Open Office 2.0 Beta Candidate Released

JPyObjC Dude writes "The OpenOffice.org 2.0 beta candidate has been released. You can find the feature guide that covers the wide array of improvements over the current 1.1 release. There are a bunch of problematic UI quirks in 1.1 that have been fixed in 2.0." Feature categories include increased interoperability with Microsoft Office, Asian Language Features, Developer-Specific Features, and new Internet based features. Commentary and an interview with Colm Smyth available at NewsForge.com.

Comments

One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[bburton]

Feature categories include increased interoperability with Microsoft Office...

Hopefully the OpenOffice team has incorperated support for Clippy (finally!!). It's the one thing that's been keeping me from leaving MS Office. I just love that little guy. He's so helpful.

I just don't know what I would do without all the incredibly useful toolbars in MS Office! Publishing my documents to the web, imbedding oh-so useful macros into all my documents. I like to turn them all on at the same time. I think there might even be an FTP client in there somewhere. You know what else I like about MS Office? I totally love th

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Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[Gadgetfreak]

Our company just upgraded (I use the term loosely) to MS Office 2003, which got rid of the standard Office Toolbar. I thought it was rubbish anyways, and didn't use it. Programs are easy enough to find on the start menu, IMO.

But you would not believe how many people came to me asking how to get their Office Toolbar to show up again. They just piled everything into it, and ignored the start menu altogether.

I was so disappointed to find out just how many people really like those toolbars...

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[bburton]

Well, I only jest.

I actually think MS Office is pretty good. I actually liked Word 97 a lot. I was just trying to point out extra fluff that MS Office has that OO.o doesn't. It's one of the reasons I like OO.o so much.

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[zurtle]

I don't use the office toolbar per se, but here at work I use multiple applications - the Quick Launch toolbar is perhaps the handiest thing I've got. Screw the Start menu, that's slow. Once you've memorised the shortcuts for other handy things like "calc" and "freecell", you don't need much else!!

Back to the topic... I'd be keen to find out how OO.o handles .xlt files - the MS Office viewers bite, and buying licences for Office is a waste when we only need it for test stations that don't need anything but Excel! Is OO.o truly an Office clone? Or is it still an occasion where we need to have both to get the useful features of both?

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[roror]

hey, they have a clippy, only that it looks like a star or sun if you prefer. when you type something and it auto corrects, you see the little guy on the lower right. equally irritating as the clippy.

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the worst examples of karma-whoring, I piss on you!

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully the OpenOffice team has incorperated support for Clippy (finally!!).

And hopefully they'll remove it soon after! Clippy isn't in Office anymore; stop using outdated arguments against Office.

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[legirons]

"Hopefully the OpenOffice team has incorperated support for Clippy"

How about the seagull?

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[fermion]

It is funny to bring up the most obvious mistake, which realy is an emblem of the disconnect between MS and the average user.

But seriously OO.org has a chance to compete because MS has not done much useful in MS Office in about 10 years. The only interesting thing they did was gut Foxpro, put a cheesy GUI on the Rushmore engine, and say look ma we can make one of them new fangle databases.

So as soon as OO.org makes it to fully to Office 95, and has a cheesy database GUI, then I will be happy. Hopefully it can maintain compatibility with the latest formate without falling into the pitfall of useless features.

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[line.at.infinity]

IIRC they ooo has had a light bulb instead of the clippy. It's pretty much the same, just without all the animation.

I've been ignoring OO.o mostly because it is horible on OS X. For example, it inexplicably shows two concurrent menubars instead of one. Copy and paste of text doesn't work with non-ooo apps. The Save As dialog box starts at the root - not even the user's home directory. The general feeling that I got was that Sun et al won't be working on a decent OS X port. Maybe after two years or so they might focus on OS X, but their version numbers seem to me a bit inflated. Their 1.1.1 were probably equivalent to Mozilla's old milestone releases. Maybe this 2.0 version would be around Mozilla's 0.7 in terms of how well polished it is.

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[WiFiBro]

Actually i was positively surprised by MSO 2003, in which things like document comments were much neater than before.

Unfortunately OO feels a need to mimick the unlogical menu structure of MSO, for instance the location of Options and Preferences. But it looks as if OO thought a bit longer about it than MSO.

I haven't tried OO for ages and i must say, it used to be a bit of a chore to use it but now it feels excellent.

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[malthusan]

May I recommend http://www.neooffice.org/? It integrates OOo into Mac OS X via Java, and the latest version is the best so far. It's a little slow to load, but that could be my iBook. On the whole, I've been pleased with it. I've used MSOffice, Abiword, Mellel, BBEdit, ZWrite, and a few others editors/word processors (all for text editing, no programming), and NeoOfficeJ is the best I've found so far.

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest problem for Open Office is that Sun is rapidly turning it into a big 'ol Java fuckfest. Open Office is already bloated and slow... and Sun is gradually moving more an more Java into the codebase making it a true grotesque. It's like they are trying to make the worlds fattest app.

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[ndtechnologies]

I've been using the 1.9.7x builds for a couple months now, and I was REALLY impressed with those. I personally think that OO.o handles Microsoft files very well, but again to each their own. The 2.0 series is definitely going to be a step up for the Open Office suite.

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[nofx_3]

Look we all know office is good, the problem is not the quality of the software (IMHO Office is MS's finest product, esp. excel) The problem is the closed-source, closed file format, and the fact that it is cost prohibitvie for home use. You can buy a PC for office/web use for $299 with windows, why should your Office suite cost as much? If Office was $79 or $99 (for the version with all the bells and whistles) I would by it, but im going to have to stick with 2000 for a long time on my windows box and I'll probably be using OpenOffice for most of my office work at home.

-kaplanfx

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[nsushkin]

I've been using the 1.9* development builds for half a year now and I can tell you that they start up much faster than Open Office 1.

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[Anonymous Coward]

Java isn't initialised (yet) when OO starts -- just wait though... a year from now, it'll be the Java behemoth VM and its monstrous class libaries oozing into memory at start up because a cockmunching Sun developer decides we need a splash screen built using Swing.

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[Mad Merlin]

Our company just upgraded (I use the term loosely) to MS Office 2003...

I find in cases like this, it's generally best to just say "changed".

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[chewy_2000]

I use Word 2k over OO.o, simply because OO.o is way too bloated and the interface is weird. Oh, and the the terrible Office compatibilty (yeah, I know, it's not their fault, their working on it, etc etc..)
I'll be checking out 2.0 when it gets released, but I don't have high hopes. What I'm hanging out for is a stable AbiWord - the few times I've used it, the stability has been too poor for any serious work (nuked a couple of my docs, luckily I had backups)

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[quinto2000]

Gnumeric is an excellent spreadsheet that handles excel spreadsheets very well. You might want to try that out. The Windows build is pretty new though, I'm not sure how stable it is yet.

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[Mad Merlin]

I thought even Microsoft (loathingly) admits that OpenOffice is at least as good as Office '97.

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[skiman1979]

Actually, I was just listening to the radio and the DJ was complaining about clippy, saying it kinda creeps him out the way clippy stares at him, blinking every so often. lol. I was tempted to call the station and tell him to try OpenOffice since it doesn't have clippy, but I don't have their number. Of course, there's always the version of Office that comes with Windows RG.... :)

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[westlake]

It is funny to bring up the most obvious mistake, which realy is an emblem of the disconnect between MS and the average user.

Perhaps more a measure of the disconnect between the Geek and the average user, who is less likely to object to a touch of color and animation on the office desktop.

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[Anonymous Coward]

are you kidding? OO is the biggest piece of bloatware I have ever had the misfortune to disgrace my hard drive (briefly)

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[Omniscientist]

god damn what a gay post

This has to bee the first time I've seen a post like that modded Insightful...I laughed my ass off.

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[mgbastard]

But seriously OO.org has a chance to compete because MS has not done much useful in MS Office in about 10 years. The only interesting thing they did was gut Foxpro, put a cheesy GUI on the Rushmore engine, and say look ma we can make one of them new fangle databases.

What the heck are you talking about? Access uses Jet - are you saying Jet was the rushmore engine from foxbase? I could have sworn they were two different technology bases.

Curious...

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[st1d]

ROTFLMAO! That's so good, I hope you don't mind me adopting it. Assume it's best said with a hint of a condescending smile, correct?

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[golgotha007]

I love OpenOffice. I love the concept of a kick ass office sweet that runs natively on Linux. I love the fact that entire business can operate on Linux workstations using OpenOffice.

But, why the hell does OpenOffice launch so slowly? I mean, really. Gnumeric launches in two seconds. Abiword launches in 4 seconds. OpenOffice (writer or calc) launches in 25 seconds?? An app that starts piggy, feels piggy.

What about an option to load up the OpenOffice libraries as soon as you log into your xsession (like the way MS does it)?

Something must change for users to feel good when clicking on their OpenOffice Writer icon...

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[MemoryDragon]

Actually the only place where I can see java is the database app and the jdbc bindings (they are optional) The database app uses java because it bundles hsql and the jdbc bindings use java because of the very good jdbc drivers, but you can use ODBC and others instead of jdbc. Besides that there is only a java gateway to the components (as well as there is one for .net) but that one is not started during OO startup, since it uses some kind of corba like tcpip mechanism. So currently java is mostly optional, you only need it if you need the database app and hsql.

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[richlv]

is xlt excel template ?
i believe calc should be able to open them (of course, no vb macros etc) - but you should probably check that out yourself - just grab this beta candidate, it has improves ms document compatibility over 1.1.

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[MemoryDragon]

The so called behemoth VM is not that bad memwise... But you can forget about such things as long as Swing does not plug itself correctly into GTK2 and Qt with its PLAF mechanism.

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[MemoryDragon]

Actually OO is better than Office 97, I have edited a 160 pages document with everything you can name, inside. Do that with Office 97-2000 you have to split documents into many small parts because MSO has weird memory problems (probably office XP and 03 also still have, those things never are really fixed - same goes for the weird OLE problems Office has had for almost 10 years nwo)

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[kyojin the clown]

oh god i was installing something recently that let you do this, i think it was MEPIS? you could pre-link the OO.o binaries so it would start quicker.

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[Anonymous Coward]

The so called behemoth VM is not that bad memwise

Not seen the recent tests on the various VMs then?

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[cowbutt]

But, why the hell does OpenOffice launch so slowly? I mean, really. Gnumeric launches in two seconds. Abiword launches in 4 seconds. OpenOffice (writer or calc) launches in 25 seconds?? An app that starts piggy, feels piggy.

Because it's a large application (it includes lots of cross-platform portability toolkit functions), written in C++. This affects Mozilla and KDE too. More info here.

If you're not using a distro that includes prelinking, you should upgrade. If you are, you should make sure that the prelink process runs regularly.

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[Mad Merlin]

Oh I wouldn't disagree, but it's still quite something to hear it from "them".

Re:One day it'll be as good as MS Office!

[Mad Merlin]

Of course, go right ahead. I'm sure you'll get the hang of it.

Native Widgets!

[Mr. Sketch]

It's about time!
(From TFA)

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 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 (R) 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 (for example, Windows 98/ME/2000, CDE) that do not support it 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.

Re:Native Widgets!

[mccalli]

Theme integration will be the default for desktop environments that support it (listed above). Systems (for example, Windows 98/ME/2000, CDE) that do not support it 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.

Interesting - no mention of OS X. I know the OS X port has now essentially been left to the excellent NeoOffice - I wonder if a beta 2.0 of that is now on the cards?

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Native Widgets!

[Vile Slime]

> Systems (for example, Windows 98/ME/2000, CDE) that do not support it will see no visual change in OpenOffice.org

Per my experience the theme is quite different on Windows 2000. Personally I don't like it. It reminds me of the psychodelic sixties, a lot of color that accomplishes nothing.

Beyond that, the Impress presentation program seems to be a lot slower than the 1.1 version.

It's so slow it's annoying to me. I just updated yesterday a 100+ page tutorial I'd written using 1.1 and it was torturous on my 2ghz machine (1 gig of ram, no swapping involved).

Re:Native Widgets!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can draw while adhering to a guideline don't forget to help out with the KDE Open Office widget set. Join the volunteers who are trying to complete the set in time.

If you have drawn tool icons before and want to volunteer then please ask via the e-mail given on http://artist.kde.org/

Re:Native Widgets!

[Troed]

I'd say the "integration" has gotten worse :/ I'm used to right-clicking on the systray icon and selecting "Open document". That's completely gone - or is there a setting that'll bring it back?

Re:Native Widgets!

[Queer Boy]

Interesting - no mention of OS X. I know the OS X port has now essentially been left to the excellent NeoOffice - I wonder if a beta 2.0 of that is now on the cards?

Personally, I don't know how much interest there is in Open Office for Mac OS X period. The interface by Mac standards makes me want to claw my eyes out. Contrary to what I am sure most Windows users assume, Macintosh versions of PC software are usually different aesthetically (and typically have more functionality).

I'm sure most Mac users are either not interested in using Office or an Office clone or would rather pay for the real deal to get the interface (I know I did).

Re:Native Widgets!

[moonbender]

No.

No engineering work has been performed on Quartz or Aqua development within the OpenOffice.org project since mid 2003. For the last year and a half all engineering work focusing on a native Mac OS X OpenOffice.org version has been concentrated in the NeoOffice/J project, using a combination of Java and Carbon technologies to replace X11.

Due to various licensing, political, and fundamental engineering difficulties it is likely, for the near future, that native Aqua porting work will be based off of the NeoOffice.org project and not under the direct aegis of OpenOffice.org. (from http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/timeline.html)

This was reported on Slashdot a couple of weeks ago.

Re:Native Widgets!

[Anonymous Coward]

Too lazy to log-in.

Apple is too short-sighted or too much in bed with Microsoft to see the future. A small team (5-7) of mac developers could produce a quality native release within 6-9 months.

But Apple puts its own profits before the benefits of its customers, no doubt.

Re:Native Widgets!

[Qwavel]

My understanding is that it is NOT native widgets.

Instead OOo did a lot of work to upgrade their own unique GUI framework to look and behave LIKE native widgets. This should guarantee longer load times, some unusual behaviors, and difficult integration. Most importantly though, this guarantees a duplication of effort as they maintain a completely seperate code base rather than contributing to one of the alternatives (eg. GTK+, wxWindows, SWT).

As a C++ developer, I'm not going to work with the OOo code until they get their act together and start sharing code and work. Until then their code base is innaccesible to me.

Please correct me if I'm wrong about what OOo is doing (I hope I am).

Re:Native Widgets!

[darkpixel2k]

Your sig is hilarious.
Did you ever see the SevTrek cartoon...?

Re:Native Widgets!

[cozziewozzie]

Actually, I do think you are wrong.

My understanding of their Native Widget Framework is that the VCL (the toolkit used by OO.o), in addition to drawing the widgets itself, can be used as a wrapper for Qt, GTK, MFC, or whatever else you are using on your system. So a little bit of overhead is there, but OpenOffice 2 should bring trully native look and feel.

Re:Native Widgets!

[aztracker1]

Have to agree 100%, why they didn't use wxWidgets is beyond me.. would have probably been less work in the end.. :(

Re:Native Widgets!

[richlv]

"On supported systems OpenOffice.org will always adopt the theme of the system and cannot choose not to do so."

i'm not sure i got this one right, but i believe this is wrong.

at least on my slackware box gtk widgets look ugly, everything flickers etc, so i'm using generic widgets by exporting SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen

Re:Native Widgets!

[richlv]

i believe i've seen a discussion about this - according to some bizzarre microsoft systray usage guidelines oo.org has removed this funcitonality from it's windows quickstarter.

maybe you should try to express your opinion in mailing lists (users@openoffice.org, for example)

Re:Native Widgets!

[jonadab]

One supposes the X11 version will take theming from Qt or GTK2, if you have
either of those installed. As far as the native Aqua version, I get the
impression that is still very much under construction and not really ready
for finicky end users yet.

WP?

[Anonymous Coward]

So can it open older Word Perfect files yet? This is the one feature I'm waiting for to switch completely.

Re:WP?

[Marthisdil]

WriterPerfect filter spec link Writer The WordPerfect import filter is supported. You can now open a WordPerfect document in OpenOffice.org. http://specs.openoffice.org/writer/fileIO/writerpe rfect.sxw Seems so.

Re:WP?

[Anonymous Coward]

hehe
from the spec sheet.
8Future Tasks
The filter needs continuous development to arrest bit-rot, and to improve it's capabilities. Many such developments have already taken place, but are not merged/proposed due to the voracious demands of bureaucratic process, and the commensurate stifling of the will-to-live.

Re:WP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever I need to open a wpd file I usually use abiword.

Re:WP?

[eck011219]

Just downloaded it and opened a WP9 document with no troubles. Give me a minute ... yep, WP5.0 comes through fine, too. Granted, I don't really have anything with a bunch of formatting challenges (tables, images, etc.) - but it's just great to pull a WP document into OOo at all. This may tip the balance with a client who's kind of stuck on WordPerfect.

