OpenOffice 2.3 Released

ClickOnThis writes "Surely I'm not the only one who noticed that OpenOffice.org has announced the release of version 2.3! From the website: 'Available for download now, OpenOffice.org 2.3 incorporates an extensive array of new features and enhancements to all its core components, and protects users from newly discovered security vulnerabilities. It is a major release and all users should download it. Plus: It is only with 2.3 that users can make full use of our growing extensions library.' You can download it but be kind and use a P2P client instead, such as bittorrent."

Comments

I wonder

[Virtual_Raider]

When will they focus on usability and speed rather than adding features. It may or may not be feature-complete (whatever that is) but it certainly is not yet quite as easy and streamlined to use even as some early nineties suites... Just my $0.02, don't bite my head off =)

Re:I wonder

[BadAnalogyGuy]

You must be the other guy who used AmiPro back in the 90s. Man, now that was a good word processor!

Re:I wonder

[vidarh]

For me, the only two missing features is quicker startup and better performance during use... I couldn't care less about anything else they might add.

Re:I wonder

[barry_the_bogan]

Too true, I'm doing all my office type work on windows and MSOffice again because I couldn't stand how slow OpenOffice runs. I'll still download this to try it, but I'm unlikely to use it regularly until they make it somewhat more efficient.

Re:I wonder

[namityadav]

It is always good if someone bothers to post about an application that (s)he is not impressed with (Like you did). But it will help more if users like you give specific examples of what's missing or what's slightly difficult to use etc. In my case, I got so frustrated by the slow loading of documents in MS Office, the ever-so-frustrating virus-scanning of every document, and the lack of flexibility and anti-virus/anti-spyware mess of Windows (I know that the topic is not OSes), that I decided to move to Linux completely (After 5-6 years of dual-booting - Linux for work and Windows for gaming and office documents etc). Surprisingly I haven't had a single format problem in any MS document that I have imported, and I am very happy with my odt documents that I just save as Word doc before sending and nobody has complained. Although I know that I am no power user. So maybe you are saying that OpenOffice is not ready for the power user. But in that case, I would like to know where and why.

Re:I wonder

[cyborch]

Speed has a lot to say about user experience. It feels slow, which makes it fell like a huge bloated application. Somehow that needs to change, at least before I personally would feel better using it.

Then egain, I may really just be in the market for a .pages -> .odt converter, rather than a full OOo suite...

Re:I wonder

[RealGrouchy]

When will they focus on usability and speed rather than adding features. Probably the same time that people stop bitching about stuff that MS Office does that it doesn't.

- RG>

Re:I wonder

[clarkkent09]

When will they focus on usability and speed rather than adding features.

"they" being every software developer who ever existed

Re:I wonder

[teh moges]

Couldn't agree more. I usually start writing in KWrite then convert to OOo to do formatting. When I am at work, I just open MS Word.

Re:I wonder

[bstadil]

No Samna was the bees knees.

Re:I wonder

[Virtual_Raider]

Well I didn't want to come across as a whinger and I did want to get the first post so I had to make it quick ;) but I was referring to a general sluggishness. It does work. It does work well and I use it as my main suite at home, and I have never had any problems with MS formats (other than some obscure PPSs with macros but I understand why this is like that [and how to fix it] so I don't complain about that). Nevertheless it does take its sweet time to load the application and to open large, heavily-formatted files. Also the fact that it freezes while saving is annoying. So my point was: it is good, but rather than adding extra functionality I would like it better that they made the excellent stuff they have now to work faster. Like somebody else rightly said, making it feel smoother adds a lot to the "it's a serious and professional app" experience.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

If you haven't tried a recent version, please do so. Once upon a time I felt the same way as you, noting issues such as usability and speed. Recent versions however have greatly improved.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, but let's come up with some specific examples for the OOo developers,

1. Use Tango Icons (another example).
2. Ditch the floating toolbars, dock everything by default.
3.1 Simplify the toolbar: only show toolbar icons by default that are used every hour (eg, open, save, bold/italics, etc.). Eg, I haven't tried 2.3 but in Ubuntu 2.2 there's a button to toggle AutoSpellCheck. It's not used that frequently -- move it to a dropdownlist. And then we might even see the OpenOffice.org help button.
3.2 Group toolbar items into tabs (call them the Office Ribbons if you want... the Office Ribbon is just a ripoff of Dreamweaver UI Tabs anyway and I'm sure they borrowed the idea from someone else. Stealing good ideas is a good thing).
4. Don't flicker in the spreadsheet when scrolling through lots of selected cells (eg, select a whole page and scroll)
5. Choose good default graph colours and design. Get gnome's jimmac to pick some... he may be colour blind but that guy knows colours.
6. Grey-out icons with alpha, not with a every-second-pixel-grey mesh.
7. Make better HTML output targetted at profiles of browsers... the current one doesn't understand shadows or borders, and with CSS3 you can support that stuff. For older browsers that don't support CSS3 drop shadows then fake it with nested DIVs or something.
8. Have a strict ISO OpenDocument profile to save documents as... not just ODF 1.0 but check for proprietary stuff all through the document.
9. Don't use Java for ODF... well allow it as an option but come up with some JavaScript syntax (Java is too heavy to type, prefer Javascript/Python/Ruby or something). Use a P4X syntax for accessing a document object.
10. Allow arbitrary border images. Allow acronyms and abbreviations for disabled users.

Some of these are probably addressed in 2.3... sorry for the dups :)

Re:I wonder

[haeger]

I am by no means a "power user". I've used OO.o for a few years when doing mostly linux-work. Now I'm transitioning into project management more and more and in this world, almost everything is Microsoft. Documents are put into sharepoint, all documents exchanged are MS-Office and MS-Project is the standard tool.
Sharepoint connects nicely into MS-Office and so does MS-Project. Everything is "interleaved" or whatever I should call it. This doesn't mean that I can't use OO.o or KPlato or something else, but it does mean that its harder for me to do so.
Yes, the filters on OO.o are great, but are they good enough for me or do I have to do some extra work to convert those documents? Most likely there's something that won't work and I'd hate to be the one to explain that I broke document just because I wanted to use OO.o instead of the MS-O that the company provides.

Microsoft is damn good at making sure that it's harder to use competing products than it is to use theirs. Let's hope that the EU will make them open up all specs so that all companies can compete on equal terms.

.haeger

Re:I wonder

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Unless I'm mistaken, Samna was the company. Likewise, AmiPro was not rewritten by Lotus until they rebadged it WordPro.

So Ami Pro == Samna?

Re:I wonder

[the_womble]

Have you tried turning off Java and increasing memory usage?

Doing that makes OO on Linux run about as well as MS office on Windows on a P4 with 1Gb (I know, I know, but its the only comparison I have).

It is still slower than Gnumeric or Lyx, which start up instantly and are never sluggish, but that is not an altogether fair comparison either.

Of course Oo are still at fault for using defaults that MOST people would be better off changing.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to clarify 9. I meant only for macros, not internally (use whatever you want) and of course I mean E4X not P4X.

Re:I wonder

[Nossie]

when I bought a PC in 1994...

it came with Lotus 123r5
and Lotus AmiPro.

it was definitely badged Lotus.... but who actually did the work, heh I dunno.

Re:I wonder

[Budenny]

Yes, I have tried turning off Java and increasing memory. Makes no difference. The problem is this 'adapt row height' thing that it does on opening a workbook. I have some array formulas, and it simply takes forever to get through it. Its not acceptable. The row heights are all defaults in any case, so it must have some other than its literal meaning. There seems to be no information on it, no way to turn it off or find out what it is really doing.

This needs fixing asap, or its not competitive.

Re:I wonder

[MemoryDragon]

I wonder when you focus on upgrading your early nineties computer?

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

When will they focus on usability and speed rather than adding features.
The new chart module is primarily for better usability. It doesn't make me immediately open xmgrace to make nicer charts as it did before and as Excel still does.

Re:I wonder

[mattr]

Yup. I've contributed lots of test cases, bug reports and enhancement requests to OOo.

But still, they just need to get power users to use the thing and lots of low hanging fruit will magically appear.
Problem is much of it requires confidential docs I don't want to post..

For example in very long text documents I would sometimes see it try to split it into pages to display it even though not displaying in print view.

Also I just tried the db forms thing for a client to be able to access a mysql db. It is totally unintuitive! Once you edit a form it is hard to get it back into the admin console, whatever that area needs some work. But it does seem to work though, even minimally it was useful. Any guides anywhere about using it?

Also, if you edit a live db in it, do rows that are displayed get locked while being displayed or might they be old data not reflecting current state of the db?

Also OOo formatting does not follow MS formatting in particular PPT. But it seems to work this is mainly interoperability I guess. I do use OOo myself now a lot, especially autocorrect helps my hands, so perhaps I should go back to usability testing it again.

Also I find the portableapps.com version of OOo very useful but a bit worried about updating, OOo should link to them.

Re:I wonder

[mattr]

p.s. I was quite bummed I couldn't get mysql editing through OOo working in the PortableApps.com version. Worked okay with windows though. OOo should help them get it going and recommending it, it's a very good way to show people OOo and I like being able to carry my own configuration with me.

Re:I wonder

[spyowl]

But nothing really beat Framework III and IV.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I have tried turning off Java and increasing memory. Makes no difference. The problem is this 'adapt row height' thing that it does on opening a workbook. I have some array formulas, and it simply takes forever to get through it. Its not acceptable. The row heights are all defaults in any case, so it must have some other than its literal meaning. There seems to be no information on it, no way to turn it off or find out what it is really doing.

This needs fixing asap, or its not competitive.

I probably shouldn't say anything since I don't have a clue what I am talking about but have never let that stop me so: Have you sent the OO devs a copy of your spreadsheet sans any proprietary or otherwise private info with a detailed comment of your issues with it? The particular formulas that you are using, while probably correct for you could still be bringing software bugs to the forefront and your spreadsheet might help them find and fix them.

Re:I wonder

[khanyisa]

Presume you've filed a bug with a sample spreadsheet? Do it ASAP and you'll find that someone will probably take it up and fix it, even if it takes a while. The beauty is that it helps everyone else too...

Re:I wonder

[LetterRip]

"3.2 Group toolbar items into tabs (call them the Office Ribbons if you want... the Office Ribbon is just a ripoff of Dreamweaver UI Tabs [webindexing.biz] anyway and I'm sure they borrowed the idea from someone else. Stealing good ideas is a good thing)."

Actually the Office Ribbon are probably more properly considered 'ripoffs' of the Blender Button panel - the tabs for Blender are icons instead of text but other than that the resemblance is quite strong.

LetterRip

Re:I wonder

[Ajehals]

Is this purely a windows issue? I don't seem to have start-up issues on Linux, especially on older and underpowered hardware (running Debian in both cases), but then I only have Koffice Gnome-office to compare it to side by side, all three are open and ready to go within 3-8 seconds of launching the application (normally 3-5 seconds, closer to 8 at desktop start-up for obvious reasons.), The only start up annoyance I have is the recovery options.

Re:I wonder

[aerthling]

Does anyone know what using Java in OpenOffice actually does? What difference does it make if you disable it?

Re:I wonder

[rduke15]

Yes, Lotus bought Samna's Ami Pro, and instead of continuing to update it, they made it into WordPro, incorporated it into Lotus Smartsuite got bought by IBM, and Ami Pro, the best word processor ever, disappeared...

I actually still used Ami Pro until a few years ago, despite it's problems (8.3 file names, outdated (by 10 years!) import/export of .doc, and a few bugs).

I use TextMaker now because it sucks much less than the others overall, but I still regret Ami Pro...

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

OK, I'll play too. Some of these are really usability flaws and some might be classed as bugs but feel like usability flaws to the user:

1. Fix mail merge in Writer. The whole data sources mess is broken, and the mail merge feature itself is unable to do simple things like merging to a single document that can subsequently be edited.
2. Fix handling of fonts and typography (starting with being able to draw OpenType fonts properly and export them to PDFs at all).
3. Fix the style selection mechanism. I don't generally use around 100 styles in one document, and I don't need 15,746 different views of the styles. I just want a list of the dozen or so styles I actually care about.
4. Provide commands to revert the formatting of selected objects/text to the default for the current character/paragraph/whatever style individually. The vague "Default" command on the menu is unhelpful.

Obligatory disclaimer/excuse: I haven't yet had chance to install 2.3, so although I've seen no reports that the above have been addressed in this version, some of this may now be out of date.

Re:I wonder

[carl0ski]

mostly affects the database engines in Base (Access Clone) and some wizards in the other programs

Re:I wonder

[00_NOP]

It was. Ami Pro was fantastic. Much better than Word 6

Re:I wonder

[speaker of the truth]

No, that's about right. However Office is faster opening (either itself in Access or other files in Excel).

Re:I wonder

[FST777]

Plus, with vanilla builds on Linux, Java (when JMF is installed) enables embedded video. For most big distros, this is replaced / complemented with a gstreamer frontend.

Re:I wonder

[richlv]

lately there have been speed improvements regarding some spreadsheets.

if the document is not confidential, you could provide and i could test whether it is still problematic with latest dev snapshots (or maybe you can try that yourself)

Re:I wonder

[paskie]

You have forgotten to mention the bugzilla numbers of the bugs.

Re:I wonder

[mspohr]

WordStar forever!!!

Absolutely the most streamlined WP ever... great for touch typists... didn't use any of those dammed F* keys and didn't need a mouse for navigation.

WordStar should be good enough for anybody.

