An Early Look at OpenOffice.org 3.0

ahziem writes "With the final release 167 days away and an alpha version available, it's time to look at OpenOffice.org 3.0's new features: view multiple pages in Writer, notes in the margin, Microsoft Office 2007 file format support, Solver in Calc, new visual theme in Calc, native tables in Impress, more columns in Calc, error bars in charts, performance improvements, real native Aqua Mac support, and more."

Comments

Crap, is documentation out of date?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just recently invested in The OpenOffice.org 2 Guidebook , which cost quite a bit. Is 3 going to have massive new UI changes that mean I have to learn how to use the program all over again?

Re:Crap, is documentation out of date?

[allcar]

Real men never RTFM, anyway.
But seriously, it should be one of the goals of the project to ensure that such books are not really need. The GUI should be intuitive where possible and on-line help should be thorough where it is required.

Re:Crap, is documentation out of date?

[ozmanjusri]

Why not just try it for yourself? You can get it from the /developer/DEV300_*/ directory of any of the mirrors.

Re:Crap, is documentation out of date?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's my view that most statements in software documentation are required because of flaws (UI or other) in the software.

Any statements in the documentation that start out "Don't" or marked "Warning" or "Notice" are always present because of flaws -- the right approach is to fix the software (and remove the statement from the documentation).

Re:Crap, is documentation out of date?

[EvanED]

Any statements in the documentation that start out "Don't" or marked "Warning" or "Notice" are always present because of flaws -- the right approach is to fix the software (and remove the statement from the documentation).

So if the documentation says "Warning: Once a file is deleted from the recycle bin, it is impossible to recover" that shows that there is a flaw in the software?

Re:Crap, is documentation out of date?

[girasquid]

Well, it is called the "Recycle" bin...;)

Re:Crap, is documentation out of date?

[Waffle Iron]

Any statements in the documentation that start out "Don't" or marked "Warning" or "Notice" are always present because of flaws -- the right approach is to fix the software (and remove the statement from the documentation).

Let's apply that to other products in the real world. How about a table saw: that's covered with warning stickers and the instruction manual is full of safety notices. These are all flaws, and we'll change the saw's design to remove them one by one. At the end of the process, we'll have a flawless and user friendly cutting tool: a plastic butter knife.

No thanks, I'll take my powerful but "dangerous" software over dumbed down pablum.

Re:Crap, is documentation out of date?

[MBGMorden]

So if the documentation says "Warning: Once a file is deleted from the recycle bin, it is impossible to recover" that shows that there is a flaw in the software? Actually, I'd call that a flaw in the documentation ;). Too many people believe that your everyday "Delete" on a computer is absolutely permanent, and as such few take the time to "securely delete" sensitive data (ie, by overwriting it several times before removing the file system entry, the latter of which is the only thing done by a regular delete).

Re:Crap, is documentation out of date?

[AvitarX]

I imagine it will be like Office XP to Office 2007.

In other words, if you know how to use the program not too big a deal after a few hours using it. The built in help will get you most of the way, along with a little bit of searching for words you recognize.

The real problem is with the people that use it like a robot and don't really know how to use the program at all.

Re:Crap, is documentation out of date?

[Knuckles]

The real problem is with the people that use it like a robot and don't really know how to use the program at all.

And the people who know it so well that it's all reflexes. I know, I worked as a PowerPoint presentation designer for a few years, and everything I did then had begone to work automatic. How I would approach a complex slide (objects to use, grouping), how I would grab objects, menus, shortcuts, everything. PowerPoint 2007 wants to make me tear my hair out.

Re:Crap, is documentation out of date?

[Knuckles]

PowerPoint 2007 wants to make me tear my hair out.

Yeah, that must be it.

Re:Crap, is documentation out of date?

[SlashWombat]

Actually, I'd call that a flaw in the documentation ;). Too many people believe that your everyday "Delete" on a computer is absolutely permanent, and as such few take the time to "securely delete" sensitive data (ie, by overwriting it several times before removing the file system entry, the latter of which is the only thing done by a regular delete).

You obviously dont have a clue! What makes you think the operating system "overwrites" the file to the same place on the HDD? All you have done by "overwriting" the file is to create more copies of it on the HDD. The "DoD overwrite" is performed more like a low level format, and done on the entire media. It NOT something you can successfully apply from most OS file management utilities.
The reason for the overwrite used to be that using drive forensics, data that had been stored for a long time would affect the magnetic domains beyond the edge of the written track. one overwrite would not effectively "reset" the data at (beyond really) the "accidental" data. To read back the data required special hardware to extract the signal. (Just for starters, the HDD head needs to be moved OFF its track slightly, and the signal thresholds need adjustment.) It is extremely unlikely that these techniques still work with modern disk drives due to the newer record head technologies employed.

So, except for floppy disks, DoD overwite is unlikely to be of much use in this day and age. (And, who uses floppies anymore?)

Re:Crap, is documentation out of date?

[orasio]

Any statements in the documentation that start out "Don't" or marked "Warning" or "Notice" are always present because of flaws -- the right approach is to fix the software (and remove the statement from the documentation).

Let's apply that to other products in the real world. How about a table saw: that's covered with warning stickers and the instruction manual is full of safety notices. These are all flaws, and we'll change the saw's design to remove them one by one. At the end of the process, we'll have a flawless and user friendly cutting tool: a plastic butter knife.

No thanks, I'll take my powerful but "dangerous" software over dumbed down pablum.

Ok. Software does not live in the real world. Some rules do not apply. "Undo" is rarely available in the real world, and backups are much more expensive there. There are reasons why warnings in software can be changed into fixes.

About your table saw, that proves the original poster point. There are new table saws that only make a small cut in your finger if you try to cut it off, maybe future designs can make it as safe to use as a plastic butter knife. I don't think losing fingers is inherent to cutting wood, current design can cope with that, and it can only improve.

Re:Crap, is documentation out of date?

[MBGMorden]

You obviously dont have a clue! What makes you think the operating system "overwrites" the file to the same place on the HDD? All you have done by "overwriting" the file is to create more copies of it on the HDD. The "DoD overwrite" is performed more like a low level format, and done on the entire media. It NOT something you can successfully apply from most OS file management utilities. I never suggested just idiotically copying a file of the same name over the file you wish to delete. I suggested using a "secure deletion" program - there are many out there. They don't just say "Can you please write x file with the same name Mr Friendly OS?". They use the OS file table to determine the exact sectors occupied by the file's current data, remove the entry from the file system table, and then proceed to write random data across those previously occupied sectors. It does NOT have to be done "whole disk" at a time, and can be achieved using easy to obtain (but usually third party) software.

Re:Crap, is documentation out of date?

[Waffle Iron]

There are new table saws that only make a small cut in your finger if you try to cut it off, maybe future designs can make it as safe to use as a plastic butter knife.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. But I'd bet good money that this saw's manual comes with *more* warnings than a normal saw. (WARNING: Never use your actual finger to test failsafe mechanism! CAUTION: Electrical interference may cause false triggering!, etc.)

Re:Crap, is documentation out of date?

[Risen888]

+1. See emacs "ctrl-h d" for a perfect example.

Re:Crap, is documentation out of date?

[lysse]

Well, if it does, at least you'll still be able to find a copy of OO.o 2 in a decade - which makes upgrading somewhat less pressing than with certain other office suites that might make wholesale changes to their UI.

Re:Crap, is documentation out of date?

