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OpenOffice 1.1 RC 1 Released
Heartz writes "OpenOffice has released OpenOffice 1.1 RC 1. Get details here. Neat features include built in PDF and Flash export, better MS Office document filters and more!"
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Does it do wordperfect files yet?
That is what stops my household from using 1.0.x Instead we're still using Corel 7
In RC1 is also a talkback style crash reporter to collect stacktrace and error information. I hope this will help OOo team to get rid of the bugs faster.
Ive tried the betas, and yes, they ARE FASTER, but there is still some problems. First it still struggles with the fonts. It dosen't have Font config support So about 50% of my fonts don't work (including my MSTTF fonts).
.doc format and tries to make you use its own proprietary format.
Secondly its annoying that it naggs you if you save in
Finaly That lightbulb has got to go. It's a horrible paperclip clone. Other than that, it's great, and that PDF export is REALLY helpful.
Nero-burning ROM for Linux!
We're not exactly "non-techie," but we have been happy with OpenOffice in a Web design/development workgroup as a crossplatform substitute for MS tools. Our designers and developers aren't heavy users of word processing and spreadsheet documents, but they do have to correspond with the outside world, and OpenOffice has allowed us to save quite a bit on licensing fees.
IT support manhours: Zero.
I still can't see a lot of big companies switching because of embedded scripts/macros. The embedded vb stuff is pretty handy and makes up a lot of dynamic spreadsheets and stuff.
I wonder if ooo.org will work in perl or some other handy dandy scripting tool. For what I do at home, it's good enough now, though.
-t
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
We have tried rolling this out at a number of sites. YMMV but this is our experience:
;)
OO is *perfect* for a large range of users, it handles all the bases and it's interoperability with the rest of the world (i.e. MS Office) is 'good enough'.
A significant proportion of users like it better than "the real thing" - heh, heh
When a user comes down to the IT department asking for a copy of 'Office' for home it is the perfect opportunity for evangelism ("We can't let you have office, it's £500, but you can have this for free - it's almost as good, so you won't even see much difference").
Management/Bean Counters *love* it - if you can lose £200-£500 *per desktop* every 3 years they'll think you can walk on water - especially if you've just lost them a few £100k off the cost of their back-end systems
HOWEVER...
Much a I have unbridled enthusiasm for OO, and I believe it is an essential part of Open Source's killer nature, it is *not yet* a no brainer for the enterprise.
Try giving it to a secretary. Worse yet, give it to a whole department of them. You will not get our ALIVE.
OO needs much stronger mailmerge capabilities. Then it will be awesome from the secretarial point of view. Until then they would rather die than give up MS Office.
OO, or a seperate project also needs a replacement for 'Access'. Yes I know we should be moving them to LAMP (and in fact we do a lot of this ourselves), but the honest truth is there are sh*t loads of companies out there with hundreds of little access applications. This is our market too.
Anyway, as I said, YMMV
I have to disagree, at least a little. ;)
AbiWord - It has the simplicity of Works. While that his not a bad thing, it is not the same as comparing to office.
Bloat - Integrated packages will always suffer from this more than stand alone products (Wordpad versus Office). And Gnumeric is limited in it does not support all the similar functions of Excel.
Performance - This is an old complaint that beyond opening I don't see. The MS Word application opens about twice as fast (I just tested it on Windows at 4 seconds versus 9 seconds), but once it is open the speed is not any different. As for the open, MS has the advantage of being able to give priority to their own applications at the base code level or taking advantage of "undocumented features."
See http://newsforge.com/newsforge/03/07/07/1516238.sh tml:
"For example, the latest patch that I worked on myself (as opposed to working on merging other people's stuff) was to get X11 and Mozilla to load faster by improving the read-ahead heuristics for page faulting in the executable images"
I hope this could also improve OO startup perf.
wolruf@gmail.com
LaTeX is there for physics papers. I wrote up my notes in LaTeX after getting fed up with writing my reports in OpenOffice
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
...is the addition of a progress bar to the splash screen. (See this page, under "Other Enhancements", near the bottom.) This would normally be a sign that your code is getting a wee bit bloated.
That said, I use OpenOffice.org 1.0.2 a lot at home, and am very pleased with it. It is slow to start, but is quite fast afterwards, and normally I have it running all the time. (This is on a 1.3GHz Athlon with 512Mb, running Mandrake 9.1.) I use mostly the wordprocessor, with a bit of the spreadsheet, and for my relatively simple needs, I've yet to find anything it can't do.
I've never owned a copy of MS Office, so the improvements in compatability with it will pass me by. Occasionally, lusers send me Word documents, and OOo already does a good job of getting the gist across. Most of the time, they're not saying anything that couldn't be said just as effectively in plain text. If the formatting is too complicated for OOo to unmangle, well... the document probably wasn't worth reading anyway :-p
Just another wannabe fantasy novelist...
Well, here goes your review (not an extensive one, but it'll do)...
We're using it to train people in basic computer usage and word processing, and to display a powerpoint XP presentation for the course, because we don't have the funds to buy new Office licenses for the latest batch of laptops we got for off-site courses.