And it looks nice, too.

How's the database?

[RazorJ_2000]

I'm more interested in how the database is looking to be.

Re:How's the database?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? There are so many strong open source databases, it seems that this is the least interesting part of open office.

In just about every other category of tools Open Office is far ahead of other competing projects. But for the database part excellent solutions already exist.

Re:How's the database?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm more interested in how many patents it potentially infringes!

Re:How's the database?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Why? There are so many strong open source databases, it seems that this is the least interesting part of open office.

The GUI interface builder and table manager is there to answer the "what about MS Access?" questions. The database UI builder can connect to other databases, though the database itself is there to offer something by default so that you don't have to configure a database seperately.

Re:How's the database?

[sploo22]

The important thing that OpenOffice really needs in the database area is a good front-end like Access. Like it or not, Access's UI works quite well, even though the database backend is the ultimate in suckiness.

Currently some of this can be done through the OO Writer, but all forms and things have to be stored in separate documents, making organizing a full database application a real pain. Plus, even if you just want to build a quick and dirty single-user system, you still need the overhead of a server like Postgres.

Re:How's the database?

[w42w42]

They are apparently including the opensource hsql database engine. I imagine that's the backend if you need it - otherwise, as this screenshot indicates, you can connect to an existing database server and use that. In that case, this becomes a pretty front end.

Re:How's the database?

[hey!]

Well, yeah. The open source databases are way beyond Access in robustness and performance and compare favorably with commercial offerings for non-enterprise level stuff. As a database professional, I would never willingly target Access as a delivery platform.

But what is missing is the ability to give a normal person the capacity to muck around. That means spreadsheet entry view, a form entry view, forms design and report design components. Are you going to run a fortune 500 MRP system on Access? No. Are you going to run your office supply inventory on it? Sure. Even I use Access some times to do one shot projects like data conversions.

What gets people into trouble with Access is when a small, ad hoc project gets not-so-small and not-so-ad-hoc anymore. We call it "hitting the Access wall". The world would benefit greatly from giving a system like mysql, postgres, maxdb, for firebird (preferably your choice!) the kind of front end convenience Access does.

Re:How's the database?

[moreati]

The interest, at least for myslef is not in the database engine - there are plenty of those, as you know.

The killer feature I'm looking for is a RAD for creating a good database frontend. Basically, can OOo Base surpass MS Access by combining powerful data aware components + object model, a good IDE, switchable backends & portable runtime with a report engine.

Alex

Re:How's the database?

[iabervon]

The database is HSQLDB, which is a reasonable SQL database with the distinction of keeping the contents of the database in SQL scripts, and normally interacting with a file rather than with a service. It's essentially the right thing for cases where you want to have "your" database rather than "the" database. It's also easy to import on a database server, because you can just connect to the database and run the file as a script. It's quite a nice package, but it's not actually an OOo project at all.

The OOo project is a front-end, and can access various SQL databases. They just include HSQLDB so that people who want to stick some information in a database in an ad hoc fashion don't have to set up a database service.

Re:How's the database?

[SixDimensionalArray]

On a side note, using M$ Access as a front-end to MySQL has been possible for quite a while using MySQL's MyODBC connector. It might not give you all the features of MySQL, but it works fairly well for simple stuff. Just try googling "Access & MySQL" http://www.google.com/search?q=using+ms+access+wit h+mysql&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie =utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:e n-US:official.

Regardless, I definitely agree with everyone - I would LOVE, SUPPORT and CONTRIBUTE to a 100% open source "generic" database interface. I think it would be a huge hit with open source advocates and corporations because that way, end users could have any easy way to interface with open source databases!

-6d

Re:How's the database?

[awful]

In the release notes there's a description of the new database component that incorporates an Access-like frontend.

Re:How's the database?

[awful]

In fact here's a description of it. With screenshots.

Re:How's the database?

[aztracker1]

Umn, access (via odbc/ado) can already do this.. as a front end for the other db's ... works pretty well when you need a quicky front-end for reporting etc.

Re:How's the database?

[T-Ranger]

I havent played with it for more then 2 minutes to see how good it is, but a "Access"-ish thing is in OO.o 2.0

http://marketing.openoffice.org/2.0/featureguide.h tml#database

The abridged explaination is that it isnt much more then a GUI front end to what OO.o has always had... Or the DB stuff that went into 2.0, anyway.

Re:How's the database?

[Ded Mike]

Druid is what you are probably looking for, and it reliably and almost painlessly integrates with the hsqldb/Base front and back ends.

Re:How's the database?

[killjoe]

rekall

Now get to work, they need help :)

Re:How's the database?

[einhverfr]

Have you played with Rekall?

I doubt that OOo database will catch up with it anytime soon. But Rekall has a couple disadvantages:

1) License fees for Windows unless you want to try to compile it.

2) Separate program that is not going to encourage people to go play with it.

Re:How's the database?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't even get me started on that huge pile of crap named Acce$$! I personnally use FileMaker Pro, and while it won't scale up to trillions of records like the Big Players out there (Oracle or DB2 to name just a few), it still scales quite well for medium projects, and its RAD tools are par to none. There is a 30-day demo if you wish to check it out at the FileMaker web site.

Re:How's the database?

[Burlappin]

Yes, but Access isn't free. I have to spend about AUD$450 to get a copy, which the small business I work for isn't really prepared to do. I've got MS Office at work pretty easily replaced with OpenOffice, except for Access. Moving the Access data to a MySQL database, etc isn't a problem, but being able to generate a UI and reports as easily as I can with Access is the trick.

Re:How's the database?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, linger no longer! You can support OpenOffice's back-end DB (which is actually an independent OpenSource project, HSQLDB) here!

Re:How's the database?

[Anonymous Coward]

What they don't say is that the databased used, HSQLDB, needs some funding to be as best as possible before OpenOffice 2.0 ships. You wouldn't want the DB part of OOo to be shacky, would you? Then learn how you can contribute to this project!

Re:How's the database?

[Anonymous Coward]

On the same subject, please note that HSQLDB is not part of OOo. They are an independant team, working on an OpenSource database. In order for them to give the maximum and work full-time on this project before OOo 2.0 ships, they need some founding to help. Please refer to this page to learn how you can help.

Re:How's the database?

[hey!]

Not to mention that is is not entirely correct. I've found that using it with non-Microsoft data sources, it can make ... mistakes. Very bad but not necessarily obvious from the get-go mistakes.

Re:How's the database?

[aztracker1]

True enough.. if you want a cheap/free/oss solution, then would suggest a php, or asp.net front end.. from a small web server with mysql, or a postgre backend. Though, you *could* use something like sharpdevelop to create a winforms app that can run on the desktop.. it's f/oss, and works pretty well, for windows, if you know vba, it wouldn't be too hard to pick up, get an intro book to vb.net, or C#, and should be off an running pretty quickly..

On a more advanced interface, there's wx.Net which would be more cross-platform portable.

Re:How's the database?

[aztracker1]

Not sure what exactly you are refering to, as I haven't had any issues with MySQL and an access front end.. though I haven't had to use BLOB fields with it, that's the only area I've had issues, and only with mysql.

As for data inserts, generally use insert/update statements, not the ADO recordset objects directly... Also, didn't use the form wizard for it either.

Re:How's the database?

[hey!]

I like FM too. It is a tool that is very good within its very limited domain.

I wouldn't say it scales gracefully to even medium project level, although medium is in the eye of the beholder.

It would be a great choice for indexing your record collection. I've personally taken it well beyond that level, but it's not advisable. For one thing data is too closely tied to presentation. This is fine when you are building something for yourself, but trouble if you have to update a design independent of the data that is in it.

Re:How's the database?

[Burlappin]

Thanks! This is looking exactly what I need.

I did have a look at the OpenOffice Database program, and it's looking like it's going to become the next access, with a bit more development.

Re:How's the database?

[LionKimbro]

Glom? Maybe you can do something with that?

OO.o for OS X?

[amichalo]

Not to be off topic, but there was a great OO.o 1.1 based version native to OS X - cannot recall the name.

Has this (yet to be remembered by me) group made any announcement on using the new 2.0 code in their OS X implementation?

Re:OO.o for OS X?

[Mr. Sketch]

The marketing page lists native widget support for Windows and Linux (KDE/GNOME), but no mention of OSX.

Re:OO.o for OS X?

[Noksagt]

The most native that I have seen is NeoOffice. Native look & feel through carbon and java.

Re:OO.o for OS X?

[Fortun L'Escrot]

http://www.neooffice.org/ its not ready for prime time. and im not sure (read i havent looked to hard) but i think its on some sort of pause. i have no evidence for any of this.

Re:OO.o for OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're thinking of NeoOffice -- which plans to support it someday, as I understand it, but it's [sadly] not a priority at this point.

info on http://www.neooffice.org/

Re:OO.o for OS X?

[ylon]

NeoOfficeJ. Very nice, actually using it at the moment. I use both MS Office and NeoOfficeJ as NeoOfficeJ has some features that MS has not implemented well. I'm really hoping they get on the ball somehow with the 2 beta as I'd love to see a true native Open Office for Mac OS X.

Re:OO.o for OS X?

[Bonker]

I heard some time ago that the OO.o project had decided to drop support entirely for OSX.

Which makes me beat my head against the wall. I'm stuck with using Abiword for when I need to open Word documents, or ...GASP... opening them on my PC with Office2k.

I feel like I need to go to a free clinic every time I have to open an O2k app just out of sheer risk of Microsofection.

"Yes, doctor, I installed all the patches. Yes, I leave automatic updates on. Yes I have SP2 installed. No, I didn't notice that rash before I installed sp2."

Re:OO.o for OS X?

[amichalo]

NeoOfficeJ. Very nice, actually using it at the moment. I use both MS Office and NeoOfficeJ as NeoOfficeJ has some features that MS has not implemented well. I'm really hoping they get on the ball somehow with the 2 beta as I'd love to see a true native Open Office for Mac OS X.

Yeah, NeoOfficeJ(ava) is the one I was thinking of. Is this project still live? The homepage shows the last "news" posted 12/21/04 (not that OO.o ever updates their website with regularity either).

I applaude these guys and gals who have stepped up to support OS X native while OO.o has backed away from OS X support (X11 is their solution which - to me - is not a solution for the Apple crowd that has always expected more from their user experience.)

I hope that instead of porting to so many languages (40 the site says) they focus on getting these v2.0 features in the Suite.

Re:OO.o for OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

They shouldnt dilute the brand by using a different name, OpenOffice branding is something that should be pushed like Firefox. Keep the OO branding. Thats what people see, you dont see NeoOffice books on the shelves, you see OpenOffice and MS Office and Word and Excel and so on.

Re:OO.o for OS X?

[Krow10]

Yeah, NeoOfficeJ(ava) is the one I was thinking of. Is this project still live? The homepage shows the last "news" posted 12/21/04 (not that OO.o ever updates their website with regularity either).

They keep releasing patches to the 1.1 beta, so I'm guessing they're still active. Nice port.

Cheers,
Craig

Re:OO.o for OS X?

[paulatz]

So they should cut some milions people out in order to make you osx desktop look nicer?

Re:OO.o for OS X?

[julianmayer]

>Native look & feel through carbon and java.

have you actually had a look at it? neither the look nor the feel of NeoOffice is native (it looks and "feels" the same as OpenOffice 1.1.x on Windows and Linux). The only thing that can be called "native" about it is the fact that it doesn't need X11.app to run, but uses a mix of java and carbon to draw.

O.K. the latest version of NeoOffice has "native" menues, but thats all about it.

Re:OO.o for OS X?

[aldoman]

The trouble is that porting GUI software to OSX is very hard. This is due to Apple/anyone not caring about porting GTK to OSX, to run outside of X. Why Apple doesn't fix this is beyond me, as they could enjoy a wealth of nearly native software. It would also finally give some sort of cross platform GUI development platform that the Mac can be part of.

I think OSX is getting very marginilised, which is a real shame since it's a very nice OS. When Linux supports my _printer_ and I can set it up in 1 minute using the GNOME printer configurationg tools, but I can't do it whatsoever on a much more expensive Mac, I think there is a problem.

This is only going to happen more often as Linux starts to become the de-facto OS for 'simple' tasks - a hell of a lot of businesses only need an OS which can run a web browser (Firefox), do email and print, thanks to the huge amount of web-based applications which are coming on board. I still think it's got a way to go before businesses will completely migrate to it (even though Novell Linux Desktop makes it so much easier than any other distro I have used), but I think we'll certainly see more and more hardware/software being supported first on Linux, then Mac, if at all.

Re:OO.o for OS X?

[BorgCopyeditor]

The trouble is that porting GUI software to OSX is very hard. This is due to Apple/anyone not caring about porting GTK to OSX, to run outside of X.

Nice troll.

Re:OO.o for OS X?

[timeOday]

Which makes me beat my head against the wall. I'm stuck with using Abiword for when I need to open Word documents, or ...GASP... opening them on my PC with Office2k.

If it's functionality rather than matching widgets that you want, can't you use an X build?

Re:OO.o for OS X?

[aldoman]

Well prove to me that it's not.

The only GUI software I have seen ported somewhat successfully from Linux is AbiWord. And the maintainer gave up with that, and I believe it's in a state of limbo now. I suppose you have Firefox too but that's not really a Linux app.

I really don't see why Apple don't port GTK to OSX, give it a nice default Aqua theme and finally give those that have to have Linux, Windows and Mac compatibility some option other than running GTK in X..

Re:OO.o for OS X?

[allemandeleft]

Abiword seems to be undergoing very active development on OSX. See http://www.abisource.com/%7Efjf/

Re:OO.o for OS X?

[toddestan]

Or, you could try this.

Re:OO.o for OS X?

[jonadab]

Apple doesn't want nearly-native software. They don't want software that
looks like GTK with an Aqua theme. Their users might whine about even the
most minor differences in how things are arranged, such as if the Preferences
option is under the wrong menu. No, they don't want software that is ported
by an automatic process using a toolkit compatibility layer. It's one thing
if the user goes out of his way to install a compatibility layer (such as the
X Server) to run non-native applications, because then the applications are
clearly non-native and so the ability to run them at all is a feature. But
if the applications were to pitch themselves as native, that would be quite
another something else entirely.

Personally, I'd like to see Apple put a few programmer years into getting a
native Aqua port of OOo fully integrated into the main tree. For a while I
thought they might do that, but it seems they chose to do their own whole
new office suite (iWork) instead, and it seems unlikely they'll do both.

Torrent link?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody got a torrent? Or a magnet or ed2k link?

Oh please...

[JoeLinux]

I'm hoping they have gotten rid of butt-ugly, non-intuitive interface and runs faster than an arthritic, diabetic, asthmatic dog. Of course, if they did, it wouldn't be representative of what Open Office has stood for...

Cool splash screen though... :)

UI problems

[geeveees]

OOo that uses GTK for widget drawing? Please?

Re:UI problems

[xgamer04]

Um,RTFA? It's in there in the "installation and configuration" section. Some guy like two comments up mentioned this too.

Re:UI problems

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as you keep that POS widget toolkit away from Windows not a problem. If they wrapped OO right it shouldnt be a problem using any underlaying toolkit. thats why MS Office is bloat, its all wrapping code to allow crossplatform.

Corel Suite

[DeathFlame]

The only thing keeping my small office from switching over to OpenOffice is compatability with the Corel Suite, specifically Word Perfect and Quattro Pro.

It used to be what our officed used exclusivley, but several people have been having issues with them. I've slowly started a switch to Open Office, but opening old documents and spreadsheet is impossible with Open Office, if they are any of the Corel Formats.

Re:Corel Suite

[wes33]

wordperfect import is supported via the libwpd project. This evidently still needs some work (although wpd2sxw does a good job for me). As the OO people acknowledge (in a linked document):

"the filter needs continuous development to arrest bit-rot, and to improve it's capabilities. Many such developments have already taken place, but are not merged/proposed due to the voracious demands of bureaucratic process, and the commensurate stifling of the will-to-live."

I know the feeling ...

Re:Corel Suite

[Daravon]

I can't find the link offhand, but my company (which does support work for other local businesses) was able to find a filter for OpenOffice that allowed you to open Corel documents and save them into other formats. The filter wouldn't allow you to save back into the Corel format, but if you're wanting to convert, then you can save the old documents to MS or OOo formatting.

Re:Corel Suite

[mopslik]

I've slowly started a switch to Open Office, but opening old documents and spreadsheet is impossible with Open Office, if they are any of the Corel Formats.

While conversion might take a good few days, have you tried using Corel's own (slightly older) conversion tool? Would a simple WP -> Word -> OO.o conversion work? Of course, this wouldn't help you with the Quattro files.

After the initial conversion pains, you should be good to go in OO.o's sxw format.