[Anonymous Coward]

So if the documentation says "Warning: Once a file is deleted from the recycle bin, it is impossible to recover" that shows that there is a flaw in the software?

No, that's a flaw in the documentation. You don't warn people about that. That's breeding a large number of users who delete things and then come to you saying, "oh, I've made a mistake and deleted the file, can't you get it back?"

People need to learn that the default behavior of "delete" means gone. That means you instead tell them, "you can recover files sent to the recycle bin" since that deviates from default behavior. And yes, the information is still on the hard drive even after deleting from the recycle bin, and you can use recovery software to dig it out before it is overwritten, but the average user shouldn't know about that, or again, they're going to start being careless about deletion.

Re:Crap, is documentation out of date?

[orasio]

There are new table saws that only make a small cut in your finger if you try to cut it off, maybe future designs can make it as safe to use as a plastic butter knife.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. But I'd bet good money that this saw's manual comes with *more* warnings than a normal saw. (WARNING: Never use your actual finger to test failsafe mechanism! CAUTION: Electrical interference may cause false triggering!, etc.)

I just pointed out that example because it was very illustrative. My point is that he was right saying that warnings are really design shortcomings. A perfect design would have no warning. Nobody said that a perfect design is achievable, but with software we are much closer, because detected shortcomings are relatively easy to fix, finding them is more difficult. In a free software project, where they tend to have honest public relations, "known issues" for a release tend to get fixed for the next release, implying that those "warnings" could be easily removed.

Re:Crap, is documentation out of date?

[varunjain]

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Re:Crap, is documentation out of date?

[hey!]

That's not really a good example, because the stickers aren't there to protect the user from the product. They're there to protect the vendor from the users.

In fact, the proliferation of warning stickers is a disservice to user safety, because it teaches them to become functionally blind to caution notices.

Getting back to this issue of deleting files, I think that the problem is one of metaphors. In some ways, the trash can metaphor is a particularly good one, because it reproduces the same characteristics of its real world counterpart, down to the aspects people don't think about enough. Anybody can easily fish a document out of a trash can, real or virtual. Once the trash has been "taken away", all bets are off; you can't count on getting any of it back, nor can you count on somebody with enough determination and knowledge of the trash processing system being unable to retrieve part or all of the document. Taking your credit card bills out to the curb in a recycling bin doesn't keep an identity thief from recovering them. Nor should you count on being able to get them back if you want to dispute a charge.

In as sense, what is missing is a "shredder". Of course the physical process of shredding a paper document is just an encumbrance to the computer file user: you don't want to shred a document then put it in the trash. But this carries over the bit of the process that is essential to the user: you shred things you want to be unrecoverable, not just "thrown away".

This points out, I think, the reason that documentation has to make up for insufficient design. Distinguishing "shredding" from "trashing" would communicate the notion that trashing is less secure. On the other hand, it is true that some users will take the unintended message that deleted files can always be recovered. This is unfortunate, but you can't shield people from every folly they might commit. You are responsible to make clear where your metaphors are flawed, either in documentation or in notification; you can't be faulted for when your metaphors actually work the way they are supposed to. If you find you needs lots of explanations for why your metaphors don't work, then your metaphors are not being helpful, and maybe you need new ones.

New Feature

[LMacG]

"notes in the margin"? That must be for all the OO.o users named Fermat.

Re:New Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

agreed. but being able to display multiple pages side by side is a feature i've been waiting for (after i had to find out via multiple google-queries that it isn't possible yet). it'll be really nice to utilize that good ol' 21"-CRT when writing my papers!

Thanks, OOo! I left Microsoft Office in 2005 and never looked back.

Re:New Feature

[amias]

There is a simple workaround , go to the Window menu and do 'New Window' then line them up next to each other
un-maximised , this fits nicely on a widescreen monitor . It will happily display the same document in two windows .
Will be good to have that properly integrated though.

Maybe it might be worth putting some logic in OOO to detect widescreen and adjust the layouts accordingly ,
seems a lot of programs are not designed with widescreen in mind.

Toodle-pip
Amias

Re:New Feature

[MidnightBrewer]

Personally, I'd love to be able to have a notes feature. I was just recently collaborating remotely on a business letter and we had to type our justification for changes directly into the document. Screwed up the formatting, to say the least, and wasn't that great for readability, either.

Re:New Feature

[Creaturee]

I was just over at the OpenOffice site browsing through some of their marketing materials to see if there was anything interesting. I came across a presentation that was given on September 19th at the OpenOffice 2007 Conference. The presentation was called "OpenOffice.org 3.0 and Beyond," and it walked through some of the most notable features that are expected to be released in the next big OpenOffice milestone. The presentation was actually pretty interesting to flip through, but the one thing that really caught my attention was their reference to including a Personal Information Manager (PIM). More specifically the presentation mentions bundling Thunderbird with their Office Suite, and refers to it as an "Outlook replacement." This is all assuming that Thunderbird recently losing two of it's main developers doesn't affect the decision, because I'm sure OpenOffice wants to ensure that Thunderbird will continue to progress before including it. A post that I made earlier this year regarding Thunderbird as an Outlook replacement really sparked some heated debates in the comments. People were saying that it will never happen, yet this is the direct goal of the new OpenOffice. They plan on including the Lightning add-on for Thunderbird so that in addition to email support, users will also be able to manage their schedule and appointments. http://cybernetnews.com/2007/10/13/openoffice-30-wants-to-compete-with-outlook/

Re:New Feature

[Arancaytar]

Which should completely eliminate the tired old "not enough space to explain it here" excuse. :P

Re:New Feature

[RiotingPacifist]

any chance theyre going to stop copying MS and start beating them?
How about:
*A themable interface so it can look like office 07 or pre-07
*Dynamic toolbars so that when you select a table the top toolbar gains table buttons, but removed non-usable buttons (dims ones that arnt directly to do with tables, like formatting)
*Intelligent, spell checker, for years spell checkers haven't changed, if it picked out words that made sense in the context of the sentence that would be a huge step forwards.
*A more intuitive interface, with pointless effects, yeah people like them. For example turning pages by the corner, dragging text FF3 style, clicking on a small graph to have it expand to full size.
*Firefox plugins, so that we can view presentations in browsers.
*New graph types, we all see statistics abused on TV, why cant we abuse them at home. For example have objects fill up acording to data (by either height or volume), attack logos to lines on graphs
**(This isn't really in their scope, as their not a scientific data suit, but meh ill post it anyway) Marking of anomalous data points and ignoring them when plotting the graph.
**Marking of the 3 lines of best fit, when using error-bars

And while they're at it how about they remove their stupid clause, and make it fully GPL

Playing catchup with Microsoft (or anybody) is pathetic, if MS office still has more features few people will care that thief docs arnt portable.

Re:New Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks, but that is kind of an ugly hack - especially not being able to scroll simultaneously

Re:New Feature

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

*A themable interface so it can look like office 07 or pre-07 In other words, copying Office?

*Dynamic toolbars so that when you select a table the top toolbar gains table buttons, but removed non-usable buttons (dims ones that arnt directly to do with tables, like formatting) User interface that changes based on where your cursor happens to be is a Bad Idea. Consistency = not having to remember where to find things at any given time.

*Intelligent, spell checker, for years spell checkers haven't changed, if it picked out words that made sense in the context of the sentence that would be a huge step forwards. Agreed. Also, the ability to add words to the dictionary with one 2 clicks instead of three. (Seriously. Why the hell woudl the user know or care whether it goes to 'sun.dic', 'openoffice.dic' or 'user.dic'?!)

