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OpenOffice 641d Released, Next Stop: 1.0
Damek writes "In the spirit of the proliferating news about Office alternatives and 1.0 versions this week, OpenOffice.org has released a new version of OpenOffice, 641d, the last planned release before 1.0. They're calling for help in pinning down and eradicating final bugs before they hit the big milestone: "...we would like you to download it, test it, and finally vote on the feature set.""
Whatever happened to porting OpenOffice to GTK? Was this ever seriously considered or did I just imagine it?
I recently had to convert 100 pages of M$-Word to Latex. There was loads of mathematics in it, and Open Office helped me a great deal in seeing what the original looked like, since i don't have any M$ on my machine.
I liked it alot, but I had some trouble running it at first. I fiddled with everything to get it to work, finaly I just gave up and started to read slashdot, after a few mins I went down to the taskbar to check the status on a POV render and low and behold there was a button on the taskbar for open office so I checked it out and the damn thing started up. I havn't had a problem sense.
Business News and Resources: www.usasource.net
with the recent stories about the implications of star office being charged for, it's good to see that openoffice is setpping up to the plate.
if I were the developers working on openoffice, I'd be thankin my lucky stars(no pun inteded) that sun decided to charge for it. with the growing wave of 'open and free is better' I think they can capitalize on it.
As a former BeOS user, I also noticed gobe productive made the news. sweet.
Now comes the important part. in a month, I'm switching over to a completely linux system, and I'm gonna need a replacement for Office. so who's it gonna be?:)
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
I am artificially intelligent.
While i like the features of Openoffice, i hate the way the whole thing works. The desktop of Staroffice 5.2 has been removed, but OO is still one big process and the different applications are just modules. If only one of these modules hangs and you have to kill it, all your OO aplications get killed. Another result is, for me starting up the Writer takes as long as starting up the whole 5.2 Desktop.
I hope that this changes in one of the future versions, but i have the feeling that it won't.
Unless they are planning a linux only type release then openoffice is nowhere near version 1, I'm all for software for linux but really it isn't hard to make the code portable enough that it will compile on FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, OsX etc. Right now it compiles nicely in NetBSD ports n thats it, the others are all broken. If I was enough of a C hacker I would try and do my bit but my gripe is the portability issue should have been thought of from the start, if it had been then we could be close to a true open source office solution that everyone (nearly) can use.
-mutter- something something something...
We were using the StarOffice 6-beta release, but when I heard of the 31-3-02 timebomb in it, we moved to OpenOffice 641C. Of course now there is a patch to extend StarOffice, but we won't be needing it.
The 641 build is quite stable and complete. Oh - except for that Australian dictionary. Maybe I should go make one...
I'm looking forward to the proposed changes to the toolbars (look under the 'Todo' section on their site). Looks very nice. Maybe it will come with a performance improvement too. Hint, hint!!!
For a package thats 60+ megs to install, shouldnt it at least install without me having to configure it?
./setup
"
glibc version: 2.2.4
/tmp/sv001.tmp/setup.bin: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++-libc6.1-2.so.3: cannot open shared ojbect file: No such file or directory
"
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
As one might infer from the original post, Open Office is a beta product.
Beta products have been known to have bugs now and again.
The best thing to do when you note a bug is to check and see if it's already been reported. If it hasn't, then you should go ahead and report it.
Complaining does little to make the product better. Reporting (and helping to fix) bugs does much.
Gentoo Linux http://gentoo.org/
They've been saying that about Unix for years. Trouble is, we have a damn good necromancer keeping it going.
6 38c
6 41b
6 41c
6 41d
Why the version number contained with bra size?
after this is 1.0,
what's next?
1.0PU
1.1
1.1PU
1.2
1.2PU
(PU = Push up)
-- Hasbullah bin Pit (sebol)
I'm interested in Open Office, but the first thing I always look for in a web site about a GUI-based software products is a set of screen shots, and they don't have any. I want to see what the product looks like. It would be really cool if OpenOffice would make some screen shots of their prodict available.