Re:Corel Suite

[arivanov]

Well, you simply have not run into the other big OO gremlin yet.

Not a single vector graphics import format works properly.

The ones that barely work (Autocad for example) lose colors and most of the formatting. So if you want to draw a half decent diagram using DIA and import it into an OO presentation you might as well forget it. Your only chance is to export it as a raster image and import it in OO. The result is horrible by all means. Horrible size, horrible visually, horrible in a print form and horrible to edit.

And OO 2.0 does not fix a single one of this issues. Instead of that we get visual candy - KDE widget support. Excuse me, but can we actually get the basic functionality fixed first before we get into Clippy land.

Re:Corel Suite

[Petrushka]

From the Feature Guide:

WriterPerfect filter

spec link [OO.o document]

Writer

The WordPerfect import filter is supported.

You can now open a WordPerfect document in OpenOffice.org.

Supported, as wes33 observed, by libwpd.

Re:Corel Suite

[circusnews]

You could just batch convert all of your old documents to something that OOo can import.

Re:Corel Suite

[mkosmul]

Here's a description of how using some OOo macros can help you with issues you encounter when converting WordPerfect documents to the OpenOffice.org file format: http://hektor.umcs.lublin.pl/~mikosmul/computing/a rticles/openoffice-macros.html

Re:Corel Suite

[Hobbex]

. Your only chance is to export it as a raster image and import it in OO. The result is horrible by all means. Horrible size, horrible visually, horrible in a print form and horrible to edit.

What about eps?

Re:Corel Suite

[Etyenne]

I did just that recently : exported my Dia diagram to EPS, imported it in OO.o.

One catch : if you want to see your EPS on-screen, you need to make your .eps an .epsi (check ps2epsi).

Re:Corel Suite

[Nailer]

This one's annoyed me too (PS files print finee, but show up as a big empty square).

But hold on a sec: how many people import vector graphics? How many people don't, but would only consider OpenOffice if it looked the same as all other apps?

Yes, its annoying. All software has annoyances. I'm confident the OOo guys will fix it. But just because an app doesn't fix your personal bug straightaway doesn't mean it's useless.

Re:Corel Suite

[arivanov]

OO uses for preview only raster out of EPS. Some EPS have an embedded low res raster for previews, some don't depends on the converter. Vector and PS proper are not visualised. So while EPS sometimes it works for printing copies you:

1. Lose WYSIYG. You do not see your diagram in relation to the text. Which is about the level of "userfriendliness" I get from LyX or even TeX/LaTeX.
2. Cannot use it for electronic viewing. Most importantly cannot do impress/powerpoint presentations. This is how I ran into this. I tried to do a network diagram which came out fairly reasonable in one of the recent Dia versions. After that I found out that there is no way in hell I can get that diagram into any powerpoint compatible presentation editor.

Re:Corel Suite

[arivanov]

It is not a personal bug. It is the showstopper bug as far as any network engineer or IT person is concerned.

There is no way to do a useable presentation with a network diagram in it as far as OO is concerned. Same for any more complex workflow, database, UML, you name it. They are all vector graphics which makes OO unusable in the industry most likely to be willing to look into adopting it (we all hate microshit).

Re:Corel Suite

[richlv]

hmm. oo.org doesn't have kde widget support, it has gtk widget support, if ia hevn't misunderstood something :)

about your problems with import - have you tried registering in www.openoffice.org and filing issues ?

Re:Corel Suite

[Nailer]

The term 'personal bug' was a poor one - I should have said bug that affects you personally.

Anyway, the non-network diagrammer audience is larger than the rest.

Re:Corel Suite

[Anonymous Coward]

I have found that going from EPS via pstoedit and fig2dev to an Enhanced Metafile (EMF) yields quite acceptable results:

pstoedit -f plot-fig figure.eps temp.fig
fig2dev -L emf temp.fig figure.emf

(I have never figured out how to avoid creating the temporary file 'temp.fig'.)

The 'figure.emf' can then be imported into OOdraw and 'broken' into native OO vector format. (right click on figure -> "Break") This should be okay in all OO applications, both for on-screen presentations and for printing.

Be warned, though, that you will likely lose all fancy fonts, as they are often not found/understood by the conversion software. (All your text will be in Helvetica and sometimes slightly mispositioned.) You can either restrict yourself to the basic postscript fonts (Helvetica, Times, ...), set the font in OOdraw and correct small positioning mistakes by hand, or you can start from an EPS file with all text embedded as curves.

I hope this helps.

Rundown of what to expect?

[Raindance]

Can someone on the inside of OO.org give a quick rundown on what to expect from this beta RC in terms of stability/usability?

It sounds like "Release Notes, a list of know issues, system requirements are in preparation" but I assume that'll be written for the LCD and hard for folks to get the big picture from.

So... if anybody in the know is out there, what's this release like? How buggy is it? What's the worst-case scenario if I start using it?

RD

Re:Rundown of what to expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

> What's the worst-case scenario if I start using it?

The big software companies get patents legalized in Europe and start litigation against end users. In the long run you may find M$Office cheaper than defending against M$ lawyers.

Re:Rundown of what to expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Name a case where end users have been successfully sued when a company violates a patent.

At worst, OO becomes unavailable and the developers get named in a patent infringement suit which has no chance of success. After a week the infringing code is removed and OO is back.

Re:Rundown of what to expect?

[krumms]

So... if anybody in the know is out there, what's this release like? How buggy is it? What's the worst-case scenario if I start using it?

It's not even a beta yet. As far as stability goes, you shouldn't be surprised if it eats both your children and your dog.

It may work wonderfully for you, but again: it's a _BETA_. The people at OO.org can't really guarantee you anything because the point behind most beta releases is that the release is unstable and needs testing. They do these releases for the purposes of flushing out the hairy bugs that keep people like yourself away from it - if you're scared of it breaking your system, then it's not for you.

Re:Rundown of what to expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

> After a week the infringing code is removed and OO is back.

Oh I agree totally, just look at the speedy resolution in the SCO case!

Code is protected by copyright, ideas are protected by patents. Wasn't Ballmer recently threatening to sue Governments in asia for patent infringement unless they bought his shoddy wares?

Re:Rundown of what to expect?

[marknewlyn]

I tried using it and IMHO wait a bit - unless you want to start everything from scratch. Most of my presentations are a mess when I import, though I was using StarOffice 7.0.

I have had issues with slideshow offsets, font sizes, textbox positioning etc. Things have improved dramatically since the 1.9.6x tags but I would say if you don't mind helping out submitting bug reports go for it.

I am still making everything I really need elsewhere and just playing with OOo2.0(1.9.79-1) at the moment.

But it is coming along very nicely - its just _really_ still a beta.

Re:Rundown of what to expect?

[DarthWiggle]

It's not even a beta yet.

but again: it's a _BETA_.

Well, ok, now I'm perplexed... you're saying it is and it isn't almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a beta?

Re:Rundown of what to expect?

[richlv]

there are users who use pre-2 builds in production for some time. i have stumbled upon small bugs and crashes now and then, so i would suggest you try it out - but save often, save different copies/versions (i do that anyway, and anybody should ;) ). i use 1.1 for everyday work, but now and then some documents are made in pre-2. had a data loss a couple of times, so unless you're adventurous type, don't do anything too important to avoid negative experience.

overall i think it depends on functionality you need. basic things are pretty polished and for several builds i haven't seen big problems with basic text usage. when you go into 3d objects and new things... well, it's beta candidate, so if you see some nasty problem, please, report it :)

Maximum row number

[camcorder]

At last 65536 rows as Microsoft Excell. Now lots of people will be able to use their xls files on OpenOffice.org as that's the major blocker for those people I know.

Re:Maximum row number

[DarkSarin]

i hope you are trying to be funny

Re:Maximum row number

[LinuxHam]

Unfortunately PivotTables prevents me from switching over. I don't need that many rows. I need the ability to visually slice 'n dice figures mid-conversation with PHBs and C-level executives.

Re:Maximum row number

[tim256]

I downloaded a version of OO 2.0 a few months ago and this 65536 rows feature actually worked. So finally it can replace Excel.

However it seemed like the biggest problems with 1.1 for me was the slow start up time and the fact that it won't open some Excel documents, mostly password protected ones. I hope some of those issues were fixed.

Re:Maximum row number

[M1FCJ]

My company uses a spread sheet with password protection and lots of stupid VB scripting. I broke the password protection to use thedocument in OOo but with 1.9m69 I still couldn't save it back more or less intact. The last time I tried it buggered all of the VB scripting and in Word it just wouldn't work.

After so many complaints that's still I have to use MS Word. I'm not expecting OOo guys fixing my company's stupid spreadsheet but if it worked it would be so nice...

Re:Maximum row number

[no parity]

You mean, like this?

Re:Maximum row number

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

Unfortunately, LARGE flat files are all too common in the workplace.

Re:Maximum row number

[Florian Weimer]

He isn't joking, I'm afraid. The Cisco GPL ("General Price List") used to have more than 32,000 lines. Apparently, such abuse of Excel as a database (or CSV exchange format replacement) is quite common.

Re:Maximum row number

[Lu Xun]

What in frak's name do you need 65536 rows for?

Re:Maximum row number

[Sweetshark]

I know it has been a issue with gnumeric. IIRC gnumeric supported more rows than the 2^16 that Excel supports and was later artificially limited for compatibility.

But nobody should use Excel with that many rows anyway. There is scientific software (Mathematica, R, S, SPSS. Maple and friends) or databases for that. I was really shocked when a friends wife complained about the row limit, because she did statistical analysis (market reseach) on huge datasets - with excel. Her solution was to split the data in 2^16 row pieces manually and add up all the stuff again later.
Thats what they get teached at the universities I guess - at least in the department of economics.

Re:Maximum row number

[RealAlaskan]

At last 65536 rows as Microsoft Excell.

Unfortunately, my boss uses spreadsheets (for populatoin models) with way more than 65k rows. He's stuck with Corel's spreadsheet, because it will do 1M by 1M spreadsheets.

Obviously, we shouldn't be doing that sort of thing is a spreadsheet, but that's another story.

Re:Maximum row number

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, and 640k should be enough for anyone!

Re:Maximum row number

[photonic]

Using Excel for large data sets is a beginners-mistake that a lot of people make, myself inclusive. If you ever want to do some serious number crunching get yourself something decent, like Matlab [or octave(open source but buggy), scylab(free but not open source), IDL...].

I work at Uni and use it for almost all my data analysis, plotting etc. I still see some colleagues (mainly the older ones) selecting columns of 1000 data points in Excel however, while you could do the same with about 5 keystrokes in matlab (a=b+c or s=sum(a)).

Re:Maximum row number

[nra1871]

I hit this limit in Excel all the time. I need to export lab results to different people, and most of the time Excel is the only format they can deal with. It sucks breaking up a year's worth of data into a bunch of small spreadsheets.

Re:Maximum row number

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats what they get teached at the universities I guess

Heh; it certainly wasn't grammar :)

Re:Maximum row number

[d95adam]

You've been marked Funny, perhaps Sad but True would be more appropriate... I work with people who use over 32K rows in Excel, so I've run into this limit quite a few times with OO.

Re:Maximum row number

[Kiryat Malachi]

It happens in the real world, too; the main problem is that they just don't know how to use MATLAB (I noticed this disconnect when I went from a systems analysis group to a hardware group; they write a lot of Excel, I write a lot of MATLAB) and therefore stick with what they're comfortable with. Plus, Excel does do a better job of importing data easily; MATLAB still lacks here.

Re:Maximum row number

[Anonymous Coward]

What in frak's name do you need 65536 rows for?

Data Conversion.

For some strange reason, most of the data conversion to a new database from legacy systems I've seen has use CSV (comma separated values) as the format to send the data, and Excel's limit is imposed on the format, even though CSV files have no size limit. Excel is used by many to inspect the files for problems (nothing major, just making sure the files aren't retarded).

The biggest problem is that you must remember TO NEVER SAVE! Excel rewrites some values to be what it believes to be appropriate.

Re:Maximum row number

[DarthWiggle]

Based on your username, you're Alaskan... couldn't you calculate population figures, like, on the back of a stamp?

I keed, I keed...

Your state is much prettier than my red-clay-and-kudzu-infested hell hole of a state. Unless you're not actually Alaskan, in which case I retract everything I just said pending the outcome of a fuller investigation.

Re:Maximum row number

[mvdw]

Well, I was looking for a quick-n-dirty way to plot under Windows some ADC data I'd captured. Unfortunately it came out to more than 65,000 rows, so I had trouble without splitting it up. Eventually I bit the bullet and used gnuplot, but it would've been much easier with excel...

Re:Maximum row number

[Deusy]

Um you should try Gnumeric. It's probably more functional than Corel's spreadsheet and supports far more bigger spreadsheets than 65k by 65k. I'm not sure how many, though. And it works in Windows as of the 1.4 release. It's really a beacon of FOSS office applications and rarely gets the credit it deserves.

Re:Maximum row number

[tim256]

Back before version OO 1.1, OO.org had a doc that described the process you could go through to increase the maximum row value.

With version 2.0 they made the process simpler. You can check the 2.0 documentation, but I think it now just involves changing a few lines on a few files and recompiling. Open Office went with 65K rows for Excel compatiblity.

Maybe someone will produce alternate versions of Calc when 2.0 final is released with more rows.

Re:Maximum row number

[gullevek]

well ... yeah:

the complete ZIP list of all japanese Cities, Prefectures, etc is way longer than the max OO can load. kinda super sucks this limit.

Re:Maximum row number

[gullevek]

cat KEN_ALL.CSV | wc -l
121452

thats more than 65K, and I can't open that in linux. neither in gnumeric nor in OO

Re:Maximum row number

[gullevek]

wrong, gnumeric can't load more dan 65535 rows either. I have a 121000 line csv file and gnumeric won't load more than 65K lines

Re:Maximum row number

[richlv]

oo.org 2.0 will start faster than previous versions, though there still is some delay.

it is supposed to open password protected msoffice documents, too, but i don't have any to test it right now.

Re:Maximum row number

[RealAlaskan]

Based on your username, you're Alaskan... couldn't you calculate population figures, like, on the back of a stamp?

Well, as long as the postage stamp is running Quatro Pro and is hooked to a 21 inch monitor (the boss has bad eyes, needs big fonts...).

Yes, I'm in Alaska. No red clay, no kudzu, no seasons, no sun. Yes, I moved here on purpose: it's home.

Re:Maximum row number

[IpalindromeI]

The row limit is built in at compile time and can be changed if you really feel like it. Look for the SHEET_MAX_ROWS #define.

Re:Maximum row number

[gullevek]

then I think this is BS. Why do we constrain? Excel doesn't have that anymore? Or is there a patent for max row lines?

Re:Maximum row number

[IpalindromeI]

Dunno. The decision is always presented as "Excel compatibility" where I've read about it.

just curious

[Anonymous Coward]

have any professional (for-profit) organizations switched to OO yet?

Re:just curious

[niki9]

Plenty of small businesses, I'm sure. Mine is one of them, I work for a small design studio in NYC, 5 permanent employees on multiple OS's, all using OO, and most of our consultants do as well.

Re:just curious

[__aamcgs2220]

I work for a large company that is in the process of switching to OOo now... Quite a few users are already MSO free, and I believe everyone will be done sometime this year. Not a lot of complications that I know of so far other than some scripts, macros, etc., that didn't quite make it but were easily converted, and some of the PowerPoint stuff doesn't come through right. Other than that, I have heard very few complaints.

Re:just curious

[Boogaroo]

Have they set it to allow 8.5x11 pages without all the hassle of having to make new templates and forcing you to set ten different things just to make it work nicely in the US?

Or is it still impossible to change the A4 size? :(

Re:just curious

[niki9]

Yeah... unfortunately that part's still a bit of a pain.

We are our own IT department, so while there's no unlucky sap that has to go around adjusting all the paper sizes for everyone in the office, we individually lose some time (& paper) futzing with the settings ourselves. Luckily we don't do that much printing...

Re:just curious

[16K Ram Pack]

A business I deal with (I pay them!) was talking to me today and I mentioned that I ran OpenOffice.org which was free.

The guy asked me "what's that"? I think I may have a conversion of maybe a couple of dozen PCs coming.

Where OOo will start to grow isn't the big corporations. It's little guys where the guys making the software selection decisions see spending hundreds of dollars per PC as affecting their bottom lines, because its their money.

Now, how do we all learn who is running OOo and not Word formatted from OOo? Should we maybe put OOo in the document properties or something?

Re:just curious

[Azul]

Novell is using OOo almost exclusively these days...

Re:just curious

[Anonymous Coward]

My company (~30 people) uses OO. Mostly, it's cause we're cheap and don't want to pay for windows/office licenses. Moving that will help with the ultimate goal of putting in linux desktops; some issues, of course, with specific software we need (firmware flashing, VC++ for customer support, etc), but that can be largely handled by termserv/rdesktop.

