-MS Office 2007 formats, while OOXML support needs continuous improvement and is still raw at places.
• Mac Aqua port. So far, OO.o had to be run through X11 on Mac OS X.

One of the best things framework-wise they did so far is getting the extensions system working. Michael Meeks is right about the number of committed developers; the extensions system should now make it easier for third party developers to create required functionality that can be quickly added, while taking some heat off the main developers. The extensions system also made it possible to ditch the bulky and inflexible way dictionaries were managed.

The Linux kernel
The benefit of running the latest 2.6.xx kernel instead of 2.4.xx is better overall security, resource management and better hardware support. The Linux 1.x tree probably doesn't support ext3 and other advanced stuff, because that depends on newer libraries, which in turn want a newer kernel to function. If you still want to run something on a very old machine, then perhaps give any of the *BSD's a try. That's how I see it.

Some of us like to commute :P And continuing the analogy, people choose the bus for saving money (implying you're using your money on other things), or helping the environment, or it's more convenient so you don't have to find parking, etc. I'd say most of those reasons with a bit of adaption could be applied to why people use OO too.

On the other hand, bus systems can be frustrating and slow, and they may not drop you off exactly where you want to be...which also could apply to OO.

And haven't messed with it much, but it seems like Calc can do most things Excel does, albeit using some very useful statistical plugins (can't find the link at the moment) it exceeds some of Excel's capabilities.

If OO ever implements this (wiki last update mid-2007): http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Statistical_Data_Analysis_Tool then it'll be way past Excel and halfway to statistical software like SPSS. Wish I knew how to implement, as I'd love to have that built in...

Speed. A slick interface.

Both are on the roadmap and primary objectives for upcoming versions. However, performance improvements really needs devs experienced with the codebase. For the interface see: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Renaissance

Heres OO.o ToDo Page. Found some interesting things there.

This bug is to implement the feature I want, and has alot of input from others who want it too http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3959

6 years old, little progress - I think most people would agree this lends credence to Mr. Meeks assertion of project stagnation

Its not like people are going to be rolling much OO code into their own projects - which is where the GPL licensing breaks down. The cost (giving up your entire codebase) is probably "high" when its likely a small fraction of OO code that is wanted (say some paragraph breaking logic).

OpenOffice.org software is under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3, which allows it to be combined with proprietary software. I don't see how use of LGPL modules in your code requires "giving up your entire codebase", unless perhaps you're on a platform that requires code signing and forbids end users to sign their own compiled apps.

This is not true at all. Sure, you can type stuff in, mark some stuff bold, spell check it, and print it out -- but there's no need for an office suite to do that, and if that's all you intend to do don't call yourself an office suite.

Here's something I ran into yesterday. There's a "Compare Documents" feature under the Edit menu. It doesn't compare the contents of tables. The bug reporting this was opened in July 2003, and nobody has seemed to care yet. In 2007, someone had a patch, which was committed and not added to the next release's codeline because "I don't think that this issue fulfills the criteria for 2.3.1". This may it was retargeted for 3.1 and rejected in November because There are too many open questions to finish in 3.1." People complained again in 2004 and 2008; I don't think you can say in good faith that "no one cares enough".

It occurs to me that your exact phrasing was "no one cares enough to add it", which is completely right. Nobody cares enough to develop OpenOffice.org to where it should be.

If you ask what more, are they not done, then I'll ask the same thing about the Linux kernel -- isn't it done? What benefit is there to running the latest 2.6.28 or whatever instead of 2.4, which worked fine for everyone a few years ago? But yet who in their right mind would (all other things being equal) set up a new system with 2.4 instead of some kernel released this year? And you'd laugh if I suggested the Linux 1.x tree, but that can open and close programs and files just as well as any other OS, can't it?

This is not true at all. Sure, you can type stuff in, mark some stuff bold, spell check it, and print it out -- but there's no need for an office suite to do that, and if that's all you intend to do don't call yourself an office suite.