Re:I wonder

[hattig]

I'd argue the Ribbon is just a graphical version of Wordstar's Help Pages (i.e., what key combos to perform which function) which were at the top of the screen and you could flick through them, and each help page covered a certain area of related functionality.

Having now used Office 2007 I find the ribbon both nice (no duplicated functionality between menus and toolbars), good (toolbars suck, the ribbon sizes features according to importance/regularity of use), and annoying (relayed out on window resize, I hate that Office menu icon, the entire application doesn't fit the look and feel of the system - people moan about Mac OS X Tiger's inconsistencies, this is a whole different universe of wrong) and a whole new learning step.

On the other hand, NeoOffice on the Mac starts up pretty damn quick these days, and looks good since they started doing the interface in a more native manner. I'll give OpenOffice a shot to see what improvements they have made, but they really do need to work on the look and feel of their application, because it was dog-butt ugly and cluttered the last time I used it.

Re:I wonder

[richlv]

Fix the style selection mechanism. I don't generally use around 100 styles in one document, and I don't need 15,746 different views of the styles. I just want a list of the dozen or so styles I actually care about.

well, there's "applied" view and "hierarchical" view, which both improve usability.
though the bug where set view is forgotten after closing/opening stylist is annoying...

Provide commands to revert the formatting of selected objects/text to the default for the current character/paragraph/whatever style individually. The vague "Default" command on the menu is unhelpful.

well, that command should be named "default style" now ;)
in any case, it is a good idea to avoid direct formatting as much as possible.

Re:I wonder

[dhfoo]

Access clone?
What are you smoking?
OpenOffice has it's own built in database (HSQLDB) and can connect to most "proper" databases as well!
It can also connect to Access if you are feeling masochistic.

Re:I wonder

[EvanED]

3D Studio had a toolbar like the new MS Office as early as I think 2001, much closer than what Blender has.

Re:I wonder

[msormune]

Ah, AmiPro... it was really fast even with those 33mhz 386 machines. Which were pretty fast back then, anyway :)

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

It is used for BeanShell scripted plugins among other things. You can safely switch it off because openoffice will tell alert you when it needs it. In vanilla setup it's typically used by export filters.

Re:I wonder

[temcat]

You're too optimistic. For the issues that I filed (being pretty important stuff like absence of Normal/Draft mode and shitty notes implementation), "a while" has already taken five years - and still counting.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

> Sharepoint connects nicely into MS-Office and so does MS-Project. Everything is "interleaved" or whatever I should call it

locked-in would be another phrase

Re:I wonder

[jobsagoodun]

Pah! Framework. Terrible bloated new fangled junk. Get Electric Pencil! Know where I can buy 80k floppies for my TRS-80 Model I these days?

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

well, there's "applied" view and "hierarchical" view, which both improve usability.

Sure, but the one thing I'd guess most people want — a view that shows a list of styles they are likely to need (whether or not they are used yet) for the current document type — is still missing. If the default list of styles only had a small number of things in it, that might be OK, but since it has vast numbers of things I doubt many people ever use, all the "show everything" views are cumbersome. Meanwhile, the "show applied" alternative is no use when you're starting from a blank document template.

in any case, it is a good idea to avoid direct formatting as much as possible.

Indeed it is, but surely that just makes it all the more important to have easy-to-define and easy-to-apply styles, and to have an easy-to-use command to remove direct formatting and revert to whatever the styled behaviour is?

Re:I wonder

[doc_doofus]

I don't know where to buy any, but I still have some in my desk. I think I re-used all of the cassette tapes tho.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you completely. While I do like OOo and use it daily, the UI of OOo is simply terrible. This feels even more true after giving Lotus Symphony (based on OOo and released free yesterday) a try, which actually has a nice UI though it feels sluggish. It really should stop trying to look like a bad ripoff of MS Office 2003, which has a rather poor UI itself.

What OOo needs to do right now is focus making a good, intuitive, platform-native* UI, then making existing features blazing fast, then start working on adding new features again. If someone needs a new feature it should be handled by an extension.

* By this I mean on Linux it should look and feel like a Gnome app, including following the desktop icon theme, font settings, proxy settings, etc. Having certain apps (OOo, Firefox) sticking out and being inconsistent with the rest of the desktop is extremely irritating. On Windows it should look and feel like a Windows app. On OS X it should look and feel like an OS X app. Native controls for each OS are a requirement!

Re:I wonder

[Cl1mh4224rd]

So maybe you are saying that OpenOffice is not ready for the power user. But in that case, I would like to know where and why.

This is one reason for me: http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=66871

I guess since I was the first to report it, it might not be such a big deal, but that's kind of bad...

Re:I wonder

[KevinColyer]

Speed? Often people erroneously say that OOo is slow because it relies on JAVA, well I just downloaded the Lotus Symphony as reported yesterday which really does seem to be based on JAVA and that IS slow! (although nice context property bar to the right)

This beta opens ODF docs really well but hangs on Lotus WordPro files. (When will WordPro be Open Sourced? - I miss it and I have a ton aof legacy documents in .lwp)

Re:I wonder

[Petrushka]

FWIW ...

Fix handling of fonts and typography (starting with being able to draw OpenType fonts properly and export them to PDFs at all).

Agreed.

Fix the style selection mechanism. I don't generally use around 100 styles in one document, and I don't need 15,746 different views of the styles. I just want a list of the dozen or so styles I actually care about.

Also agreed. How hard would it be to have the stylist remember which view I was last using (normally "hierarchical"), instead of always presenting me with the default?

Provide commands to revert the formatting of selected objects/text to the default for the current character/paragraph/whatever style individually. The vague "Default" command on the menu is unhelpful.

Here maybe I can be helpful: for text, select text and ctrl-shift-space; for a paragraph, put cursor within paragraph without any text selected and ctrl-shift-space.

Obligatory disclaimer/excuse: I haven't yet had chance to install 2.3, so although I've seen no reports that the above have been addressed in this version, some of this may now be out of date.

Don't let that stop you. I'm quite sure that none of the actual important stuff that impacts on people on a day-to-day basis will have been changed -- like the fact that in Impress you have to press alt twice to access the menus, or the fact that right-clicking moves the selection (contrary to the behaviour of every other piece of software on the planet, with the sole exception of a certain proprietary office suite not worth naming here).

Re:I wonder

[richlv]

for a new document you might try "text styles" - for most documents this might even be enough, and the list nicely fits in a small stylist window.
there's also "automatic" mode, which seems to produce similarly short list, but i am unsure about criteria used for it :)

Re:I wonder

[smchris]

Easy and streamlined -- use AbiWord. Really.

A few years ago I had the argument with a guy about features. He was saying the wonderful thing about Word is that it DIDN'T have as many features as other word processors. (I can always be called upon to laud WordPerfect.) To me, that's insane. Don't use what you don't need and don't tell me I shouldn't have what I can use and we'll both be happy.

As an aside, the comparison between OOo and Word the other day was interesting because it looks like Word still hasn't grown beyond limitations that annoyed me 10 years ago. OOo is my hope for maybe someday regaining the versatility I had back then with WordPerfect.

Re:I wonder

[funkatron]

11. Don't give me a license agreement/please register screen every time I update.

Re:I wonder

[ILikeRed]

The Mail Merge issue is preventing migration from MS Office in several offices that I am aware of. And in a couple they still keep a few old computers running Office 97 for specific Mail Merge jobs for (very expensive) Rena envelope printers because newer versions of Office don't do the job well - so they are actively looking for a replacement. It's a great opportunity for Open Office I hope they take advantage of someday.

Re:I wonder

[ozbon]

Nope, there were a fair number of people using it.

I'm another with many fond memories of AmiPro- I suspect it'd still kick M$ Word's backside now.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Provide commands to revert the formatting of selected objects/text to the default for the current character/paragraph/whatever style individually. The vague "Default" command on the menu is unhelpful.

Here maybe I can be helpful: for text, select text and ctrl-shift-space; for a paragraph, put cursor within paragraph without any text selected and ctrl-shift-space.

You're a star. It was worth joining this discussion for that tip alone. Thank you. (I missed a usability point before: the on-line help for this sort of thing is mostly hopeless.)

I don't suppose you also know a way to remove the formatting of text on-the fly? For example, if I insert some text immediately after a formatted section, Writer will continue the formatting by default. However, it seems I can't just hit Ctrl-Shift-Space before typing to turn the formatting off, because that would cancel formatting for the entire paragraph, and not just at the insertion point for the text I am about to type. (Another usability point I missed before: keyboard shortcuts to switch styles on or off are far too difficult to set up, which probably explains why everyone I know just hits Ctrl-B to enable bold, rather than defining some sort of "strong emphasis" style.)

Re:I wonder

[nine-times]

1) I'd rather see them make it easily skinnable. I don't know what's involved, but I know that in Gnome, some applications will use different icons depending on what icon set you're using for Gnome. I know the NeoOffice guys have had some problems with replacing the icons-- they've finally done it, but apparently it was troublesome somehow.

3.2??) I know that Ribbon has gained a lot of fans, but it annoys a lot of people too. I wouldn't say it shouldn't be done, but they should be careful about its implementation.

Re:I wonder

[kklein]

Just my $0.02, don't bite my head off =)

CHOMP!

Seriously, though, I used to think and say things like that, but now, thanks to the folks around here, I understand that it's not OpenOffice's clunkiness that made me feel that way, but my own stupidity and incompetence! You should really re-think your expectations of software, like I have. FOSS is always better, even when it doesn't work quite right. Or at all!

Re:I wonder

[jopsen]

I'm running Ubuntu Feisty with OpenOffice 2.2, and it's fairly quick... No where near as slow as 2.1 and 2.0, Actually I've been using 1.9.x too, and there's most certainly been great improvements...It takes what 2-3 seconds to open Writer, back in 2.0 it was a lot slower... It's steadily improving, so don't bash too much before you've tried the new version... By the way, I like the extensions idea... But when I was looking into it a few days ago, the APIs were very confusing...

Re:I wonder

[jonadab]

> When will they focus on usability and speed rather than adding features.

They focus on usability whenever *specific* usability problems are pointed out, but when people just whine "it needs better usability", that's too vague to deserve any significant response. Usability is actually an issue of major importance to the OO.o people, and their software has in some ways lead the way for others. For example, dialog box buttons in OO were labelled with what they do ("Save", "Discard", and so on) while other office suites were still using traditional confusing labels ("Yes", "No", "Okay", and similar largely-meaningless words), forcing the user to read the entire text of the dialog box each and every time or just guess and hope. I'm sure there is plenty more room for improvement, but it's better than most of what's out there, and if you have specific complaints, you ought to enumerate them. Asking vague questions like "When are they going to focus on usability" is pointless.

As far as speed, I don't know how old your computer is, but I have not noticed any speed problems with OO on systems with a decent amount of RAM (say, 512MB or more if you're one of those single-tasking people who basically runs one app at a time, 2GB if you run multiple apps at the same time as OO). Even on five-year-old systems with more like 128MB of RAM, OO doesn't have noticeably worse performance than any other modern app (e.g., Firefox). And if a computer is much older than five years, it needs to stick with the software it has. New software on old computers, after about five years (three years if the computer was bargain-basement when new), is generally a fundamental mismatch, kind of like pouring new wine in old wineskins, or trying to run software designed for Windows XP under Windows 95. It kinda don't work pretty good. There are exceptions, but most of them involve repurposing the system, e.g., you can take a ten-year-old desktop PC and turn it into a router and firewall with current software, no problem, but if you try to run current *desktop* software on it, it's not going to perform so very well. It'll still run software from its own era.

The big case where I've seen OO perform poorly even on relatively decent hardware is when it's running under Windows with Symantec AV installed, but in that case *everything* crawls, so you can't blame OO for that.

Oh, there's one other case. If a document has really large images in it (like, four-digit numbers of pixels in each direction), performance can be somewhat degraded, particularly if your amount of RAM wasn't too much overkill in the first place. But that really shouldn't be surprising. And the correct solution is for OO to support embedding SVG images -- yep, a feature -- because then we wouldn't *need* enormo-huge bitmaps so often. (You're still occasionally going to want to put a big photo in, but that's more of an edge case.)

Re:I wonder

[walt-sjc]

I can always be called upon to laud WordPerfect.

I still haven't forgiven them for the abortion that was version 6, where the stability went in the toilet.

Re:I wonder

[temcat]

Easy and streamlined -- use AbiWord. Really.

I would if it weren't so limited and if it worked with DOC files and not merely faked the file extension. However, I must say that basics (such as lists and para indent setting) are implemented in AbiWord way better than in OOo, and unlike OOo, AbiWord has something resembling Word's Normal mode which I find essential for my work.

Re:I wonder

[bigdavesmith]

When will they focus on usability and speed rather than adding features

I have to agree with you there. While I think 2.3 is actually an improvement in look and usability over recent previous versions, it doesn't seem to be a real change in focus.

After recently fooling around with both OpenOffice 2.3 and Microsoft Office 2007, I ditched both in favor of Pages on Mac, and Google Docs on everything else. I'm sure there are a whole lot of people who need more features than either of these provide (particularly google docs), but for me, the less bloat I have to look at and wait for, the better.

I think there's still some work to be done in the OOo community before usability is properly addressed. No rush here though.

Re:I wonder

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Agreed. There are some glaring usability issues; hopefully they have been addressed. My favorite (ie, most annoying), adding a word to the dictionary:

• MS Word: see a spelling error, right click and choose Add
• OO: see a spelling error, right click and choose Add, then be forced to choose between three different dictionaries to add the word to.