*A more intuitive interface, with pointless effects, yeah people like them. For example turning pages by the corner, dragging text FF3 style, clicking on a small graph to have it expand to full size. This was a joke, right?

*Firefox plugins, so that we can view presentations in browsers. That'd be very cool; and yet also very irritating. I personally hate the way PDF opens in browser, requiring me to go to task manager to kill it if I want my 80MB of memory back. (I've since turned that off...)

*New graph types, we all see statistics abused on TV, why cant we abuse them at home. For example have objects fill up acording to data (by either height or volume), attack logos to lines on graphs Probably because there are like 10 people who actually need those in real life.

Playing catchup with Microsoft (or anybody) is pathetic, if MS office still has more features few people will care that thief docs arnt portable. Not really. The majority of people don't use the majority of features in MS Office.

Re:New Feature

[RiotingPacifist]

In other words, copying Office? yeah, but giving the users the choice, so effectively copying but beating them.

User interface that changes based on where your cursor happens to be is a Bad Idea. Consistency = not having to remember where to find things at any given time. perhaps mi posted it wrong the 1st time but basically you have the buttons that are always avalible in one section, then the buttons that are only usable when an item is selected in another. Its hard to explain but it allows more buttons to be available, while still letting the document be visible. For example table buttons would just waste space space when your editing a picture and visa versa, so only 1 space for table/picture buttons is needed.
|A A A A A A| T T T T T T | A A
|A A A A A A| P P P P P P | A A
All the usable buttons are in the same place when their usable, nobody is going to be looking for a P button when they have a table selected so it doesn't matter that they're not there.
I think KDE do some stuff like this but im not sure.

Probably because there are like 10 people who actually need those in real life. the ability to attach a company logo to a graph would be useful, when doing comparisons.

That'd be very cool; and yet also very irritating. I personally hate the way PDF opens in browser, requiring me to go to task manager to kill it if I want my 80MB of memory back. (I've since turned that off...) well its up to the browser weather to use the plugin.

This was a joke, right? Not really, compiz boosted linux adoption, have it optional sure, but if something looks better, people will think it IS better.
And fancy graphics sometimes do useful stuff (fast zooming, color shifting, etc). Flipping pages as a way of changing the page, could allow for the page to look asif it were sitting on top of a stack of pages, giving the user a clear idea of where they are in the document (like desktop cube helps some users have a clear idea of which desktop their on)

Oh do they have inline search (like firefox) yet? Because that's a definite improvement on dialog boxes for find, and even simple replace (and Im sure something could be worked out for the more complex replace options)

Not really. The majority of people don't use the majority of features in MS Office. But unless OO has features that people want (or think they want), people will never switch.

Re:New Feature

[mooreti1]

And me. Honestly, when you're working on a paper being able to make notes in the margin will be helpful. Especially for citation purposes.

Re:New Feature

[zcsteele]

That works just fine in OpenOffice 2, under Insert->Note. I'm not sure how long it's been there - I don't use notes often - but I'm fairly certain it's been around for at least a few years.

Re:New Feature

[Petrushka]

Insert -> Note only gives you a note marker; mouse-hovering is needed to read the content of the note. Marginal notes that are visible all the time would be most welcome -- one of the few features I have occasionally missed (though not often) from another popular office suite that I once used.

(Also welcome would be a fixing of the bug that requires me to press Alt twice before I can get keyboard-shortcut-access to the menus in Impress. Yes, I reported the bug ..... several years ago. Oh, and also the bug that prevents images from being inserted in a presentation if you insert it by keyboard shortcuts; that only works if I use the mouse.)

Re:New Feature

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

In other words, copying Office?

yeah, but giving the users the choice, so effectively copying but beating them.

Fair enough; but at the same time you can't really call the interface itself a new feature.

User interface that changes based on where your cursor happens to be is a Bad Idea. Consistency = not having to remember where to find things at any given time.

All the usable buttons are in the same place when their usable, nobody is going to be looking for a P button when they have a table selected so it doesn't matter that they're not there.
I think KDE do some stuff like this but im not sure.

Hmm. I thikn I see what you mean, but I disagree. If I look there one minute and see a series "B I U" buttons, and the next minute I see a "add merge del" - even if I couldn't make use of "B I U" in that context - it's still going to be confusing. The reason is partly because you're putting different things in the same place; but also because it would not be internally consistent. For example if I selected the table, I would see just the table buttons; if I was editing text, I would see the formatting buttons. But if I was editing text within a table, I would need to see both -- and if you're only showing what's usable at any given time, /one/ of the two would have to physically move to do this.

Probably because there are like 10 people who actually need those in real life.

the ability to attach a company logo to a graph would be useful, when doing comparisons.

I don't disagree; but I read your initial list as "these great new features would put OO above what Office can do" - and in such examples as this one, the difference is so marginal that it wouldn't even be something that could be advertised effectively. For all intents and purposes that means that even if it's there, people currently using Office won't ever know about it.

well its up to the browser weather to use the plugin.

True, I just got sidetracked on a tangent ;)

This was a joke, right?

Not really, compiz boosted linux adoption, have it optional sure, but if something looks better, people will think it IS better.
And fancy graphics sometimes do useful stuff (fast zooming, color shifting, etc). Flipping pages as a way of changing the page, could allow for the page to look asif it were sitting on top of a stack of pages, giving the user a clear idea of where they are in the document (like desktop cube helps some users have a clear idea of which desktop their on)

Mm. I understand your point, though I don't agree with it. Most of the people I've known who were excited after the newest compiz features came out used it enthusiastically for a week (myself included) then stopped because it wasn't actually serving a /real/ purpose except as a distraction. And I know anecdotal evidence is verboten on /., but I don't know of anyone who was compelled to /try/ Linux because of the eye candy.

Oh do they have inline search (like firefox) yet? Because that's a definite improvement on dialog boxes for find, and even simple replace (and Im sure something could be worked out for the more complex replace options)

Inline would be a nice in some contexts, though it's also confusing if someone isn't looking down at the taskbar. Perhaps best to support both options, and give a "did you know" bubble in the Find dialog the first time it pops up, along with the option to switch styles.

Not really. The majority of people don't use the majority of features in MS Office.

But unless OO has features that people want (or think they want), people will never switch.

I agree; but I think that the underlying problem is that there's very little roo

Re:New Feature

[ross.w]

The one new feature I'm looking for is the ability to have multiple X-ranges in a X-Y chart. at the moment when I open my Excel spreadsheet in Oo2 it moves all the X-Ranges to the first one when I save it.

Re:New Feature

[RealGrouchy]

Even worse than wide screens is short screens. I had three OOo Calc windows open, tiled horizontally, and I had removed most of the toolbars and status bars to maximize visible area.

Unfortunately, it kept turning the toolbars back on!

- RG>

Re:New Feature

[MidnightBrewer]

Cool, thanks. After I read the OO.o 3 feature list and noticed it was called Notes2, I realized that there must be something there already.

However, the person I was working with was using Office, so I think it might have been a moot point, anyway. I'll have to do a test and see how compatible it is.

