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OpenOffice 2.0 Preview Release

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the do-you-see-what-I-see dept.

gmuslera writes "A preview release of OpenOffice.org 2.0 was released, which has new features like better MS-Office compatibility, an Access-like program and a more. Here is a review of it with screenshots and how it performs. It's work in progress, maybe not recomended for production sites, but it is a good sample of what is coming."

3 of 517 comments (clear)

  1. OS X by cratermoon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But when will they ever have native OS X support?

  2. An Access-like program? by h_jurvanen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    an Access-like program

    I remember when those were called "databases."

  3. Re:Better MS Office Support by MarkLewis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    First of all, I'm sure the OOo developers would LOVE to follow the Word format correctly. That is, if it were a standard format, which it isn't, or if it were documented at all, which it isn't.

    Secondly, let's assume just for the sake of argument that you had full access to all required documentation, had direct access to the internal MS code that reads/writes the files, and access to the developers who designed the file spec in the first place. Given that, you should be able to create a pretty good import/export tool, no?

    So Microsoft shouldn't have any problems with their own format, right? After all, it can't be that tricky, and they DO have all of the advantages listed above.

    Ah, but have you ever tried to import older Word documents into the most recent version of Word? Or even worse, to try to save a newer Word file in an older file format? It doesn't usually crash, but the translation makes OOo's Word export look pretty good.

    Now, I realize that I haven't directly answered your question. All that the above is trying to do is convey the underlying complexity of the problem, and the fact that MS itself can't even get it right.

    To address the specific issue of broken compatability: Given that MS makes a great deal (most?) of its money from lock-in to its proprietary formats, I would say that they have a vested interest in protecting their monopoly, no?

    Of course it isn't proveable (think anti-trust ramifications here), but would it not be convenient, given this vast complexity of code, if some change just so happened to break compatability with a competitor?

    Especially when you realize that when MS-Word imports older documents (even from previous versions of MS-Word), they get run through an intermediate converter that changes them to RTF, and then the RTF is imported.

    You wouldn't expect the Word 97 -> RTF converter to need to change with each new release of Office, would you?

    No, of course not. Not unless they were fixing a bug. And for a company where interoperability itself is a bug ...