Miko O'Sullivan
It doesn't matter how well it works. The main thing that matters to most people in an MS Office replacement is how well it reads and writes MS Office files. And that's, unfortunately, a moving target.
yep, you're paranoid!
the source code for both these products you mention are OPEN SOURCE. if you can show some of these time loops in the free version, we'd love to see it. i'm sure the developers of the software would love to see it as well.
The article says 641D is the production (or near production) version. But if you go to the mirror sites, there's already a 642 version out there.
(Incidentally, neither of the US mirrors are working, but the one from Denmark seemed to work just fine. The links are further down on the page.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
They don't seem to be entirely /.'d. I was able to navigate their site enough to find this URL for mirror sites, and load the page of mirrors.
Now I'm downloading a copy from Mexico.
Notice that the build642 directory was last touched Mar 9, while the build641d was last touched Mar 29, so it isn't entirely clear which version to get. However, if you are getting the source you should plan to do a cvs update anyway, so it doesn't matter that much.
I grabbed 641D a couple of days ago, and I have to say that I'm impressed! Other than a few fonts that I haven't migrated to Linux, it's done a great job with complex tables and formatting.
The only thing that would stop me from using it as my regular word processor is that I can't figure out how to make it use imperial units (inches) instead of metric.
...restrained from exploiting their monopoly...the PC vendors can install openoffice, java, Perl, Mozilla on EVERY PC that they ship....that might give us a base to start with. Perhaps the XML file formats will become the basic document exchange standard...
I want to be alone with the sandwich
If it ain't broke then don't fix it. If it runs on 6.2 then it should run on newer versions.
I still fail to understand why people upgrade office machines as often as they do. My IT person at work tells me she has to upgrade the hardware in order to run the latest software and that often requires an OS upgrade.
Why? Because her users have to be "compatible" with other users in the world. She cited several examples of people receiving files from vendors that were in OfficeXP so we had to have OfficeXP to be compatable.
That was the reason that, when she discovered my 486 box with RedHat 6.2 on it while I was on vacation, she replaced it with a brand new 1.2 GHz machine running Microsoft products of the XP line. She claims this to be an upgrade and is shocked at my lack of thankfulness.
She is, and I'm sure you will be, shocked that I am not happy about this. But damnit my computer was doing just what I wanted it to do, and quite reliably. It now takes longer to write a simple memo, to create a simple spreadsheet, even to check my email or find information on the WWW. But I've got a "compatable" configuration.
Not everyone needs or wants the latest and greatest. Because of this I'm glad that they are testing on a version of Linux that has been out there a while, is fairly common, and has proven itself. The results of those tests should indicate that their product will work fine on newer OS. If not, well that's an OS issue.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
Simple - it's largely because they're cross platform. This means that they cannot take for granted ANY system services at all. With Mozilla for instance they reimplemented COM (into XPCOM) because only Windows has such a component model. They created XUL (as far as I'm concerned the coolness value makes that worth the effort alone) because at the time there were no robust enough XP GUI toolkits under the right type of license. Qt would have been ideal, but I think there were problems with the legalese.
So they used their kick-ass rendering engine to do the GUIs. But this makes it larger, as all the widget logic has to be contained within the software. I'm amazed Moz is as small as it is.
OpenOffice is the same - they created their own component model, not sure about the widget set, but because they could assume nothing they had to make a lot of stuff pure Windows/Linux/Mac developers can take for granted.
But after using for about 1/2 an hour, I'd say this thing is pretty impressive.
Just a couple of notes:
1) I find the interface a little (stress "little")clunky, but I'm a long time Office user. But I'd get used to it in about a week.
2) The Document default views are awful. I'm going to see if I can mess with this to make it more livable for me.
3) It opens Office XP Spreadsheets, Documents, and Powerpoints pretty well. I haven't thrown the kitchen sink at it though.
4) 1/2 hour isn't long enough to judge stability. But I haven't had any crashes or oddities yet.