Perhaps with this release, they've clued in that most people (even geeks like me) don't actually give a shit which dictionary it lands in, and want to simply add the word and move on.

Re:I wonder

[jefu]

The only start up annoyance I have is the recovery options.

The recovery options drive me bonkers. I've managed to shut things down badly a few times (in various ways) and then had OO sit on startup for what seemed like a long time (but was probably only a few dozen seconds) recovering perfectly reasonable documents. The worst was when I actually used "mv" to put a document someplace else and OO basicly refused to start at all. It wasn't that hard to fix (find the right file in the oo info directory and delete it) but it was certainly annoying and could easily have made OO unusuable for a user less willing to poke around and delete files.

On a related note, how can I turn off that horrible splash window?

Re:I wonder

[mhall119]

I'm running Gutsy with OpenOffice 2.3, it's even faster than 2.2 was on Feisty. I'm not sure if this is because of OO.o, or improvements in other parts of the OS.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Give it more RAM to make it as fast a MS Word. Tools > Options> Memory

YMMV.

Re:I wonder

[mhall119]

Your issues require either brand new features or major re-writes of features. The "adapt row height" slowness is more likely a bug fix or simple optimization, which wouldn't take as long.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Word processor?

Sheesh.. nope.. it's ed, bitches!

"Ed is the standard text editor."

Sorry.. I'm easily entertained.

Re:I wonder

[Nimey]

Everything is "interleaved" or whatever I should call it.

They've leveraged their synergy?

I'm going to scrub out my keyboard now.

Re:I wonder

[mhall119]

OO.o Writer cold-startup is about 3 seconds for me, 1-2 seconds for warm-startup. MS Word 2003 cold-startup is also about 3 seconds, warm-startup in about 1 second. I suspect that much of people's observed startup times for OpenOffice.org are reading the executable from the disk into memory.

Re:I wonder

[Drinking Bleach]

They usually try to insult software by calling it a "clone"--especially by using embarrassing software to compare it to.

Re:I wonder

[Drinking Bleach]

> 3.2 Group toolbar items into tabs (call them the Office Ribbons if you want... the Office Ribbon is just a ripoff of Dreamweaver UI Tabs anyway and I'm sure they borrowed the idea from someone else. Stealing good ideas is a good thing).

Looks like the Photoshop 6 UI...

Re:I wonder

[robin.com.au]

The slow-ass-ness of OO has always been the biggest complaint article after article about OO and there seems to be no sign that the issue is being addressed. So what's the progress with KOffice and Gnome office suite(abiword, gnumeric) or others that I should know about?

I wonder if IBM Lotus Symphony is tackling the speed issue.

Re:I wonder

[sherpajohn]

I still haven't forgiven them for the abortion that was version 6, where the stability went in the toilet.

Aye! Along with about everything that made version 5.1 (DOS) the best there was...about all I can recall us ever getting (I was admin for a college network) were new printer driver disks. It simply worked, and (once you go to know it) worked simply. Those were the days... WP 5.1 and 1-2-3 (2.3 ?) - though I admit I got pretty fond of early Excel.

Still, I am gonna give OO a try, downloaded 2.2 a couple of weeks ago, have 2.3 in Utorrent now - sharing with the masses.

Re:I wonder

[Frantactical Fruke]

Nope. It would still get kicked in the teeth by magazine reviewers who have exactly two criteria:

a) Does it have as many features as MS Word?
b) Is its interface exactly like MS Word's, since that's what I've learned?

The only thing wrong with AmiPro was the manual, but I only found out when I started writing macros for it. Never needed it for anything simple like styles, tables, headers and all that other obvious stuff that I keep looking for in Openoffice help files...

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a problem? PLEASE. IUf you where using vi, this wouldn't be an issue.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

"I've contributed lots of test cases, bug reports and enhancement requests to OOo.

But still, they just need to get power users to use the thing and lots of low hanging fruit will magically appear.
Problem is much of it requires confidential docs I don't want to post.."

If you want to report a bug that can only be reliably demonstrated with a sample document, what you can do is to replace the content of your confidential document with dummy content (a la lorem ipsum). Just make sure that no sensitive info remains, say as document properties, tracked changes, column names (in a spreadsheet) etc.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's hope that the EU will make them open up all specs so that all companies can compete on equal terms.

The way to make MSFT compete is the real threat of using their competition. It is laughable that the US/EU justice departments put on a show, make some paltry rules, and threaten some miniscule fines. What would hurt requires no Judge, no Jury, no fines, no rules, no directives. Have your government buyers shop elsewhere (OSS w/ service is not free so you can still "buy" it and have someone to yell at when things don't work). This could accomplish the goals of: critical mass, interoperability, and open formats.

Re:I wonder

[Risen888]

Have you tried KOffice? It's got some ground to make up on the "ease-of-use" front, but it's surprisingly speedy and responsive, and beats the piss out of Abiword/Gnumeric for features.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

With the exception of Donald Knuth, of course.

Re:I wonder

[Tychon]

Since I'm not big on word processing in general — rarely do I have to write more than some bland pages in "professional" formatting — what exactly is difficult to use in OpenOffice?

Now, I've seen Microsoft Word used in government contract settings with 10,000 page documents and seven specs to cover the placement of dots in your bullet lists, so I can understand how that aspect could be painful in OOo as well, but is it really any different than Word or anything else in this regard?

Re:I wonder

[Gibbs-Duhem]

Well, I've got one that's missing. I filed a bug about the calc solver crashing OOo every time I use it. I've not even seen a response, much less accepting that there's a bug, and trying to find a fix.

The solver was the only thing in OOo that really impressed me. It was actually easier to use than Matlab for the problem I was solving.

I dunno, I don't mind things being broken temporarily, but it's been broken in the developer releases too. If it wasn't fixed by the time they wanted to release it, I wish they had just reverted to an earlier version of the solver code.

Re:I wonder

[Gnavpot]

It is always good if someone bothers to post about an application that (s)he is not impressed with (Like you did). But it will help more if users like you give specific examples of what's missing or what's slightly difficult to use etc.

In my case, it is the Calc UI missing simple everyday functionality. Someone compared Calc's UI to walking barefooted on gravel, and I understand why.

One simple example from everyday use:
In a selection of cells, there is a "handle" at the bottom right corner which can be dragged with the mouse for filling adjacent cells. On a small selection, this works well in both Excel and Calc.

But then try to select a column or row. In Calc, the handle will still be at the bottom right corner of the selection. That is really far away, since most people work in the top left corner of the spreadsheet. In Excel, the handle will appear at the bottom right corner of the *visible* area.

Another simple example from everyday use:
Try to move column C in between column A and B. In Calc, you can't. You first have to insert an new, empty column and then move the contents from the old column. In Excel, you hold down Shift while dragging the column. Or you use Ctrl-X to cut the column and Ctrl-+ to insert it between two other columns.

Re:I wonder

[ABCC]

Indeed, only in MS Office-land does a bug == a feature

Re:I wonder

[dmmiller2k]

Just curious: anyone see how OpenOffice.org stacks up against StarOffice (Sun's for-pay version)?

Recently, Google Apps started offering StarOffice as a freebie, so I tried running it on my PC, but it seemed, if anything, no faster than OO.o. I removed it eventually, to reclaim the 300+ MB.

BTW, in my family we use OO.o on all our macs (only of our machines is Windows based, the rest are Macs running OSX 10.4), and I refuse to buy MS Office for the Mac, even at the educational price (both my kids are in Middle School and my wife's a teacher).

Apart from performance and VERY FEW MISSING FEATURES (none of which I can recall right now), OO.o Writer is absolutely interchangeable with MS Word.

Re:I wonder

[HiThere]

Java version or compiled under gcj? I suspect that THAT may make the difference.

I'm using it on Debian Etch, and I have the gcj version installed. It's pretty fast (it's no AbiWord, but it's pretty fast). I note that there's also available a version that runs under the Java interpreter...which I haven't tried, and don't intend to. It probably has more functionality, but it's not worth the tradeoff to have a slower program with more features...if those "more features" aren't one's I have a need for.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

That makes three of us - four including my wife.

Ami Pro: an improvement on every word processor that came before - and after.

Re:I wonder

[LinuxDon]

I've filed a RTF bug (obvious and confirmed defect with all details included) beginning this year. Nobody has even responded on that.

Fixes bugs doesn't seem to be a high priority, and I can't blame them (because it's free).
But it is turning our company's migration to OOo into a big failure.

There are quite some big issues with OOo that are in need of fixing and stand in the way of enterprise adoption. For home use however, OOo is great (I've been using it for many years already).

Re:I wonder

[zaivala]

The word processor, spreadsheet, and powerpoint thingie are all good and MS compatible. They have yet to get CLOSE to compatibility with the MS database, or even find a database that is easy to use. I totally agree about the speed issue, it's a main reason I had for migrating so slowly.

There is still occasionally a problem with "copying" a website to a wordproc file, but they have ironed out MOST of the bugs in that process.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Native controls for each OS are a requirement!

It's not just native controls; that's the easy part. UI guidelines go far beyond what controls look like, and it's probably even more important to match platform-specific things like any expected language support (spelling checkers etc.), localisation (for dates, currencies, etc.), standard dialog boxes (open, save, etc.), printer system, font configuration, conventions for windows/menus/toolbars/opening multiple documents, and more.

People who think writing a good cross-platform UI just means using some cross-platform toolkit that does native widgets have a lot to learn about writing a good, user-friendly, cross-platform UI.

Re:I wonder

[tepples]

I usually start writing in KWrite then convert to OOo to do formatting. I usually start writing in Notepad++, and sometimes I even do formatting in Notepad++.

Re:I wonder

[Warbothong]

I prefer Abiword and Gnumeric mainly because they are more lightweight and quicker, and also they don't look butt-ugly as soon as a theme other than the distro's default is used. OpenOffice does have better Microsoft Office document handling, but it is obviously still not perfect. I remember having to fill in a form in a Word format, Abiword didn't open it very well (it was a big table full of text-entry boxes and help tooltips) so I tried it in OpenOffice which fared a little better. I am not annoyed with OpenOffice at all, although maybe with the people who made a form which needs an expensive OS-specific application just to fill in. I managed to stop myself emailing it back in ODF, but the guy on the other end looked at it and went "Woah! Did you do this in OpenOffice or something?"

Just an observation, but where did all of these "Nobody cares about features, what we need is speed!" people come from, and where are they during every Linux vs. Windows argument which inevitably ends up saying "OpenOffice is nowhere near replacing Microsoft Office, call me when they actually get [insert some obscure Microsoft Office feature here]."?

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

I submitted about 10 bugs on Draw a year ago, but the only one they've fixed is a documentation mismatch (they changed the documentation, not the code).

I've basically told them what needs to be done to Draw to make is usable, but there's been no work on it.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why I don't use OO. 5 year old bug, hundreds of votes. Target milestone: Later

http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4914

Re:I wonder

[PitaBred]

So... you're basically annoyed that Calc doesn't work exactly like Excel? I've never found Calc to get in my way of using it... Excel isn't exactly "intuitive" itself, either. Sounds more like you're proficient in Excel, and want a free replacement with no learning curve.

Re:I wonder

[mvdwege]

To turn off the splash window, start up the OOo component with the --nologo option. On a Gnome desktop, open up the menu editor, look up the menu item, right-click, select properties, and add --nologo immediately after the command (with a space in between, of course). If you have dragged the menu item to the panel, like I did, then properties is immediately available on right click. If you can script a bit, doing a little sed magic on the .desktop files can automate this for all OOo components. How this works in KDE, someone else may have to explain.

Mart

Re:I wonder

[Gnavpot]

So... you're basically annoyed that Calc doesn't work exactly like Excel?

No. And that was not what I wrote either.

It is not a matter of working exactly like Excel or not. It is a matter of at least being able to do the same task with the same or less amount of work - copying Excel behaviour or not.

Re:I wonder

[anomaly]

AbiWord is fast, no doubt about it. I have tried using it on my Mac, and the font rendering is TERRIBLE. The spacing is completely off for multiple typefaces - so much so that the text is practically unreadable. AbiWord - speed? Yes. Usable? No.

Re:I wonder

[Petrushka]

Hmmm. There's no default shortcut or button for doing that. However, let me recommend you to "Tools - Customize - Keyboard". There you can arbitrarily assign any kind of style and any macro to pretty much any key combination. E.g. you could assign ctrl-N (for example) to "Category - Styles - Character : Default". You could then use ctrl-shift-space to remove paragraph styling, and ctrl-N for character styling.

Re:I wonder

[Petrushka]

OK, OK, ctrl-N wouldn't be such a great key combination to use, but you get the idea ...

On another note, I've been fiddling with the newly-released IBM Lotus Symphony, based on OOo (v.1.1, not 2.x, it seems). Apologies for posting this to the wrong story, but it is kind of relevant in the sense of providing a comparison between the two. There's a lot to like. Tabbed documents are good, and I like the expose-like ctrl-T that allows you to search text in all open documents simultaneously. (Plus they've corrected the right-click behaviour that always bugs me in OOo ...)

But it seems to hide a lot of options away. They've sometimes turned tabs into dropdown menus, so e.g. that doubles the mouse-clicks required to move from paragraph styles to character styles in the stylist. More importantly, it doesn't appear to be possible to assign styles to key combinations, as I was describing in my previous post. That's a big usability downgrade right there.