Re:New Feature

[mhall119]

Hmm. I thikn I see what you mean, but I disagree. If I look there one minute and see a series "B I U" buttons, and the next minute I see a "add merge del" - even if I couldn't make use of "B I U" in that context - it's still going to be confusing. The reason is partly because you're putting different things in the same place; but also because it would not be internally consistent. For example if I selected the table, I would see just the table buttons; if I was editing text, I would see the formatting buttons What would be even better would be to add background-highlights on the toolbars that OO.o thinks you'd be most interested in depending on your cursor location. In your example, editing text in a table, the "Text" toolbar would be most highlighted, the "Table" toolbar slightly less so, the "Page" toolbar less agian, and the "Picture" toolbar would not be highlighted at all (or perhaps anti-highlighted/dimmed to indicate it serves no purpose in your current context). Visually it would be a lot like the "Aging Tabs" extension to Firefox.

That way it makes it easier to find the toolbar buttons you'd be interested in without them getting lost in all the rest, and at the same time keeping them all in their original locations so that once you've memorized where a button is you don't have to hunt for it again when in a different context. If anyone else thinks this is a good idea, I'll post it to OO.o.

Re:New Feature

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Actually, that'd be pretty damned cool.

Re:New Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

as their not a scientific data suit

"they're".

Re:New Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

Its hard to explain but

"It's", "explain, but".

For example table buttons

"example, table".

when your editing a picture

"you're".

visa versa

"vice versa".

when their usable, nobody

"they're", "usable; nobody.

Plus capitalization, etc.

Database support ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any chance to get database support outside of Windows ?

Still the show-stopper to get rid of Office, what do you do about the pervasive Access applications ? last time I checked, couldn't run them outside of Windows...

Re:Database support ?

[AKAImBatman]

Any chance to get database support outside of Windows ?

??? It already exists? OpenOffice Base has a dependency on Java, but otherwise it's available for all platforms. (The core database is HSQLDB.) As I recall, you can use either JDBC or ODBC drivers to connect to a remote database.

The data sources configured in OpenOffice Base can then be used in programs like Calc.

So... I'm not really sure what the issue is?

Re:Database support ?

[somersault]

IMO the show stopper is a lack of a decent Outlook replacement.. then again, I have done a few different DB applications for work, only one of them involved access and that's just because they wanted it "ASAP!!!!!!!" (they received it like a year ago and still haven't really started using it.. they're still mostly relying on their little excel trackers, it's sad)

Re:Database support ?

[Imsdal]

Still the show-stopper to get rid of Office, what do you do about the pervasive Access applications ?

I think you misspelled "pivot tables". Are they in yet? If not, please end the discussion of why people are not switching from Excel to OO right here.

Re:Database support ?

[Albanach]

A quick google search

http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000252 shows how to implement pivot tables in OO2. http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2007/programme/wednesday_186.pdf tells us that Pivot Table support will be improved in OO3

Re:Database support ?

[cobaltnova]

I think you misspelled "perfectly compatible VBA Macros." Pivot tables are supported, and have been for a while. The interface is different, but I think all the features are present.

The real problem with Excel is going to be the macros and consequential integration, many of which are sophisticated and may be very expensive to change--read no one in manangement will pay to do the switch

Re:Database support ?

[toriver]

Fail

Language/runtime environment snob much?

Re:Database support ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but you're an idiot.
Get over yourself, and you'll live a happier life.

Re:Database support ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, caring about efficiency. I am a terrible, terrible person. I'm as terrible as the moderator who thinks that "Flamebait" is the same as "I disagree".

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to see if I can get the OO.o developers to accept a patch that requires a dependency on .Net. No one cares so I figure it'll be a dodle.

Aqua?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aqua was what shipped with Mac OS X 10.0. What about Quartz?

Re:Aqua?

[caerwyn]

You're a little confused.

Aqua is the set of widgets and such that make up the MacOS X user interface. It has evolved over the various versions of the OS, but it's still Aqua.

Quartz is the underlying PDF-based drawing technology that MacOS X uses to draw everything to the screen- including the Aqua UI widgets.

Referring to native Aqua is quite correct.

Re:Aqua?

[yanyan]

Isn't Aqua just a UI theme?

Re:Aqua?

[Anonymous Coward]

aqua is the code name OpenOffice.org uses for the porting from the X11 version to the native version.

Stability

[rumith]

Hopefully, the stability issues that have been plaguing OOo 2.3 will be fixed too. A dozen or so users of OOo 2.3 for Linux I know have been experiencing more stability-related issues than all the Windows users of OpenOffice I know combined. Can anyone confirm/explain this? Thanks.

Re:Stability

[Finallyjoined!!!]

I've had no problems with either (dual boot Ubuntu/XP) not a single crash, haven't heard of any from the people I've converted. Mostly windoze, but a few Ubuntu users too:-)

Looking forward to 3.0 :-)

Re:Stability

[wile_e_wonka]

I had tons of stability issues. This has been solved so far as I can tell by completely removing the version of 2.3 available in the repositories and installing the one available directly from OOo. It's sad, I know. In the OOo forums people said that Ubuntu (and perhaps other distributions?) don't like to integrate bug updates into the version Ubuntu uses until they are tested as stable in Ubuntu. In the meantime, Ubuntu is then left with a very unstable release of 2.3. I installed directly from Openoffice and have had none of the problems I had previously.

Perhaps there is a reposity out there that pulls directly from OOo so I don't have to update the program manually? Anyone know?

Re:Stability

[alexgieg]

I use OOo in Ubuntu, and I really, REALLY hope this new version to stop handling menu and dialog font spacing and anti-aliasing (or the lack thereof, as I prefer) by itself, and instead let Gnome or KDE handle this, as all other applications do. It's just ugly to have the fonts in everything looking perfectly in a certain way, except for OOo.

My 2nd hope is for OOo 3 to stop using Java for the wizards. Or for anything really. There's no point in having Java handle things behind the scenes on an otherwise compiled application. It just make things slow to load and slow to run.

And my 3rd hope is for OOo 3 to finally make tables creation and editing in Write as easy, free form and trouble free as it is in MS Word. Click a button, start "drawing" your table any way you like, without giving any consideration whatsoever to the number of rows and columns, dividing cells anywhere you want, merging cells in any way, moving cell boundaries left and right and up and down without any invisible wall preventing you (not even the table's boundaries): that's how it should be, and how it actually is in MS Word.

Do these 3 things and I'll never look back to MS Office.

Re:Stability

[mpapet]

stop handling menu and dialog font spacing and anti-aliasing

Except the problem with letting the WM handle anti-aliasing is they maintain their own gui toolkit so they minimize dealing with WM bugs and quirks. Sure, it sounds like a big deal to maintain a gui, but the time spent doing that may be shorter than debugging WM issues. Mozilla maintains their own gui for the same reason.

My 2nd hope is for OOo 3 to stop using Java for the wizards. Or for anything really.
Well, now that's just not going to happen considering it's Sun's project.

3rd hope is for OOo 3 to finally make tables creation and editing in Write as easy
While my Wife and I have no issues with tables, maybe it's just not intuitive for you. It happens all the time. Maybe shelling out the dough for an MSOffice license is what you should do rather than complain about something you got for free?

Re:Stability

[zugurudumba]

Or perhaps Ubuntu should change their policy, making it so that users just need to visit the developer's site, download and install the software, without relying upon repositories anymore. Yeah, like in Windows. Or like in Mac OS X. IMHO, this whole centralized, repositories-based way of getting things done just sucks.