Re:just curious

[metricmusic]

A4 is an ISO standard. That might be why.

Re:just curious

[guacamolefoo]

My law office has two folks (me and a minion -- sounds like an 80's sit-com). We have used solely OO since start-up over a year ago.

GF.

Re:just curious

[Boogaroo]

Yes, I'm sure that's one reason why it's the default. Still, it's truly impossible to change the default. They have it locked.
You either have to change the size every single time, or go through a five step workaround on each and every computer that has the program. With problems like this, no major corporation will ever think of switching to OOo.

StarOffice 8 (beta)

[SignificantBit]

Just in case StarOffice 8 beta is also available here.
A month ago I installed a pre-relase build of OpenOffice.org (not the RC) and run very very slowly and buggy. Then, i download and try StarOffice 8 and it run beautiful.
I assume OO.org RC must be at the same stability/maturity level as Sun beta is.

Re:StarOffice 8 (beta)

[panurge]

Yes, SO8 beta runs very nicely, thank you. The beta program runs till roughly the end of March, and it's worth looking at, IMHO. I may be old, mad and past it, but I actually liked SO7 and preferred it enough to the current OO enough to buy it. I suspect I will feel the same about SO8. And no, I do not work for Sun or any of their partners.

The Access database front end works surprisingly well in SO8 beta, though I've only tried it so far with MySQL 4.1 and MSDE.

Interestingly for me, in one application that is important to us where a document is created and formatted remotely by connecting to an Office service, the main portability issue is between different Word generations, not between OO and Word. The latest SO8/OO release looks to me as if it will be more compatible with MS Office 2003/XP than earlier versions.

Torrent link here!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://borft.student.utwente.nl:6969/ is the tracker

OOo_2.0bc_Win32Intel_install.zip
OOo_2.0bc_LinuxIntel_install.tar.gz
these are direct links to the windows and linux installers.

Looking forward

[AdamReyher]

I've been debating switching completely to OO. As soon as I get sufficient support for my needs, I'm over fully. Hopefully 2.0 will be this threshold. Either way, I'm looking forward to playing around with it.

Re:Looking forward

[Second_Infinity]

I switched a long while back. For an every-so-often I-need-a-nice-text-editor getup, it really shines. (FC3) I have switched my father's company completely to Open Office, away from Office 2000 - and it fits their needs perfectly. (Windows XP)

But dang, I didn't want to have to go install a new version at his office! Of course should this release eliminate some of the quirks of V1, it will be worth it.

Center page in window in Writer

[Anonymous Coward]

I typically zoom out from the page in Writer so much so that it is either fully viewable in the window or close to it. Unfortunately, that means the page is stuffed in the upper left hand corner of the window like this.

Is there a way to center the page in the window horizontally? Is this fixed? If not and I submit a bug report, is there any chance this'll get fixed?

I can't wait

[Schlemphfer]

I suspect I'm always going to be a WordPerfect fan, at least when I'm trying to do real writing instead of just get business done. But I'm nevertheless so grateful that OpenOffice.org exists.

Just today, I got a friggin' Excel spreadsheet from my distributor. They wanted me to complete it and send it back to them. It would kill me to fork over my hard-earned dough for Microsoft Office, but thanks to OpenOffice.org I never have to. I just fired up the OpenOffice spreadsheet, inserted the data, saved it as an .xls file, and my distributor won't have any idea I don't even own Microsoft Office.

This wasn't the time and place, but whenever I get a chance I tell people they can probably get by with OpenOffice.org instead of purchasing Microsoft Office. OpenOffice 1.1 is more than good enough for most tasks, so I can't wait to see how good 2.0 is. It's always nice to use a fantastic product that also just happens to keep me from having to pay the Microsoft tax.

Re:I can't wait

[mmkkbb]

I just fired up the OpenOffice spreadsheet, inserted the data, saved it as an .xls file, and my distributor won't have any idea I don't even own Microsoft Office.

Which gives them exactly ZERO impetus to switch away from MS formats.

Re:I can't wait

[M1FCJ]

Following my experience with 1.9 series it won't make a lot of change for me. If you have footers and headers leaden with graphics, OOo 1.9 (tested upto m79) performs poorly. Basic graphs are OK but today I managed to print a large document which had a transparent background image, when printed it brought the image to the foreground and left the text in the background. Instant waste paper, poor dead tree.

If only it would just get better. Every time it crashed I tried my best to report the problem back but the agent would never work with the password-protected proxy.

Load times are improved by having one of those blasphemous "pre-load" options. Instead of waiting 20 seconds to load now I load it once when I start my PC and spend 200000 seconds in a reboot cycle waiting my PC to swap in and out of disk. Neat.

Re:I can't wait

[narcc]

>>I just fired up the OpenOffice spreadsheet, inserted the data, saved it as an .xls file, and my distributor won't have any idea I don't even own Microsoft Office.

>Which gives them exactly ZERO impetus to switch away from MS formats.

But it gives you the ability to do so if you choose -- and isn't it all about choice anyhow?

Re:I can't wait

[hazzey]

I have always had a problem with this. OO never worked that way for me. I could open the .xls file fine, but after saving it, excel would show garbage in every cell that had an equation. This was with 1.1.2. I just installed .4 and I haven't had a chance to test it yet.

Re:I can't wait

[Anonymous Coward]

-----Load times are improved by having one of those blasphemous "pre-load" options. Instead of waiting 20 seconds to load now I load it once when I start my PC and spend 200000 seconds in a reboot cycle waiting my PC to swap in and out of disk. Neat.

Er, do you realize the "pre-load" feature is easily turned off if you don't care for it?

I do not experience the insane slowdown you mention.

Re:I can't wait

[The Monster]

Should have sent back an .sxc (.ods in v2) to the bastids, along with http://openoffice.org in the message body.

Re:I can't wait

[Serveert]

But when they look at paying out the nose for a MS Office upgrade it might just provide inspiration.

Re:I can't wait

[Anonymous Coward]

No-one said the XLS file is intended for Microsoft Office, it's just MS Office compatible ;)

Gnumeric is introducing non-Microsoft XL tags into exported files. They'll _load_ into Excel, but not all your chart settings and other fancy stuff are supported by Excel, you need to upgrade to Gnumeric to see that stuff.

Embrace and Extend.

Re:I can't wait

[M1FCJ]

The fact is pre-load doesn't make your system faster, only slower. I have it turned off, many don't. If you had 3.5GB of RAM maybe you wouldn't really care but I do.

"Impress" presentation engine features?

[amichalo]

Okay, so the 1.1 to 2.0 feature guide shows there is a new "presentaiton engine" called Impress (PowerPoint?) but it only lists this:

New Presentation engine

spec link

"spec link" is not a link at all, just text.

Anyone have any Impress specs to disclose?

Also, Draw got only one entry in the otherwise lengthy document for the addition of "CustomShape" that allows 3D extrusions:

The Drawing Toolbar has been reworked to provide a rich set of new commonly used drawing shapes such as: Basic, Block Arrow, Symbol, Flowchart and Stars & Banners . Furthermore the huge number of different arrow types in our lines and connectors toolbox has been reduced.

The geometry of CustomShapes is editable by the user through modifier handles. CustomShapes can be converted to 3-D through extrusion and provide 3-D effects for Fontwork. They can be imported / exported to commonly known formats without loss.

Could this be used for a CAD module in the future?

Re:"Impress" presentation engine features?

[IntergalacticWalrus]

Actually, the current Presentation module in OOo is already called Impress. That is except in Ximian's version, which removed all fancy names.

But I just got done compiling OpenOffice 1.0 . . .

[bahamat]

. . . wait, that's a kernel joke. Crap!

Does that come with or without MSFT virus protect?

[WillAffleckUW]

You know, where it tells you that Firefox is a virus?

After all, it's not really Office compatible if it doesn't try to spread FUD...

I Just Switched to NeoOffice J Today and . . .

[autosentry]

I didn't see ANYTHING about it a few hours ago. At least for Mac Os X. I find that really weird. It's nice that there's a new Open Office, but the old one has successfully driven me insane with the long waits. NeoOfficeJ seems to be only slightly better, but that's good enough for me. I don't know that I'd try the new one unless I hear rave reviews. And I mean *rave*. Ready to be modded troll in 3, 2 . . .

Re:I Just Switched to NeoOffice J Today and . . .

[paulatz]

I don't get the point: neooffice is based on openoffice.

Why is this filed under "Linux" ?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is openoffice Linux-only ?

I just downloaded the Windows-Version of it, just to make you feel bad.

Native-looking, not really native

[no parity]

Still better than nothing, though.

Beta candidate?

[Repton]

What does that mean?

"Please let us know if you have any problems. We'll go through a couple of release candidates and then, once it's stable enough, we'll release it as a beta and you can all start testing it!"

Re:Beta candidate?

[BestNicksRTaken]

Yeah no shit - what is a beta candidate?!

I guess we'll have to wait for the alpha release to see if they've fixed the startup time.....

Maybe they've changed the numbering system too, and we're not actually on 2.0 as they say, but 1.0.2.0?

Maybe at parties...

[GIL_Dude]

To answer your question posed in your signature... Maybe at parties you get drunk and confuse Microsoft licensing fees with taxes? Oh wait, that was here...

Where is the grammar checker?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can they be seriously expect a major revision when it doesn't even have one of the most requested features? There are open source tools around, shouldn't that be their jobs to include them? All these macho talks about 'we don't need stinking grammar checkers' are coming back to bite the developers' back ends.

Re:Where is the grammar checker?

[graphicsguy]

Do people actually use the grammar checker in MS Office? I find that it usually suggests that I change something that is grammatically correct to something totally wrong.

Re:Where is the grammar checker?

[Bent Mind]

Yes. It's one of the things I really miss from MS Office. Of course I never used it in-line. Rather, I'd run it after finishing the document. It kept me from sounding too much like an idiot. It also helped improve my writing skills. After all, the fewer mistakes I made in the first place, the less time it took to correct. As for pointless suggestions, it's easy to ignore them.

Re:Where is the grammar checker?

[TERdON]

I do use it. But only when I'm writing in my third language - german (german grammar is a pain in the b***, and well, I could need some more training). My swedish and english are good enough to beat the grammar check, though... So - the grammar check IS great - when you're writing in a foreign language.

Re:Where is the grammar checker?

[Kagami001]

I find grammar checkers useful for catching typos that spell checkers can't. I don't really think of the advice itself as all that important. (Much like not taking a spell checker's first suggestion.)

I would imagine the number of false positives may vary depending on the nature of one's writing, though. The trouble with Word's grammar checker (all grammar checkers?) is that there's not a way to teach it that a certain phrase is OK -- and even if there were, next time it would probably still mark a slight variation as incorrect.

Re:Where is the grammar checker?

[linguae]

I find that it usually suggests that I change something that is grammatically correct to something totally wrong

Yes, I notice that. In later versions of Word, though, the grammar checker has gotten better. Still, since I don't use Word, I just use the Unix style and diction tools for suggestions and hand-correct the document. All grammar checkers need to be trusted with a grain of salt, though; there is nothing better than going over the paper manually.

Re:Where is the grammar checker?

[Manchot]

IMO, it is good for only one thing, and that is catching passive verb usage "errors." Technically, they're not wrong, but I do appreciate the chance to make my sentences active (as it is more forceful writing, after all). Other than that, though, it is indeed worthless.

Re:Where is the grammar checker?

[shic]

Emphatically - YES!

Don't be mislead, however, I do not feel I get any benefit from automated suggestions, just from the green wiggles which encourage me to re-read a section which may be poorly structured or just drivel. I frequently find myself writing technically oriented memos -composed from various sources with cut-n-paste... all against the clock - often with interruptions. Just as I find a spell-check useful, I also find an automated grammar check a beneficial productivity tool. Rather than being dismissive of grammar checking based upon the limited functionality in Word, I'd like to see innovation in this field. I'd like to see the extension of grammar checkers to also provide style and consistency verification... preferably configurable. I think it would be great to have a tool which checks for consistent tense - or to verify that a whole document is written in first, second or third person. There is no need to give such a tool the final say on any aspect of prose - but in my opinion automated analysis of documents has the potential to be the single most important advancement in document processing this century.

2 things about 2.0

[DarkMantle]

1. This is hardly New developments in OOo. But more like a reminder.
2. I hope they fixed the bug that hit me yesterday. Writing a new document in writer. Hit save, give it a name, click the save button. And it crashes on me. Had to recover the document and save again. At least the recovery works. ;) It didn't do it the second time tho.

Re:2 things about 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are using Openoffice dialogues instead of gnome/gtk you may avoid this problem. (ie. tools/options/general)

Re:2 things about 2.0

[richlv]

about 2.
it's almost impossible to find out what the problem was if it's not reproducible (and especially if you do not report it ;) )

so if you have any mor eproblems that you can reproduce - file them in www.openoffice.org

Re:2 things about 2.0

[DarkMantle]

It was on my windows machine. So it is the OOo dialoge

Now smaller!

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone noticed that it is about 30megs smaller than the previous verison.

Wonder why...

Re:Now smaller!

[narcc]

Reminds me of a technical support story where a user called to complain that the new version of the software he purchased came on fewer disks than the previous version -- and wanted to know if they were shorting him on features.

Re:Now smaller!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they've cleaned up the nasty codebase a little more since it was staroffice.

Re:Now smaller!

[m50d]

I'd imagine it's because of using native widgets

Re:Now smaller!

[metricmusic]

better compression most likely. I doubt they took anything useful out.

Re:Now smaller!

[Anonymous Coward]

The documents are larger ... maybe it stores the extra 30 Mb in them.

I miss Clarisworks

[Quiet_Desperation]

It was written by real geeks you could trust: http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/~bob/bobandscott.jpg

Created in the shadow of Mt. Hood: http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/~bob/hood.jpg

Sigh. Everything was so simple and clean back then.

All these new office suites make me feel depressed, and they make baby Jesus cry.

:(

Re:I miss Clarisworks

[Anonymous Coward]

seconded. Clarisworks = best productivity suite ever.

Beta Candidate??

[chris09876]

Is this a beta candidate? The only thing worse than google having betas for years is a company releasing a beta candidate.

Re:Beta Candidate??

[DarthWiggle]

There's a John Kerry joke in there somewhere... "Yes, folks, we were just working out the bugs with that release. We'll keep you updated on the status of DemPartyCandidate 2.0 as we get closer to a release."

Re:Beta Candidate??

[Darthmalt]

YOu know what they say "If at first you dont succeed , Put it out for beta test."

Re:Beta Candidate??

[metricmusic]

oh damn, my icq just shut down after reading that!

User Interface de-Windows-ized?

[amigabill]

>Native system theme integration (native widget rendering)

Does the descriotion for this mean that the user interface will now ACT like the native OS interface, or just LOOK like it now? My main gripe with OOo is that it seemed to try and emulate the MS Windows user interface in its operating window. While it seems the widgets drawn will no longer be trying to look like MS Windows widgets, I'm more interested in how I'll interact with the program.

If it's still an MS Windows-like _interaction_ then I'll still be less happy than if it used native OS style user interactions, in terms of actualy scrolling the scrollbars and other stuff that don't feel like they're Solaris or Linux interactions in 1.x versions. The user interactions in MS Windows is the major reason I don't get along with it well, and was disappointed to see older OOo versions trying to bring that baggage to different OSes that I otherwise got along with better.

Re:User Interface de-Windows-ized?

[scribblej]

RTFA

The "native OS interface" is not available in Windows. Sorry.

Otherwise, your question would hhave made some kind of sense.

track changes?

[icebrrrg]

does anyone know if oo is supporting change tracking? that's a feature i rely heavily on at work, and would be a huge boon to those corporate users ...

Re:track changes?

[ictyl]

I would assume that version 2.0 of OO.o will support track changes, since the version 1.1.3 that I am running does... (look in the Edit->Changes submenu)

It has even worked with the MSWord track changes the few times I have tried it.

Re:track changes?

[Kwil]

From what I remember from OO 1.1.3, track changes works there.

That being said, it doesn't work all that well. I found it clunky to use, especially when trying to review changes from different authors. I also found it has serious trouble dealing with any type of font or style changes from MsWord.

2.0 may be different. I'll probably give it a whirl with a few test documents here just to see.

Impress Templates

[dduardo]

When is OOo going to include more standard templates. To most people, Impress is useless because it doesn't come with a sufficient amount of bundled templates. Sure you can find more online, but people used to MS Office are not going to deal with that.

Re:Impress Templates

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as someone (hey, how about...You!) makes them and shares them with the community.

Re:Impress Templates

[dduardo]

That's exactly the problem. Many people, including myself don't have any artistic skill. That's why we need the bundled tmeplates.

Re:Impress Templates

[16K Ram Pack]

How about developing some and publishing them yourself?

