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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))]
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
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?
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.
"Someone's gotta have some damn perspective around here!" -- Commander Susan Ivonova, Babylon 5
Anyone noticed that it is about 30megs smaller than the previous verison.
Wonder why...
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'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.
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