This is a good package so far as I've looked. I'm going to try to work in it for the next few days and see if its good enough to recommend to relatives who need MS Office compatibility.
Hats off to these guys. This is excellent work.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
WordPerfect import ability would really help.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Not under Windows it doesn't. OO seems a lot faster under Windows.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
A few days ago, I posted a quick personal review of OO 641C. I've been impressed by the software, and my main complaint was the speed of the program as a whole.
I can gladly say that 641D has introduced significant speed increases under Linux. Startup time fell by half; whereas I used to wait 20 seconds to get a workspace, I now wait 10 seconds or less. The interface in general has sped up. Things feel much snappier, far less laggy. Dialogs open faster, new windows open faster, the whole thing feels like the developers spent much of their time between releases on optimizations and speed increases. I'm already very impressed.
The one thing I used to dread about starting up OO was the speed. I don't think I'll have any such worries anymore, as it doesn't seem to bog down the system either anymore - or at least, not as much.
I'm a happy user.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
This sounds like a troll to me but really, the simple thing is to put redhat 6.2 or 7.2 on that AMD machine and keep on trucking. If you're really paranoid about her coming back to redo WinXP then go buy vmware or one of the other emulators and tab switch between the two.
Latest news on the Debian packaging effort can be found here. There is also a mailing list, debian-openoffice, if you're interested in helping with this project.
>>How do they manage to make them so slow?!
>Simple - it's largely because they're cross platform.
You hit it right on the money. It's extremely difficult to write complicated programs so that they're efficient on multiple platforms. Differences in the windowing system are only part of it - another big part is how the different OS's deal with multiple threads, file I/O, etc. - what's very fast and efficient on one platform might be quite slow on another.
If anyone's thinking of starting development on a cross-platform program now, you should seriously look at wxWindows - it abstracts the GUI, file I/O, networking, and many other things and runs on Windows, Unix/GTK, and all MacOS's...and unlike Mozilla and Qt, it uses native widgets on all platforms! Unfortunately wxWindows wasn't mature and stable enough a few years ago when Mozilla was getting started, or even longer ago when StarOffice was getting started, so they had to invent the wheel themselves.
Metric vs Imperial is a hard problem, or so it appears to be. Switching between them is always bolted on to a software product as the very last thing, and hard coded defaults have a tendency to rear their ugly heads at the worst moment (especially if you prefer to use the en_US locale for menus and dialogs, but require metric sizes).
I have long believed that every developer should spend time fielding support calls, just to make 'm feel the pain they inflict on their customers.
It just occurred to me that developers should also be encouraged to switch between localization preferences from time to time. Heck, alternating their printers between A4 and Letter sized paper every week would either take a significant bite out of user frustration, or save acres of trees.
Just a thought.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
But it wasn't your money and in the scheme of things eventually you'll need to upgrade. Sometimes just being thankful for what's given to you is better than going around saying "why, why, oh why god have you given me this $INSERT_WONDERFUL_OBJECT when my $INSERT_OLD_OBJECT was working so well?"
Sorry but you just sound silly. Maybe that isn't your intention but in all truthfulness that is how you come off to me. I could see your arguement but to me it's idiotic. Maybe that is because my car from the 1980's is dying and I'm getting ready to toss it.
Adios. And if you don't load linux up on that new computer you should go stew some prunes.
Well with those details included I can see why it does suck quite a bit! I'm really surprised that admin didn't ask you before going all bushy tailed and buying a brand new machine.
If I were you I'd get them to buy one more hard drive (20-30gb are damn cheap these days) and put Linux on that. If you aren't going to get anything back for the Windows license you might as well keep the ability to use it just in case (unless you don't want that ability which I could understand!).
Maybe my day sucked so much that it has changed my perspective a bit... So for what it's worth I can understand where you are coming from and why my previous attitude (which somehow seems to be a bit close to the bushy tailed admin's) is a bit one sided...
Good luck.