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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.
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.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
I'm more interested in how the database is looking to be.
pi=sigma{n:0-infinity}[(1/16)^n][(4/(8n+1))-(2/(8n +4))-(1/ (8n+5))-(1/(8n+6))]
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
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...
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
have any professional (for-profit) organizations switched to OO yet?
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.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
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 . . .
Monster Zero is the reason we cannot live on the surface, but must live forever live underground like this.
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.
Anyone noticed that it is about 30megs smaller than the previous verison.
Wonder why...
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.
:(
>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.
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.
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.
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?
Couldn't stand the weather
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.
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
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.
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?
On Arrakis: early worm gets the bird. Magister mundi sum!
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.
2 2661
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=
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.
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.
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.
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.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
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.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
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.
IntechHosting - Free domain, 2GB, PHP, £4.95/$8.95
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...)
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.
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.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
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.
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
Abiword seems to be undergoing very active development on OSX. See http://www.abisource.com/%7Efjf/
That annoying little purple box even nags me for more stuff than clippy used to.
:O
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
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