Finally: I see no trace of the GPL in what I downloaded. All I found is a whole bunch of IBM-specific licences, and a bunch of notices including the following:

OpenOffice.org 1.1.0
The Program includes portions of code from the OpenOffice.org project. The source code version of the original OpenOffice.org code is available under the terms of this Sun Industry Standards Source License version ("SISSL") at http://www.openoffice.org./

What the ...? Is it not possible to get the altered code?

Re:I wonder

[Petrushka]

Apologies for replying to myself again. Well, you learn something new every day. I hadn't realised that OOo is actually LGPL. Evidently the IBM suite is proprietary, just free-as-in-beer. Oh well, go figure.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

spreadsheet -> split text to separate columns

absolutely essential requirement - no java please.

Re:I wonder

[khanyisa]

As someone else said, feature improvement takes longer... but then link to the issues here and persuade people to vote for them :-)

Re:I wonder

[khanyisa]

What's the bug number? There are other ways to get a bug's profile raised if it's important to you (find the right mailing list / IRC people etc). If it's for enterprise use getting support form Novell or Sun may be a good option and save you in the long run... maybe enquiring with them would be worthwhile. It would at least give you a better idea of the chances of getting your big issues fixed, and potentially help other people too

Re:I wonder

[tehcyder]

Give it more RAM to make it as fast a MS Word. Tools > Options> Memory

And why exactly should you have to do this?

Re:I wonder

[arturs]

It's slow. Even with "quickstarter" it's very slow. Starting 10xlonger than the competition (any). Especially annoying when you open e-mail attachments. Yes you can always close the document not the app, expecting it will be needed in a moment, you can leave OOo running in the background all the time. But how happened the rest got it right, just OOO is sluggish? And that's probably the most important software used on Linux.

OpenOffice has a long way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't checked out this new release, but the previous release, imo, wasn't even up to par with Office 2003.

I'm an avid linux user but flat out Office 2007 is years ahead of OO. I hope this new release brings it significantly closer.

Re:OpenOffice has a long way to go

[cheater512]

Hopefully the extensions will close the gap.

From what I see, you can do rather nifty things with them.

Re:OpenOffice has a long way to go

[speaker of the truth]

How long did you use OOo for? I'm finding it does take some acclimation to and it often requires more steps then Office does, however I would say its fairly close to Office 2003.

Re:OpenOffice has a long way to go

[sumdumass]

I find this odd. I don't use word processors much, same for spreadsheets. You probably wouldn't catch me even thinking about doing anything with power point.

But when I do need to do something, I find OO.org to be easier to get it done with then MS office is. I have both and I'm not really sure why we are at the exact opposite of the experience unless experience in using the app is the big difference.

I guess it would make sense that someone who isn't as clued in to MS Office might take to something else easier. But for me, OO.org just seems more intuitive and natural when I use it or the features. I have to hunt for things in both products but I tend to locate them and use them easier in OO too.

Re:OpenOffice has a long way to go

[speaker of the truth]

Well unlike you I don't have to hunt for things in Office, because I did it a long time ago and I simply know where it is now. However in OOo I have to hunt for it.

Re:OpenOffice has a long way to go

[Bert64]

OO also tends to be more intuitive to people who learned on systems other than msoffice (eg wordperfect)...
The only people who prefer msoffice, tend to have never really used anything else. A lot of people try openoffice very briefly, before giving up on it. Not giving it a proper chance to get used to it. Conversely, most msoffice users are forced to at work, so they have to use it long enough to get used to its quirks.

Re:OpenOffice has a long way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't checked out this new release... ...and that's where I stopped reading your post.

Error bars - woohoo!

[Goonie]

Openoffice's charts have been pretty much useless for any scientific work because they don't support proper error bars.Apparently the new charting tool will have full error bar support.

With any luck, I won't have to fire up MSOffice ever again...

Re:Error bars - woohoo!

[Tablizer]

Openoffice's charts have been pretty much useless for any scientific work because they don't support proper error bars.

Then don't make errors ;-P

Re:Error bars - woohoo!

[Radish03]

I got really excited when I read your post. Error bars were the sole reason I reinstalled MS Office last week. Unfortunately, I just ran Calc and checked out the new chart tool. Nothing seems to have changed, other than a new, fancy interface. It still lacks the ability to use a data range as error bars for a range of data points, and still lacks the ability to display a trendline equation on the graph. Looks like I'm still going to be split between OO Writer and MS Excel.

Re:Error bars - woohoo!

[antiknijn]

If you're serious about your charting, why not look into good alternatives like R, Octave or GNUPlot? These all come for free and offer vastly superior charting possibilities than Excel.

Re:Error bars - woohoo!

[QuantumTheologian]

I've always done scientific work using the ROOT analysis framework: root.cern.ch. Granted, it's designed and been developed with particle physics in mind, but it's free, it's actively developed, and it works. Is there any reason why one would use a general purpose office program (MS or OOo) over something more suited to scientific analysis?

Re:Error bars - woohoo!

[QuantumTheologian]

That is to say: http://root.cern.ch/

Re:Error bars - woohoo!

[doxology]

Gnumeric seems to support error bars.

Re:Error bars - woohoo!

[kocsonya]

Charts have been useless for any serious work since always. With every beta test that Sun ran on the StarOffice variants detailed reports of missing chart features have been submitted to them. Nothing happened throughout quite a few revisions.

A lot of work went into eye-candy like all those toolbars that pop up and disappear, which is extremely annoying when you just move the cursor through the document and your view jumps up and down as the toolbars came into existence and disappear, but many reported bugs and actual usability issues remained unresolved. I haven't updated for a while: I did beta testing of StartOffice and tried OOo every now and then and decided that it was actually better to use the old stuff, most of the problems were not fixed. GUI changes were plenty but I don't really care how the dialog box looks like, I am much more interested in the dialog being a non-modal context aware box rather than the usual modal boxes with themable icons.

There was an ApplixWare suite a long time ago. It was quite limited compared to OOo, however, they created a user interface that was quite friendly, non-modal dialogs all around, tri-state checkbox (yes, no, inherit) on all hierarchical features, ultra-flexible numbering scheme (OOo's outline numbering is a pain in the neck) and so on. Not to mention a very powerful and flexible chart (although sometimes you needed some creativity to work with it) and an absolute seamless intergation of the tools to each other. It wasn't perfect, had bugs, missing features etc. but it was quite flexible (when you got the gist of it). Unfortunately, it was also closed source, proprietary code and AFAIK it became abandonware when Applix switched from the multi-platform office suite to Windows-only business software service mode maybe 4-5 years ago. Still, a lot could be learnt from the way they did the user interface, for example. They did not copy MS Word, they created an application. IMHO, at least on the user interface and flexibility front, they fared far better than OOo.

Re:Error bars - woohoo!

[LarsWestergren]

I got really excited when I read your post. Error bars were the sole reason I reinstalled MS Office last week. Unfortunately, I just ran Calc and checked out the new chart tool. Nothing seems to have changed, other than a new, fancy interface. It still lacks the ability to use a data range as error bars for a range of data points, and still lacks the ability to display a trendline equation on the graph.

I was curious and looked through OOo's Bugzilla, and it seems this issue was started on today! Either a nice coincidence, or they read Slashdot. :)

I already modded in this topic too... oh well, just a +1 funny.

Re:Error bars - woohoo!

[LarsWestergren]

Oops, I was a bit too quick to post there, that was an added enhancement. The original RFE for error bars is here. Target was recently set to release 3.0 (which won't be released until somewhere in 2008 I believe). As they say in the list, if you want it, vote for it instead of filling Bugzilla with noise.

Re:Error bars - woohoo!

[joeljkp]

Yeah, that's just it. I'm not really very serious about my charting. I'd just rather have something that isn't a pain to use.

I mean, you can argue that having bad charting functionality in Calc isn't important for scientific types, but that's no reason not to improve it.

Re:You know someone's gonna ask

[mdenham]

Don't you mean "does Emacs run it"?

Extentions

[headbulb]

The extensions if done right. As to take out the features that are not used.

So we have the core of the application and then if you want a feature you add it through extensions. Kinda like firefox. Whether it works out that way is another question. I haven't downloaded this release yet to know if they have made it faster.

I am with the stay with the features you have and make openoffice faster. What features are missing? None that I really use and if a feature is missing I could probably get by without it, for my needs.

Re:Extentions

[speaker of the truth]

Extensions are good for things that:
* Are rarely used
* The developers don't have time to code
* Things the application can't do better natively

If there are features that are used regularly and can be done better natively, its certainly worthwhile coding them in. Beyond the speed at start up, I haven't found it to be particularly slow.

Re:Extentions

[westlake]

So we have the core of the application and then if you want a feature you add it through extensions

The office manager wants a standard configuration that a temp that comes in on Tuesday and leaves on Thursday can recognize immeadiately and be productive.

The feature set of an office suite is defined by the fact that it has as to be as serviceable to an employer with 15,000 clerical workers in a dozen departments as it is to the employer with a full-time staff of five.

When complaining about missing features

[pembo13]

as is inevitable, it might help if you give details, and leave out things like "doesn't act exactly like Word"

Re:When complaining about missing features

[PinkyDead]

It needs to act like Word in one particular case. It must load Word documents and format them exactly like Word, and when it saves them there must be no way of telling whether it was done in Word or OpenOffice.

The purist will of course say, "OpenOffice shouldn't be defined by Word" - and in fairyland that's a very reasonable stance.

Word is the #1 word processing package (in terms of numbers) - like it or not (personally I don't). One of the distribution channels for OpenOffice must be by sneaking in as a faster replacement for Word - but it can't do that if someone sends me a document, I edit it and send it back to them, and they tell me that all the tables are screwed up or whatever, even though it looked fine for me on OO.

Outside of that, it should do its own thing.

Re:When complaining about missing features

[uberhobo_one]

Actually, "doesn't act exactly like Word," is my biggest complaint with OO right now. When I write scientific articles for journals, I need to be 100% certain that when the publisher opens up the file in MS Word that it will look exactly the same as it does in OO. That's nowhere near being true yet. I've also gone the other way around, trying to open up my carefully laid out Word documents in Writer, only to find that all the formatting and image layouts had been completely screwed. It took Apple far too long to figure out that if they want to compete with the big dogs, they have to make sure their product is seamlessly compatible with the dominant products out there in order to spur adoption.

Re:When complaining about missing features

[ClickOnThis]

It needs to act like Word in one particular case. It must load Word documents and format them exactly like Word, and when it saves them there must be no way of telling whether it was done in Word or OpenOffice. [Ahem. At the risk of my being modded troll...]

If only MS Word itself behaved that way. It has been my experience that even identical versions of MS Word running on identical OS versions can still yield small but annoyingly different results. Never mind what happens when you exchange documents between different version of MS Word: good luck loading an Office 2003 document if you're using Office 97.

Given the above, I have found that OpenOffice does quite a good job indeed of importing and exporting .doc files. I have sent .doc files exported from OOo to many colleagues with various versions of MS Word and have heard no complaints.

Word is the #1 word processing package (in terms of numbers) - like it or not (personally I don't). One of the distribution channels for OpenOffice must be by sneaking in as a faster replacement for Word - but it can't do that if someone sends me a document, I edit it and send it back to them, and they tell me that all the tables are screwed up or whatever, even though it looked fine for me on OO. Perhaps you're hitting the "corner cases" more frequently than I am. Fair enough. But as I said above, I suspect you'd have the same experience sharing documents between users with different versions of MS Word. Even saving to a "common denominator" version of .doc file (e.g., Office 97) is no guarantee of complete success, and partly defeats the purpose of upgrading in the first place.

Re:When complaining about missing features

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

It needs to act like Word in one particular case. It must load Word documents and format them exactly like Word, and when it saves them there must be no way of telling whether it was done in Word or OpenOffice. [...] One of the distribution channels for OpenOffice must be by sneaking in as a faster replacement for Word

I respectfully disagree. OO is never going to be a better Word than Word, nor is it realistic to expect perfect preservation of complex formatting when moving between different software packages that use different models for the data and different file formats to store them. This is a battle that cannot be won, and it is a waste of resources trying to fight it.

In any case, we can readily see that perfect document interchange is not a priority for most users. After all, people open Word documents that were laid out for US Letter paper in A4-friendly Europe and vice versa, even though this typically affects pagination. It's the content that matters for most people, not the round trip, which means you need to be able to import and export readable files but the odd blemish isn't catastrophic. For in-house people, you'll typically be using the same software across an organisation anyway, so round-tripping isn't a problem if you need to do it. And if you really do need exact reproduction for an external source, for example to send to a print shop or for a downloadable brochure, then it's better to use a format such as PDF or PostScript that is designed for that purpose. But this is usually a one-way trip, so that's not a problem.

Of course there will always be exceptions, where people want to round-trip with perfect formatting between different packages. But to be brutally honest, that is unrealistic, and it always has been. Once you can import the content accurately and a good approximation of the formatting, you rapidly get diminishing returns trying to get the corner cases with complex page layouts and the like. Personally, once you've reached that point, I'd rather see the developers of other word processors try to do things in their own way that is better than Word. Fighting for every extra last ounce of .doc compatibility can yield a Pyrrhic victory at best.

Re:don't call me...

[BadAnalogyGuy]

It's an entirely different kind of office suite altogether.

Wah!?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do scientific work with MS Office???
You must be kidding!

Re:Wah!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Get with the program asshole. Thats why noone will hire you.

Re:Wah!?

[sophanes]

I'd have to agree - compared to proper packages like OriginPro (or even Matlab) Excel produces the most amateurish and ugly looking graphs. Simple tasks (like adding error bars) are made much harder than they should be. Data analysis options are non-existent, and forget about being able to export to EPS.