Re:Impress Templates

[Poeir]

Do you really want to trust open source programmers to have artistic talent? They're programmers.

column limit

[JRob007]

I don't understand why they want to copy Excel so tightly. The 256 column limit is a real problem. I regularly use data sets that have more then 256 columns. I will adopt OO.o as my main office suite when that is overcome. Until then, quatro pro will have to do.

Re:column limit

[ShieldW0lf]

I don't understand why they want to copy Excel so tightly. The 256 column limit is a real problem. I regularly use data sets that have more then 256 columns. I will adopt OO.o as my main office suite when that is overcome. Until then, quatro pro will have to do.

Try normalizing your data.

Re:column limit

[Anonymous Coward]

Just transpose your table.

Re:column limit

[Kiryat Malachi]

Doesn't work if you have more than 256 rows as well.

A 1000 point dataset with 300 parameters per data point, for example.

Speed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could someone knowledgeable show us some information about speed of Calc handling such large table? I had bad experience with Excel.

Outlook Compatibility?

[Anonymous Coward]

When will there be a Outlook clone for OO? It's the only reason I own Office, and the reason that my office (13 computers) runs Office as well (since OO has similar features to Word and Excel).

Re:Outlook Compatibility?

[M1FCJ]

See Evolution. It is a complete Outlook replacement. I still have people using Outlook 98 in the office. They really annoy me. Evolution just works.

Re:Outlook Compatibility?

[Anonymous Coward]

Evolution and connector.

Re:Outlook Compatibility?

[aaamr]

Outlook is available as a standalone app... no need to buy the whole suite.

Re:Outlook Compatibility?

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? What has email got to do with word processing? What is wrong with Evolution or Thunderbird? Is it really too much work to download and install OOo from one free web site and Thunderbird from another free web site?

Re:Outlook Compatibility?

[DoctorMO]

Emails are comunication not office/production I always regarded bundeling Outlook in MSOffice as a bad move and Never install it. besides, Thunderbird is much better and getting even better every day, why bother with Outlook any more?

Re:Outlook Compatibility?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll get right on using evolution on my windows box.

Re:Outlook Compatibility?

[M1FCJ]

Ditch Windows. That's the idea.

Re:Outlook Compatibility?

[TiggsPanther]

Not always an option at work.

Since switching to Linux at home I have OOo on my work PC so I can view/edit home-produced native documents at work. (I don't like format-switching unless I can't avoid it)
That and every so often a corrupt file will bomb out Word but open fine under OOo. Being able to at least try and rescue corrupt files is kinda useful.

Plus there's one main reason that a Windows port of Evolution is desperately needed. The Outlook Connector. I can't stand using OWA, but that's what work uses for e-mail - complicated by being off the main site stuck behind a slow ISDN connection. I'd love to be able to use a client-side application to access/store my work email at work - rather than being stuck behind a slow connection and losing access to my older messages is the server or connection fails. Unless work granted external access to SMTP/POP/IMAP ports a Windows port of Evolution would make my work life so much easier.

What Open Office Really Needs...

[osewa77]

is to work exactly like MS Office. Let's learn from the success of Firefox (vs Mozilla). Shortcuts, Menus, should be similar even if functionality is different. So people can migrate from Word without noticing the difference.

Re:What Open Office Really Needs...

[Anonymous Coward]

is to work exactly like MS Office.

Yeah... Then they can get sued for copyright/patent infringement.

Re:What Open Office Really Needs...

[Anonymous Coward]

I already have migrated off Office 2002, what we DO need is an Exchange and Outlook replacement, however we still depend on Exchange and Outlook, but at least we saved a bundle on Office licenses.

You can also use OO as a bargining chip for MS :D

Re:What Open Office Really Needs...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. is to work exactly like MS Office. Let's learn from the success of Firefox (vs Mozilla). Shortcuts, Menus, should be similar even if functionality is different. So people can migrate from Word without noticing the difference.

So, what part of IE's menus and features did Firefox copy? Was it tabs, the configuration dialogs, or popup blocking?

Making a clone does not make it easier to use -- people get confused by subtile differences but have different expectations when there are more noticeable differences.

Re:What Open Office Really Needs...

[wildwood]

is to work exactly like MS Office.

Which version?

Re:What Open Office Really Needs...

[Anonymous Coward]

Argh, pleas no.
It should it make as easy as possible for people switching from MS Office, but it sure shouldn't simply copy MS Office's gui.

Btw., if you had read the newsforge article you'd know that making it as easy as possible for people to switch was one of the main design goals of the new openoffice version.

Re:What Open Office Really Needs...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, my father didn't mind the loss in speed but he couldn't stand that the buttons were in a different place.

Oh, that and the icon set which doesn't look like anything else on WinXP.

Re:What Open Office Really Needs...

[tootlemonde]

So people can migrate from Word without noticing the difference.

And what about those of us who want something better?

Granted that many people think that the Word interface was handed down on Mt. Sinai, but there are at least three other approaches.

1. A bare-bones Notepad-like look, when all you want to do is type and save.
2. A split-screen reveal-codes view like Wordperfect has. Some of us think HTML markup is all a person needs in this world.
3. A rich outline view. Long documents are best handled hierarchically. The Word outline implementation is fairly clumsy.

The whole method of defining and using style sheets could be done better to encourage using them more.

Perhaps there should be a special word processing mouse configuration that brings up special menus for power users. A power user might prefer no on-screen menus but would want them to appear as needed by moving the mouse pointer to a particular spot on the screen.

More could be done with tabbed interfaces to display multiple documents or different places in the same document. The tabs could be either editable documents or browser windows. The tabs could be predefined groups of documents, Web pages and PDFs the way some browsers let you define groups of Web pages as tabs.

Already Outlook 2003 "provides an integrated solution for managing e-mail messages, schedules, tasks, notes, contacts, and other information. Outlook 2003 also delivers innovations you can use to stay organized and collaborate better--all from one place." Maybe that's the direction Open Office should be heading if it wants people to be comfortable.

Or, some people might want their word processing program to look more like their browser.

Re:What Open Office Really Needs...

[Anonymous Coward]

Making a clone but better is how Excel won out over their competitors (according to JoelOnSoftware). They copied the keyboard shortcuts, placement of icons, everything. Then over time once they got the userbase they diverged again.

I completely agree that if there are subtle differences that making it look the same is confusing. A good example of this is the unifying themes between KDE and Gnome when they have different behaviour.

But if they are subtle differences, really subtle differences, maybe the immediate association is better than it looking completely different.

In the end it comes down to individual features, and whether it works for users -- which means usability testing and use-cases. I don't think we'll find an overreaching rule here that defines all cases.

Specific cases though, is more interesting.

Re:What Open Office Really Needs...

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea of using styles in a wordprocessor is about creating document structure -- the most usable interface I've seen for this the interface for Conglomerate.org. It's pretty fancy, and avoids trying to look like print or web when these days people want to publish to both from a single source. It concentrates them on the structure, which is what cross-platform publishing is all about.

Re:What Open Office Really Needs...

[adiposity]

In windows (in Linux, some menus differ):

The entire "View" menu. Example: view->toolbars->customize.

Most of the "File" menu. Example: File->work offline.

The Favorites menu (called Bookmarks). Example: drag and drop works similarly to IE.

The "Help" menu. Example: "Help->For Netscape Users" vs. "Help->For Internet Explorer Users"

All of the menu titles except Favorites/Bookmarks are identical. Right click on the toolbar and you can choose "customize" and move buttons around. Almost every single IE shortcut is supported (example: "alt-d" goes to the Address bar even though in Firefox there is no Address label).

I could go on, but there is plenty more. Firefox copied everything about IE that was good, and much that was just customary for all those IE users. You've listed the things that Firefox brought to the table, and no, those weren't copied from IE. The tabs were copied from Opera (or inherited from Mozilla, if you like). The popup blocking was copied from IE plugins, etc.

Your last statement has some truth. But the truth here is that Firefox has done well on windows because IE users have little to learn; it works nearly identically for the average user. Where it works differently, it usually works better. In short, for many it works as a drop-in replacement for IE. That's a good thing, considering how established IE is. The same will have to be true of OO before it can start to replace MSO in the businessplace.

-Dan

Re:What Open Office Really Needs...

[Anonymous Coward]

None of the icons in Windows (or programs written for Windows) seem to ever look similar except the (small) set of standard win32 ones.

Re:What Open Office Really Needs...

[linguae]

is to work exactly like MS Office.

No! MS Office is a decent product, but boy does it has its quirks. How come outlining is a PITA in Word, for example? Do we really need a clone of Access's backend when using a better database backend would do? Why do we need to emulate Visual Basic of Applications, of all programming languages, when Python could do the job much better? Where's Clippy? OpenOffice doesn't need to work exactly like MS Office; OpenOffice needs to work better than MS Office.

Let's learn from the success of Firefox (vs Mozilla).

Firefox succeeded because it didn't include every feature under the sun like the Seamonkey suite (Mozilla) did; it was because Firefox did its job (be a web browser), only its job, and did that job remarkably well. If you needed more functions and features, there are plenty of Firefox entensions and plugins.

OpenOffice seems to suffer from what Mozilla suffers; OpenOffice is huge, monolithic, and tries to include every feature under the sun. Say I needed a presentations program. I'm already pleased with AbiWord and Gnumeric (which seems to follow Firefox's model in terms of functionality), I just need a presentations program. I can't just download OpenOffice Impress, install it, and call it a day; I have to download the entire OpenOffice suite and install it (a hardship if you can't get a binary). Plus, there is no "GNUPresentation" or something like that that is PowerPoint compatible, I must fetch and install OpenOffice. I wish that each component of OpenOffice was split into separate applications, much like how MS Office is set up.

Still, though, I appreciate OpenOffice. I've used it a few times (not on my own machines, though) and it is pretty nice. The compatibility is near perfect, and the interface isn't annoying (unlike MS Office, don't get me started). Sometimes in the computer labs on campus, whenever somebody doesn't have MS Office and needs something cheap and compatible, I refer them to OpenOffice. Everybody that has used OpenOffice seems to be pleased with it. OpenOffice just need some more polish, better implementation of some features, and some modularity, that's all.

Re:What Open Office Really Needs...

[mnbjhguyt]

Well, i'm still using office 97, which includes a full guide for Lotus 1-2-3 users and an option to use Lotus' keyboard shortcuts, so it definitely makes sense.

Re:What Open Office Really Needs...

[Alpha_Traveller]

I don't see why this would be an issue. After all, if a major corporation like Apple Computer can make current applications like "Pages" (i.e. MS Word) and "Keynote" (i.e. MS Powerpoint), there is no reason why OpenOffice can't do something similar, with similar keystrokes and functionality. As others have mentioned here, there's plenty of previous packages, such as WordPerfect providing more than adequate historical representation.

Not really a theming engime on Windows

[Mitchell Mebane]

The way the article words it, it sounds like the Windows widgets aren't really done by a theming engine, they just made a Luna Blue skin for OO.o. This would mean that people, like me, who use WindowBlinds will still not have a matching OO.o.

I haven't tried the 2.0 betas, is this really the way it works?

Re:Not really a theming engime on Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

I just downloaded it to check the widgets; in particular, I was curious if they really did manage to get it to look like Windows widgets. It's very annoying when something looks close to Windows, but isn't exactly it, especially if it's differing in behavior. JBuilder has horrible problems with this.

Anyway, it appears that they do their own drawing, so it's likely things won't work correctly with WindowBlinds. Anyone else tried it with WW? The menu fonts, sizes are noticeably different from Windows. Dialog box buttons are oversized. In fact, it seems like the fonts they use are slightly too big. At least the fonts use ClearType properly; JBuilder's ignorance of ClearType made it virtually unusable for coding on an LCD screen for me.

I know I'm being knitpicky, but it really is a problem when all Windows apps look one way, and then a strange duckling such as OO.o comes along. Some of you may point out that Office and Visual Studio look different, but I believe the difference is that they're used more often, and that people get used to the different look. Of course, the same could happen with OO.o, but it'll have to overcome that initial bump in looking different first before it'll be okay to look strange.

Re:Not really a theming engime on Windows

[Quarters]

WindowBlinds 4.5 is, at a minimum, skinning the title-bar, window border, scrollbars, and buttons.

I didn't have a lot of time to check, so I don't know if it is skinning anything else (tabs, drops downs, menus, etc...). But, at first glance OO.o 2.0b does appear to be WindowBlinds friendly.

Re:Not really a theming engime on Windows

[Mitchell Mebane]

WindowBlinds pretty much skins everything.

Re:Beta candidate? - What about startup speed?

[bogaboga]

For me, it's the startup speed; 31 seconds on SuSE 9.2 with KDE! Why won't "the team" team up and reduce this time? I also wonder whether we shall have macros and modules in its database component just as M$ Access does.

I hope things will improve since this is just a release candidate.

Looks good

[Daath]

On my Windows install, it installed in half the time 1.1.4 did, didn't say anything about java (which it usually does), the splash it better looking.

I have two issues with this version in my short test, one was that they removed the program shortcuts from the "Quick Starter" in the tray?! Why on earth would they do that? Now the only thing you can do with the quick start is decide if it should load at windows start, and exit it.

The second thing is that I chose File - Wizards - Install new dictionaries - Chose the language I wanted to install, and then nothing happens when you press the "Start DocOOo"-button, so no automated installation of dictionaries I guess.

XML encryption algorithm...

[Anonymous Coward]

From the new features guide:

"Digital signatures offer secure protection of document content. The new XML (eXtensible Markup Language) encryption algorithm offers additional security."

Well, the page title does say "marketing", so i'm not surprised...

It says WriterPerfect is integrated now

[Rikardon]

From TFA:

"WriterPerfect filter (Writer): The WordPerfect import filter is supported. You can now open a WordPerfect document in OpenOffice.org"

It's in the table "Interoperability with Microsoft Office and other products."

feature question

[nexus987]

First off, Kudos to all those involved in OO2 development. I had a quick look at the new features and it's not clear to me what the new "hyperlink()" feature does. I looked at the spec link, but can't figure out what program to use to open the .sxw file. What I'd like is something similar to Excel's "data->import external data->import data" preconfigured stock quotes feature (preferably with finance.yahoo.com data). I know there's a way to do this in the current version of OO, but it looked quite a bit more complicated than the excel version.

Great!

[pherthyl]

OO.org is great.. I just wish it would start a bit faster. I thought this was one of the goals for 2.0.

Anyway, congrats to the OO.org team! It's not easy diving in on that much code and making sense of the everything.

Re:Great!

[fdrebin]

It's great in a lot of respects... not so great in others. At my organization (80 developers) where we tried to use it for design documents, we gave up in mass frustration because it cannot be forced to auto-number documentation sections accurately.

It was like that 'bop the duck' game where heads keep popping out of little holes in a box - you hit one little head, another one pops out of a different hole. The 'holes' are section numbers - they simply cannot be maded to behave.

Example:
I want to have a document that looks like:

1.0 Section

1.1 Subsection

2.0 Section 2

2.1 Subsection

2.1.1 Subsection

2.1.2 Subsection

etc.
OK, type that into OO, and it'll do it. Now come back and insert something 1.2.

Q. What'll happen?

A. If you know the answer a priori, you have an excellent chance a making a bundle as an OO consultant.

No, we're not stupid noobies. Sure seems like it though...

By itself it's nearly impossible; add in real MS Office compatibilty requirements, and it's hopeless (so far)

Yes, we read ALL the documentation. And the source code. Should that be necessary to get a document editor to work?

We wound up removing ALL FORMATTING and manually adding it in at the end. Sad.

IF there's a clue stick to be had, please feel free to beat me with it. Please?

Re:Great!

[WiFiBro]

"Now come back and insert something 1.2.

Q. What'll happen? "

um... it inserts 1.2?! at least in the english beta for windows...

Re:Great!

[pherthyl]

Hmm.. yes, I can't reproduce your issue. It inserts 1.2 just like one would expect. Perhaps this is something that was fixed in the beta.

Re:Great!

[fdrebin]

Yes, it works when there are 10 lines. Throw a 60 page document at it, with 10 major sections and a dozen subsections each, THEN try to get it to behave. Indeed, I wasn't very clear about that.
If there is an OO developer who wants a concrete example, I may be able to provide a document that reproduces the issue (would have to clean proprietary stuff out etc.) /fd!

64 Bit?

[dJCL]

Does it work in a native amd64 environment?

I've just gotten wine cross compiled(as all windows binaries are 32 bit) and the only major tool left for my system is openoffice, but 1.x does not like 64 bits aparently(according to everyone in the gentoo forums who has tried).

So, anyone know if it works?

Re:64 Bit?

[Omniscientist]

2.0 is supposed to include support for compiling and running in an amd64 environment. I did check over the new features list on the marketing section on OO, and there is no mention of 64 bit compatibility...

This is the beta (hell...beta candidate) however, maybe when the final release is out?