Here's something I ran into yesterday. There's a "Compare Documents" feature under the Edit menu. It doesn't compare the contents of tables. The bug reporting this was opened in July 2003, and nobody has seemed to care yet. In 2007, someone had a patch, which was committed and not added to the next release's codeline because "I don't think that this issue fulfills the criteria for 2.3.1". This may it was retargeted for 3.1 and rejected in November because There are too many open questions to finish in 3.1." People complained again in 2004 and 2008; I don't think you can say in good faith that "no one cares enough".

It occurs to me that your exact phrasing was "no one cares enough to add it", which is completely right. Nobody cares enough to develop OpenOffice.org to where it should be.

If you ask what more, are they not done, then I'll ask the same thing about the Linux kernel -- isn't it done? What benefit is there to running the latest 2.6.28 or whatever instead of 2.4, which worked fine for everyone a few years ago? But yet who in their right mind would (all other things being equal) set up a new system with 2.4 instead of some kernel released this year? And you'd laugh if I suggested the Linux 1.x tree, but that can open and close programs and files just as well as any other OS, can't it?

This is not true at all. Sure, you can type stuff in, mark some stuff bold, spell check it, and print it out -- but there's no need for an office suite to do that, and if that's all you intend to do don't call yourself an office suite.

Here's something I ran into yesterday. There's a "Compare Documents" feature under the Edit menu. It doesn't compare the contents of tables. The bug reporting this was opened in July 2003, and nobody has seemed to care yet. In 2007, someone had a patch, which was committed and not added to the next release's codeline because "I don't think that this issue fulfills the criteria for 2.3.1". This may it was retargeted for 3.1 and rejected in November because There are too many open questions to finish in 3.1." People complained again in 2004 and 2008; I don't think you can say in good faith that "no one cares enough".

It occurs to me that your exact phrasing was "no one cares enough to add it", which is completely right. Nobody cares enough to develop OpenOffice.org to where it should be.

If you ask what more, are they not done, then I'll ask the same thing about the Linux kernel -- isn't it done? What benefit is there to running the latest 2.6.28 or whatever instead of 2.4, which worked fine for everyone a few years ago? But yet who in their right mind would (all other things being equal) set up a new system with 2.4 instead of some kernel released this year? And you'd laugh if I suggested the Linux 1.x tree, but that can open and close programs and files just as well as any other OS, can't it?

How about fixing some of the 12058 open bugs?

OpenOffice.org is freely available from OpenOffice.org with versions for the Mac and for Linux, as well as for Windows, so there is no reason to be shelling out money to Mickey$oft! I myself, will refuse to purchase or use anything, either hardware, or software that forces me to pay, and pay, and pay to anyone in Redmond WA!!! The time has come for everyone to turn Mickey$oft into the true"Alternative" O/S, and to make Linux the Mainstream O/S!!!

If you MUST use Windows:

http://www.openoffice.org/
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
http://www.inkscape.org/download/?lang=en

If you're partial to macs you have the same options:

http://www.openoffice.org/
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
http://www.inkscape.org/download/?lang=en

If you're fed up with Microsoft and don't have a Mac (or if you have a Mac but are tiring of OS X):

http://www.opensuse.org/en/
http://www.kubuntu.org/
http://www.xandros.com/
http://www.centos.org/
http://fedoraproject.org/

If you MUST use Windows:

http://www.openoffice.org/
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
http://www.inkscape.org/download/?lang=en

If you're partial to macs you have the same options:

http://www.openoffice.org/
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
http://www.inkscape.org/download/?lang=en

If you're fed up with Microsoft and don't have a Mac (or if you have a Mac but are tiring of OS X):

http://www.opensuse.org/en/
http://www.kubuntu.org/
http://www.xandros.com/
http://www.centos.org/
http://fedoraproject.org/

Like of homework wasn't boring enough, now you have to pay to do homework?
Good way to demotivate students and make them skip homework.
Students should be payed to do homework.

http://www.openoffice.org/

It could : http://why.openoffice.org/images/base-big.png

The point is, there are tons of other softwares that do the same thing as you just pointed out. I doubt Stone Edge has cornered the market of e-commerce or electronic retail management. Same thing as metlin is saying by bringing up Excel all the time. 90% of people don't need the VBA integration for their spreadsheets/graphs. Calc can do pretty much the entire base feature set Excel can, and some of the advance stuff too.