Re:Wah!?

[SnowZero]

Reference.

Re:Wah!?

[Bert64]

Not to mention the reputation for inaccuracy excel has... And unfortunately, openoffice seems to copy (i assume for compatibility, people will assume openoffice to be wrong if it returns a different answer to excel regardless of which one is in the wrong).
Anyone using excel for scientific purposes is compromising the integrity of their research.

Re:Wah!?

[RepCentral]

I'll have to check out Origin Pro further.
I tend to use Minitab, Excel and Graphis (www.kylebank.com)
Graphis is a real lifesaver for complex 3d graphing.
I haven't found a another tool that lets me create compound
3d graphs as easily. It's great when you can make graphs
that the engineers understand instantly and management enjoys
because of all the pretty colors. Everyone's happy!

An improvement to OOo

[d12v10]

It would be most appreciated if OpenOffice was sped up to the point where it doesn't take ten seconds to load up and then periodically halt every couple of minutes on a P4.

Re:An improvement to OOo

[speaker of the truth]

I tested this assertion and found that despite your claims Calc, Writer does open as quickly as Excel. The only one that opened significantly slower was Base compared with Access.

Unfortunately Excel is able to open 500KB files significantly faster then Calc, although I've yet to have it freeze on my computer, an Intel Core 2 with 1 GB of ram.

Re:An improvement to OOo

[gordo3000]

I love OO as an idea but I've always said I can't use it till it gets competitive with excel. you think you had problems with 500kb file? I got a core 2 duo but my files are more along the lines of 40 mb..... open office just dies. excel doesn't do much better but I can be sure it'll run.

I find boot times for open office pitifully slow but I'm running version 2.0 or earlier.... it runs fast enough for my home use but I want to kill it every time I try to do work on it.

Re:An improvement to OOo

[McDutchie]

I love OO as an idea but I've always said I can't use it till it gets competitive with excel. you think you had problems with 500kb file? I got a core 2 duo but my files are more along the lines of 40 mb..... open office just dies. excel doesn't do much better but I can be sure it'll run.

Seems to me that if you work with 40 MB spreadsheet files, you're using the wrong tool for whatever it is you're trying to do, anyway. Are you using Excel as a database?

Re:An improvement to OOo

[gordo3000]

you're about the 10th person to tell me.

I think it's pretty standard in the financial industry. we have massive databases to hold risk information for our trading desk. It's pretty standard and these are very large databses(in txt format we are talking about 20 to 50 mb files just to dump a subset of this data).

but from that raw data, we need to do relatively complex analytics that can't be done outside of either our own program or excel. I format and organize all the data in my sql queries for this stuff but then the analytics eat up massive size and the data output into excel isn't small (last data set was 9000 rows by 220 columns this morning). I'm not sure of a better way to do it but OO doesn't handle my work stuff well at all. excel sure as heck isnt' great but it's pretty standard at our bank to be running spreadsheets between 10 and 50 mb (depending on what we are doing).

if you have a suggestion I'd love to hear it but short of writing our own software, we use excel.

Honestly,

[gondwannabe]

I have to use the OO spreadsheet to support some gawdawful SQL queries that are linked to some legacy CRM stuff...but it's like walking barefoot on gravel compared to Excel.

I think OO would do fine for anyone who hasn't spent years living in MSOffice - otherwise it's torture - I had to buy Office for an Admin who threatened to walk over OO formatting frustrations.

Wahhhh! Where's the frickin format painter???

Re:Honestly,

[Bert64]

Format painter? It's in the default toolbar, i use it quite a lot.

Re:Honestly,

[Anonymous Coward]

walking barefoot on gravel Weak-footed pansy!

The big feature!

[aurelito]

The big feature, as far as I'm concerned, is the fact that the page is now centered in print layout view. Until now, it was left-justified, and that absolutely drove me nuts on my wide screen monitor. If it bothered you too, check this version out.

Re:The big feature!

[pembo13]

Thanks for the tip, I wonder what was the original reasoning for a left justification.

Re:The big feature!

[Corporate Troll]

Probably to stick the Styles panel to the right. At least that is what I do on my 4:3 monitor.

That said, I would prefer that the styles panel could dock to the side... But hey, it's a free and good office suite, so I'm not complaining.

Re:The big feature!

[richlv]

styles panel (stylist) can be docked. i usually dock it at the right hand side. or have i misunderstood the problem ?

Re:The big feature!

[Corporate Troll]

"Styles and formatting" (F11) in Writer. What version did you try? I just tried on OpenOffice.org 2.0 on Windows XP and I didn't find how to dock it. Yes, I'll try 2.3 as soon as I can.

Re:The big feature!

[richlv]

either simply drag it to the desired size (easier to do with oo.org window maximised), or hold down ctrl and doubleclick free space in stylist upper area (where style categories are located) - that will dock it in the last docked position.

i vaguely remember this being problematic in some cases - maybe that was with some widgetsets or something. you also might could try reversing ctrl holding.

in any case, trying the latest version is a good idea :)

Re:The big feature!

[Corporate Troll]

Interesting... The Ctrl-double click thing works in 2.0 Thanks for explaining :-)

As a Gentoo user...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am deeply troubled by this announcement.

Re:As a Gentoo user...

[mjorkerina]

Sure, you didn't even see what OpenOffice 2.2 is looking like !

Re:As a Gentoo user...

[UberLord]

That is why we provide the openoffice-bin ebuild for our OpenOffice users who don't have distcc compile farms

So be troubled no more :)

Re:As a Gentoo user...

[GNUThomson]

Let's hope that OO and KDE releases will never overlap. Personal entry: KDE compilation, day 3. Need to waste another day on something. Slashdot? Again? Ahhh, what the hell...

Re:As a Gentoo user...

[padonak]

(I use openoffice-bin anyway)
Just out of curiosity, does it even take advantage of distcc?
Because last time I checked, packages like Firefox and Openoffice don't even use MAKEOPTS="j4" on my Athlon X2 - they compile with one process only.

Re:As a Gentoo user...

[TeknoHog]

Me too. It took several minutes to emerge openoffice-bin, due to downloading over ADSL and unpacking the binaries.

Re:As a Gentoo user...

[kc2keo]

hehe... When I used Gentoo and compiled OpenOffice it took foreeeeevvvvvver

Re:As a Gentoo user...

[fellip_nectar]

You can set WANT_MP="true" in /etc/make.conf to force OpenOffice to use more than one process, but the build usually fails if you do this.

Re:As a Gentoo user...

[Rich0]

Uh, the build usually fails if you do just about anything. I've never seen a more tempermental code base. Forget code-should-not-generate-warnings - let's start with less than 100 fatal errors per run.

In any case, even after two syncs the digest is failing on the file I downloaded...

Re:As a Gentoo user...

[ndansmith]

You clearly do not roll a PowerPC.

Re:As a Gentoo user...

[hawaiian717]

As far as I understand, the -bin packages of OpenOffice, Firefox, etc are the binary releases from the upstream developers. So if you want Gentoo to have an openoffice-bin for PowerPC, you'll have to pester OO.o to provide it.

Re:As a Gentoo user...

[padonak]

I *love* undocumented features!
Thanks.

Re:As a Gentoo user...

[Kream]

Bah. Only 6 hours on my AMD 64+ 3000, building with all debug symbols. Does take a huge amount of disk space to build, if you're going the -ggdb way, as I do with my packages. I don't know what the big deal is. Set it to build just before you go to bed. Wake up, it's done.

Sign the damn installer (Windows)

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

This is getting old. In Vista, the UAC elevation process checks the file signature. Since the OOo installer for Windows elevates, it should be signed. So should the actual application binaries, but the installer is particularly problematic.

A code-signing certificate is around $100 per year. This is peanuts for the OOo Foundation.

Mozilla signs their Windows binaries. So do Adobe, Corel, Apple, NVIDIA, ATI, Sun, Microsoft, and thousands of small software companies.

Re:Sign the damn installer (Windows)

[LinuxEagle]

Um... why should they have to spend $100? Last time I checked Linux and macs did not require programs to be signed.

Re:Sign the damn installer (Windows)

[tomknight]

Are you *trying* to look stupid? Read the damn post - the guy's talking about *Windows* binaries. Not Mac, not Linux, but Windows. I'm sure you love Linux and want the world to know it but all you're doing is making Linux users appear illiterate.

Re:Sign the damn installer (Windows)

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You're missing the point. Paying a fee to sign the installer is just a tax on legitimate software developers. Everyone else manages without it, and if all it takes is a $100 bill to get a certificate, then that is exactly what a certificate is worth (and deflation will take place the first time a major trojan is installed by signed software).

Re:Sign the damn installer (Windows)

[Anonymous Coward]

I might be totally wrong here but AFAIK, doesn't the signing cert have to be accepted by Microsoft? And dose not that cost money (lots probably) and why would they accept (quickly,fast etc) a cert for a product that is the main opponent to their second most profitable product? (Office 2007)

Re:Sign the damn installer (Windows)

[tomknight]

Certification isn't just about paying $100, it's about meeting a standard. Here's an html version of the MS doc saying what a package must be/do to be certifiable (as 'twere).

I've had to deal with crappy installers (I've created a few of them...) and know that it's much easier to deal with a good one, especially when supporting a large number of machines. That bit of certification can help give a sysadmin confidence that this installation isn't going to be a PITA when it comes to upgrading/removing/conflicts/reboots over a large number of machines.

Does that help at all?

Re:Sign the damn installer (Windows)

[EvanED]

I might be totally wrong here but AFAIK, doesn't the signing cert have to be accepted by Microsoft?

Yes, you are totally wrong.

This isn't a Windows logo type thing, this is just origin verification.

Re:Sign the damn installer (Windows)

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Certification isn't just about paying $100, it's about meeting a standard. Here's an html version of the MS doc saying what a package must be/do to be certifiable (as 'twere).

In a sense, that's even worse. If it's not intended to be a "financial bond" but actually a human-verified, technical standard, then there is no reason to charge for it at all. Microsoft has more than enough resources to provide this service for free, or for some token sum of money just to prevent flooding the system ($100 is not a token sum of money if you're a hobbyist giving away your code for free).

This is a problem entirely of their own making, and expecting all the small commercial outfits and freeware/OSS/whatever developers to pay up to get their installer certified when they don't otherwise charge much, if anything, for their products is just deluded. After all, what do the freeware developers lose if Vista users refuse to buy their software? Microsoft, however, has literally everything to lose if Vista sales don't pick up in the way they are hoping, and making it a hostile platform for application developers is a pretty good way to ensure that outcome.

Re:Sign the damn installer (Windows)

[Anonymous Coward]

You are confusing two entirely separate things.

• An installer can be cyptographically signed to prove who created it. This is what the parent posts are talking about.
  
• An application and installer can be certified by Microsoft to show it meets certain minimum standards. It can then use the Designed For Vista logo. That's what you are talking about.
  

The two things are independent.

Re:Sign the damn installer (Windows)

[tomk]

You appear not to understand what signing is, how it works, or why it is important.

It is not a tax on legitimate software developers. It is a way for any user to ensure that they are getting software from the source that they think they are getting it from.

A signature does not guarantee that you are not getting a trojan, or that the software has any sort of quality at all. The only thing it guarantees is that party A cannot send you software that claims to be from party B. The expectation is that certain developers/companies/people will have some reputation which users trust, and the signature makes sure that nobody else can harm that reputation by pretending to be the trusted party.

The first time people start getting signed trojans, they will immediately lose trust in the party who signed it. Users could still elect to install software from that company but based on reputation, they should expect trojans.

To verify signatures and support signature revocation in case the key is stolen, keys need to be regularly checked against a trusted third party (like Verisign). So that third party has a continual bandwidth and infrastructure cost. The cost of the signature is to offset that cost (and of course, make money too) but the cost is tiny compared to the value of reputation.

Saying "everyone else manages without it" is like saying "I've never been robbed before, and none of my friends have been robbed before, therefore there is no need for door locks." It's naive. If you are a developer, it will take only one instance of someone distributing a trojan in your name before you come to value a signature validation service.

Re:Sign the damn installer (Windows)

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You appear not to understand what signing is, how it works, or why it is important.

You know, there something eerily predictable about Slashdot. Whenever someone starts a reply to your post by stating that you are incompetent and/or ill-informed just because you happen to disagree with them, it's a good bet the argument they're about to make will be unrealistic.

In this case, I'm well aware of what the signing concept represents, thank you. However, as far as I can see, nothing in your post affects the validity of the claims I've made in this discussion: charging a fee for this is a cheap profit-grab, and since Microsoft care far more about Vista developing a reputation for being an unusable mess than your average free software developer cares about being accepted by Vista users (both of them), if Microsoft were smart they would either offer this service for a nominal fee or not make a fuss about it when installing under Vista. Shifting the burden onto the little guy is just going to result in the little guy ignoring you, and a whole load of users noticing that it's harder to do stuff on Vista than it is on XP (or, for that matter, alternatives like OS X or Linux, but this isn't really a Windows vs. non-Windows issue).

Re:Sign the damn installer (Windows)

[tomknight]

Apologies, thank you for correcting me!

Re:Sign the damn installer (Windows)

[ABCC]

Microsoft claim to be all about 'letting the customer choose' when they talk about, well, just about anything really. Why oh why won't they let the customer choose that companies that make shitty installers probably make shitty software too?