Re:Stability

[FreeGamer]

My 2nd hope is for OOo 3 to stop using Java ... for anything really. There's no point in having Java handle things behind the scenes on an otherwise compiled application. It just make things slow to load and slow to run.

Stop peddling misconceptions and myths. It erodes the credibility of your other statements. Java is not inherently slow, especially not for complex applications. Java done badly... yes... slow, but so is C++ done badly, Python done badly, etc. Since the slowness of Java comes down to loading the environment and all the helpful libs, it actually lends itself well to a large application like OOo which makes heavy use of the feature rich environment Java provides - the "Java dependency" only really looks bad in a "Hello World!"-style example.

Re:Stability

[wile_e_wonka]

I love the repository system! I think it works fabulously for the most part. One great advantage Linux should certainly exploit more is that all programs obtained via the repositories (notably this includes nearly every program an average user would need) are updated automatically. I just think Ubuntu should revise its policies to make better use of this wonderful resource. Not to mention--if I need a program that serves a particular purpose, I can just look in the repositories, click download and run the program. On windows finding some obscure program to meet my obscure need is much more difficult, costly (over the course of the many obscure programs I have found I need), and then I need to restart the computer to use it and watch for updates to the program manually.

Or perhaps you were just being sarcastic--because I just can't imagine why a centralized repository would suck. (note, however, that the repositories aren't really "centralized"--I can set up a server with a repository and people can add that to their software sources and automatically update any programs they receive from me via my repository. Which means--perhaps there's a better repository for me to use for my OOo)

Re:Stability

[trytoguess]

While my Wife and I have no issues with tables, maybe it's just not intuitive for you. It happens all the time. Maybe shelling out the dough for an MSOffice license is what you should do rather than complain about something you got for free?

On the flip side perhaps you should accept the line as the suggestion it is, and not get all offended someone offered a personal usability issue?

Re:Stability

[BiggyP]

3rd hope is for OOo 3 to finally make tables creation and editing in Write as easy
While my Wife and I have no issues with tables, maybe it's just not intuitive for you. It happens all the time. Maybe shelling out the dough for an MSOffice license is what you should do rather than complain about something you got for free? Why can't you complain about a free product, if everyone just decided to ignore bugs and usability issues because they haven't paid for the software then nothing would ever change. If usability isn't up to scratch then go file a bug with as much useful feedback as you can provide, "please make it work exactly like product X" isn't a valid comment here, and see what the developers have to say about it. Open source projects often have transparent and interactive development processes and people who will listen.

Re:Stability

[alexgieg]

Sure, it sounds like a big deal to maintain a gui, but the time spent doing that may be shorter than debugging WM issues. Mozilla maintains their own gui for the same reason.

Except Mozilla obeys and follows the WM's anti-aliasing, kerning etc. commands.

Well, now that's just not going to happen considering it's Sun's project.

Sad, but true. Although I heard some time ago about some guys doing a Java-less fork. Unfortunately I don't remember the name.

While my Wife and I have no issues with tables, maybe it's just not intuitive for you. It happens all the time. Maybe shelling out the dough for an MSOffice license is what you should do rather than complain about something you got for free?

First, let's stop with this nonsense of thinking one cannot complain or request improvements to a piece of free software. Good free software projects accept and welcome suggestions and criticisms all the time. Why do you think Firefox (since we talked about Mozilla) has a "Report site as incompatible..." option under it's Help menu? Simple: because positive, concrete criticism is good, not bad. Had they followed this "go use the proprietary version" philosophy and that menu option would be a link to Microsoft's IE download page. Also, let's not forget that OOo isn't solely a free software package. It's also the core of Sun StarOffice package, from which they earn well deserved profits.

That said, no, it has nothing to do with it not being "intuitive to me". OOo's tables, or at least the user interface around them, simply have less features than MS Office ones. For people who just need a "n x m" table now and then that's surely not a problem, but the moment you're required to make a very complex table layouts to accommodate within millimeter of precision fields that will be printed on non-blank, pre-printed paper form, you have a really hard time doing so in OOo. The funny thing, though, is that you can import a document with a complex table from MS Office to OOo, and it works well. That's why I think the problem is in OOo's user interface, not on its internal table support.

Re:Stability

[alexgieg]

Java is not inherently slow, especially not for complex applications.

As long as a Java software converted to byte code is nothing more than interpreted code, and the VM an interpreter, it's slower than compiled code. Pretending it isn't makes no sense. At best you can say that, since the code is idle most of the time, it doesn't make much practical difference from the user's perspective.

Even so, though, if you have a choice between a small interpreted language on one hand, and a gigantic interpreted language on the other, it makes little sense to prefer the gigantic if all the features you need are available in the small. And that's precisely the case with OOo's wizards. What they do can be done with, say, python. So why use Java? There's no reason other than it's a Sun project, and since Sun also owns Java, it wants OOo to be a showcase example for Java.

If OOo itself was a Java application then I surely wouldn't complain. In fact, I loved playing around with that ancient Corel Office for Java before it got canceled years ago. But as things stand, I don't see any reason at all for Java to play any role in OOo's inner workings.

Re:Stability

[blackest_k]

I had a problem with printing crashing Open office seems it was down to the desktop theme i was using 'Crux'
without that theme its been very stable.

Re:Stability

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't like centralized repositories?

If you want Slackware, you know where to find it.

Re:Stability

[mpapet]

No offense taken. What part of "It happens all the time" suggests I'm offended?

Re:Stability

[trytoguess]

The usual reason, assumptions made when one can't see the person writing, with a dash of slashdot's collective view affecting that assumption. Also, the person did state he had MSOffice already, and just stated why he kept it. You responded by telling him to not complain, and use something else. It sounded strange, and seemed like you were trying to drive home the fact that he shouldn't talk badly about OO. But in any case my bad.

Re:Stability

[psykocrime]

As long as a Java software converted to byte code is nothing more than interpreted code, and the VM an interpreter, it's slower than compiled code. Pretending it isn't makes no sense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_compilation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HotSpot

Re:Stability

[psykocrime]

Hopefully, the stability issues that have been plaguing OOo 2.3 will be fixed too. A dozen or so users of OOo 2.3 for Linux I know have been experiencing more stability-related issues than all the Windows users of OpenOffice I know combined. Can anyone confirm/explain this? Thanks.

I use OO.o 2.3 on Fedora 8 all the time, and haven't had a single problem with crashing / instability yet, FWIW.

Re:Stability

[alexgieg]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_compilation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HotSpot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_performance#Comparison_to_other_languages

Re:Stability

[zugurudumba]

Unfortunately, I was not sarcastic.

Of course you can set up your own repository, but having multiple software sources != decentralized package management. The package manager has to be aware of everything installed on the system in order to keep a (as in, only one) sane database. That means centralized. Also, the user is relying on various other individuals / organizations not only to offer sane, valid packages, but to guarantee that different combinations of those packages do not result in breakage. That, again, also means centralized.

Not using repositories makes life much easier. Software can be wrapped with all the dependencies in a container and be deployed, installed, removed, upgraded as needed. More or less like a sandbox environment. As a counter-example, the official way to get Firefox 2 on Ubuntu 6.0 LTS is to upgrade the WHOLE OS to the next release. Same is going to happen with the current stable release and Firefox 3. I find this laughable.

Look at Windows XP and then tell me people who use it don't just love the fact that they can run binaries 6 years old on it. Ubuntu is not even backwards compatible with itself, as most packages can't run on the previous release, and the cycle is only 6 months long! You call that stability?

