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OpenOffice.org 2.3 Review
Peace Frog writes passed us a link to an in-depth review of the newest version of OpenOffice. Instead of just the normal bug fixes, 2.3 has added several new features. Examples include: "A bunch of new and enhanced features like restoring the user-defined movement path in Impress and applying better default print settings in Calc. Check the release notes for complete information from OpenOffice.org. A significantly different chart tool. New extensions provided by Sun and other vendors. You will need to run 2.3 for the extensions to work. Read more about the new extensions on the OpenOffice.org web site." The general impression from the review is that the OO team is doing an excellent job of responding to feedback from previous releases.
To try to change this from simply a troll to a constructive post, why not mention the things they coded wrong this time? I'll start:
* Not having a user definable number of columns (instead sticking with the old 256).
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
I think this is unrelated to 2.3, but I was excited to see yesterday that Novell now has an OOXML Translator for OO.o. I was going to have to buy Office 2007 for my fiance soon because she needs to open .docx files that are emailed to her regularly. Now I don't have to bother.
Whatever you say about Novell, I appreciate their work.
The parent troll conveniently ignored the fact that OO was a commercial product, sold to sun the subsequently open sourced. OpenOffice.org didn't write the original code, neither did Sun. Marco Börries at 16, dropped out of high school in Germany to establish 1984 to sell Star Office under the corporate name Star Division. The fact that it is still around today and competing with Microsoft is an amazing feat in itself.
X11 isn't monolithic anymore, it was modularized starting with version 7.0. my personal memory usage for an idle X desktop dropped by almost 100 meg with either xfce or gnome when I switched, almost a year ago now as I recall.
thats right, I rarely use capitals. deal with it. but don't mistake my laziness for stupidity
A pretty minor bug, me'thinks. There's a perfectly good accepted extension for comma-delimited files, it's called CSV.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I don't know, what they did to OOo, but when I upgraded from the 2.0.2 to 2.3.0, the performance of the Writer dropped dramatically. I have a document, which contains 20 500x500 pixel images distributed over 30 pages. The scrolling from one page to another is awful. It takes from 5 to 20 seconds to switch from one page to another. This delay seems to be pretty random but consistent at the same time, because it doesn't matter if I already have visited both pages and I'm working between these two pages, the delay still varies between the 5-20 seconds each time. I didn't have this problem with the 2.0.2 version. Now I'm considering downgrading back to 2.0.2.
Disclaimer: I am one of the founders of NeoOffice.
Being based on OOo 1.x, IBM does not need to release the source code for Symphony. OOo was originally dual licensed both under LGPL and the SISSL license. SISSL allows companies to make completely closed source forks, only providing notice of the original vendor and SISSL license. This license was one of the primary motivating factors for why we forked and created NeoOffice, to prevent companies from making a commercial product whose improvements couldn't be shared back with all the volunteers that had worked to create it.
Closed source forking is also our reason for using full GPL since it guarantees everyone's freedom to access the code. Not even LGPL provides that ability since commercial closed source proprietary code can still be incorporated provided it's in a shared library. Only the full GPL provides enough protections to ensure that everyone must cooperate and that no one can make key parts of the project rely on closed source solutions.
ed
They forked before OO.o went LGPL only. It used to also be under the Sun Industry Standards Source License, which didn't require the full source to be made public.
Have you tried READING THE HELP file??? Calc CAN open a CSV file as a spreadsheet. It works differently than Excel, but why is that a problem; Excel does it WRONG. By definition, a CSV file IS a text file and unless you provide other guidance in the File Open dialog, why would you expect it to do other than what it is programmed to do?
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?
Rename file.txt to file.csv.
Understand now?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
HUH, you need a little history; Excel did it differently than Visicalc, Smartcalc, THE Spreadsheet, or even Microsoft's own Multiplan. It was intentional on Microsoft's part to break compatibility so you would have difficulty going back to another product. OOo returns to the standard used by all other apps.
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?
For a 200 pages document, nothing comes near LaTeX.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Where it breaks down is easy, it depends on the default printer. Try switching between a laser which is 300dpi based and an inkjet that is 360dpi based, and watch your document formatting go to pot :-)
The problem comes from the way the TrueType font render works. When you ask for say 12pt Times New Roman what you actually get back depends on the device you are rendering to. The hinter fiddles with the font so that it looks good and in the process changes the metrics...
All my reports are readable by Windows machines (you may have heard of PDF files).
.doc: bad idea. Professionally, anyway. I've worked in a few places that don't allow documents to be sent as Windows .doc files because of the possibility clients can turn tracking on and see previous changes including possibly sensitive data that has been "deleted". It's a good practice that students should follow too.
As for
Couldn't stand the weather