I spent an hour trying to install a "signed" Adobe app without any success today. Like everything else MS makes those licenses seem to come with no guarantees whatsoever. If you think this licensing scam is anything but a tax on software developers and intended as a hindrance to free (both libre and gratis) software developers you really need to sit down and think it through again. For all their talk MS has always worked towards a "IT ecosystem" consisting a handful of well entrenched monopolies (both in hardware and software). Even if the bozo that dreamed this one up had good intentions the accountants and shareholders won't fail to see this as a "good thing"

Re:Sign the damn installer (Windows)

[tomk]

charging a fee for this is a cheap profit-grab Perhaps you missed the part of my message which explained why this costs money. It's not just a one-time signature issuance. Every time the signature is verified, the trust authority comes into play. The infrastructure to handle millions of signature verifications costs money. When a company has costs, it generally passes those costs on to its customers. Who ever said everything in life has to be free?

if Microsoft were smart they would either offer this service for a nominal fee Is $100 per year not a nominal fee? That's less than $10 per month. And frankly I'd rather pay that money to VeriSign (or one of the other independent companies) than Microsoft. Be honest- you would never trust Microsoft with your signature verification either.

Vista verifies the signature automatically, and I (as a developer) wish that every OS did the same. It's not about free software developers OR commercial developers, it is about the security of the system which transports software from a developer to the end user. It also has absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft, other than the fact that they are at the forefront of enforcing this security.

Perhaps you place no value in security. That is the only way you can make the claim that you value code signatures (and signature verification) at $0.

Re:Sign the damn installer (Windows)

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Is $100 per year not a nominal fee?

That depends. Next time you're talking to a hobbyist who has written a few useful utilities that they're willing to give away so others can benefit as well, and who has been kind enough to wrap them up in easy-to-use installers again purely so others can benefit, why don't you ask them how they'd feel about paying n×$100 for the privilege of giving away their own code?

If you're about to retort that OpenOffice.org is not a small-scale, hobbyist program, then please consider that the whole signing mechanism is dramatically reduced in value unless it is effectively universal.

Perhaps you place no value in security. That is the only way you can make the claim that you value code signatures (and signature verification) at $0.

There are so many non sequiturs in that argument, I don't know where to begin.

It is reasonable to argue that the signing mechanism does not bring a major improvement in security, for example because of the lack of universality mentioned above. This means the signing component isn't worth the asking price, not that security has no value.

It is also reasonable to argue that people are already paying for this mechanism, when millions of them shelled out for Windows, and therefore that Microsoft should provide it at no additional charge to developers if they feel it is an important factor contributing to Windows' security. This doesn't imply that the code signatures have no value, merely that developers should not have to pay for them. They are, after all, for the benefit of users rather than developers.

There seem to be other flaws in your argument, but either of the above seems to completely undermine it anyway.

Use the bittorent - it's fast

[suv4x4]

It's faster than their download servers right now, maybe because the story just broke...

As for this release, I'm still a rabid fan of MS Office but when I dual-boot into Linux this is my Office suite (got it under Windows as well). It's nice that MS has some promising competition, even if it's not ready to quite replace MS Office (especially with the advancements made in 2007)

Re:Use the bittorent - it's fast

[MMC Monster]

As someone who recently had to work on a modestly complex text document from multiple locations on various versions of Windows (with varying versions of Office) and OS X, having the ability to use Openoffice.org on all the machines was a godsend. No worrying about differing .doc formats and text layouts. No illicit installations of MSOffice (so that I could use the same version on differing computers). And at the end a simple print to PDF that anyone could open.

Re:Use the bittorent - it's fast

[Gertlex]

Indeed, it's the fastest torrent I've ever had (avg. .5MB/s... Though I don't download much, and I don't tend download super-"popular" stuff.

Zotero extension for bibliographies

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who makes documents with bibliographies should check out Zotero, but OpenOffice.org users in particular can benefit from the Zotero extension for inserting citations directly in odt documents. Like EndNote, but better.
http://www.zotero.org/

(Yes, there is a Zotero plugin for MS Word, too, for those unfortunate people who are stuck with that. :-))

Not compatible ?

[SuurMyy]

I almost never use ooffice, and just two days ago I witnessed a problem in an EU project w/word docs. Using anchored tables in the word doc caused compatibility problems w/ooffice. Granted, I heard that using those anchors is evil, but that's somewhat beside the point.

Re:Not compatible ?

[khanyisa]

You've filed a bug? Or checked if one exists and voted for it? I sure hope so :-)

Re:Not compatible ?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The problem with your slightly flippant reply is that some of us did once file and vote for bugs, but after seeing some of the most popular bugs in the whole system stay dormant for literally years and given that the OO bug reporting system is ludicrously overcomplicated for casual users, we don't generally bother any more.

Re:Not compatible ?

[temcat]

Mod parent insightful. This is my situation exactly. BTW I wonder how many bugs has this khanyisa filed...

Re:Not compatible ?

[Gorgonzola]

Which is precisely my experience as well. Not to mention very popular feature requests such as reveal codes.

Re:Not compatible ?

[SuurMyy]

Actually, I haven't. I effectively never edit anything w/OO, and it was my SO who had the problem w/it. If you knew how many things I need to take care of every day, you wouldn't be asking me to file bug reports in behalf of others about programs that I almost never use.

Re:Not compatible ?

[khanyisa]

How many? Just the number will do :-) If you weren't the user that's fine, just encouraging people to report issues where they can.

Re:Not compatible ?

[khanyisa]

45 issues filed. Most of them are to do with language support patches and build issues as I worked on South African language support. Some had patches that have been accepted. I know OOo process is sometimes crazily slow but I was just pointing out that it doesn't help to abandon hope - a lot of things are actually fixed. In addition the upstream distro people are often very responsive - I had some crashes of OOo on Fedora fixed pretty quickly.
Any further questions?

Re:Not compatible ?

[khanyisa]

I understand and agree with the comments about the bug reporting system. So file bugs about the bug reporting system :-) Most of the bugs that stay dormant are feature requests and that's just a case of needing developers who have the time and inclination to work on them.

Source Code Cleanup

[mdm42]

What I really, really want from OOo is a cleanup of the code to the point where merely-mortal developers like myself can actually do something useful with it. As it is, the codebase is just this great big hairy ball of stuff -- completely unapproachable unless you have someone willing to fork out a paycheck for you to bang on it full time.

Far too many open-source projects miss the point that one of their major "features" is clean code, design and architecture documentation; a big part of the "user base" are the people who might want to live (sometimes) inside the code. That means you have to keep the barrier to entry low for the programmer who is a noob to your codebase. (We could talk about how some OS projects lack developers who are clued enough to actually write clean code or design decently, but we won't go there ;-)

Until a real and deep codebase cleanup happens OOo is "open-source" in name only as far as I am concerned.

Re:Source Code Cleanup

[Daengbo]

You are so right. The code is a mess. Everyone complains about it. The fact that there are very few contributors outside paid staff is also well known. There is some work on cleaning it up, but not nearly enough. Once the code is clean and modular, there will be many more contributors and much more advancement.

Re:Source Code Cleanup

[JohnFluxx]

I just have to defend OSS here :)

OpenOffice.org is a horrible mess _because_ it was developed in house with paid developers etc.

Look at the koffice code instead - it's beautiful. It uses KDE parts, the Qt library, the general KDE spelling framework, and so on. It's modular and reusable. The formula thing (one part that I happen to know about) it used koffice, but also has it's own program for standalone math editing, and is also used by another program that uses it as frontend to math engine (maxima etc).

I know reuse isn't proof of clean code, but it's evidence of such :)

Re:Source Code Cleanup

[mdm42]

Good point about it originating as closed code. Fact remains, though, that the biggest missing feature in OOo is a code cleanup.

Re:Source Code Cleanup

[jeremyp]

I fail to see how being proprietary necessarily makes code horrible. I've seen good and bad open source code and good and bad proprietary code. I think the quality of the code is more a function of how well the project is run than whether it is proprietary or not.

Re:Source Code Cleanup

[Abcd1234]

I fail to see how being proprietary necessarily makes code horrible.

Well, to play devil's advocate (I happen to agree with you, actually), it may be true that, given the scale of large open source projects, and the nature of the collaboration (anonymous over the intarwebs), it may simply be necessary for developers to write cleaner code, as that code is one of the primary forms of communication between the various team members. After all, it's not like koffice developer #1 can just walk down the hall and ask koffice developer #2 what the hell he was thinking when he wrote some piece of code.

Re:Source Code Cleanup

[wikinerd]

The psychology of the average employee is "get finish quickly so that I can go home" - they just don't care about code quality. Free software and open source people usually care, if they have enough free time to cater for their projects.

PDF Forms & Flash Animations

[Phoinix]

One of the best features is exporting PDF files especially while using a "Portable" version of OOo. They had some issues in exporting forms (thru the Writer) in the previous versions where the exported form failed to show or work with Adobe Acrobat and Foxit software.

A great future improvement would be the ability to export the presentation animations and transition effects (Impress) to Flash animations & transitions.

It would be also interesting to see the worldwide distribution of the downloaded versions (directly or via Torrent) and the clients used (browsers, torrents, and download clients).

Re:PDF Forms & Flash Animations

[jiawen]

Impress already does Flash, at least as of version 2.2. In "Export", one of the options is .swf Flash files.

Re:PDF Forms & Flash Animations

[Phoinix]

Yes, and I always keep a copy of my presentation in Flash in case non of the other formats (ppt & PDF) worked or when I want to make it more dificult for someone to steal the presentation contents, but the last time I checked (2.1), the animations included in a presentation are not exported. I am not a fan of animations in presentations but it would be a great feature to encourage people to use OOo.

Re:PDF Forms & Flash Animations

[bogie]

PDF creation was impressive 10 years ago but not now. Every program on linux and windows can already export to PDF with the right software installed. On windows I recommend PDFCreator.

Re:PDF Forms & Flash Animations

[Phoinix]

Even now PDF is still very practical and much better than using M$ Word docs. It is not only what I like, but also what the coworker or colleague can read or print. I use PDF Creator frequently, but there is no portable PDF-Creator. In-addition to not being able to handle hyperlinks without using "PDF-T-Maker" for "M$ Word", PDF Creator cannot handle forms.

As I said in the above post, OOo still cannot handle forms adequately. PDF forms are much better when they can be filled and then printed by the user (or submitted via a script). PDF forms created via OOo still (version 2.3) do not show or work well neither in Adobe Acrobat, and nor in Foxit reader.

Depends

[Goonie]

Not everybody needs super-duper charts (though I may need something fancier for my current project). For most of my previous charts, either using Gnuplot or Excel produced acceptable output. Excel was quicker for very basic purposes. But if your graph doesn't have error bars on it when you present at a conference, the attendees laugh at you, and there's nothing more disconcerting to be laughed at presenting a conference paper!

As for data analysis, there are innumerable other packages available for that, all the way up to stuff like GNU R (or writing your own code).

Re:Depends

[hcpxvi]

Given what day it is today, should that not be GNU Aaaaarrrrrrrrrrrr?

Seriously, R's graphical output is thoroughly production-quality. I use it all the time and wince with pain to see the nasty looking graphs produced by most spreadsheets.

Re:Depends

[tehcyder]

But if your graph doesn't have error bars on it when you present at a conference, the attendees laugh at you, and there's nothing more disconcerting to be laughed at presenting a conference paper!

Couldn't you just draw them on your slides with a marker pen, the good old way?

British English.

[Ashe Tyrael]

Depressingly, they still haven't fixed the British English localisation (Not the spell checker, the actual UI and stuff.) There was some hoohah about the en-GB versions after 2.0.2 being broken or something, so OO wouldn't release 'em. Even now, the OO website still has the same guy doing it who doesn't appear to have actually done anything since then.

Re:British English.

[netean]

I live in Wales (for the Americans out there: Wales a seperate country that is part of the UK- where Tom Jones and Kathryn Zeta Jones come from!!!)

anyway, I NEED to be able write documents in both languages, British English and Welsh (CY). Never been a problem in M$ office. HIghlight some text and select the lanuage from the drop down. spell Check works in both languages.

Never been able to do this in OOo... language seems defined on a per document basis.

Surely I can't be the only person in the world who writes documents in two languages at once?

Re:British English.

[Corporate Troll]

No, you're not the only one... However, the language settings are part of the "Character format". Which makes sense... Include it in your styles (e.g. "Body Text French", "Body Text English" and it becomes way easier than in Microsoft Office... Where it really seems to be document-bound (Tool->Languages->Set Language).

Re:British English.

[Chainsaw]

Surely I can't be the only person in the world who writes documents in two languages at once? Tons of people from Sweden write documents with a mixture of Swedish and English. So no, you're not alone.

Re:British English.

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair to the poor spell checker, you guys have a village named Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

Re:British English.

[TheRaven64]

Never been able to do this in OOo... language seems defined on a per document basis. Is this really true? I remember using StarOffice 5.0 with English, French and German dictionaries installed, and it let me select the language per word, sentence, paragraph, or document from the context menu. It would even detect the language; if I typed something in French, it would suggest in the context menu that it was valid French.

Considering that this is a feature that was in StarOffice a decade ago, I'm really surprised it isn't still there. Can any OO.o developers suggest why not?

Re:British English.

[Freultwah]

Not document-bound in MS Office. Switching between languages is very easy in Windows/Office. If you've defined all the languages you use in the Control Panel, switching between them within Word is as easy as Left Alt + Shift. Word is immediately notified. Keyboard layouts are not tied to the language and vice versa. Whenever I have to use Windows, I set it up so that all the languages are tied to the Estonian keyboard layout with which I am familiar. It's actually a lot easier than in OOo (which I use daily), where you have to wade through all those menus and drop-down lists. Already extant text's language properties can be changed with a simple double-click on the bottom of the windows etc.

