OpenOffice 2.0 Preview Release

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."

Comments

Compatibility

[Wordsmith]

Here's my completely subjective, indicitive-of-nothing compatibility test.

I have an old version of my resume I drafted in Word some time ago. It's not very complicated - just a few boxes of text and a table for the main content. It's been edited, exported to different formats, reimported and mucked up all over the place a few times over. The last version of it opens just fine in any version of Word, and looks good, but I can only imagine the leftover crud from several edits and imports/exports sitting around in the file.

So far, I've yet to come across another office suite that renders the documents the same way word does - although late builds of OO 1.x have come close. I downloaded the 1.91 preview version, on a FC3 system with the msfonts installed, did an almost-perfect import. One line that sits at the bottom of the document in word gets pushed to the next page in OO 1.91. Other than that, it's a faithful reproductoin of the special characters (bullets and a few accent marks) and hand-adjusted spacing in the table. The fonts all match and the lines break in the same place.

I think "opens Lou's resume pretty well" should be an advertised feature in any Word competitor.

Re:Native Widgets?

[pjrc]

If you follow the link and read the list of new features or just to a search for "native" (yeah, RTFA... I must be new here):

Native System Theme Integration (Native Widget Rendering)

To enhance integration of OpenOffice.org with the underlying operating system, all user interface elements (such as buttons and scrollbars) will have the same look as those used in most other "native" applications for that platform. OpenOffice.org will react on-the-fly to changes of the desktop theme, so that when the user changes the desktop colors or theme, OpenOffice.org will adjust its own appearance to match.

Native system theme integration will be available for Gnome (version 2.4 or higher), Microsoft Windows (including XP and future versions), and KDE (version 3.2 and higher) desktop environments. On Windows XP the "Windows XP Style" must be chosen under Settings->Control Panel->Display->Appearance to achieve the correct look.

Theme integration will be the default for desktop environments that support it (listed above). Systems that do not support it (e.g., Windows 98/ME/2000, CDE) will see no visual change in OpenOffice.org. On supported systems OpenOffice.org will always adopt the theme of the system and cannot choose not to do so.