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OpenOffice.org 2.0 Preview
Reader lord_rob the only on wrote in to mention a preview of the upcoming OpenOffice.org 2.0 running on tectonic. From the article: "It is not too bold to say that OpenOffice.org 2.0 will usher in a new era of functionality, reliability, compatibility and ease of use. The extensive changes and enhancements which are to be included in the upcoming release are all the evidence needed to justify this assertion." As we mentioned earlier this week, the beta candidate is currently available.
It looks really nice. Especially the addition of "Base", the database portion which appears to be much more well thought out than most "easy to use" database products. FileMaker Pro? Forget about it. More like FileMangler Pro! ;P
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Anyone know if you can view and edit two pages side by side like you can in Word? It's a really useful feature when you have a decent sized screen to work with. I have played with an earlier snapshot release a bit but haven't been able to find anything in the menus that would accomplish it.
Wow, this looks really good. Being a Linux user and student, I've always wished I was as productive in Linux-native word processors as I am on Windows with Word (currently 2003). However, after using Word for my whole life, AbiWord and OpenOffice (OpenOffice especially) seem unintuitive (obviously the result of Microsoft brainwashing ;)). Hopefully OpenOffice 2.0 will solve this problem for me, but in the meantime does anybody know of a good (as in you've actually used it successfully) Word-convert user's guide to AbiWord or OpenOffice? If there's another (preferably Gnome-native) word processor that you know a guide for, that's okay too.
Has it grown even bigger and slower than it is now?
OOo is great, but I discovered the other day that it doesn't work anymore on my older laptop with 96M of ram and nothing loaded but a basic KDE. It used to work there not so long ago, not fast or anything, but well enough to do presentation with Impress on the cheap. No more, which is a real pain.
So if 2.0 has grown even more monstrous, I'm not even trying it out, nosiree. My other laptop still has enough oomph to use 1.1.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
That said, please test it! OpenOffice.org's success in the long run is determined by the visionaries like us who give good feedback so that it can eventually make it to the mainstream smoothly.
Berto
http://www.tectonic.co.za/graphics/ooo-writer.jpg
Looks like they still haven't gotten the white page centered on the screen yet. It's only been about 5 years since it was first suggested. Oh well. And the interface is still cluttered with tiny icons, and there's the useless styles and formatting window. Not much of a "complete interface redesign" as far as I can tell.
This is only a beta, so things can only get better.
So with Open Office 2.0 in the near future how will sun promote it? A firefox like campaign? (That would be something to see. Future Headline: "Microsoft Claims Open Office not a Threat".) However, I've always wondered if sun's motives for funding open office were a bad thing. (Apparently they just want to make Microsoft mad.) Still yet version 2.0 looks great. Base is cool. The new icons are a plus and that Math program would be great for educators. As for community they seem to be really into it. (Open Office Splashscreen contest.) Yet I wonder... Who has power in the project? Are they evil? Do I get a t-shirt?
In OO 2 its supposed to load faster, but to be honest, Hell Works 2.0 has done basically everything I've needed since 1988. Office 2000 added some useful features, but then I switched to Macintosh anyway. I wish they would optimize the code and take out the bloat. I would be impressed if just once someone came up with an application that version 2.0 ran on older hardware instead needing newer stuff because of code optimatzation.
I have Office V.x for my Mac primarily for one program: PowerPoint. I've just purchased iWork and damned impressed with Pages and Keynote 2. Still not as many design templates as Powerpoint for Mac, but I am sure that will change with time.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
The vast majority of universities provide students with legal copies of office.
http://brandonbloom.name
I've given it a decent try for several days now, and it keeps screwing up tables when it imports them from MS Word.
The tables I've got aren't complex, but there is a fair bit of "tables within tables" for the sake of formatting. While I know there's better ways of doing this sort of "poor man's page layout" within Word, unfortunately I'm stuck with using these templates for the forseeable future.
I'm trying to isolate the problem at the moment to give a nice small document to the OOo developers to work with, but be warned - some of these table layout bugs only become obvious when the document is printed and the layout is all wrong.
Other than that, OOo 2 seems a lot more stable and is pretty much a rock solid replacement for MS Office in my experience to date. If you don't have to muck around with stupid Word tables in document templates, I'd say go for it!
The thing I use the spreadsheet for the most results in a graph. OMG is it ever slow! It would be really nice if they would fix that.
