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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."
maybe not yet but this can easily be fixed by using an open standard. hopefully Microsoft's plan to get a closed source one won't happen. but then isn't a clsoed standard an oxymoron?
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I have a 1 GHz Athlon system with 1 GB of RAM, running Ubuntu Linux. I just tried out this release, and it's damn slow. It's not due to a lack of memory, either. The top command shows I consistently have 300 MB free, and the machine isn't swapping.
This is pretty bad. It takes three to four seconds for the menus to appear, even after opening them several times. There's a noticeable delay when typing. It actually reminds me of college, when we had to use the teletypes connected to the DEC PDP-whatever, and there were 45 other users connected.
Anyway, does anyone know what might be causing these problems? KOffice runs just fine, as done AbiWord. I know my system isn't the fastest, but 1 GHz should be more than sufficient for an office suite. I haven't used previous versions of OpenOffice, so I don't know how they compare to this release. Regardless, I am not impressed. Could these speed problems be due to OpenOffice's supposed use of Java for certain tasks?
The kerning issue should help OpenOffice immensely. Most of the folks that call me asking for a "real" word processor after they bought their bottom-dollar Dell have complained that many of the fonts "look funny". Personally, that was my only complaint about OO. Many times, during an edit, I would try to delete that small space between characters thinking I had fat-fingered the space bar while typing.
.doc documents that are readable by those still stuck with no other option than MS products. It will also allow you to read the flood of .doc-only documentation out there.
To the first poster: No, I assure you it is NOT 100% compatible with all the bells, whistles, proprietary hidden tags, and closed formats of Office 2007. Nothing short of MS switching to ODF will allow that to happen. It WILL however, produce
Hmmm, methinks we need more ODFmentation in online manuals. The switching by several European goverments is a good start....
khasim (12/9/06): In a blind taste test, more people preferred Coke over the Pepsi that I had previously pissed in.
So, I have just two questions:
Firstly, does anyone have a useful, user-focused summary of the new features, instead of the cryptic mess on the development site?
And secondly, have they fixed PDF export bug in Writer that we were discussing here the other day? The bug database suggests not. :-(
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Because she does all the real work at our workplace, we set up the secretary's home computer for her. She wanted an office suite, and we put Open Office on it.
Just yesterday she was telling me that she doesn't like it and wants Microsoft Office (for Word and Excel). Open Office is slow and ugly, according to her, and the default font size in Writer is way too small.
Ya but is it 100% compatible with MS Office. Cause if its not I can see why a lot of companies would think twice about making the switch.
While I agree with you about companies not switching, remember that there are other vectors for OO success. Where I am, in the world of VC funded startups and contractors, OO has become a defacto standard; nobody here pisses away money on word processors or spreadsheets. It all leads to PDF anyhow. Microsoft's stuff is too expensive, isolated to one platform and a security problem. OO is cheap, fast, portable and more than sufficient.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
True story - I had a Word document that had somehow gotten corrupted. It was a large file but not huge - ~60 pages, a bunch of figures, ~3 MB in total and it took Word several minutes to open. I opened it in OpenOffice, resaved it as a Word doc, and whatever was broken got fixed - Word could now open it in seconds.
As a slight rebuff to your comment that rendering was completely different. We run OOo in Windows in the office to create documents and insert placeholder text, then run them through an automatic python script that decompresses and alters the document (mail merge, basically, but slightly more complex), then automatically generates PDFs hundreds or thousands of times per day. The only difference between Windows and Linux (RHEL4) that I have really seen are sentences breaking at different words and fonts in general appearing slightly larger, but not horribly obvious unless you're an anal retentive perfectionist.
I've been extremely happy with the 2.1 version of OOo, and I can't wait to try out 2.2.
I do wish their revision log were better written, though...
It's gonna take a lot more than just saving some money to make people consider switching.
OO's word processer and spreadsheet are pretty much on par with Microsoft. If those are the only components of office you regularly use, you probably shouldn't be shelling out for MS Office, period.
I can't speak to OO's powerpoint equivalent - I hear its decent on its own, but not as compatible with MS as it should be. So if you need to create and present powerpoint its fine, but if you need to share power point with others its not as good. (Although OO is free so there is nothing stopping the people who you need to share with from getting their own copy - this may or may not be practical depending on who you have to share with. Conversely if you only need to view other peoples powerpoint stuff then you can use MS's free powerpoint viewer.