In repository-based operating systems there's no line between the OS and the applications, other that the fact that the installation media happens to include *some* software from the repositories. Is this modularity? Granularity, maybe, but not modularity, and certainly not flexibility, as the user is confined to the existing repos - and if the release is stable, the repos are frozen - good luck with those new features you need.

So how do people solve it? By using third party repositories and risking a breakage of the system, by compiling software - and we all know compiled software is non-existing software for binary package managers; actually, people who can compile their packages don't really have to use binaries - therefore if the need to compile arises, the binary package manager has failed its job.

Repositories are, IMHO, just a lame excuse lazy developers have found for not doing their jobs till the end and compile their own fucking software. And because they are that lazy and ignorant (we all know the disdain for backwards compatibility FOSS developers have - "if it doesn't work, upgrade to the latest version"), a new species had to appear: the package maintainer. Yet another layer of complexity, yet another layer of bureaucracy. And yet you thrive in this kind of "social" organization? To quote a Vortigaunt in HL2, what next in the parade of constant obstacles?

I guess I'll go back to my world, where the developers are directly responsible in front of the users for the software they make, AND package.

Re:Stability

[psykocrime]

And your point is what? You seem to believe that Java is strictly interpreted when in truth that is almost never the case with a modern VM. And the link you just supplied makes a case which seems counter to your position on Java performance.

Java is often Just-in-time compiled at runtime by the Java Virtual machine. Hence, when Just-in-time compiled, its performance is: [12]

        * lower than the performance of compiled languages as C or C++, but not significantly for most tasks,

The average performance of Java programs has increased a lot over time, and Java's speed is now comparable with C or C++. In some cases Java is significantly slower, in others, significantly faster[13]

No, Java isn't perfect, but blanket assertions that "Java is just plain slow" and other that that ilk, are just plain wrong. In a great many contexts, the performance of Java is more than sufficient. If something you see that uses Java is too slow, that just argues that it needs to be optimized, not that it can't be performant because it's Java.

Re:Stability

[holomorph]

I agree, on my 64 bit Ubuntu box I've learned not to try to use any wizards or templates unless I want to crash OO and start over. I guess I should have been good and filed a bug, but usually Abiword is all the awesome I need and then some.

Re:Stability

[Remusti]

#1 - No comment, although I agree that so many programs using different toolkits is annoying.

#2 - Disabling Java in OOo makes for fast start up, I haven't noticed any issues, but then I use a fairly small subset of features. And I haven't used an OOo Wizard yet.

#3 - I'd prefer table editing to be something similar to the way Thunderbird does it. I don't know where they got it from or if they designed it themselves, but Thunderbird has the most innovative and useful table editing I've found. Which is really weird, of course.

As a sidenote, the amount of flamebait responding to this thread is disgusting.

Re:Stability

[Alchemist253]

That said, no, it has nothing to do with it not being "intuitive to me". OOo's tables, or at least the user interface around them, simply have less features than MS Office ones. For people who just need a "n x m" table now and then that's surely not a problem, but the moment you're required to make a very complex table layouts to accommodate within millimeter of precision fields that will be printed on non-blank, pre-printed paper form, you have a really hard time doing so in OOo. The funny thing, though, is that you can import a document with a complex table from MS Office to OOo, and it works well. That's why I think the problem is in OOo's user interface, not on its internal table support. If you actually need millimeter precision, you should not be using a word processor for the task!

Actually, I don't use word processors at all. I think they are stupid and inefficient (linked essay is NOT my own writing). Whether or not you agree with this sentiment, however, you have to see that page layout programs (be it LaTeX or Adobe InDesign) are the proper tools for constructing complex, structured documents.

If you have never tried using one for your table task, you might find it makes your life much easier than using Word.

Re:Stability

[mhall119]

Not using repositories makes life much easier. Software can be wrapped with all the dependencies in a container and be deployed, installed, removed, upgraded as needed. More or less like a sandbox environment. I've installed many programs on Ubuntu as downloaded .DEB files, which seems more inline with what you want. Doing so still lets you maintain the software in your local database, and allows you to download and install dependencies from your repositories if required, and adds menu entries in your Gnome/KDE/XFCE desktop menu. I prefer to use a repository so I get automatic updates and the like, but it's not strictly necessary if you don't like it.

As a counter-example, the official way to get Firefox 2 on Ubuntu 6.0 LTS is to upgrade the WHOLE OS to the next release. I have IE6 on Windows2000, how do I get IE7? However, unlike IE on Windows, if you really want FF2 on Ubuntu 6.06, you can just download it and install it directly, nothing stops you from doing that.

Ubuntu is not even backwards compatible with itself, as most packages can't run on the previous release, and the cycle is only 6 months long! You call that stability? Um, when a package takes advantage of the new libraries and such that come with a new release, then of course you can't run that on an older release. That's not a Linux thing, it's true of any OS. If a program relies on new features/libraries in Vista, it won't run on WindowsXP. Your complaint is that new versions of a program take advantage of new features in the OS, but the alternative is for your programs to _not_ take advantage of new features when they become available, and that would make me (and many others) very unhappy.

and if the release is stable, the repos are frozen - good luck with those new features you need. The release is stable _because_ the repos are frozen. If you want the latest software, then upgrade to the latest software, but then you won't be guaranteed a stable system, you can't eat your cake and have it too. Nothing prevents you from upgrading, either your entire OS or just the apps/libraries that you want to upgrade, it's just that Canonical isn't going to put bleeding-edge code in their stable branch.

By using third party repositories and risking a breakage of the system Again, this is true for any OS, when you introduce unknown variables you risk breakage. Heck, it's not even an OS thing, if you add non-standard parts to your car, you risk breakage.

Repositories are, IMHO, just a lame excuse lazy developers have found for not doing their jobs till the end and compile their own fucking software. You are, of course, entitled to your opinions. But they are wrong. A developer's job is to make a program, not to ensure that the user's environment has all the necessary libraries for it to run, or to ensure that it gets added to the desktop's menu system, or to provide a UI for installation/deletion of the program. Programmers should not be responsible for enforcing the Operating System's conventions, that is the OS developer's job.

I'm sure it's just me

[zappepcs]

and there will be plenty of folk who can be pessimistic about this, but I'm having trouble with doing that. It's free, being improved, and already works as good or better than MS office for more than 99.9% of the needs of myself and my family as well as most people I know. Those are not empirical numbers (just a good guess) but I remain impressed. What are the downsides to this? I'm not trolling, just wanting to know what they are.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[VGPowerlord]

My biggest problem with OO.o 2.3 is with Writer... it doesn't save RTF files correctly for whatever reason. It's pretty sad when you save an RTF, close OO.o, then reopen said rtf and have it suddenly bold everything after the first time you use bold...

Then again, Writer is also the only component I use. There are also some other minor problems with .doc files and embedded images, but those are rather minor formatting issues.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[Anonymous Coward]

The only downside is that it's not yet 100% compatible with MS Word .doc format.