Take a look at Veusz

[xiox]

Take a look at Veusz if you want proper scientific charting on Windows, Linux and MacOS. [plug]

Re:Take a look at Veusz

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool, I hadn't heard about that one (I guess it's been a few years since I had to look around, at that time gnuplot + grace ruled the roost)

Maximized Macintosh Spreadsheets

[HTH NE1]

So will this version finally remember the window size of a spreadsheet and not always open it maximized on the 2048x1536 head of my two-headed Mac? Nothing I do to it changes this behavior. I have to manually unmaximize and resize every damn time!

And how about how if you try to move to another cell while it is recalculating it keeps repeating the recalculation until you wait for the redraw to finish?

A slimmed down version would be a plus

[waterbear]

I'm not sure that a version announced using the word 'growing' is a good thing at all. My ooo installation, on Mandriva Linux, already takes up 440 Mbytes and is sloooow! This is too much already! I'm considering getting rid of it and changing to something less bloated before it engulfs the whole machine!

-wb-

Office wins this one my friend

[Toreo asesino]

Actually, MS Office is pretty good at doing multiple lingos at once. I regularly have to write emails in Spanish and English and i never have to set the language at all - Office just works out after a sentence or two that I've switched and changes the paragraph language spelling and grammar checks appropriately. It works really well.

Missing ONE nail in M$ Office coffin:

[Anonymous Coward]

Please OOo/O3 folks, make Calc graphs/charts more interoperable with Excel.

My problem is the charts are very different from Excel, so it's not easy to port big xls files. Borders are good enough.

Didn't test 2.3 yet and thx for the excellent work till now.

What's new that I care about?

[edmicman]

What improvements are there that I care about from a user perspective? And how does OO 2.3 compare to the newly released Lotus Symphony suite?

Does the spreadsheet program have a useable Text-to-columns function yet, and can it use web data or consume web services for data? It seems like last time I checked, Excel was still quite superior to OO's spreadsheet offerings.

Too easy to make sheets that don't work on Excel

[JPMH]

My biggest problem with OOo was that it was far too easy to create spreadsheets that simply didn't work for other people looking at them with Excel. For a new user, playing with spreadsheets for the first time, to find this out having created some quite big and complicated spreadsheets in OOo was a huge turn-off. I now invariably use my old version of Excel '97.

AFAIK, there is not even a snag list of things to be careful of, that will work on OOo, but will break the sheet on Excel.

As well as formatting and display issues, as far as I remember the most systematic mistake I'd made was using mathematical formulas on ranges of cells including cells that are empty or contain strings. OOo would just treat them as having the numerical value zero, and carry on fine; but on Excel it would make the whole formula return an error.

Going through and debugging this (finding workarounds to make it work on Excel) is something I don't want to have to do again. Because I don't know what other things are there that may then not work on Excel, I no longer use OOo for spreadsheets.

Non standard standards

[carandol]

My first discovery on installing OOo 2.3 (for linux) is that Open Document files created in KWord no longer load into Writer correctly -- the default text style turns to Times New Roman, no matter what it was in the original document. Since I work on an old Thinkpad T21 (which takes 30 seconds to load OOo), I tend to use KWord for most of my writing, and only load up OOo if I need to do more complex things like tracking changes or printing A5 booklets. I've filed a bug report, reinstalled 2.2, and now wait to see whether it will be fixed before KWord 2.0 comes out, possibly with the features I'm currently missing.

Re:Non standard standards

[Anonymous Coward]

I am having a similar problem with an ODF I created in OO.o 2.0 or 2.1, the embeded images won't open in Writer 2.2.

[sarcasm]If this gets any worse I may as well use OOXML...[end sarcasm]

What does this have to do with Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux: OpenOffice 2.3 Released - what does OpenOffice have to do with Linux??? I just don't get it.

Is this from yet another clueless Linux person?

Re:What does this have to do with Linux?

[ClickOnThis]

Linux: OpenOffice 2.3 Released - what does OpenOffice have to do with Linux??? I just don't get it.

Is this from yet another clueless Linux person? Don't blame me. I contributed the story under "Index->Software".

The only thing that matters....

[TechnoBunny]

Does it run on Linux?

Re:The only thing that matters....

[Amazetbm]

LOL. Thanks for the laugh.

Gobbledygook new features

[kneels_bore]

After all the effort put into 2.3, couldn't somebody have sat down to write a couple of paragraphs in plain English explaining what the new features are? Do the leaders of this project live in a marketing stone age?

The key to using the database stuff..

[Anonymous Coward]

is to have a serial/autogenerated primary key for each table. Without that
you can't edit the table. Oh, look, a joke (key,key)!

What no OOXML support yet?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Pretty soon Turkministan and Azarbaijan and the little tropical paradise of Tuvalu and the Little Henderson Atoll will join ISO as full voting members and ratify not just the speed track of OOXML but also the final blessing. So hurry up guys and start wasting your time coding "pagebreak like in Word5, cutesy£ greek character in front ofî everyæ spaceê likeü inï wordstarÑ 1986"

[ducks and runs away and hides]

Try a du on the source tree

[Chemisor]

I have had a memorable moment with du one day. I was trying to explain to my non-geek sister why some programs are bloated and some are not. "See, we have these things called source code files, and the more of them you have, the bigger the resulting program will be." (Please don't be pedantic; I was not brave enough to explain template inlining and other such things, and you wouldn't have been either) "We have a program, we call 'du' that tells us how much space our source code uses. Here we have the source code for a simple program called bash. [run du on the bash source] As you can see, there isn't a lot of code. And here, by comparison, we have OpenOffice..." I rand du on the OpenOffice tree at this point, ready to point gleefully at the result, which I expected to be about a thousand times larger. "And here, you see that OpenOffice is... is..." and we kept watching, entranced, as du scanned the whole huge gigabyte tree for a good ten minutes. My poor sister was quite impressed. Especially because, like many non-technical people, she kept asking "how can you read it so fast?", assuming no doubt that I was keeping a running total in my head, adding up the partial du numbers as they scrolled by at breathtaking speed...

Trendline Equations!

[EvilRyry]

Trendline equations in calc has been highly requested since the 1.x days. They revamped the charting module supposedly and we still don't have it! Usually if I make a line, I WANT TO KNOW WHAT THE HELL THE FORMULA IS! How this bug has been left open for 5 years is a bit disturbing.

Adding to the list

[will.perdikakis]

11. Fix bulleting/numbering system. What a mess!

Mass Network Installation for Windows

[mgpeter]

If any admins out there would like to mass deploy OOo 2.3 onto their Windows Workstations, I created a "Mass Install Utility" that enables you to deploy it with a few mouse clicks.

Check it out here.

Note that I do recommend Novell's OOo version, but I do create the installer for the standard version as well (which I just updated to 2.3). To download the complete versions of the Installation Utility (which includes all files necessary) you must use Bittorrent and get the files from my tracker here.

IBM's Version Lotus Symphony

[Whiteox]

Don't forget that IBM have recently announced its own version called Lotus Symphony:
http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.jspa if your interested in the download for Linux and 32 bit windows.
It's free and based on Star Office/Open Office and is ODF compliant.
All you have to do is to register your organization with IBM and download it.

I wonder if they distribute CD versions?

It's too darn slow!!

[Xenomorph.NET]

System requirements for OpenOffice are higher than some versions of Microsoft Office! Everything from Office XP loads and runs very quick on my Pentium 1 w/ 96 Megs RAM. In fact, performance of MS Office on that system is slightly better than my Athlon 64 3000+ w/ 2 Gigs RAM running OpenOffice 2.x. OpenOffice takes longer to load up, uses more RAM when it is running, and simple things like resizing the window cause really slow re-draws of the program window. Throw in the fact that the most commonly used Microsoft Office application I've seen used it *Outlook*, to which OpenOffice does not have it's own version of - makes OpenOffice not even a choice for many companies out there. When OpenOffice's performance gets a major tune-up, and they add an Outlook clone, THEN people will see it as a real choice.

Let me know when they hit v7

[jollyreaper]

I'll so use 00.o7. *cue guitar theme*

faster news plz

[wikinerd]

I've already downloaded 2.3 yesterday - I wonder why Slashdot fails to announce cutting-edge news fast enough. One would assume that Firehose would help make the process faster, but it looks like more improvements could be made.

Emacs keybindings?

[Anonymous Coward]

So does it have emacs key bindings yet?

How about a consistent way to import key bindings from past releases so it doesn't need to be done from scratch for each release?

Please don't reply (again) with "give us cash". That response was old years ago.

Still needs Java? No thanks

[raitchison]

I know this is an unpopular position but I just can't stomach the use of Java, especially one that requires the Sun JVM (which is pretty much anything that uses Java)

Back when OpenOffice 2.x was being developed there was some controversy surrounding the Java requirement, then there was an announcement that the problem had been "solved" and that they were going to use GCJ or some other Java compiler. Apparently this never happened (maybe RMS was insisting that they call it "GNU/OpenOffice.org" ;-) ).

Hopefully once Java is finally open sourced there will be other real alternatives to the Sun JVM that don't suck quite as hard in the resource consumption department, until then OpenOffice is not something I'm going to consider.

I love pdfcreator and use it every day, but....

[Anonymous Coward]

...pdfcreator still has one major niggle in that it cannot properly handle URL's in pdf's.

Re:Too easy to make sheets that don't work on Exce

[Risen888]

Because Excel is defective (yes, by design), you gave up on OOo and use Excel?

I'm not trying to talk you down here or anything, I understand the necessity if you work an an MS shop, I live in the real world too. But I do take umbrage in your describing this as "your biggest problem with OOo."

FWIW, I have experienced some of the same formatting issues you describe. I am lucky enough to have the freedom where I could say "Well, fuck Excel then."

Re:I wonder... SADLY

[davidsyes]

That "base" has not a dint of the usability or award-gaining capacity that Lotus Approach did. Approach won SEVERAL awards in its prime. Base is STILL way off base in usability, apparent flexibility. I think the OO.o base devs are fiercely resistant to LOOKING at Lotus Approach. There is absolutely NO excuse for base to be so... OFF. It sucks, at least as of 2.0. Approach, if slipped into OO.o, would wipe the FLOOR with "Base". Of course, Base has a FEW things Approach hasn't got. But, Approach has more than Base has for "getting work DONE".

Re:Still needs Java? No thanks

[dwheeler]

OpenOffice.org doesn't require Sun's JVM. I believe the OpenOffice.org implementation on Fedora is compiled with gcj.

Re:Still needs Java? No thanks

[raitchison]

Not according to the system requirements:

"For full functionality, jdk/jre 1.4.0_02 or newer or jdk/jre 1.4.1_01 or newer is required"

Still have AmiPro and WordPro

[fahrbot-bot]

I *still* have AmiPro loaded on a system as well as WordPro. Both Kick Ass over Word!

Who killed AmiPro?

[Futurepower(R)]

I liked AmiPro, too. It had a MUCH more sensible menu system than Microsoft Word.

Who killed AmiPro? The executive who did that should be required to put it on his resume.

It's kind of a double comment on Java

[HiThere]

It's proof than Java can tackle really massive projects...and it's commentary on what the results will be.

OTOH, I use OOo on Linux, compiled under gcj (i.e., as a wierd dialect of C++) and it's pretty responsive. I also use it on a Mac...and it's not the same experience at ALL. It's so bad that I have trouble getting my wife to use it rather than a graphics program to write her letters in. ... Well, that's probably more than just Java, but I notice that the Gimp on the Mac doesn't have the same glacial use ... and it's more X Windows dependant then is OpenOffice, so perhaps it *IS* just the difference between native compilation vs. running in an interpreter (pardon me, virtual machine). Interpreters are almost always slow. With a well-done interpreter you count on the added flexibility to make up the difference, but I'm not convinced that Java HAS that flexibility. (Well, I haven't used Java much, so I'll concede that my opinion isn't very valuable, but Python and Ruby are flexible, Java emulates a compiler [which is why gcj is able to consider Java to be a dialect of C++].)

Re:It's kind of a double comment on Java

[cduffy]

Just curious -- any particular reason your wife hasn't tried NeoOffice? (Or have 'yall tried it and found that it didn't work out?)

Also, OOo is mostly C++ -- the java portions are actually in the minority.

Not quite sure how I parse the argument about flexibility making up for a performance difference, unless you're talking about reduced development cost compensating for increased hardware costs (which I can agree with, to a point). Most Java runtimes do at least some level of interpretation from bytecode to machine code. My experience thus far is that other than startup time (and when running code not written by a bonehead, which a great many Java developers are), modern Java (1.4+, using JRockit where appropriate) is actually a decent language with quite good runtime performance (for being garbage-collected and bytecode-based) but with a standard library written by a company that couldn't design a graphics API which is simultaneously usable (which Swing almost is, but AWT is not -- lowest-common-denominator for your widget selection sucks!) and performant (which AWT almost is, but Swing is not -- failing to take advantage of native widgets when they're available sucks!) to save their lives; ironically, the most unsucky Java-centric graphics library I know of is from the Eclipse project, SWT). For the most part, though, I've even gotten to the point of forgiving Sun for not providing an interface to the select() call in earlier versions -- and forgiveness for that takes some doing.