MS Office "likeness" can be easily implemented by customising the toolbars (~1 hour to get it right), and is close enough that we've had few complaints from the people who (having looked terrified at the prospect of using a computer) started on OOo, and then moved to using Office XP at our main centre (where we already have licenses).
Speed wise, it's a little sluggish starting up on the salvaged P233/64mb laptops we use, but once it's started (15-30 seconds), there's no noticeable speed difference.
As ever there's the odd niggle, clipart works differently to MS Office (it would be nice to have a compatibility mode... I prefer the OOo way of using folders. Clients disagree, and prefer clear categories, and search function), and a few of the keys need re-mapping to work the same as the MS offerings, but overall, it's been a very successful trial, and saved us a couple of thousand in new Office licenses (even at charitable rates).
OK, so I run Windows XP at home. I'm trying to get into OpenOffice but the upgrade "scheme" is a pain. I haven't found an easy way to just update to the latest version. I normally go through and delete the current version (installed for the network and each individual user) and then install the new version. I have to say that this is a royal pain. Maybe I'm missing something but I find OpenOffice a pain to install in XP. Especially for multiple users.
Last I had read Gnumeric has all Excel functions plus a couple hundred unique ones, can you please list something that Excel supports that Gnumeric doesn't??
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
My wife is illiterate in a pc world and because of my profession, uses me gratuitously for support. She is also a college student at 37 and must type many papers. Up until this summer she has only used MS Word for her work and has no knowledge of any other processing apps that are out there. I have a Win2k domain at home and I created an OO.org MSI install so that deployments are hands free, and simple. The results of the test? She did NOT realize that Word wasn't installed for two weeks. It's true that some of the menu items aren't there or are different but it didn't matter because she would call me any way. It turns out that there are features that she prefers now such as a much cleaner auto complete. I think we would all be making mistake by comparing OO.org to MS Office too directly. They are different apps with a different feature-set even though ostensibly they are both used for the same tasks. Sure there are bugs in OO.org, but ahem.... when was the last time you commented on a bug free MS Office? Besides that it would be worth three months of torture in hell to do away with that freakin paper clip!
My wife wanted me to install Word, but I sneakily installed Open Office instead.
So far, she has been able to do whatever she needed in OO, and has not come across any limitations in terms of it's capabilities.
My first impression of it was that it seems to be up to the task, but I didn't like how it started to prompt for Data sources when I first started it.
Cool feature, maybe.. but let me find that stuff when I want it, not when I want to play with the tool and see what it does.
Other than that small gripe, it's probably gonna go on any new boxes I build, unless a customer asks otherwise
however, there is still no usefull word count feature.. which makes OpenOffice a lot less useful than it should be.
stuff
Is the splash screen (on Linux I've found it annoying) still there?
Opening the same sheet with Oo.o 1.1beta1 & 2, tood a few seconds (didn't time it), and the cells were parsed correctly.
But, my adobe type1 fonts are now missing from the selection pulldown!
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
1) Grammar checker in OpenOffice - for all the Non native English speakers
2) A Mail and calendar application that is integrated. Yes Mozilla is partially integrated - but the Mozilla Calendar doesn't work properly.
Currently it is crippled and needs some work. It should support ITIP, read emailed Outlook events, and ftp for calendar entries (not just webdav).
2) Integrated GNUe small business accounting software to be released (and work). Eventually all small businesses want to use the addressbook from their accounting software.
4) OpenOffice needs to be more accessible to programmers. It is difficult for developers to get started and contribute to this project as it is so large and complex.
5) OpenOffice to start quicker in linux like the Ximian Hack but faster.
6) A Lotus Approach/MS Access/FileMaker Pro replacement
7) Prettier icons. Compare kwrite to oo write. The icons are much prettier - and that stuff sells.
I tried version 1.0 and almost immediately switched to koffice (on linux). (At work, I tinkered with OO and AbiWord, but for the most part I have to stick with department standards, so I still have MS Word there.)
I recently installed the 1.1 beta, and it was dramatically better. Documents that choked 1.0 opened perfectly in 1.1. It even does a great job at handling PowerPoint presentations. (The main glitch I've noticed is it doesn't get the "path" correct when connecting two boxes with a connector line, but I imagine most simple presentations just have words and pictures.)
I love the Flash export for presentations and the PDF export for documents. No more having to print to a PS file and convert it, or install some PDF writer print driver. I also like the ODBC data interface, although I haven't yet figured out how to create a new datastore to add things to.
Aside from a few "cosmetic" issues (faster loading, more improved filters, etc.), the main thing they need to make OO a total MSOffice killer is an Access replacement, and possibly a Visio replacement. It would be nice if they could get enough developers to tackle the same kinds of projects as the KOffice team.
As the parent post says: even if you didn't like 1.0, give 1.1 a try. It is a vast improvement.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
Actually, yes and yes. On my machine (Debian unstable w/ Crossover Office) MS Word starts in 3 seconds and OpenOffice.org Writer starts in about 11 seconds. Once running, they seem to be roughly comparable in speed.
I'd really love to be able to ditch Word, but for long (100+ pages), complicated (proposals with lots of formatting) documents that I need to share with Windows users, OpenOffice.org doesn't quite cut it. For simple documents that don't need to be maintained in any meaningful way by a group of coworkers who insist on Word, OpenOffice.org is perfectly fine.