Frankly, this is getting old. The arguments weren't valid back in 2000, they are even less now.

Yes there is Open Source solutions to his problem: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org_Solutions#Content_.26_Document_Management_Systems.2C_Search_Technology

Alfresco and Plone are the most known solutions and they're (much) cheaper than MS products and imho easier to implement and use

I agree about the copy editing. This is a discipline all of its own. My wife has just completed a 2 year course (in 12 months) to qualify as an editor. There is a 'language' to the editing marks that leaves me somewhat stumped, but is obvious to those in the know.

I also heard her say, on a regular basis through the course, that they are taught to "edit without changing the writer's voice".

So, if you are editing your own work, be careful that you edit in your own voice. (I recently wrote (most of) a 50,000 word novel for the National Novel Writing Month and found myself editing on the fly and in some cases editing out good dialogue and making it 'wooden'. Then, I recalled my wife's words, and the words flowed much better in my own 'voice'.)

OpenOffice.org is what I used.

When things get to the point that Open Office starts culling formats, it is more likely than not that someone in the data recovery field (or some other concerned individual) will build a Linux VM that supports the old version that can deal with those formats.

Based on that line of reasoning, it might not be easy or cheap to access those formats( http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/OOo3_User_Guides/Getting_Started/File_formats ), but it will almost certainly be possible.

On the other hand, staying as close to text as possible and using widespread/open formats has present day advantages. (html and such may die, but the idea that there will be no way to look at the file is just silly; somewhat amusingly, a good strategy probably involves rendering svg to a binary format like png, and dumping binary databases to something like csv (if size allows))

Mark Williams, District 5, President, Austin Independent School District.

Dear Mr. Williams:

As you may or may not be aware, it appears that a teacher in your district recently disciplined her student for demonstrating open source software to his/her classmates.

IMPORTANT: The article http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/08/12/10/001236.shtml about this is going viral on the web.

I can assure you that educators need to understand that Open Source Software is, by it's very nature, free. Free to use, free to distribute and free to copy. Further to that, Open Source Software can save your school board 10's of thousands of dollars in licencing and royalty fees. Replacing Windows and/or Microsoft Office is now easy. Furthermore, going forward, upgrades are free too.

More and more schools and school boards are adopting Linux and Open Office http://www.openoffice.org/. Open Office is a mature, fully-featured, standards compliant Open Source office suite which adheres to fully open document standards and can open and create virtually any MS Office document, spreadsheet or presentation. Linux is virtually virus-free, stable and secure. Special versions of it are designed for schools. Here's one: http://k12ltsp.org/

The most important thing about Open Source Software is that it helps to level the playing field. Less advantaged students can take home legal copies of software and use and install them legally at home.

All I would ask is this:

- Please educate your teaching staff about the advantages of Open Source Software.

- Please have your IT department review its costs and look at the savings to be had.

- Please do what you can to help give all kids the same opportunities.

Thank you in advance for your time in looking into this matter.

I'm glad that the argument that "they do it for the glory" worked for your dad. But I think in general it is a weak argument that doesn't really explain much and may be mostly fictitious. For instance, the Spread Firefox contingent make a seriously important contribution to the larger Firefox community, but none of them are in it for the glory, or are using programmer's skills for that matter.

[I know I'm preaching to the choir here. Please think about how you might be able to use the following in your efforts to convince those around you that FOSS is an important phenomenon that is significantly reshaping our world. Consider this a part of my contribution back to the open source communities that are giving me so much: Ubuntu, OpenOffice, Blender, Apache, GnuCash, and the list goes on and on...]

Here's a core truth about successful FOSS projects: it really is all about the community.

These projects come together like an Amish community that decides it needs a new meeting house, or an Inuit community that decides it needs a new whaling canoe.

Community members gather to mutually develop a plan, then each contributes a bit of their labor in their free time for the common good. In the Amish community, those with carpentry skills measure the boards and do the hammering; those with lesser skills work the saws and fetch and carry the boards. Others with different skills prepare the meals. Everyone contributes to the building and in a Saturday's time, hundreds of man hours, including that of skilled craftsmen, cause a new meeting house to be raised.