On the positive side, Oo has given me fewer problems using complex numbers than Excel. Excel does have some suprising abilities like doing FFTs for instance. I haven't even tried to do anything like that in Oo because the resulting graphs would take forever to produce.
Why do I harp on the graph problem? If my spreadsheet has a graph and I change the data then I have to wait while the graph gets redrawn before I can do anything else. I realize that I could work around it but I have to remember to do so. The result is that I get a lot of 'Oh shit' moments.
What has won me over from M$ office is mainly the excellent support for my language. You just grab the version for your language, run the installer and voila!..spell checker, hyphenator all in place and with excellent accuracy. No activations, no product keys, no EULAS. In 5' you have a fully localized working opensource office suite!.. If you stick to M$ you either have to find some form of addon pack for your language (crappy crappy crappy) or get a localized version (and pray that they won't charge you high).
Community support has made OO *VERY* relevant in situations like these. From what I have seen OO2 has a much more agreeable interface and the load times are roughly the same (perhaps slightly better). Well, from my point of view, it definitely gets better all the time...
Open Source Java DAO Generator
has anyone been able to compile v2.0 on 64 bits architecture such as AMD64
right now, the only way to run OpenOffice 1.0 on x86_64 is through the 32bits compatibility mode while OOo 2.0 promise to offer native version
Yeah, but at least OpenOffice doesn't TRANSLATE the freaking scripting commands to YOUR language.
sum: Command not found. Try "suma".
Way to go, Microsoft!
"It hasn't quite caught up with MS Office 2003 in terms of functionality - but who cares?"
People who actually need the functionality of Excel or Powerpoint care. There are workflow, performance, capability, and compatability issues with OpenOffice (but I haven't tried v2 yet.)
In the past, it hasn't been merely slow, it has also been difficult to do certain tasks that apply a lot of data to graphs that are linked to both documents and presentations. OO works GREAT where I need it (simple spreadsheets, word processing), but it never quite lives up to the hype when the biochem researcher in my family tries to use it -- and she gives it an honest try every time a new version comes out.
It may meet the needs of the average office clerk, but is that really hard to do? It doesn't meet the needs of a scientist.
Weigh that against the fact that open source programmers underestimate the need for a good macro language, as evidenced by the flippant comments throughout this discussion. Furthermore, StarBasic is not a "good macro language" other than the fact that it's free.
;-)
IMO, LISP is the world's best macro language. I guess this is probably why the GIMP uses it....
Why does it need to be based on VB? Even if it does, why not use GnomeBasic and Gnumeric?
Wake me up when OpenMacroLISP.org reaches version 0.1
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Doesn't work like that.
This sort of claim assumes that the software co has a target total revenue and divides this amoungst the number of units it expects to sell.
In reality, they aim to make as much money as possible, and charge the amount that gives them the maximum revenue.
Right, but you have to cover your costs. If your software is widely distributed via unauthorized channels, then you have to charge more in order to recoup your investment in R&D. That is it. So yes, prices will rise but you are correct in that an increased market in the absense of competition will not create lower prices.
Downwards pressure comes only from competition. My problem with unlicensed versions of Office has to do with my analysis and conclusion that it hurts competition. This does result in a reduced set of downward.pressures and hence higher prices.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I haven't used Open Office enough to have an opinion, but Elliotte Rusty Harold used it to write a book, and came away with the opinion that the program is full of "GUI Bloopers". More here.
I third that. Writing my thesis or any of the articles I've had published in scientific journals would have driven me absolutely batshit had I tried it in Word. LyX is my favorite WP for scientific and engineering work, hands down.
As an undergrad, I used Word with MathCAD for equations, Excel for some graphing, etc. It was kludgy, but I could make it all work. But LyX, almost from the beginning, allowed me to ignore the formatting and work on the content and everything went smoothly. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
"OOo is not only as good as MS Office, it is *better.*"
My company switched from solaris (with a pc card running windows) to linux and made all users use open office about a year or so ago. The verwhelming reaction was it sucked compared to MS Office. These aren't people with any particular allegance to MS or OSS. They just don't like it. The couple of windows boxes provided for the linux crowd are always in use and it's a pain to get one to use. Go ahead and mod me down for criticizing this product, but that is what people in the real world think.
Vote for Pedro
The biggest problem with Office is the price. What sort of person is going to cough up $300 for an office suite that will be rarely used.
