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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."
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?
MS Office isn't 100% compatible with MS Office...
HTH
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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.
OpenOffice is not Java 'based'. It does have Java sprinkled all around (like the help system requires Java I believe, and it uses several other languages as well (I think OpenOffice uses at least 11 different languages, counting all compile time as well as run time...).
OpenOffice isn't what you'd call a pleasant experience to hack on (some might blame the closed source roots where it would mostly be the same group of developers for a long period of time that are paid to work on it).
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.
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.
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)
> OpenOffice isn't what you'd call a pleasant experience to hack on
> (some might blame the closed source roots where it would mostly be
> the same group of developers for a long period of time that are paid
> to work on it).
I would blame the fact that it is a very diverse and unique code base. It is mostly C++ but it is not based on any common libraries. Even for their GUI they decided to completely go it alone, which means that they make no contributions back to any libraries, and learning to hack it is very hard. At one point they considered switching to standard libraries but then didn't get around to following through. And then they started adding Java everywhere they could.
I'm running the Ubuntu Feisty Beta with OO2.2 and I exchange fairly complex Word docs with others, including legal pleadings and other hairy stuff, and I'm having no problems whatsoever.
Come on Zonk, why is this categorized under "Linux" with a Tux icon? OOo is cross platform--runs on Linux, Windows, and OS X (even if it does take X11 to run under Mac.) I'd even be willing to bet that there are more Windows users of OOo than there are Linux users of OOo.
Penny - plain text accounting
This has been a bug (submitted by myself and many, many others) since before 1.0 came out.
That's wrong. StarOffice was developed by a company called StarDivision in Germany in 1986. Sun didn't enter the picture until 1999.
See here
Je ne parle pas francais.
In most European countries the comma is used as the decimal separator. Three thousand dollar and twenty-five cents would be $3.000,25 (not $3,000.25 you might be used to). In a locale that does this Excel uses the semi-colon too.
!ERR: Signature not found.
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.