Everyone involved benefits: any member of the community can use the building. No one person owns the result, but everyone involved is wealthier for having access to the new asset. And it all comes together with incredible speed, and (by capitalistic standards) an impossibly low cost of production.

This is a very ancient way of getting big projects done. The internet makes it easy to go back to these ancient ways for software production. The internet makes it possible for worldwide communities to form around different ideas that would benefit everybody (an office suite with fully shareable data files-- OpenOffice.org; a superior 3D modeling and animation package-- Blender; an accounting package that even a mon'n'pop grocery store could afford to use-- GnuCash). Given sufficient interest, a production team of thousands can self-assemble and create in a very short time a piece of complex software that matches or exceeds the quality that any closed shop could afford to produce.

Since there is no cost involved in sharing the results of these community efforts even with people who are outside of the community, it makes sense to just make them completely open for anyone to use. For one thing, it is easier to do that than to come up with any kind of exclusionary scheme. Any more, these products are generally copyrighted by some representative of the community, but the licensing is used to protect the community's long term interests in its jointly owned property, and not as means to play zero sum profit games. The wealth that the community builders wanted is there, and is undiminished by sharing it with everyone. To not so share it would actually be harder to do and would add an impossible cost.

A Christian might see this as a loaves and fishes thing. What would have happened at that assembly if some guy in the middle of the crowd decided that he was not going to hand the basket on unless the fellow next to him paid him a coin or two. Well, the other baskets being passed about would route around him, wouldn't they? And that is what the FOSS concept is turning the world of software into: a gigantic loaves and fishes meeting where nobody is going to go hungry.

[Thank you for reading this rant.]

The OpenOffice.org project is primarily sponsored by Sun Microsystems, which is the primary contributor of code to the Project. Our other major corporate contributors include Novell, RedHat, RedFlag CH2000, IBM, and Google. Additonally over 450,000 people from nearly every curve of the globe have joined this Project with the idea of creating the best possible office suite that all can use. This is the essence of an "open source." community!

(Emphasis mine)

Oh,

And MS Word macros have a much cheaper solution:

http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/

Cheers then, thanks for responding. I too chafe sorely at the MS tax, and long for the day when I can totally rely on FOSS and fully open formats for my business needs. "Proliferat[ing] the closed format files on everyone else", indeed -- .doc files are all my clients send me (aside from the occasional, and dreaded, .ppt file). OmegaT and Lokalize are making strides on the translation memory front, among others, but OOo keeps dropping the ball on the word processing front. With most of my clients, I *could* dispense with the fancy formatting and send them just the translated text, so full-on faithful MS Word format reproduction isn't really required. But come on -- how hard is it to generate sane counts? We're talking over five years and counting (vis-a-vis Issue 17964). Far too many businesses simply cannot afford to adopt OOo as their in-house office suite, due to bizarre formatting issues (MS's fault for being such fckwads) and such glaring shortcomings as this should-be-no-brainer (OOo's fault), leaving the rest of us having to deal with .doc files. Oh, well...

Cheers,

After all, most of the automation done in word processors is really really trivial: replace that with that; set that attribute on selection or count that and put it in here. This are one/two liner in VBA (what is top of my VB capabilities), yet in StarBasic this is Java-like Object Oriented monstrosity.

You hit the nail on the head here --

I don't know what happened in the evolution of the StarOffice/OOo codebase, but folks there seem to have gone way beyond the pale in making blooming *everything* Java-y, with services and interfaces and implementations and whatnot, right down into the documentation. Those of us not dealing directly with the source code, but opting instead for a script, must wade through tons of Java-specific gobbledygook to even begin to find what we're looking for.

By way of example, let's look at a TextCursor, ostensibly the object we need to use to futz with text in an ODF document. The link above is to the official API documentation. Look that page over briefly and see if you can tell quickly what a TextCursor can do, in terms of what procedures a TextCursor object exposes and how to invoke them. I'd wager good money that, unless you're already intimately familiar with the OOo API, you won't be able to.