I looked at Office 2003 for my Grandad, and if it been less that $100, I'd have said use it. I took a leap and put my Grandad on OpenOffice and we've never looked back.
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
Any spreadsheet program that doesn't have basic and simple regression analysis is a JOKE. Puh-lease - OOCalc is a JOKE compared to Excel.
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Just take a look at these...
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=1
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=
The "intent" has been there since it was StarOffice but these yahoos that are currently coding have NO IDEA what the Prosumer needs/wants. So long as these guys think this is an "enhancement" and not a sorely missing feature OO won't have any credibility.
Feel free to mod me down for telling it like it is. A VERY UNHAPPY OO user (except for data analysis which is why I use MS Office).
I clicked on the download for Mac OS X on the beta page and got sent to the mac page and the lame 1.1 version. I think they need to be truly cross platform. There are a lot of desktop Linux users who also use Mac OS X. OO needs to support both to properly support those users.
All I want to know is whether the new version can be automated more easily than the old version. Suppose I have to convert 50,000 documents from random word processor formats to a more standard format. Am I doomed to do this manually, or is there a way I can easily interface with the process?
The older versions, you had to keep a whole copy of OOo running which you sent remote commands to, and if you kept it running long enough, it would memory leak until you had none left.
I've been hoping that they will eventually make the conversion stuff a single DLL that you can load and call in-process.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
It uses an open documented file format, for starters. StarOffice has PDF export on the main button bar, I suppose OO.org does too? PDF is also an open documented file format.
Microsoft really doesn't do open or documented. They try to spin it as if they do, but they really don't. Why should they? Lock-in is all they have as a reliable marketing device.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
Did your company provide adequate training? As another poster noticed, it is usually not any difference in quality that matters, it is what people are used to.
I did that mistake at my previous job where I was a sysadmin. One of the girls asked me if I could get a licence for Photoshop for her. It turned out she was just going to do some light website graphics. Budget is tight of course, and I knew she was pretty smart and computer savvy, so I downloaded Gimp for her. Started it, showed her to do to the most basic things and said, "right click on a picture and you will get a pop-up menu with all the possible commands". A week later or so the head sysadmin came by and said "We got the Photoshop licence, could you install it at her desk?".
When I asked her why she didn't use Gimp, she basically said "I hated it." I must have looked a bit crestfallen, so she quickly said: "I'm sure it's great once you know it, but I couldn't figure it out, and I don't have the time. It's better if I go with what I'm used to."
Basically humans are very conservative. Once they are used to something, that is what they like. No wonder Microsoft gives huge discounts to schools. Hook 'em while they are young. I've read success stories about companies going Open Source here on Slashdot, but most include a week or so of training.
The only exception I found was with Firefox. Two people at the job had problems with IE. It crashed or they got spyware, etc. I installed Firefox for them and said that they should try it, and if they didn't like it I could take a longer look at IE. They both came later and said "I love it!! No more pop-up ads, it's fast, looks nice..."
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
dont get me wrong, i love ooo, and i would be sold if it wasnt for the crappy spellcheck. maybe i have been raised wrong, and schooled wrong. but i suck at spelling, and so does ooo. here is the test that i ran. i spelled the word "Meticulously" phonetically, or fonetically if you will. and in ooo 2beta, i get about 10 sugesstions that all start with the letter "r". same thing in ooo 1.1. so i guess that ooo has made no progression in this area. in wordperfect 12, one sugesstion, and it was right. in word i bet it would be the same (i cannot aford to try it). I also tried google, and it sugessted the correct spelling. would be that hard to develop a front end for googles sugesstion service for ooo? so it wouldnt suck? this is the major compalint that i have with ooo, and it is major in my opinion.
Kevin
The biggest problem with Office is the price. What sort of person is going to cough up $300 for an office suite that will be rarely used.
Microsoft's target market for Office isn't your Granddad, it's (wait for it...) offices, who don't use it rarely but use it every second of every minute of every hour of every day.
Microsoft charges so much for it because that's what companies are willing to pay for it, and I'm sure most offices consider it a bargain at that price considering how much they do with it on a daily basis.
If they priced it for common people who don't really need it to begin with (e.g. your Granddad), they'd be shooting themselves in the foot. It would be complete lunacy for them to do so I don't blame Microsoft one bit for pricing it out of the price range of the masses.
For the common man, Microsoft developed and sells Microsoft Works (which is Word/Excel compatible) for a measely $50.
The