And by that I mean, it will show everything that's in the document, but the spacing and formatting will be somewhat off.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[Anne_Nonymous]

It's ready for prime time. OO does not have any greater number of annoyances than commercial software.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I thought so too with 2.0 and unleashed it upon my non tech savvy friend. Turns out she does use some crazy word functionality for tracking edits. Different parts of a document are highlighted according to when and by whom they were eddied by. At least open office 2.0 didn't really support that, now she has a negative experience with free software. She'll be a little more skeptical the next time I tell here a free program will do everything she needs it to do. On the other hand my non tech savvy brother is using Open Office in med school exchanging a whole litany of MS office formatted files, with out a hitch. Well the 2007 format was a hitch, but the Novell version of Open office handles them perfectly.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[Ciarang]

I wouldn't call it "crazy word functionality", it's a very commonly used and important facility.

The same thing is supported in Open Office Writer 2.0 as well, see Changes on the Edit menu. I *think* it's even reasonably compatible with the Word implementation, but don't make any more dubious claims to your friends based on my say so.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[Bill Dimm]

she does use some crazy word functionality for tracking edits. Different parts of a document are highlighted according to when and by whom they were eddied by You mean like Edit / Changes / Record?

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[Compholio]

The only downside is that it's not yet 100% compatible with MS Word .doc format.

And by that I mean, it will show everything that's in the document, but the spacing and formatting will be somewhat off.

You know, my printer has the exact same problem. That's why I use OO.o and LaTeX now.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[EvanED]

At least open office 2.0 didn't really support that...

It does, but not nearly as well as Word. For instance, I'm not sure how well it handles tracking edits by multiple people, and I do know that deleted text shows up in the original place, just strike through, which probably throws off the pagination. Word displays deleted text in the margin, like the new notes feature. I was excited when I read that because I expected OO Writer to follow suit, but according to the article, that's not yet. Still, the notes in the margin seems like the fist step there, so hopefully better track changes support is not far behind. Here is another issue with the track changes feature that I had forgotten about.

(This is a feature I use myself a fair amount, and have been disappointed with OO's support for it.)

I also have a couple votes for this improvement, which is to add something like Word's normal mode. Having the margins there I think is really obnoxious. Normal mode in Word will make it so that successive lines aren't a couple inches apart on the screen. Even Word's page view mode lets you collapse the top and bottom margins.

There aren't major issues with OO Writer, but at the same time, there are enough minor annoyances that I'll still take Word in a second.

(Calc vs. Excel is another matter... I go back and forth there. Excel has a bunch of annoyances too...)

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[Kjella]

Right now, I'd say it's mostly the "it's your problem" factor. If I'm working with Office 2003 and get some Office 2007 documents or whatever that don't work right, I'll tell them it's their problem. If it doesn't work right in OpenOffice, they'll tell me to use the normal Office and that it's my problem. It doesn't have to actually be my problem, but it defaults to me.

I've experienced a bit of the same with Linux apps, if something is hard/not working then it's because it's Linux. So I let them struggle with the "real" tool a bit as well too, usually they come to the conclusion that neither is going to make the world a perfect place, and the Linux tool is really no worse than the other one. It just takes time to get people to reallize that you're not using a second-rate cheap hack even though you're someone off the beaten track.

I still wouldn't pick OpenOffice for anything where I'd have to closely collaborate with someone using MS Office. Things I get from others typically open in a "usable" state, though it's not always exactly as it should be. I think one downside for me is that I'm not confident what an MS Office user would see if I save it as .doc. Yes, I couldn't be sure about that with Office either, but it's a "whose problem" situation again. Office versions are debatable, if your OpenOffice-generated document doesn't show up it's your problem again.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[neumayr]

Wow, that must be annoying.
Can't reproduce it in OO 2.3.1 though, so you might want to update?

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[truthsearch]

For me the X11 requirement on OS X is a real nuisance. I can't tell if 3.0 is now truly native on Macs, although I know they are working on it. Until it's native I'll stick with NeoOffice, which is effectively the same but sometimes a little behind in versions.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[zappepcs]

I know what you mean, but I've been submitting my 'specially formatted' weekly report from Writer for about 6 months. No one has noticed yet, so it has not messed up their 'must do it our way' formats for Word.

OO will open a much larger .csv file than Excel, albeit truncated but at least it opens it. As I'm learning more about the less used features of OO I'm liking it more and more. My wife wants to brush up on MS Office skills while job hunting. I had to brush off an XP disk, do updates, install XP Office Pro, do updates, make note to go for eye exam after trying to read product key 43 times, and so forth so she could practice. 10 minutes into her first session she asked what the difference was. 10 minutes later she asked how much OO costs. When I said free her jaw dropped. So far, she can't tell the difference except for minor things on the menu arrangement. She was one of the users that didn't get the formatting of Word in the first place. After showing her how to import/export/save/open documents between the formats she has not asked another question.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't call it "crazy word functionality", it's a very commonly used and important facility.

I totally agree, but the nerds stuck in Emacs just don't understand it.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[nozzo]

erm source code is available? :-) just kidding.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll see when their beta comes out, but I think they will still be 10 years behind Excel on math stuff. I hope that will not be the case and I won't have to buy MSoffice 2007.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[VGPowerlord]

I'm not at home at the moment, so I can't say which version of 2.3 I'm using there. As far as I know, it is 2.3.1.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[Otter Escaping North]

For me the X11 requirement on OS X is a real nuisance.

Agreed, but as I mainly use Linux, it didn't have the opportunity to grate on me too badly. Grandpa Otter installed NeoOffice (OpenOffice ported to run natively on the Mac). You might consider checking it out for the next 160 days or so.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[Chaos Incarnate]

Word doesn't guarantee spacing and formatting across printer drivers under Windows; it's hardly fair to expect OpenOffice to magically offer that feature!

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[Blakey Rat]

Turns out she does use some crazy word functionality for tracking edits. Different parts of a document are highlighted according to when and by whom they were eddied by. At least open office 2.0 didn't really support that, now she has a negative experience with free software.

"Crazy Word functionality?" I think it's more like "basic expected functionality." Having a writing tool designed for an office environment that doesn't have revision tracking would be like writing a program without using source control. OpenOffice does it, but it's pretty primitive compared to Word.

What your comment really illustrates is that the people who constantly post "OpenOffice is good enough for everything I want to do!" really don't do all that much in Word/Excel/etc.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[MBGMorden]

What your comment really illustrates is that the people who constantly post "OpenOffice is good enough for everything I want to do!" really don't do all that much in Word/Excel/etc. This really does have a lot of truth to it. Then again, a lot of Office users we have don't really do much with them either. It just depends on their duties and such. While I keep the latest OpenOffice installed at work, and use it for most stuff at home, I must say that it rarely gets used at work. Too many of the various Excel files and such that I've created over the years simply don't work on it.

It it's core, OOo is essentially a pretty decent *basic* office suite. It does most of what your average user needs, but the same can be said of Microsoft Works. It too has a word processor and spreadsheet application that's good enough for the majority of users. That's where I think OOo's competition lies. It works at a GREAT replacement for Microsoft Works. Comparing it to Office itself is a bit of a stretch though.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[SCHecklerX]

"Crazy Word functionality?" I think it's more like "basic expected functionality." Having a writing tool designed for an office environment that doesn't have revision tracking would be like writing a program without using source control.

You do that with your program editor? Sounds like a mess to me. Version control, as is done with code, should be done on a content management server in an office environment. Doing it in the doc itself leads to a mess, and if you need to share with 3rd parties, disclosure of things you likely didn't want to disclose.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[Blakey Rat]

You do that with your program editor?

Sure. Tons of people do. XCode, Visual Studio, and Eclipse all support it.

Version control, as is done with code, should be done on a content management server in an office environment.