And it's the same damn thing for *any* object you can get a hold of -- to look it up in the API and really understand it, you need the patience of Job and a few pots of coffee close at hand. Why the heck are the docs this insane? I know they've effectively *prevented* at least half a dozen people (myself included) from using OOo more. I thought documentation was supposed to *help* people -- the OOo API docs get in the way, instead.

"Java-like monstrosity" is certainly an apt description.

Sadly,

I know you're marked Troll and your verbiage is deliberately inflammatory, but in all truth, OOo still falls short of the mark. I'm a Japanese - English translator, and one simple piece of functionality that I require for my business is accurate counting of mixed Western + CJK texts. OOo Issue 17964 has been on the books for years, with many votes but essentially zero progress. There hasn't even been any hint of actual development efforts to fix this shortcoming. Meanwhile, IBM's closed Lotus Symphony office program, based on the OOo 1.x branch, includes accurate counts for mixed Western + CJK text, clearly indicating that the problem is not insurmountable.

I mention Issue 17964 here in specific, but the bug is symptomatic of far too many OOo issues that have been formally reported. I don't know what the problem is, but my guesses are:

• too few devs,
• ridiculously complicated and poorly documented object model, and
• devs working on what makes them happy (apparently new features) rather than what needs fixing (bugs and other failings).

I would dearly love to make fuller use of OOo in my business. However, when all my clients are sending me source documents in MS's .doc format, and OOo cannot faithfully reproduce complicated .doc layouts and massively borks them on save (Lotus Symphony has the same trouble), nor even provide me with a basic word + Asian character count (not including spaces), I simply cannot rely on it. And more's the pity, it seems OOo devs really don't understand the opportunity for a fuller MS Word clone, making it all the more unlikely that OOo will ever truly be able to steal Word's thunder.

There's a reason MSO continues to rule the roost -- and, for good or ill, that reason is not entirely MS's monopoly market position, but simply because MSO does what people need it to do, with no real viable alternatives around. I quite despise MS, but sometimes you just need to use the best tool for the job.

Cheers,

Your failure is running M$ Office.

Go get a copy of OpenOffice. http://www.openoffice.org/

(Corporate America): "Whats that Sonny?!? Speak up, old man Corporate is hard of hearing!"

Your failure is running M$ Office.

Go get a copy of OpenOffice. http://www.openoffice.org/

Is that so?
Me, I know a number of people who don't run Windows at home. I even know some who don't run Windows at work. I'm not sure what industry you work in, but even if you have to use Windows at work, no one is forcing you to at home. You can avoid it other than for your job. And frankly, work is work. There are lots of things you can't avoid at $work, unless you change jobs.

It's a trademark issue. These people had the trademark first, I gather. OpenOffice.org's web site has this to say about the question: Because of trademark issues, OpenOffice.org must insist that all public communications refer to the project and software as "OpenOffice.org" or "OpenOffice.org 1.x," and not "OpenOffice" or "Open Office."

http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/ooo2gd

Works with Google Docs, Zoho, and WebDAV.

It's like Sharepoint and Live Office in one.

http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/ooo2gd

There are plugins for this. OOoSVN comes to mind.

It's because they also included Java in the Google Pack.

See here: http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/sun_toolbar.html

"Under the agreement, Sun will include the Google Toolbar as an option in its consumer downloads of the Java Runtime Environment on http://java.com./ In addition, the companies have agreed to explore opportunities to promote and enhance Sun technologies, like the Java Runtime Environment and the OpenOffice.org productivity suite available at http://www.openoffice.org./"

They are 'opening' something that already exists : ODFDOM and jOpenDocument.

That might work on some or most files, but there still is no replacement for Acrobat.

True, but we're getting closer. OpenOffice 3 now has a PDF Import extension, and of course for Windows there's PDFCreator (Gnome/KDE and OS X natively support printing to PDF).

Get OpenOffice + the Google Docs Plugin:

http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/ooo2gd

Writeup
http://lifehacker.com/software/featured-download/sync-openofficeorg-docs-with-google-docs-332055.php

Problem: destroyed. God you suck.

They didn't care enough to put a single PPC binary to downloads, that shows their lack of care and knowledge of the platform.