The real OO killer in business is Outlook. Businesses essentially buy outlook and get the rest of office for free. And outlook is tough to unseat, there aren't a lot of great alternatives, especially once you start looking for groupware features, calendering, and PDA sync support.
But for home users, where most of them are on webmail/gmail/msnlive/whatever, outlook express, or are just using outlook as POP3 client, OO is a great alternative.
That said, even in business Office isn't unkillable -- Exchange web access is rapidly reaching the point of unseating outlook, PDA sync is becoming wireless direct with the server, and if outlook takes a fall then evaulating Office v OO becomes a much more level playing field.
Meanwhile, in the home market, Microsofts increasingly aggressive anti-piracy moves are finally starting to shift people away. It used to be that everyone had a pirated version of Office at home, but as these become more of nuisance to use, users are starting to open up to alternatives instead of shelling out for office or fighting with Genuine (dis)Advantage.
But I think the biggest thing OO needs is some advertising to build some brand awareness and credibility. Couple that with a pre-installation deal with the likes of Dell or HP and they could make some serious inroads.
Startup in California I'm contracting for...
$2 millions in funding (first round). I visited their office. 30 employees, 29 Windows machine, 1 MacOS X machine, 30 OOo installations, 30 Firefox. Why spend money on an Office suite that brings nothing but lock-in?
With the level of inefficient inertia plaguing big companies, I expect these to be amongst the last to switch. Though, well, some are leading the way (e.g., Peugeot-Citroen switching 20 000 desktops to Linux)
I think OpenOffice can do the plugin thing better than MS can. Just look how multi platform plugins work for Firefox. The OO team can make cross platform plugins that work pretty seamlessly if they tried. MS will be locked into doing it on Windows only. I could be wrong of course but I don't see how MS can do plugins better than the OO people, especially consider OO uses open API's and formats. I would find OO the much more appealing option if I were a developer.
MS Office is great for writing memos or doing spreadsheets that would be better done in perl or C, or creating gratuitous presentations, but for the kind of work that I do, MS Office as not been in the lead for many years now. All eye candy aside.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
This has been a bug (submitted by myself and many, many others) since before 1.0 came out.
Everyone said that at my office when i replaced some office installations with open office...
i just told them it was the new version and they were satisfied.
like most people, they dont mind different and new, as long as they feel like its not too different and new.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
I do not understand why this is. Freetype has supported OpenType for ages. The Windows version of OpenOffice supports OpenType fonts. Why is this so hard to implement universally in every port of the product?
I realize that the Windows port uses the Windows font API, and thus provides the ability that way. NeoOffice does the same on OS X. Yes, it's not so easy to use OS X Core services from X11, but why not switch to a decent type library like FreeType that already has the support? Not robust enough for typography? I just don't get it. You would think this would be a priority.
Mir tut es leid, Menschen daß Einfältigfehlersuchenbaumfolgendenaffen sind.
Is OpenOffice planning to include OOXML translator anytime soon. It is required, as more and more people are now using Office 2007 (and they are sharing their documents with us Linux users).
are you using the UNO bindings? we do something similar with about 1000+ documents on each run. and found that after about 100 or so documents, OOo stops responding. so we had to put a nasty hack of killing OOo after evey 50 or so documents and restarting it. this was OOo 2.1. i'd love to hear what your experiences are...
It was said earlier in the thread, but I think it bears repeating.
"You can't fight the future".
As OO.org or other, more nimble alternatives (like KOfice 2, which is coming to Windows) get better and better, it will approach (and perhaps even overtake) Microsoft's functionality.
Look at what happened with IE6; Firefox and Opera aren't just arguably better than IE6, they are a lot better. Obviously Microsoft put some money into making IE7 better, but Firefox and Opera are still better at rendering CSS web pages.
I'm sure as OpenOffice and KOffice get better, we'll see investment (in the form of code, or programmers, or money) from companies that are friendly to open source (IBM maybe?), which will increase features and code quality.
Would someone be willing to use a product that is better than a product that costs $351 (for the "Standard" version), and is free?
I'm sure they would.
Microsoft is already at it's peak, it has nowhere to go but down.
Give OpenOffice (or the lighter (but less feature filled, but prettier and more elegant feeling KOffice) out. Think of it as Firefox, back when it was called "Phoenix".