Embedded Java applets in Impress

[graphicsguy]

I hope they will fix the problem with inserting java applets into the presentation software some day. If it actually worked, that would be a neat feature that PowerPoint does not have.

http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2 2661

Have they fixed the spell checker problems?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Open Office 1.1, the spell checker has problems with using a lot of memory (it causes my PIII-450 system with 360 megs of ram to swap), and being very slow when right-clicking on a misspelled word. Has this issue been addressed in OpenOffice 2.0?

Another issue with OO1.1 is the annoying way that the font changes back to the default font if I hit the right arrow key at the end of the document.

Last updated 6 February 2005?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, there could be new features/fixes that are not listed?

Why would that be funny?

[Sycraft-fu]

I have, on more than one occasion, encountered a spreadsheet that was thousands of rows long. You have to remember that in the market that OO is really after, the bussiness market, things are different than for geeks. They aren't using spreadsheets to store a small list of hardware they want and prices, it can be vast amounts of financial data, all tied together with formulas.

For example you might have a sheet that has your past 8 quarters of sales, current one, and next one. For each of these you have a couple lines for each distributor like what they bought, what the unit cost was, and any reimbursments. And you have 1800 distributors. Makes for a real big sheet real fast.

Excel will handle that, and I see companies use it all the time. They can tinker with numbers to get projects for their next quarter sales based off of different targets and expectations and such.

So it's quite reasonable ot say that support for thousands of rows is a necessary feature for Open Office to have. If I'm a beancounter or sales guy, I can't very well say "Hey guys, I can't deal with the sales spreadsheet you sent me, it's too big." You'd better have an office suite that can deal with it, espically if you are the guy using the non-standard one. Likewise, if you are a tech guy that is going to push OO as a replacement, you can't be telling the beancounters that they'll have to break their sheets up, they'll just tell you to get lost, they are using Office instead.

Re:Why would that be funny?

[DarkSarin]

ACK!

I am going to respond to a number of posts here, because they are all relevant.

First, Excel is not a database--no spreadsheet is. I use spreadsheets for a variety of things. I even use excel/OO.o for data entry and prep BEFORE I send it to SPSS/EQS/R for analysis (SPSS stinks for things like normalizing variances, combining questions, etc). Too much of what you say is talking about using Excel for tracking large amounts of inventory. This is useful, but your main data storage should NOT be in a spreadsheet. It should be in a db (and excel can then do an odbc lookup for the data, and so can OO.o).

Second. Excel should NEVER be used for statistical analysis. Especially anything more complex than a Standard Deviation (which they calculate for the population, not the sample, which could cause minor deviations) or MAYBE a correlation (I haven't checked that formula recently, so I don't know exactly how they calculate it). If you are doing analysis/stats, get a stats package. If you are a programmer, R will work (or SAS or ...), if not SPSS is usable. SPSS also is limited to what the designers foresaw when they wrote the package, but I digress.

As far as it goes, yes I hope the guy was joking. Support for that many rows indicates that you have grown to the point where you REALLY need more than just a spreadsheet--you NEED a database. REALLY.

As a note, I tend use it for smaller stuff-tracking grades, data entry for stats, etc. I think that's what a spreadsheet is perfect for. Not tracking a year's worth of financial reports. There are accounting packages that do that, and do it well, that don't cost that much more than a single license for MS Office 2003. Get one.

Re:Why would that be funny?

[Sycraft-fu]

Ok now the problem is you are saying what you think things should be, I'm telling you how things are. If you want an underdog product to eat away at the dominant one, one of the things you have to do is offer what people want. It doesn't matter if you think that what they want is stupid, or that they shouldn't use your thing for that, you have to give them what they want.

So you can scream until youa re blue in the face about how you shouldn't be useing a spreadsheet for financial projections, the bussiness people will say "That's nice" and go back to using Office. I'm not claiming it's the way it should be, I'm claiming it's the way it is.

However, I will note that this is the orignal reason spreadsheets were developed, and the orignal reason peopel were so excited. Accountants could use them to easily store, tabulate, and modify massive amounts (relitively speaking) of data.

Either way, it's how they like to do it and telling them "No, you are wrong" isn't going to change it.

Let's just hope

[Trogre]

.. that they haven't changed the functionality of the Equation Editor.

This is one feature of OOo which is streets ahead of MSOffice Equation Editor, or even its big brother MathType.

It's just so.... nice.

Re:Let's just hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Equation editor hasn't changed a bit. It's exactly the same. I too like its functionality, but I just really would want it to render faster. But well...

Re:Let's just hope

[dizzyduck]

The OO.o equation editor syntax is amazing, but it's useless for all but the most simplest of documents until they get the equations properly aligned. Manually aligning fives pages of equations is no fun, I can assure you.

Oh well, back to MathType and Word.

Switching

[Christoff Ka Sin Chu]

What they should really do to get more people to switch is to make everything look like Microsoft Office...maybe as a theme option? That's why Firefox is so popular...it's simple.

CC

That ONE feature that I need...

[spielermacher]

I've been using OO 1.x for a long time now, and really, I probably won't go back to MS Office. However, the one feature that I want more than anythning is in OO Writer - to support MS Word's "Normal" text entry mode. With this, you don't see unecessary gray borders, as it doesn't try to make you think you're typing on an actual piece of paper. Normal Mode in MS Word just gives you a blank window. Page breaks are shown as dotted horizontal lines. That's it - why make it more complicated and take up screen real estate?

OO 2.0 does not support Normal mode, and there are some threads on the Writer board over at OO.org requesting the feature. I have no idea why this isn't supported, and I'm tired of having to resize my Writer window every time I open a document, just so I don't have to look at the stupid borders. Those that are preachy about oo Writer will post here that all I have to do is make a template with my window resized, but that's not the point - I just want it to work in as simple a way as possible. Is that so wrong?

Re:That ONE feature that I need...

[phatsphere]

you can try view>online layout. not exactly what you are looking for, but there are less irritating borders and no page breaks. and a hint, if you hack a bit around you can assign each paragraph the header level 10 and then you can see the first words of each paragaph together with the headings in the navigator window (compass icon...)

Re:But I just got done compiling OpenOffice 1.0 .

[Stevyn]

For gentoo users though who are used to compiling both from scratch, OOo takes much longer. Of course, that's why I use openoffice-bin.

Yay! Multi-lingual!

[sbryant]

One thing that was an annoyance about OO.o 1.x was that you needed a complete new installation if you wanted a different language. I have users who have different language preferences using the same system, and while the desktop software (KDE in this case) can be switched, OO.o couldn't.

Well, that's now fixed in 2.0! You can add language packs to an existing installation! spec link

Yay!

-- Steve

PS. Anyone know if Firefox can/will support this functionality?

and Forms?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this Forms thing discussed on the new feature guide? I can't find it easily on the OO.org website.

Relation to OOO-Ximian

[Zarhan]

How does this relate to Ximianized Openoffice that I've been using all the time?

The reason I prefer ooo-ximian are the native widgets (KDE/Gnome), including stuff like file selection boxes. I'm noting that OOO 2.0 includes them too - and however, OOO-Ximians news file indicates ongoing development...

How do these two relate in 2.0? Are the "new widgets" in 2.0 merged from ooo-ximian, and in effect, which version should I choose once the 2.0 is released?

Linux installer rather than RPM?

[the plant doctor]

What happened to the good 'ole .gz package that had an installer that worked on any Linux system? I've not bothered to try OOo2 on either of my Linux boxes since one uses Debian and the other Slackware and the installer is RPMs now. Yeah, I know there's instructions there but I like to complain and you can't take that away from me. :D

Re:Linux installer rather than RPM?

[nko321]

I agree, RPM's? The old installer, while weird about multiple users, worked on my system without a hitch. OO.o wasn't that important to me anyway, I guess. I'll stick to KOffice and MS Office under Crossover. *shrug* If someone makes a Slackware package, maybe I'll take another look.

Terminal server installation!

[shadowlight1]

One thing that kept me from installing 1.1 was the painful installation on a Windows 2000 terminal server, lots of custom scripts and headaches. With 2.0 and its msi installer, does anyone know if that is eliminated??

Wish ya had flexibility in what is actually instal

[Sark666]

Back when I'd install office 97 in win98. I'd just install word and excell as thats all I'd need.

Well now I'm in debian and I went to see what OO had to offer. But 180 megs for the install. Too big for just a word processor and a spreedsheet. You say it offers more? Fine, but I don't want more.

Also, I read somewhere that Open Office is unusual in that it copies a whole lot of crap to one home where in the end, in effect the user has practically installed the thing to their home. Is this correct?

Word grammar checker is horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

MS Word's grammar checker is very bad. Even English professors/professional writers have commented that they rarely take its advice.

Re:Word grammar checker is horrible

[m50d]

No "even" there. *Of course* professionals don't need it. But the number of slashdotters who can't even avoid apostrophes on every plural, yet alone getting it's and its right, suggests there are a lot of people who could do with a grammar checker.

R??

[bstadil]

Guess what the first letter R stands for!

Re:R??

[Anonymous Coward]

What R? The file version is listed as 2.0bc.

Look at the OO.org download page. It clearly states that it's "OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta Candidate." Not release candidate.

Isn't a beta candidate usually called an alpha?

Re:But I just got done compiling OpenOffice 1.0 .

[Anonymous Coward]

but it's not a kernel joke - Crap!

gentoo zealot

Page Size

[Gonoff]

Now you know what the rest of the world has had to put up with MS products for years!
Every now and again, I get a call from a user saying that the page setup has gone weird and I show them how to reset the paper size to A4.

Perhaps they can teach you about logical date formats too?
I also get calls from people with stories like I entered the date for 1 March this year and it changed it to January 3. Be logical - small - middle - big ddmmyy is a logical order. Middle - small - big mmddyy is backasswards.

Vive la difference! If we all did things the same, there would be no room for innovation.

Re:Page Size

[amliebsch]

mmddyy is backasswards

It's that way because matches how we speak, e.g., "Dec. 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy..."

Why do we speak that way? Hell if I know.

Re:Page Size

[TERdON]

Actually I think ddmmyy is totally backwards (literally). In my eyes (swedish ones) it should be yymmdd - logical order compared to the decimal number system - "biggest" number should be to the left. It's also very logical when combined with times. Right now it is 050302 03:30 in Germany, for example. At least we agree on one thing - dates are written differently all over the world (we haven't even started to count other calendars...) and the american way to do it is really strange. :)

Re:Page Size

[mab]

Don't you call one off your holidays the 4th of July?

Re:Page Size

[mab]

Don't you guys have a holiday that you call 4th of July?

Re:Page Size

[amliebsch]

Yes, that's the name of the holiday. But ask an American what day the 4th of July is on, and they'll tell you: July 4th.

Re:Page Size

[Boogaroo]

Yes, but when you tell MS Office to change the default paper to A4, does it do it? In OOo, you set the default, it looks like you did it right, then when you open a new document it's back to A4.

To change it, you have to create a new document, save that as a template after making all the changes you need, THEN set that as the default template.

Shouldn't the defaults be easier to change? I know their reasoning is to prevent morons from mucking up the settings, but it would be better to have a "original defaults" button instead of forcing a kludged up workaround on everyone.

As far as dates go, I can see why each point works. Small, medium, large does make sense, but if you only put down one bit plus year, you get either (15th, 2005) or (January, 2005). Which of those two is more specific? Anyway, it would be nice if everyone had standards for paper that we could agree on. I wouldn't mind moving to metric, but people just don't want to change. I can't use A4 on my own here in the US.

I'll go read TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

to see if 2.0 will compile on amd64... 1.x will not :-(

A step forward

[water-and-sewer]

I'm discouraged by the tremendous amount of comments here by people who have obviously not read the article but rather rushed to post "I hope it imports WP files" and the like. Holy schmoly.

I think it's a great step forward. I signed up to be a beta tester for Star Office 8 and while I have only downloaded it this afternoon and won't get to install and play until tonight, I'm looking forward to the new features:

Word Perfect import, a cleaned up user interface, better PDF export, better input filters for crapomatic Microsoft documents, and a database front end that can interface with MySQL? Who's yo daddy? Those are features that mean a lot to me.

I'm a writer and I'm picky about my tools. And I take a Mac to school with me but run SUSE 9.1 and Xandros XD3 at home. Openoffice is the only software that really allows me to bridge the gap between those two platforms. On the Mac I run NeoOffice/J - a tremendous piece of software that's far more robust than people make it out to be. It doesn't load quickly, but once it does it gives me all the goodness of Openoffice.org with all the power of Mac OS X, and the interface is nice and clean, including native Mac print dialogues, and the like. I don't know what kind of alchemy went into marrying OO.o to Java to Mac OS X but I'm grateful someone went ahead and did it.

Look closely at OpenOffice 2.0r1 and what you see is an attempt to steal marketshare away from existing MS Office users. That means cleaner widgets, better import/export capacity, and a look and feel that isn't too foreign. It's not breaking any barriers in the document-writing paradigm here (check out Mellel for Mac OS X for that), but it is making it easier for existing Office users to jump ship. And jump they will.

There are several things I like about OO.o, including the stylist and navigator, the export to PDF functionality, and the way the interface meets my needs. At work I use MS Word 2003, and I swear to God I hate it, not because of who produces it but because it's the most awkward, confusing, automatic-in-unnecessary-ways piece of crap I've come across. And all that additional complexity has done little to make the secretaries I work with write good documents. I'm talking about borked-up formatting, inconsistent styles, and so on. OO.o deals specifically with those issues in a way I really appreciate.

The new database component is a huge addition. To all you pinheads pontificating about how important an Access-like program is for the future of OO.o, shame on you for not having RTFA. This could very well be a killer app when all is said and done (the Star Office 8 beta forums make it look like it's still a bit buggy). That is: a front end that "looks like" Access, tied into a MySQL back end. That's fantastic! I currently use Rekall for my database front end, but I can't get a version for Debian, which is a major pain in the butt.

In sum, ease up on all the "they better have included feature X." This is a major but manageable step forward, and while it doesn't solve all our problems, I think it's a big step forward to improving upon the success of previous editions of OO.o, and a big step forward to convincing potential MS Office refugees to give something new a shot. As for myself, I've decided compatability with MS Office users is no longer a concern to me. I'd rather just work alone with my grumpy ol' self. :)

Re:A step forward

[Anonymous Coward]

Talking of the Database part, be sure to check out the plea for help from those folks! OpenOffice 2.0 uses HSQLDB as its embeded DB, and those folks don't have any big corp baking them.

Two Needed Improvements

[Phoinix]

1) Ability to transform the animations in the presentation into Flash animations when the presentation is exported to Flash format. That would be Smashing!

2) A "Pack And Go" option as in "Powerpoint" and "WordPerfect Suite".

NEW splash screen

[bach37]

Here.

Re:NEW splash screen

[shokk]

Wow! Almost looks like it wasn't taken from Acroread's splash screen. Almost.

Wow, ANOTHER Clippy joke!

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to Slashdot, where it's perpetually 1999. Even though Clippy hasn't been in a default install for five years, let's obsess over Clippy in every single article as though it's still funny or clever.

Let's also obsess over BSODs and Microsoft Bob, that one-time Windows 3.1 replacement shell that sold for a brief time way back in 1994. Because, it's STILL funny!

impress specs

[Jafa]

Here are all the specs for impress:

http://specs.openoffice.org/impress

You'll have to poke around, but the spec site in general for OOo is incredibly awesome. I highly recommend anyone doing any open source work to check it out. Hopefully it will inspire other programmers to document things as they should be in a community project.
J

NeoOffice 2.0

[JPyObjC Dude]

Interesting - no mention of OS X. I know the OS X port has now essentially been left to the excellent NeoOffice - I wonder if a beta 2.0 of that is now on the cards?

I am tempted to help with hacking neo when they get to NeoOffice 2.0

Re:Beta candidate? - What about startup speed?

[Anonymous Coward]

For me, it's the startup speed; 31 seconds on SuSE 9.2 with KDE!

Phew... 31 seconds is actually a wickedly fast startup for an app under KDE. Seriously, switch to another desktop. KDE eats memory faster than a CAD application with the entire schematics for a jumbo jet loaded.

Praise the Lord

[qyiet]

From TFA:
Password-protected Microsoft (R) Office Word and Excel files can now be loaded when the StarOffice / OpenOffice.org user knows the password that protects the file in Microsoft (R) Office.

Thank whatever deity you prefer. The lack of this alone has had me wandering to windows machines for too long to view someone else's "secure" spreadsheet.

What about OTF support?

[Boolda]

When will I be able to use Myriad OTF with OO. Without that it's still a baby word processor.

Proper word count?

[aurelian]

That's the main feature missing in my opinion. Yes I know there's something available from the File menu, but that doesn't do the job. Needs to be able to count the number of words in selected text, & ideally to exclude certain styles/sections (e.g. references).

My other big gripe with oo.org is the number of 'smart' features such as auto-correct turned on by default. Like auto capitalisation. Took me ages to work out how to switch it off. And in fact now I've forgotten again come to think of it..