Here: http://distribution.openoffice.org/p2p/ in several languages for PPC, but not english. I suppose you can add a language pack if you can find one or extract it out of the beta or Mac intel builds.

where's the 64-bit version of OO.org?

http://borft.student.utwente.nl/~adrian/torrentphp/torrent.php/OOo_3.0.0_LinuxX86-64_install_en-US.tar.gz.torrent
Found on the p2p download page: http://distribution.openoffice.org/p2p/
I can't see it on the normal download page, don't know why.

while gentoo may have an openoffice 'overlay'(not a gentoo user so that may be the wrong term) most ubuntu users will have to download the deb manually (either from here or a third party repo (cant think of any for ubuntu) or wait for 9.04

oh and from TFA

Only 221,000 downloads by Linux users were recorded, leading John McCreesh, head of marketing for OpenOffice.org, to suggest a massive undercount. McCreesh said 90% of Linux users traditionally receive OpenOffice.org updates straight from their Linux distribution's vendor, which would explain the relatively low Linux count.

but that would still give windows >66% (assuming os x makes up 0%, which is possible due to neo office)

If you to help increase the visibility of this bug, please vote for Bug #43029.

Ok, I voted.(2 votes, too!)

Now, will you vote for one of these?
RFE: ability to merge cells already merged http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/showvotes.cgi?issue_id=2131

Generated HTML changes default spacing http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/showvotes.cgi?issue_id=14600

Outline View (aka MS Word) http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/showvotes.cgi?issue_id=3959

If you to help increase the visibility of this bug, please vote for Bug #43029.

Ok, I voted.(2 votes, too!)

Now, will you vote for one of these?
RFE: ability to merge cells already merged http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/showvotes.cgi?issue_id=2131

Generated HTML changes default spacing http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/showvotes.cgi?issue_id=14600

Outline View (aka MS Word) http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/showvotes.cgi?issue_id=3959

If you to help increase the visibility of this bug, please vote for Bug #43029.

Ok, I voted.(2 votes, too!)

Now, will you vote for one of these?
RFE: ability to merge cells already merged http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/showvotes.cgi?issue_id=2131

Generated HTML changes default spacing http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/showvotes.cgi?issue_id=14600

Outline View (aka MS Word) http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/showvotes.cgi?issue_id=3959

If you to help increase the visibility of this bug, please vote for Bug #43029.

Ok, I voted.(2 votes, too!)

Now, will you vote for one of these?
RFE: ability to merge cells already merged http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/showvotes.cgi?issue_id=2131

Generated HTML changes default spacing http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/showvotes.cgi?issue_id=14600

Outline View (aka MS Word) http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/showvotes.cgi?issue_id=3959

I registered a bug with OO 6.5 years ago, still unfixed, that causes spreadsheets to give utterly wrong results in even the simplest calculations. Sometimes OO treats a number as a string, and assigns it a value of "0" in calculations, e.g., 1+1 could equal 0 or 1.

Either OO should throw an error "can't treat a string as a number" or it should guess the number of the string is a valid number. But a major undetectable error like this is murderous, as has been testified to by the folks reporting the same bug after I did.

(Note the OO bug tracker seems to be having problems at this moment, so the link doesn't work.)

It's not really the summary at fault. Seems like the whole http://www.openoffice.org/ is giving the same response.

I keep meaning to install the latest version of IBM's Lotus Symphony. The last version I installed impressed me for having resolved some of the issues that prevent me from using OOo -- I'm a Japanese-English translator, so getting accurate word / character counts is vital, and OOo completely drops the ball on this one, but Symphony actually gives me useful count data. I'm not sure about Outline view, but it wouldn't surprise me if Symphony did this better than OOo, too. Plus, Symphony apparently uses a good bit of the OOo codebase, and it reads and writes ODF and MSO files. The downsides are that it's still slow to start (possibly because it's built on top of the Eclipse platform), and I'm not sure about its status as FOSS. It's certainly free-as-in-beer, at least. You might find it's worth taking a look.

(Note that I have no relation to IBM at all. I'm simply a former OOo user frustrated by the glacial pace of improvements, and happy to find an ODF-based alternative that seems to actually work. :)

Cheers,

after looking i see this... haven't tried it yet.

http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/aqua.html