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OpenOffice 2.3 Released

Posted by Zonk on from the yay-free-software dept.

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."

24 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. I wonder by Virtual_Raider · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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 =)

    --
    +Raider of the lost BBS
    1. Re:I wonder by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    2. Re:I wonder by barry_the_bogan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    3. Re:I wonder by namityadav · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    4. Re:I wonder by cyborch · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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...

    5. Re:I wonder by clarkkent09 · · Score: 5, Funny

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

      "they" being every software developer who ever existed

      --
      Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
    6. Re:I wonder by Virtual_Raider · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      +Raider of the lost BBS
    7. Re:I wonder by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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 :)

    8. Re:I wonder by haeger · · Score: 4, Interesting
      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

      --
      You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
    9. Re:I wonder by the_womble · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    10. Re:I wonder by Budenny · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  2. Error bars - woohoo! by Goonie · · Score: 5, Informative
    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...

    --

    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
    --Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
    1. Re:Error bars - woohoo! by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

      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

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  3. When complaining about missing features by pembo13 · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    --
    "Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
  4. The big feature! by aurelito · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  5. As a Gentoo user... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I am deeply troubled by this announcement.

    1. Re:As a Gentoo user... by UberLord · · Score: 4, Informative

      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 :)

  6. Use the bittorent - it's fast by suv4x4 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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)

  7. Source Code Cleanup by mdm42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    New mod option wanted: -1 DrunkenRambling
    1. Re:Source Code Cleanup by JohnFluxx · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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 :)

  8. Re:Not compatible ? by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  9. Re:Sign the damn installer (Windows) by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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).

    --
    If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  10. Re:Sign the damn installer (Windows) by tomknight · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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?

    --
    Oh arse
  11. Re:British English. by Corporate+Troll · · Score: 5, Informative

    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).