Re:Proper word count?

[richlv]

there's word count in tools->word count which counts also selected text.

about autocorrect features... check out help, it's faster than finding that option on your own ;)

Re:Wish ya had flexibility in what is actually ins

[oojah]

OOo 2.0 allows you to install what you want on Windows. I can't remember if this was the case for 1.x and don't know whether it works that way for Linux.

Quite a useless reply this isn't it?

Cheers,

Roger

OOO Base 2.0

[JPyObjC Dude]

Not so cheesy database GUI.

OASIS file format support and extension

[Jafa]

This seems kinda interesting-

Additional file format conforming to the OASIS standard

Exchange documents with any other software that recognizes this standard format.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 and StarOffice 8 use the new OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) standard XML (eXtensible Markup Language) file format as their default file format.

The new file names are the same regardless of the product vendor. You will not only find this new file format used in StarOffice and OpenOffice.org, but also in KOffice and a growing number of products that support this new standard.

They then go on to list several different extensions of various formats (text-.odt, spreadsheet-.ods, etc).

Looking at the spec sounds like they're phasing out the .sx file formats and going to this standard. Seems pretty cool!
J

J

Who died and made you project manager?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are welcome to add some code to make this happen.

Cross References

[mrm677]

Cross References are still crap. Until they fix this issue, and I find an addon tool to interface with Bibtex, I cannot use OpenOffice Writer to replace Framemaker (or Latex, or even MS Word).

I need to easily reference numbered sections, figures, and bibliographic entries. The problem is that OpenOffice doesn't automatically create a reference point for numbered sections.

Re:Cross References

[advocate_one]

you've got the source... fix it then... don't just sit there whinging about it...

Re:Cross References

[mrm677]

Open-source advocates should stop saying this. I'm not whining and I choose not to spend my time fixing it. Sorry, I have a family and other hobbies to deal with in my spare time.

If the developers of OpenOffice desire to convert me, and thousands of others who author scholarly works, this is a problem they need to address rather than add some other useless bell & whistle.

In the meantime, I'll continue to happily use Framemaker. However because this product is likely being end-of-lifed by Adobe, I will need to convert to something else at some point. I'd rather not resort to Word even though it has all the features I need.

Final

[Adam Avangelist]

Anyone know when the final open office 2 will be released, or know of any time frame?

Re:Final

[JonStewart]

That's what I want to know.

Re:Does that come with or without MSFT virus prote

[Anonymous Coward]

That image was a hoax. Go back and read the comments or read the thread in the forum it was posted in.

track changes with digital signatures

[Jafa]

There is track changes, and it looks like they're trying to integrate digital signatures with it. The Electronic Signatures and Encryption spec is very detailed and includes all the benefits that those features will bring. Tracking changes with digital signatures, macro security, signing/encrypting any file format (spread sheets, presentations, pdf, etc) and even just sections of the file.

One things to keep in mind though is that at some point these features turn into Digital Restrictions Management. Allowing reading a document but not printing, for example. That has to be on the OOo team's mind and I'm sure they are looking into options along that route also.
J

Link to main OOo BitTorrent page

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the main OOo BitTorrent page:
http://distribution.openoffice.org/p2p/bittorrent/ download.html

Included is the 1.1.4 as well as the Solaris builds

pfffff- puh-lease

[enmane]

Let's dispense with the MS-bashing and hoping that this will replace MS Office.

IT WON'T!

Yes, they finally have a database program but you won't see any REAL business/scientist/engineer switch over until they get statistical analysis that comes ANYWHERE near Excel.

You can't even plot regression lines/error bars/regression equations on the curve without figuring out the coefficients somewhere else on a spreadsheet and then plotting them as an equation. Those OO yahoos have been dragging their feet on this one for years.

I'm SHOCKED that there are so few that notice these features as missing, especially from the ./ crowd. Hang your heads low - you are NOT techies!

For reference see this bug and ALL the other linked to bugs...
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3 66
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=17 422

Re:pfffff- puh-lease

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they finally have a database program but you won't see any REAL business/scientist/engineer switch over until they get statistical analysis that comes ANYWHERE near Excel.

I can't speak for businesses. However, I don't know any scientists or engineers who use excel except for quick peeks at small data sets. The point and drool interface is crap when you're working with thousands of points. Hell, I find it annoying if I have more than 60 or so points. If you happen to have more than 65k points, excel just can't handle it.

Also, excel's ability to do non-basic statistical analysis is very limited.

• It can't:
• do multiple linear regression
  
• easily produce quantile-quantile plots
  
• produce box plots
  
• perform goodness-of-fit tests
  
• perform lack-of-fit tests
  
• produce stem/leaf displays
  

In fact, the only place I've ever seen someone using excel for statistics was at a technical college.

Native?

[mpcooke3]

Is that native like firefox, eg still slower than gnome apps with laggy menus and poor performance under X. Eg, a lightweight rendering system that needs to be re-optimised on every single platform to approach the performance of truly native toolkits? Or a properly cross platform native toolkit like SWT?

Sure better native emulation is nice, but unless they are planning on a truly native GUI then i hope OO doesn't kill other gnome office apps.

And why is it with these native GUI emulation systems in browsers, Openoffice and Java the only platform people want to make the GUI trully native in is osX.
I suspect it's because mac users don't want to be shafted with 2nd class "native emulation" applications.

Bah, perhaps i should just give up on gnome and buy a mac mini...

feature - tabbing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll love to see a tabbing system similar to firefox where you can open and switch several documents at one time.

This will be great for doing research and writing reports.

It will even be better if you can integrate web browsing and use a word processor at the same time by simply tabbing them in a firefox like browser.

get it with Bittorrent

[Anonymous Coward]

http://distribution.openoffice.org/p2p/bittorrent/ download.html

Office Standard Student and Teacher Edition

[westlake]

If Office was $79 or $99 (for the version with all the bells and whistles) I would by it, but im going to have to stick with 2000 for a long time on my windows box

Amazon lists MS Office Standard Student and Teacher Edition 2003 for $125.
Installs on three PCs, no student-teacher ID required. Ranks #3 on the Amazon software sales chart. Student-Teacher Office 2004 for the Mac is $136. Ranks #18.

Re:Office Standard Student and Teacher Edition

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to break the EULA, why not just steal it in the first place?

Re:Office Standard Student and Teacher Edition

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to break the EULA, why not just steal it in the first place?

What's to break? The license is for non-commercial use by a student, teacher or any member of their household. The bundle sells over the counter with no age limits, no ID check, no requirement for full time study. If someone at home can't plausibly fit within the rules, you haven't much imagination.

Re:Office Standard Student and Teacher Edition

[nofx_3]

Yes, but I also need access support. I don't understand why access is typically not included, its a POS program but we pull data and run weekley reports on it at my work so its a necessity. My old 2000 copy works just fine.

-kaplanfx

Re:Office Standard Student and Teacher Edition

[Anonymous Coward]

also no outlook

Re:Office Standard Student and Teacher Edition

[Anonymous Coward]

except that it DOES come with Outlook... genius

Re:Office Standard Student and Teacher Edition

[st1d]

>Amazon lists MS Office Standard Student and Teacher Edition 2003 for $125. Installs on three PCs, no student-teacher ID required. Ranks #3 on the Amazon software sales chart. Student-Teacher Office 2004 for the Mac is $136. Ranks #18.

That doesn't strike you as part of the problem, that you have to essentially lie to get a fair deal on MS Office? Doesn't it make you feel the least bit uncomfortable knowing that you need to lower your morals to MS's level (read as: none) to pay a decent price, while an alternative that's nearly equivalent is free? If it works for you, great, but it would make me feel a little off.

Next thing you know, you'll be visiting animal shelters to stock up on meat for your freezer...

Re:Office Standard Student and Teacher Edition

[Fred_A]

However the *real* price for the MS Office suite is 455 Euros here (or 612 Euros for the Pro version, not sure what the difference is). Which amounts to USD 597 and USD 803 respectively.

OTOH StarOffice is listed at 110 Euros (144 USD). Still relatively expensive (but then it's only two new games), but at least affordable. And you don't have to lie.

I often see people buying the Student/teacher edition of MS Office at software shops and always spend some time educating them about OpenOffice. I have yet to find one that was even aware that it existed. All of them seemed to be genuinely interested and promised they'd give it a try. I don't know how many got a refund on their Office software though.

Re:Office Standard Student and Teacher Edition

[ltbarcly]

If you approach the world like this you have problems.

Man, there is opportunity X. Now, I'll plug X into my Personal Morality Unit. Ahh, crap. It seems that I can't do X, since the PMU has decided that it would be necessary to lower my morals.

This is really hilarious to me. "It is wrong to click the box that says you're a student when you aren't". Why? Does it make Jesus cry? Is Kant turning in his grave? I bet when you find loose change you leave it on the ground because you don't know how to report it on your tax return. When the cable guy accidently left HBO on for free you called them and forced them come turn it off, AND charge you pro-rata for the time it was on. You heard your neighbor playing mp3's so you had to go and buy the albums, since otherwise you're getting to hear them free through the wall. (you bought 2 copies, because sometimes your wife hears it too)

Personally I only use Free Software. Free as in Bittorrent, sucker!

Re:Office Standard Student and Teacher Edition

[randomencounter]

At least some of us have "PMU's". I kinda like that in fact.

It keeps people from walking off with my stuff.

I find it amusing and disturbing that someone would have such a badly misfunctioning PMU that they need to put down someone else for having a more functional one.

Re:Office Standard Student and Teacher Edition

[ltbarcly]

There is no PMU, dope. The entire point is that creating some kind of artificial moral test is retarded. If you feel like something is wrong, don't do it. But if you are so backward that you have this rational construct that you test actions with, then you are a very silly person.

You like that some people have PMU's, because it keeps them from stealing from you? Would you like their PMU when they call 911 because they see you going 10 miles an hour over the speed limit?

Finally, someone can't be better at morality. They just happen to agree with you more, so YOU think they're better. I'm not saying that it is completely relative, I'm saying that there is serious ambiguity in the ethical value of most actions no matter what. Is speeding ethically wrong? What about having sex with a girl one minute before she is the legal age? What about having sex with a girl while she is turning the legal age (start before and finish after). There are always these borderline questions that defy any kind of set of rules, merely because the rule is really locally arbitrary (that is, it is immoral to have sex with children we pretty much agree, but when it becomes not immoral isn't completely certain, though the line is drawn somewhere). But if it is arbitrary you can hardly be considered immoral if you fudge it a little. (It isn't immoral to go 1 mile an hour over the limit consistantly, is it?)

In the end, you are probably some sort of religious "moral compass" lunatic anyway, so I'll stop wasting my time.

Re:Office Standard Student and Teacher Edition

[randomencounter]

You have to draw the line somewhere, because if you don't you end up fudging further across the line every time.

I find it amusing when people assume that being moral means being a holier than thou prick about other people's morality as well, and then proceed to be holier than thou about their lack of morality.

Guilty consience perhaps?

Re:Office Standard Student and Teacher Edition

[ltbarcly]

like I said in my first post in this thread, sucker!

Pack abnd go (was: Two Needed Improvements)

[Anonymous Coward]

I use the Export to PDF feature for this and it works fine in recent OOo. Acrobat, xpdf and the various Ghostscript-based PDF viewers all have full screen options.

It works much better than "Pack and go" ever did.

RPM only ??

[flacco]

wtf, people?

why not provide a version we can just unpack and run, instead of RPM-only?

Re:RPM only ??

[CanadaDave]

This is bullshit, this is a tar.gz file on the mirrors. The author has his head up his ass.

Re:RPM only ??

[flacco]

This is bullshit, this is a tar.gz file on the mirrors. The author has his head up his ass

inside the tar.gz there are RPM's.

there is a source package, of course, but i don't want to compile the beast.

Re:But I just got done compiling OpenOffice 1.0 .

[Anonymous Coward]

You think that's funny, you fucking stupid asshole-licking son of a bitch. Everybody hates you and your miserable attempt at humour. Die, die,die, bitch!

Can't right click on toolbars

[assassinator42]

To my dismay, when I right click on a toolbar, expecting to see a menu pop up letting me choose which toolbars to use, it does nothing. At least add back the old right click menu.

Re:Wish ya had flexibility in what is actually ins

[real_smiff]

on a multiuser system you do a -net install ('full') to the program files dir (about 180MB or whatever, large). and then a small install ('workstation' iirc) to each user's home (1.8MB for me, mostly config files and logs). doesn't seem to be any executable content in the home dir. this sound reasonable? i think so. i haven't tried 2.0 yet.

On Moving NeoOffice to 2.0

[soullessbastard]

Disclaimer: I am a developer of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X and a founder of the NeoOffice project.

I don't mean to be a curmudgeon, but NeoOffice/J won't be available in a 2.0 beta anytime soon. There are a number of reasons:

• 2.0 isn't finished yet on any platform! We've already got so much on our plate that we simply can't spend our time working on such a large codebase that hasn't even yet reached code-freeze.
• Mac OS X (X11) build support and testing for 2.0 isn't finished yet! In fact, it's only just begun. Because NeoOffice/J is built on top of the X11 base, we need to have a solid X11 version running and compiling before we can isolate whether bugs are inherent to Mac OS X or whether they are unique to the GUI replacement layer.
• We haven't even finished NeoOffice/J 1.1! We're still working on trying to iron out all the bugs in the 1.1 based product. Moving to 2.0 is obviously going to introduce new bugs, and we can't consciously shoot ourselves in the foot right before a final release.
• Translation of 2.0 isn't complete. NeoOffice/J supports localizations in over 40 languages, and we definitely don't want to leave any languages behind. We won't be considering moving until all of our supported languages are available.
• 2.0 is not the final 2.0.x release. This is just a matter of fact...2.0 will probably have bugs after it is introduced and will have another 2.0.1 release, a 2.0.2 release, etc. It's easy to get caught up in the hamster wheel of keeping up with the torrent of patches and point releases from Hamburg and we can't afford to lose focus and let native porting suffer.
• Moving to 2.0 is going to be a lot of work. Definitely months worth of dedicated work, actually, perhaps even more than a year. Just going from 1.0 to 1.1 took Patrick over a year easy and we're still not finished with that jump yet.
• There are higher priorites than moving to 2.0. While folks love to clamor for "feature parity", we have different priorities (well, I do, perhaps Patrick disagrees). I am more than happy to trade 2.0 features in exchange for working on and completing the equally complex Mac OS X specific tasks, including:
  • getting the first "Final" release of NeoOffice/J!
  • moving to Java 1.4/1.5...crucial for the long-term viability of Neo/J on Tiger and future operating system revisions. There's no sense in spending a year perfecting 2.0 only to find it won't run on the latest and greatest. We already have to work around crashing bugs in the 1.3.1 VM every time there's just a minor update (e.g. 10.3.7 -> 10.3.8), and there's gotta be only so many more updates for which we can find workarounds until the VM just plain no longer works.
  • implementing the NWF and other Aqua widgets
  • using native file dialogs
  • beginning to redesign the interface to adhere to Aqua HIG
• We only have so much time available! Although Patrick is truly astounding, there really is only so much time available as we need to feed our families and pay the rent from time to time. With limited resources available and several large and very technical projects looming on the horizon, they need to get prioritized.

We're intending to backport the major feature of 2.0 that is required...OpenDocument format support. There are plans for an OpenOffice.org 1.1.5 release on other platforms that provides OpenDocument support which we hope to incorporate.

What's most likely going to happen is that we'll try doing a NeoOffice/J 1.5 release with Aqua widgets and other Mac-specific features and technical enhancements. Our #1 goal isn't to keep up with the most up to date OOo release, but rather, to make a great Mac OS X office suite. NeoOffice/J 1.1 is the most solid foundation upon which to build it since it's the most bug free.

Without substantial assistance (e.g. perfecting

Something else not touched on...

[Chordonblue]

OOo 1.1 had TERRIBLE problems with workstation / all user installs. It relied on files being placed in a user's local home directory which is not good when you have computers in a lab-like setting. Workstation installs required user input (unless you scripted it otherwise - but then you'd lose the ability to set OOo defaults), and putting it on a Windows server running Terminal Services was buggy as hell.

By default, OOo 2.0 now installs an 'all users' install, meaning that there are no more issues with OOo registering icons or having one person mess with everyone else's settings.

To me, this was the hugest issue of all next to MS Word compatibility (check the OOo forums if you don't believe me) and yet very little is said of it.

Everyone has their 'one feature'...

[Teancom]

that OO needs to have before they'll switch, and I'm looking for abbreviation replacement. Well, for my sister. She works as a medical transcriptionist, and would really like to switch over to Linux. She started out a few months ago using Windows, IE, Outlook Express, and Word and has switched over to Firefox and Thunderbird so far. If she could get a good replacement for Word (+some plugins she uses), then she'd drop Windows in a second. She's also been using a desktop automater program and was very interested to learn that you can do the same things in Linux using a standard programming language like python (with dcop bindings) and shell scripts, for free. Basically, she wants to be the most efficient she can possibly be, and see's Windows as a stumbling block towards achieving that.

