OpenOffice 2.2 Released

xsspd2004 wrote with a link to a Desktop Linux post about the newest version of OpenOffice.org. Bug fixes and the usual changes can be found in the project's release notes. The developers are using the turn of phrase 'a real alternative to Office 2007', hoping to win over some folks not too thrilled with the commercial software's new look. "Overall, version 2.2 should appear better to users thanks to its support for kerning, a technique that improves the appearance of text written in proportional fonts; kerning is now enabled by default. OpenOffice's PDF (Portable Document Format) export function has also been enhanced with the addition of the optional creation of bookmarks feature, and with support for user-definable export of form fields. A quick look at the release notes also reveals that many minor bugs have been repaired in this new version. Most of these appear to relate to the Calc spreadsheet and Base database programs."

Comments

Re:but

[Colin Smith]

MS Office isn't 100% compatible with MS Office...

HTH

Re:How do other heavy Java apps perform?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not well. I'm using JDK 1.5.0_09, for the record. I'm also using the OpenGL pipeline for Java 2D, since I heard that can lead to speed improvements.

I did try to use NetBeans recently, and I found that it was terribly slow, too. Worse than this release of OpenOffice, even. So maybe you're right.

I don't know much about the architecture of OpenOffice, but why do they need to depend on Java? Couldn't they rewrite those portions in C++, or some other more performant language?

Re:Equations still aren't fixed

[niiler]

My big thing as a scientist is that it would be nice to have equations display ON THE GRAPH. It's really hard to suggest this as an alternative to students in lab classes when it doesn't have even this basic feature.

On the other hand, this is/has been my only real complaint for years. I use it exclusively, but then, I'm a geek.

Re:More than money

[LaughingCoder]

OO's word processer and spreadsheet are pretty much on par with Microsoft.

Well, I can't really comment on the word processor, but I can say definitively that the spreadsheet is a far cry from Excel - especially the graphing feature, which is very poor. As I understand it, the whole graph subsystem of Calc is scheduled for a ground-up rewrite, which substantiates my claim. So, if you require graphing capabilities in your spreadsheet, it is best to avoid Calc and use Excel.

Re:It's nearly unusuable.

[nexex]

It's MicroSoft...you will be paying again.

Re:It's nearly unusuable.

[OECD]

I am guessing MS word is faster on its native Windows. But the point is, even in the 21st century here, typesetting programs are still slow.

Arggh! Word is a Word Processing application. It is NOT a typesetting program!

Word is centered around getting you the info in the doc, it doesn't care much about how it was displayed on the originator's computer. Fair enough, that works when you're just worried about the info. If you're at the point where you care about design, Word fails it. By design. (You should have the info in some other program at that point.)

Sorry, but that sort of confusion makes my life hell (but also keeps me employed.)

Re:How do other heavy Java apps perform?

[jbolden]

Java apps by in large are 3-5x slower than the same apps written in C++. That's because:

1 -- C++ gives you access to low level routines and these are used to improve efficiency
2 -- C++ is inherently faster because of its more C like defaults
3 -- Java tends to create longer chains of function calls because of the way the libraries are architected
4 -- Java is running on a JVM not on the hardware and thus adds another layer of calls

Its perfectly correct to blame Java for being slower than C++. The fact that there exist fast Java apps doesn't mean that Java apps on average aren't substantially slower.

Re:Nice :)

[Blakey Rat]

Sorry, regardless of what your workflow is (or "should be", although I'm not an elitist jerk to tell other people how they should be doing things), bugs like that should be fixed. Also, as a good philosophy, applications should be adapted to users, not the other way around... look at how Excel killed off other spreadsheets for a perfect demo of how this should work.