That said -- Java-the-language is certainly not built around flexibility (yes, you've got introspection, but it's much more out-of-your-way to use than in newer languages -- and the number of lines of code needed to get something done is frequently more than it should be), but it's not even remotely the only one targeting the JVM. I've had much fun with JVM-targeted Scheme implementations (Scheme's biggest weakness, after all, is the unstandardized and frequently useless runtime library), and really really wish Jython would get its legs back (which maybe it's doing -- I see they've finally gotten 2.2 out the door). (That said, the bytecode-targeted language I'm having the most fun with when I get playtime is Boo -- it borrows Python's good ideas, adds in several more of its own, but targets the .NET CLR and so is a little off-topic for this thread).

A bigger problem is Java developers being taught to do things in ways which are trendy but not performant -- such as using threading in cases where asynchronous calls from a smaller number of threads makes more sense. Part of this is because the language itself forced people to do things that way until it was improved (things like NIO being introduced), and part of this is because of people coming to Java without experience playing outside the JVM's sandbox and thus having a good idea of what's involved in terms of the work the JVM and OS and the hardware have to do to actually run the code they're writing...

...but anyhow, I've been rambling, and will stop now. Suffice to say that, though, that Java itself has its share of warts, but nonetheless has been at least somewhat unfairly maligned.

Re:It's kind of a double comment on Java

[HiThere]

She's tried NeoOffice...and it was better than OOo 1.x. Now she only uses it if she needs Mac system fonts. (Admittedly this is partially because she can't keep them straight, so I hid the one that's less frequently appropriate. It's in the system folder, but no longer on the toolbar. Nothing beats trying to edit the same file with two programs at once....except trying to explain what happened to someone who can't keep them straight.)

It's wierd the way people have different skill sets...but it can certainly be useful. I use her skills all the time to manage social events. She uses mine to manage computer access. Neither one of us can do what the other does.

Re:Too easy to make sheets that don't work on Exce

[JPMH]

I was trying to share analyses of genealogical DNA data with other people online. The sad truth is that at the moment an overwhelming majority of random users turn to Excel as their default spreadsheet. That makes any differences between the two OOo's problem, not Excel's. At the very least, OOo could use an "Excel preview mode".

Is Excel "defective by design" in this area? Regarding Excel's greater pickyness about data integrity, arguably that design choice is actually an Excel feature, not a defect. But I wonder if the correct handling by formulas of such mixed data is actually explicitly addressed by either of the would-be standards, ODF or OOXML.

Whatever, this is the kind of detail that implementations must agree on, if document exchange is to be a reality. And at the moment accurate document exchange with Excel is a make-or-break requirement for OOo.

Meh...

[calebt3]

Ubuntu Gutsy has had 2.3 for at least a week now.

Faster Charts

[Bilbo]

I don't do a lot with spreadsheets, but one thing I've found that works a LOT better with OOo 2.3 is generating charts. I could usually get what I needed from charts in v2.2.1, but it was bloody slow. They've made some significant changes in the charts Wizard (not all good...), but what really hits me is the time it takes to actually generate the chart. The new version is several times faster than before.

Story about Michael Schrayer of Electric Pencil.

[Futurepower(R)]

Electric Pencil!

In 1976 I was in a computer store owned by a friend, a very nice store in an upscale area.

Someone walked in who I assumed would be asked to leave because he looked so disreputable. He had poor skin and unkempt hair. If you had looked in the dumpsters in that area you could not have found clothing as old and trashy-looking as this man's. (That is not an exaggeration.) Back then you would have called him a bum, because we didn't have homeless people in that area until after Reagan was elected and had a chance to work his corruption.

After a while my friend came over to me, and I asked him why he didn't ask the disreputable person to leave. He said, "That's Michael Schrayer, the man who wrote Electric Pencil!. He may look poor, but he is at least a millionaire."

XML is "reveal codes" on steroids

[tepples]

Which is precisely my experience as well. Not to mention very popular feature requests such as reveal codes. Anything that loads and saves ODF already has reveal codes. Just rename the .odt to .zip, edit the XML files inside, and rename it back to .odt.

Re:XML is "reveal codes" on steroids

[WWWWolf]

Anything that loads and saves ODF already has reveal codes. Just rename the .odt to .zip, edit the XML files inside, and rename it back to .odt.

That's not exactly user-friendly because it's not integrated to the GUI. The way it worked in WordPerfect 5.1 (the last word processor I used that had this feature) was this: Hit a button, and you get a split-screen editing mode where your normal editing view is above and the code display is below. Make changes, and they appear in code display right away.

Most importantly there was no need to leave the application, wade through non-prettyprinted XML to find the exact spot you was interested of, edit and repack.

I think OpenOffice.org just needs a built-in XML mode. Inkscape is a good example of an application that uses XML documents and has a very nice (document type-specific) XML editor right in the application.

Re:XML is "reveal codes" on steroids

[jimicus]

Anything that loads and saves ODF already has reveal codes. Just rename the .odt to .zip, edit the XML files inside, and rename it back to .odt.

While you're technically correct, this is exactly the sort of "you've already got that feature, just do (insert obscure thing here)" approach that keeps Open Source user interfaces about 10 years behind everything else.

I am reminded of a Dilbert strip which said "I'll make the command easy to remember, like 'CTRL-ALT-F4-DEL.' And if they forget that, they can just edit the source code in 'COMMAND.COM.' Perfect."

Re:XML is "reveal codes" on steroids

[tepples]

While you're technically correct, this is exactly the sort of "you've already got that feature, just do (insert obscure thing here)" approach that keeps Open Source user interfaces about 10 years behind everything else. I agree that OOo could use something like Inkscape's XML tree editor. So who has filed this user interface suggestion as a feature request in OOo's issue tracker?

Re:XML is "reveal codes" on steroids

[Gorgonzola]

Which is technically completely accurate but nonetheless for all practical intents and purposes the kind of utterly useless solution that is so completely off this world only geeks can come up with. Not to mention that it is not comparable to WordPerfect's split-screen reveal codes functionality at all.

Let me help:

[Futurepower(R)]

"They've leveraged their synergy?"

They've leveraged their synergistic enterprise solutions to achieve pervasive market recognition.

To type that, I got a keyboard out of trash. More efficient than scrubbing.

(This has been typical Slashdot male competition. Thank you for reading.)

Correction:

[Futurepower(R)]

Oops. I should have said 1977 or 78.

GNU vs. CC license compatibility?

[tepples]

1. Use Tango Icons How can icons under one of the Creative Commons licenses be used in a program under one of the GNU licenses? I thought CC licenses, which require downstream distributors to remove a contributor's copyright notice on request from that contributor, were incompatible with several software licenses, which require downstream distributors to preserve all contributors' copyright notices.

For older browsers that don't support CSS3 Which web browser supports even the majority of the latest CSS3 draft correctly?

Re:GNU vs. CC license compatibility?

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk to the copyright owners and see if they'll allow a dual-licence. Pay them for it if need be.

Bug in installer

[kbg]

There is a bug in the installer, I have Open Office 2.2 installed and it
asks for openofficeorg22.msi before it can install 2.3, didn't anyone
even think of actually testing the installer?

Re:Bug in installer

[ambrosen]

would that be openofficeorg22.msi the version that is kept after installation in a subfolder of your Windows directory for uninstallation?

Re:Bug in installer

[kbg]

No that would be the files that the installer unpacks to a subfolder on your desktop. If you delete this folder, which of course you do because no one likes programs to leave crap which has no use on their desktop then you can't install the new version.

Re:Bug in installer

[El_Oscuro]

Oracle and Microsoft never do. Why should anyone else?

"Default" still means not to repay one's loan

[tepples]

well, that command should be named "default style" now ;) "Default" still means not to repay one's loan, and any menu option with "default" in it is still confusing. (The page on kde.org does not have named anchors; please search for the word Default.)

Speed is not a problem

[ciaran.mchale]

Lots of people on slashdot are complaining that OOo is slow. For goodness sake, guys. Just run it on a Beowulf cluster and it will be plenty fast enough. At least according to the overlords.

Re:Too easy to make sheets that don't work on Exce

[AeroIllini]

My biggest problem with Firefox was that it was far too easy to create webpages that simply didn't work for other people looking at them with Internet Explorer. For a new user, playing with designing websites for the first time, to find this out having created some quite big and complicated websites in Firefox was a huge turn-off. I now invariably use my old version of IE 6.

AFAIK, there is not even a snag list of things to be careful of, that will work on Firefox, but will break the page on IE.

As well as formatting and display issues, as far as I remember the most systematic mistake I'd made was using margin and padding values on ranges of divs with exact pixel width measurements. Firefox would treat them as additions to the width, and carry on fine; but on IE it would make the whole box width the maximum.

Going through and debugging this (finding workarounds to make it work on IE) is something I don't want to have to do again. Because I don't know what other things are there that may then not work on IE, I no longer use Firefox for designing webpages. Funny how, for web browsers, that same logic is used to call for change in the broken Microsoft product, instead of shunning the program that works better.

Re:Too easy to make sheets that don't work on Exce

[Risen888]

OOo spreadsheets can export to PDF just fine. I realize that doesn't help anyone on the receiving end edit, but if they're just viewing the information you should have no problem.

The sad truth is that at the moment an overwhelming majority of random users turn to Excel as their default spreadsheet. That makes any differences between the two OOo's problem, not Excel's.

I still respectfully disagree. Especially if you're not in an office environment and they can download and install OOo just as easily as anyone else.

I really believe if people would just get over the fact that these are two different application suites (one of which uses non-documented binary formatting deliberately to break compatibility) and stop pouring so much effort into .xls and .doc compatibility, maybe OOo could actually, y'know, innovate.

And at the moment accurate document exchange with Excel is a make-or-break requirement for OOo.

Not for everyone. If you absolutely must have perfect .xls files, use Excel. I've heard it does that.

Open Office or Star Office

[infonote]

The question is, should I use Open Office or Star Office?

Re:Michael Schrayer, and Electric Bill Gates

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh! Sometimes I also am given to wearing cut-off jeans and a torn t-shirt. (It's been my standard shopping and carousing attire since, oh, the lates '60s.)
But not, of course when I am hob-nobbing with my ex-associate cubicle hoi-polloi.
Schrayer sounds like the kind of guy I would just love to share a cheap bottle of Pinoqachole with, while trading ideas and objets d'art in the bottom of a dumpster!
But you?

Sounds like you frequently wear a suit and tie to bed.
..
..... ?
(Gasp!) You're Bill Gates, aren't you!
I KNEW that someday we'd eventually catch you lurking on /. !!

Re:Michael Schrayer, and Electric Bill Gates

[Anonymouse Cow-Orker]

LOL!

Hey save some room in that dumpster for me! But keep the dumsters out.
I have great idea for electric vodka.
Oh yeah- Yep it is Bill Gates. I recognize the eyeglasses.
And he wears those to bed too. LOL.

Re:Still needs Java? No thanks

[tehcyder]

I know this is an unpopular position but I just can't stomach the use of Java

You must have accidentally posted this to the wrong forum. This is slashdot, jeans and trainers welcome, Java and Windows are barred.

Re:Too easy to make sheets that don't work on Exce

[JPMH]

Cute, but two differences I think:

1. A problem between Firefox and IE affects my ability to read stuff, which I can see, and if necessary I can work around. But a problem with OOo and Excel affects (unsuspectedly) my ability to communicate, which I can only fix by going to Excel.

2. A problem between Firefox and IE will in general at worst only uglify the display - but I can still understand what's there. and if necessary I can look at it in IE. But if formulas don't compute, that's content -- thw whole information I'm trying to convey, the results and how to calculate them, all is lost.

That's why at the end of the day the problem between Firefox and IE is a fleabite that I can live with. But the problem with OOo is (for me) a showstopper that I can't.

Re:As another Gentoo user...

[chris_sawtell]

who actually has a distcc farm, I'm sorry to have to tell you that when I compiled OOo-2.3 yesterday it didn't use the other machine _at all_, and took many hours to do the build. I was both very troubled and disappointed.

Shrayer, without the c

[nobaloney]

Shrayer, without the c. There's a photo of him here: http://www2.polito.it/didattica/polymath/ICT/Htmls/Studenti/Universita/Tesi-DAlessandro/Quei%20favolosi%20anni%20'70_file/image070.gif

I crossed paths with Michael many times, most recently at a resort in Southern California in the early 90s.

Earlier than that when I ran a TRS-80 software project at Programma International and we released a product named Pencil Point which added inline formatting (similar to what later became HTML) based on codes I'd used on earlier Alphatype and CompuGraphic typesetting systems.

Before then, Electric Pencil was strictly wysiwyg. I started development on Pencil Point before merging my Practical Applications company with Programma International, after meeting with Arthur Schawlow (yes, that Arthur Shawlow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schawlow) who was working towards getting Stanford University to switch from expensive Wang word processing systems to using the TRS-80 Model One with a hardware hack to enable lower case.

While that project never caught on (probably because of the required hardware hack), Shawlow was definitely ahead of his day, as was Michael Shrayer.

Michael was a cameraman (I don't remember whether for television or film) when he wrote Electric Pencil. Based on conversations with him, I believe he never really earned that much money from the project. I don't believe he was ever a millionaire.

Was Michael a millionaire?

[Futurepower(R)]

"I don't believe he was ever a millionaire."

After talking briefly with Michael, my friend who owned the computer store told me how many copies of Electric Pencil he had sold at his store. I don't remember the number or the price, but I do remember that it was quite obvious to both of us that Michael had earned more than a million dollars.