By the way, an abbbreviation expander program is something that looks for you typing something like abd and it expands it to abdomen. Obviously, the programs she uses (shorthand and speedtype) are aimed directly at the medical transcriptionist market and come preloaded with abbreviations, but even something that she could customize would suffice for her needs. There are other MTs that are looking into Linux as well, and they could probably spread the load of inputting the medical terms into an abbreviation database and share it with one another, if only a word processor on Linux supported this. Any suggestions? I spent a goodly amount of time yesterday surfing google trying to find anything, and came up empty.

Re:Everyone has their 'one feature'...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have switched some time ago... I no longer use Word or any of that crap Office software.

Re:Everyone has their 'one feature'...

[ltbarcly]

Why try to get her to drop windows, if it has the tools she needs? Too many people try to wedge others into using linux and OSS when it just isn't ready for users with their skill level. Buy your sister a Mac Mini and plug office on there for her, and she'll thank you forever.

Re:Everyone has their 'one feature'...

[richlv]

i can see two possible solutions that exist in oo.org right now.

1. word completion - oo.org remembers words that are longer than x symbols (customizeable) and when you start typing next word, it displays possible completion. if you hit enter (can be changed to end/space/right) the word is completed. helps if words have different endings so that you can see wether the correct one has been chosen;

2. auto correct - simply put abd/abdomen in, now when you type abd followed by a space it's expanded to abdomen

Re:Everyone has their 'one feature'...

[Teancom]

I'm sorry for not making it clearer, but she approached me, not the other way 'round. And the main reason she wants to do it is because Windows is proprietary, and she doesn't want to be beholden to one vendor. This is all according to her, I haven't been preaching Free Software to her at all. So moving to a mac would increase her productivity, but not address the underlying problem. Frankly, it makes me a bit giddy to see 'normals' seeing this sort of stuff on their own. Makes me wonder if the revolution is closer than I thought :-)

Re:Everyone has their 'one feature'...

[Teancom]

Do you happen to know if either of these solutions are easily 'shareable'? I.e., put into a separate file that can be copied around and expanded by different people? If they are, I think we found a winner. Thanks!

Re:Everyone has their 'one feature'...

[Filmwatcher888]

Your sister could cross over to Linux today if she really wanted to. Crossover Office supports Word, and the rest of the MS office Suite quite well. But, if your sister and her colleges are willing, it is also a trivial matter to set up a perscript that goes through the file and seds/awks every shorthand note into long form.

Re:Everyone has their 'one feature'...

[Teancom]

She actually asked about wine in her first email to me. I discouraged her from it though, based mainly on the fact that we use Crossover Office here at work for our linux workstations, and it is a crashy, buggy, piece of crap. Maybe I have a jaundiced view of it simply because I'm the admin in charge of keeping it running, and upgrading, but I wouldn't wish it on anybody. Especially if she's going to be adding plugins, like the abbreviation expanders.

Re:Everyone has their 'one feature'...

[richlv]

autocorrect information is stored in
~/.openoffice.org/user/autocorr
there is one file (per language ?) that can be easily copied over to other machines.

i'm not sure about preserving customized autocorrect configurations. there is a tool named 'configimport' that supposedly combines imported information with existing, but i haven't tried it yet.

word completion unfortunately works only in your current session (as you close oo.org, all information is lost). a workaround would be opening a document that contains a 'dictionary' as a first document - not exactly user friendly :)

Can't do NWF on OS X without being native.

[soullessbastard]

Disclaimer: I am a developer of OpenOffice.org Mac OS X and a founder of the NeoOffice project.

There's no support for them in Mac OS X because OpenOffice.org itself still runs in X11 on Mac OS X. The Native Widget Framework doesn't actually use native widgets at all. The way the NWF works is by introducing a new abstraction layer (first pioneered by NeoOffice/C) that allows the OOo SFX/VCL based widgets to call a platform-specific function that essentially translates to "draw a button background here" or "draw a scrollbar thumb here". On Mac OS X you can only get access to low-level widget rendering routnies through the Appearance Manager (Carbon) or the HIToolbox (Carbon/CG). Neither of those are available to X11 applications.

Besides...I think it'd be frustrating to have "Aqua-ish" buttons in an X11 app that can't even copy to the clipboard correctly. Kinda defeats the purpose putting the look onto an app that doesn't even have the right Mac OS X functionality, not to mention the "feel/UI design" :)

ed

Neo not on pause...rumbling towards "Final"

[soullessbastard]

Disclaimer: I am a developer of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X and a founder of the NeoOffice project.

It's not on pause at all, rather, we're essentially roaring towards our first final release. We actually released 1.1 Beta Patch 6 about a week or two ago which fixed many of the crashes introduced by the 10.3.8 update along with other font fixes (particularly asian languages) and some other stuff thrown in. Technically, that's the 6th major update to the Beta version this year.

An anonymous donor also recently raised funding to implement inter-application drag and drop between NeoOffice/J and other OS X applications, so work is commencing on that requested feature.

ed

Re:Neo not on pause...rumbling towards "Final"

[Fortun L'Escrot]

good stuff. and to give us some perspective, where does NeoOffice stand feature-wise in relation to OO v2?

Click the "News" link of the homepage

[soullessbastard]

Disclaimer: I am a developer of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X and a founder of the NeoOffice project.

For the latest news, click the "News" link off of the NeoOffice homepage which will take you to trinity where our headlines and forums are posted. You'll find that there's new content in the forums every day :)

ed

Re:Pack and go (was: Two Needed Improvements)

[Phoinix]

I use PDF as a backup. Whenever I am using a PC at some conference (i.e. one which I do not have previous access to), I keep PDF and Flash copies just in case the PPT did not work.
PDF and Flash copies will not show any effects (animations, transitions, embedded Java or media, etc...)

The OOo people need alot to learn

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Some very important compatibility problems with words was not addressed, wait for next release. This release has the most publish attention, why wait for the next.

2) Stupidly common sense: when unzip the zip file (in windoze), please put them in a folder. I have to create a folder (or have one permanent there) just for the sake of this. If not, a bunch of files scatter all over places.

This seems to be small issue. True, but it indicates a big problem at OOo, people there lack a brain.

Curry's and PC World in the UK IIRC...

[Phil John]

...last time I was in one of their stores (buying a cooker) it took a while to sort out the financing package (they had just finished moving over to a brand new integrated package called eclipse that handles everything from POS to backend inventory and were having a few teething problems), at one point the salesperson had to close down the app and go get a manager, at that point I saw that the only icons on the desktop were for eclipse (their custom app) and the openoffice.org products.

From the look of things it's a standard image on all machines so I would guess they've moved over to OO.o exclusively, at least in retail stores, I don't know about head/regional offices, but I'm sure they'll be following if it's a success.

seems like there's been little progress...

[dalutong]

what am i missing? i was expecting huge changes and polish between 1.x and 2.x. has there been a lot of under the hood work? will the polish come with 2.1.x like it did with 1.1.x?

Asian Language Features

[Jarvo]

I can't wait to get my hands on these features.

When I'm making worksheets for my students , it's a pain to get proper Japanese script on the page. I've resorted to cutting and pasting from Wordpad. :(

Re:"Microsoft" Gets Flagged in StarOffice?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, pointing out an unpleasant fact, e.g., that things like this make the Linux and Open Source movement look petty in the eyes of the very people you need to be weaning away from Microsoft, gets you modded as a "troll."

C'mon, guys -- this IS silly. If Microsoft Word had some dumbass feature that suggested "fear, uncertainty, doubt?" as synonyms for "Linux," or "Satan" as the correct spelling for "Linus Torvalds," you'd rake Bill over the coals (and rightly so.)

Maximum Row Number Is A Show Stopper

[wintermute1974]

Well, I for one work at a manufacturing plant that makes refrigerator-sized battery chargers.

We have about 45-thousand parts and assemblies in our master database. Unfortunately, there is no way to create ad-hoc queries on this DB, and I am often forced to print reports to text files. I then take these text files and import them into Excel. After using the "Convert Text to Columns" feature, I can slice and dice the data any way I want.

Although I have minion/errand-runner/peon status in the company, senior managers routinely ask me to create reports that cannot be generated using the system itself. My abilities appear like witchcraft to them.

Come to think of it, I learned to appreciate Excel when I was first slicing and dicing datasets created from our dataloggers which were recording voltages, currents, temperatures, and other values during type testing of new battery charger models.

In that case too, Excel proved to be a very simple, very fast way to get the data into a manipulable form and then actually generate decent reports quickly. The charting feature is rather simple, but it usually gets the job done.

You may sneer, you may turn your head up and sniff with disdain, but guess what? Some people are measured for their productivity, and if they need to get something done both quickly and well, they will routinely turn to decent software like Excel.

Incidentally, I think Microsoft hit the zenith in their software development with Excel 97. I have tried Excel 2000 and Excel XP, but they do not seem to have any significant features worth upgrading for.

Re:Maximum Row Number Is A Show Stopper

[richlv]

although oo.org now supports 65k, maybe you should try it's database interface, if it is possible. might be easier and faster.

so

[Anonymous Coward]

does it still look like shit?

Yaeya! HazaAa! Oh Joy!

[Fussen]

Ode TO joy! Word COUNT IS HERE!!! Ten Words excactly!

Impress Templates (an idea)

[Nailer]

Personally, I shell out for good looking Powerpoint presnetations and use 'em in Impress.

But anyway, an idea:

Post OOo 2 release, why not have a competition for best templates? Authors contribute in exchange for publicity.

"CoolThing 7"
Created by Smithworks Graphics. For more Smithworks templates, click (here)."

sadly, you're right :( Re:it has clippy

[aaron_pet]

That annoying little purple box even nags me for more stuff than clippy used to.

And OO has more annoying "features" turned on by default... however, they are all listed on just a handfull of tab thingies.. so after 4 minutes or so my OO.org system is up and running without goofing up my grammer...

(I type dogs, then want to type dog(newline) and it types dogs for me.... stupid, stupid stupid)

But heck, I avoid MS office, MS and Bill Gates do enough things that I don't agree with that, I'd even work extra to not give them a penny.

The only things I need for OO to suit me, are email form letters (not for spam, I swear!) and better impress printing of multiple slides, and an embedable chart that can take data from other embeded documents, rather than manually type the entire huge dataset by hand on every change :O

Is MSFT virus protection real?

[WillAffleckUW]

strange thing is, when I ran MSFT AntiSpyware on my PC today (a Wintel), it disappeared the Firefox icon from my desktop ... so, maybe it isn't a hoax.

My point is OpenOffice needs to include all the bad parts of MS Office for it to be ready.

The killer feature for OOo would be

[Anonymous Coward]

readable code!

I've tried to hack on OOo before, and it's a bear.

The build system isn't Make -- they use their own. The punchline is that there are still Makefiles: they just don't do what you think. So if you type "make", it screws up your whole build, and you get to start over. And the thing takes literally hours to build, and gigabytes of disk space.

Second, there's no overview of the code. Everything is in incredibly cryptic folders with names like "sc" and "sd" and "sx". If you want to dive in, you're pretty much on your own.

Finally, once you do get it building, and figure out which file you want to work on, good luck getting anything done! It's half German, half English, and half acronyms. I'm pretty decent at German (studied it all through college), and I still have trouble. When you see an acronym (and every variable and type starts with something), there's no way even to tell if the acronym is for German or English words! There's no project vocabulary file, AFAICT.

I really want OpenOffice to succeed. I wanted it so much I downloaded it and built it and hacked on it. But after a few days, it became clear that the whole codebase is so unfriendly, it simply wasn't worth my time to do software-archaeology on it to figure out what's what. I wish the best to them, but I still think the #1 thing they can do today to help their project is to make the damn thing readable.

A million eyeballs are great, but they aren't worth much if they can't decipher your code.

And the best (?) part about it...

[cianduffy]

Is that it now comes with a Mozilla plugin. So you can view OO.o and Office documents in Firefox/Netscape/Mozilla and print them or export them to PDF from the browser interface. Only one step away from the browser becoming the OS then :-p

And for the rest of us...

[BlackHawk-666]

...who don't want to lie and cheat to get the suite, and aren't students? List price on Amazon is $499, but you can buy it for $390, about the same price as a Lindows PC!

Can you do it with a macro?

[aug24]

It ought (but I don't have OOo here at work to try it) to be possible to write a macro that would:

1. Get the current word
2. Look up that word in a spreadsheet (first column)
3. Get the content of the second column in the same sheet
4. Replace the current word with that content.

There's a guide to macros here, but it's in OOo format... and I don't have OOo here at work!

HTH
Justin.

OOo handles long documents and styles better

[SgtChaireBourne]

Actually, OOo handles long documents and styles better than MS-Office and is therefore of great benefit to schools, colleges and universities. Anyone that has ever tried to write or edit a thesis or dissertation using MS-Word already knows first hand that it doesn't cut the mustard. Yes, TeX and TeX variants are out there, but OOo is easier for non-science students.

Also, OpenOffice.org handles royalty-free, open, XML-based file formats like OpenDocument, unlike MS-Office which cannot/does not. That ought to have been in the article summary.

JavaOffice?

[UglyMike]

How come nobody is bitching about the ever increasing reliance on Java? Lots of Java apps come bundled with OOo v2.0b bundled like the Mediaplayer (Just read the posts at the end of the article)

An OpenOffice that will end up requiring Java is no longer an OpenOffice but a JavaOffice and thus not portable to other alternate OSes like the *BSD and such and hence NOT EVEN FREE SOFTWARE!!
Do we want to trade MS Office for Sun Office ? No difference in view of their close partnership if you ask me...

Hang On

[Anonymous Coward]

How did you post know to post that your post contained 10 words before you ran word count? It doesn't make any.....

Here We Go

[Anonymous Coward]

Open Office rocks, I know. But anyone who can say (MS) Office is crap has to be retarded. If anything, it has WAY too many features, but you can change menus and toolbars as much as you want. I'm not talking about whether it's closed source, proprietary software, just the usability factor. I can just see you trying to type a letter in Word (with that funny white people voice black comedians use) wringing your hands because it's not working. "OH! This won't do at ALL At all!!!

OK, here's something

[hey!]

Well, I've had Access mistake an unique index for a primary key for example.

It then uses this when it issues an update.

Suppose I have a table X with fields {A,B,C}. A is the primary key, B is an unique but nullable field, and C is a plain old field.

Now, I have a tuple (1,null,'something'), which I edit in my spreadsheet view to to hae (1,null,'or other').

Access should issue the following statement:

update X set C = 'or other' where A = 1;

but it issues this instead:

update X set C = 'or other' where B is null;

Whoops!

Re:OK, here's something

[aztracker1]

weird, but should still work.. not sure what/how you have say A set in that instance... since B is unique it *should* work anyhow.

Re:OK, here's something

[hey!]

Will it work? Well, yes, the record in question will be updated along with every other record where B happens to be null.

Not every unique field is a candidate key!

Re:OK, here's something

[aztracker1]

no, but every unique field is, well.. unique.. in any case, you *COULD* just create your update statement sql yourself... as I said before.

Re:OK, here's something

[hey!]

no, but every unique field is, well.. unique..

Only if you don't count null, which is a very important special case. An uniuqe field can contain duplicates, if those duplicates are all the null value. Null means doesn't apply. So this definitely does NOT work, unless my field also has a not null attribute. Null never returns true when used in any comparison operator other than "is null".

My Sql example isn't quite correct though. Consider this. Table X has ten rows. I issue the following SQL:

select count(*) from X where null == null;

What do I get? 0. Not 10.

So the interesting thing is that access is smart enough to take the following:

update X
set C = 'or other'
where B = null;

and convert it to:

update X
set C = 'or other'
where B is null;

But is NOT smart enough to recoganize that an unique field that can take the null value is not suitable for being treated like a primary key.

Trust me -- Access does this and it is the wrong thing!

Yay!

[Sasquatchdied]

Great news. I thought it would come a little quicker though. I alpha tested, and it worked just fine. I just hope they've updated the slightly ugly GUI from the alpha, at least for public release.

? You really like clippy.

[Sasquatchdied]

I think someone should shoot the little paper clip. Are you being serious.
I get fed up of it telling me what I'm doing, and then trying to help with it when it's obvious that it's just a twisted piece of metal with no sense of reality...

Re:But I just got done compiling OpenOffice 1.0 .

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

I can compile a kernel w/ modules in about 20 minutes on this AMD 2600+. But I had to leave my computer compiling overnight to emerge OOo..

MOD PARENT INSIGHTFUL

[Anonymous Coward]

nt

a writer indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a writer and ...

yes, you do write a lot

grimrc

Heretic!!

[beakburke]

You obviouly aren't a REAL Gentoo user!!