OpenOffice.org Hits 1.1

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Posted by ryuzaki0 on Wednesday October 1, 2003 @07:24AM from the native-pdf-is-sweet dept.

sander writes "OpenOffice.org 1.1.0 has finally been released (after 5 release candidates -- should make it pretty sweet). The announcement is here, there is a really nice features page and a long list of mirrors carrying the goodies." OO.org releases for languages other than English should be here soon, too.

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Start up time? by n1k0 · 2003-10-01 07:26 · Score: 4, Interesting

Has the start-up time been reduced for this release? When last I tried (a few weeks ago), it was rediculously slow.

Here's hoping,

-Nick
Just tried it by KrackHouse · 2003-10-01 07:27 · Score: 3, Interesting

IBM should help out with the marketing of this, it's really great. Get better icons, etc. here -> http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=7 131 It seems faster than 1.0, more polished.

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"release candidate" != "feature freeze", sadly by Anonymous Coward · 2003-10-01 07:39 · Score: 5, Interesting

OpenOffice.org 1.1.0 has finally been released (after 5 release candidates -- should make it pretty sweet)

Don't read too much into the word "release candidate", which is a Sun marketing tool rather than anything like a feature freeze. As someone working on OpenOffice translation, it has been somewhat difficult when "release candidates" come out containing whole new modules like crashrep and officecfg. Also, there is nothing like a timeline or a release plan like the mozilla project uses - as a contributor, the first you hear about an OpenOffice release is when it appears on the website. This makes it very difficult when you're trying to convince organisations in your country to switch - you're working in the dark and have no timescale to plan against.

Don't get me wrong - I think OpenOffice is a brilliant product and will be pushing it very hard in my country. But if they'd open up the development process half as much as they've opened up the licence, it'd make advocacy a lot easier.
Re:RC5 and 1.1.0 is the same by Delirium+Tremens · 2003-10-01 07:51 · Score: 3, Interesting

Therefore, if you have downloaded RC5, there is no need to download 1.1.
That is not exactly true because there was actually 3 rc5 release attempts, the latest one even being called rc5b.
So your RC5 being the same as the final version really depends on which RC5 you actually downloaded.
Personal Star/OpenOffice timeline by swordgeek · 2003-10-01 08:02 · Score: 5, Interesting

Ah, how far we've come.

I got one of the very first copies of StarOffice 5.0b when Sun bought and released it for free. It very quickly got renamed 5.1, and I tentatively recommended it to a client as a means to solving their office-suite-on-xterm problem. Ended up having to support the evil bastard package as a result. Horrible, horrible thing it was. 5.2 was identical, except with slightly fewer bugs.

OpenOffice.org was born, and I ran screaming. Occasionally I'd drop in and check out the current release (around the 0.300 to 0.500 mark), and find that they had gone light years beyond SO5.2, but still had at least that far to go.

When Sun announced that SO6.0 was coming out, I started to check out the OO releases again, and found a passable package. Slow slow slow (still), but actually usable and convenient.

SO-6.0/OO-1.0.1 was a decent product. I used it regularly, learned to deal with its quirks (no anti-aliased fonts on Solaris--ugh!), and was relatively happy.

Then came the StarOffice 6.1 beta program, which I was a part of. That's when I fell in love, or at least like. StarOffice 7.0 (formerly 6.1) or OpenOffice 1.1.0 are GREAT packages, at long last! Slow to start up, but fast to use once they're running, and really well designed. It's professional quality software, available for multiple platforms, for free. My sole Windows machine is now no more than a games console.

This is a happy day folks! We finally have a complete non-MS desktop!

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Print to PDF from Mac vs Export from OO by Tor · 2003-10-01 08:03 · Score: 5, Interesting

You know, in Mac OS X [...] you can export a document from any application to PDF format, as long as that application supports printing.

True, however those PDFs are HUGE compared to those that OpenOffice creates -- with no seeming improvement in quality. Indeed, the OO seems a bit better at detailed pictures etc.

I printed a 3.2MB MS PowerPoint presentation to PDF from a Mac, and the resulting file was 22MB. I exported the same file from OO v1.1 (which, by the way, has been in Debian 'sid' since Sep 25), and the resulting size was 2.3MB.

Indeed, the PDF created from OO seemed smoother (despite having to import a foreign document format) than the one created via the "Print to PDF..." option in the Mac OS X print dialogue.

-tor
Fix The Installer.. by wfberg · 2003-10-01 08:32 · Score: 4, Interesting

Why a .zip file that contains compressed installer files? Couldn't there be one big executable that's the installer and contains the compressed files? Or even an installer that looks around whether the compressed installation files are on the disk itself, or whether it should download them (if the user chooses to install components which are not available)...

If you use MSIE, it will first download the .zip in a temporary directory, then COPY the .zip to your download directory (not an atomic MOVE!), then you have to unzip, then the installer has to decompress files.. Quite a lot of disk activity and space being wasted there..

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Re:Print to PDF from Mac is inefficient by Alderete · 2003-10-01 09:18 · Score: 5, Interesting

I love the capability of Mac OS X to print anything to a PDF file, it's a great feature to use in a pinch. But it's no substitute for a real PDF generation tool, like Acrobat, or functionality built into OpenOffice.

The file size different noted here (22MB vs 2.3MB) is hardly unusual; indeed, it's the rule, not the exception. In dozens of attempts, I never made a PDF file remotely close to what Acrobat Distiller was capable of doing, size-wise.

If your job doesn't depend on being able to send people PDF files, the built-in version is fine. But if you share your PDFs regularly, spend the time or the bucks to get a real PDF solution.
Yay! by achacha · 2003-10-01 09:20 · Score: 3, Interesting

I for one am very happy they released version 1.1. I am a happy user of version 1.0 on Windows ME. I had a choice of installing OpenOffice and buying MS Office.

I thought about what I wanted to do, and came up with a small list:
1. Read .doc files that people use at work (don't really care about formatting or power features, just want to read the content)
2. Read Excel files and generate simple spreadsheets

That is all.

For email I use emacs, for a database I use mySQL.

Microsoft Office offered nothing for me.

I do NOT want VB script (as most MS bugs are rooted in that god awful script).
I do NOT want Outlook, while it may be nice at work to schedule meetings and manage internal email, it is not suited as an email reader in the age of viruses and worms. Pine is just fine. (no rhyme intended).
I do NOT want power point (as it is equivalent to brain rot and no one pays attention to those presentations anyways, easier to just give handouts and a URL).
I sure as hell do NOT want Access database as it is inferior in every way to mySQL.

So after much thought, I decided that MS office is not worth the money and installed OpenOffice and to this day I am happy with my decision.