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OpenOffice.org 2.0 Released
Da Massive writes "The official release of OpenOffice.org 2.0 has been pushed to the download servers, as of Thursday the 20th." From the article: "OpenDocument is an XML file format for saving office documents such as spreadsheets, memos, charts, and presentations. It was approved as an OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) standard at the beginning of this year. OpenDocument, set as a default in OpenOffice, is cited by proponents as a way of fighting vendor lock-in associated with proprietary formats. Already, it is the required office format for internal archives of the US State of Massachusetts." You can download, or read past coverage including a preview or a comparison with MS Office. Update: 10/20 17:22 GMT by Z : Made date reference more topical.
Surely cross-platform nature of OO.o is the whole point?
It'd be nice if they released a build for OSX. The only 2.0 build they've had for as long as I've been checking is a development build in french.
No support for the Mac OS X is a show stopper for me. :(
I just recently restored my laptop, and rather than go fishing for my MS Office 2001 disk with the faded product key, I opted to give OpenOffice.org a shot. For me, a casual .doc reader who just needs something light and quick to open and read with, OO.org is a great solution. It does just about everything a cheap guy like me could want. Plus I didn't have to dig in that dreaded closet of PC past and type in a cd key I can barely make out anymore. I had no idea a new version was coming out so soon, so this is great news to me! I even began spreading whispers about it at work, it may not be the juicy Lost roundtable, but a free alternative to something Microsoft for our Macs always perks some ears.
-Buddy of DoQ
No, it does't run under OSX. It runs, poorly (meaning, without access to system fonts because it's an xwindows app, not an OSX app) on PPC Macs but not as released (you have to dig up the right copy) and it's not integrated with the OS in terms of style which annoys a lot of OSX users (which is one of the claims for OO 2.) It doesn't annoy me, I can deal with whatever interface, but the fact that it can't access the system's fonts is a stone killer problem.
I'm a little worried about the decision to use Java for the DB, too, but I may be buying trouble that doesn't exist. I'm just going by the various interplatform/interapplication incompatibilities that I see on web pages because the wrong Java is installed (eg, flickr works on firefox but not on omniweb, etc.)
Too bad they didn't write it in python. Make java look like the c-descended nightmare it is. ;-)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.