That's a huge pain in the ass. To view edits with comments, you'd need to download both Word files, open them both up while also keeping the CMS open, and flip back and forth between each window. Using Word's built-in functionality, it's all in one single document on one screen. (And yes, you can view revisions side-by-side if you want.)

Doing it in the doc itself leads to a mess,

It does the way OpenOffice does it, it screws up pagination. Word does it just fine.

and if you need to share with 3rd parties, disclosure of things you likely didn't want to disclose.

That's a valid point, but you just have to be careful when you save it.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[EvanED]

Version control, as is done with code, should be done on a content management server in an office environment.

Which works really well when you don't have something that formal set up and are just emailing documents around.

Anyway, dropping DOC files into SVN or something wouldn't work at all, since the diffs wouldn't be human-readable. (Those for ODT wouldn't be much better.) Code works well because it's plain text; the facilities available for doing the same for Word more or less don't exist.

Besides, the track changes feature gives you something which even SVN + a smart DOC diff program wouldn't, which is the ability to easily accept and reject individual changes. You could of course include this ability (there are some graphical diff programs that let you do it essentially, though I don't know any that will let you see changes from many sources highlighted based upon who made the change) in the diff program or the word processor itself, but they currently aren't.

Word's approach may not be ideal, but it works reasonably well in practice, and OO isn't trying to improve on the idea.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[Knuckles]

Version control, as is done with code, should be done on a content management server in an office environment.

Show me convincingly how to do that in a 15,000 user company, where 10,000 use laptops because they are constantly at clients' sites (which can also mean a trailer without internet access at a Polish mine), traveling, etc., are in general not very tech-savvy, and extremely hard to train/educate in application usage and processes (due to constant time pressure and a "know all" attitude), and I want to talk with you about a job.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[HTH NE1]

I'm just glad the latest X11 version for Mac (not the latest version over all) now knows not to open my spreadsheet maximized every time. No more unmaximizing and then manually resizing every time I open it.

Still, that's an odd decision to center it on the screen. If you can remember the size, couldn't you also remember the placement, overriding only if that combination would leave the window partially or totally off-screen (say due to running a different resolution and/or number of monitors)?

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

What your comment really illustrates is that the people who constantly post "OpenOffice is good enough for everything I want to do!" really don't do all that much in Word/Excel/etc.

Then I have succeeded in getting my point across. I'd like to have thought that I did use them enough to find bugs in the things that I used ( ms Equation, tables, multi column, mail merge, precise image placement, embedded excel and visio sections, table of contents pages with links to document sections, large large files thousands and hundreds of thousands of pages. ), but apparently judging by the number of replies stating how common edit tracking is, I was very wrong.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

do know that deleted text shows up in the original place, just strike through, which probably throws off the pagination. Word displays deleted text in the margin, like the new notes feature.

That's exactly what she complained about. I think some information about who made the changes was missing as well. I don't remember all of the details. My least favorite text editor is which everyone I last used. I think I've established here that i don't use some of the most common features in a word processor, but I still run into unexpected behavior I don't like.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[mhall119]

Use something like GIT or Mercurial, where users can edit/save in a disconnected environment, then merge their changes back with the centralized repository when they get back, or merge their changes with another user's local repository (You can't do that with Word's change tracking as far as I know).

A GIT/Mercurial OO.o plugin could save the revision data directly in the META-INF folder of the ODF file itself every time you save, giving you the best of both worlds. Doing it this way would even give you separate revision histories for content, styles and meta-data. Suppose you only want to accept style changes but not content changes (or vice-versa), this could do that. The majority of the work would be developing an XML-based diff and displaying it inline with the document.

Now, about that job....

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[darkwhite]

she does use some crazy word functionality for tracking edits Are you shitting me? This functionality is used pervasively.

I've tried most other Office-like programs out there and found them lacking. Office 2007 fixed quite a few of the problems you mention (many of which stem from the file format if I understand correctly). The lock-in is painful, but Word/Excel/Powerpoint 2007 are very far out in the lead of office software engineering.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[EvanED]

Since you talk about Git, I have a question for you. I'm in grad school right now, and use Subversion for my version control. One feature it would be nice to have is I "checkout" a local copy of the repository, make changes when I'm disconnected, then import that whole history into the main repository. (E.g. if I make 3 commits while disconnected, I want to see 3 commits after the merge.)

Most of the advantages I've seen of Git have talked about its branching abilities and such, and I'm not sure I really care about that. But my sense is that Git would give me the above, and that I do care about, and it very well may be enough to get me to switch to Git.

Is my impression correct? Most of what I've seen on Git has either been to long for me to go through or too short to explain in enough detail what is going on.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[mhall119]

I am by no means a GIT expert, but my understanding is that in GIT, every "revision" calculated based on every revision that came before it (GIT versions look more like an MD5 hash than a 1.1.1 type version number), so I would assume that merging your local repository with someone else's would show each individual commit you made to yours in the other person's history after the merge.

Re:I'm sure it's just me

[Knuckles]

Great idea (I like the style vs content separation in particular) and hurrah for free software, but it needs to work with binary MS files, at least for the time being (company has no real migration plans for O2007). I'm unfortunately not in a position to change that. I probably should have mentioned this, but I guess I thought it would be obvious from the context.

One thing I'd be concerned about is that making users switch from Word's style of showing the changes inline would be a tough battle. It is pretty damn nice if you're used to it. Dunno how you envision the inline display of the changes. But anyway, if there are enough advantages in a new solution, the users might accept change.

Regarding merging changes back with another user's local repo: there is little notion of a repo in standalone Word, that only comes in with Sharepoint (which we don't use because it's useless for us), so naturally Word can't do that. You can easily merge one user's version with another user's version, obviously on a file basis.

Sorry for taking so long to answer, Easter and all that.

Still, no re-write of the crappy calc charts

[Anonymous Coward]

I've given up on OO Calc for charts. Once created they are practically impossible to edit.

Re:Still, no re-write of the crappy calc charts

[Anonymous Coward]

I've given up on OO Calc for charts.

Me too. Excel is the only program that keeps me dual booting. Calc really is not ready, but it seems to be slowly going in the right direction.

Re:Still, no re-write of the crappy calc charts

[evanbd]

My short wishlist for Calc:

As you say, better charts. Make the damn things editable!
A better solver. One that doesn't wander off and get stuck in places that aren't even locally optimal on smooth 3-input optimization problems.
Fourier transforms. Excel has it, and they're not that hard to code up, and if you need them there's really no substitute. I need them.
There are others, mostly interface and performance related, but really if you give me those I'll be happy...

Re:Still, no re-write of the crappy calc charts

[my $anity 0]

I wanted to get full-page charts for a lab I was writing up. It took me a long time to figure out no commonly available free spreadsheet would give me full page charts where I can mouse over a data point and see its value.

still need an outlook replacement

[OrochimaruVoldemort]

it just isn't a full office suite without one, not to say that thunderbird isn't bad or anything. hopefully, they will have one when 3 comes out for everyday use. I still would like to see a publisher replacement (for printouts and what not).

Re:still need an outlook replacement

[Yetihehe]

Thunderbird is more like outlook express. You are searching for Evolution I think.

Re:still need an outlook replacement

[Shawn is an Asshole]

it just isn't a full office suite without one, not to say that thunderbird isn't bad or anything. hopefully, they will have one when 3 comes out for everyday use. I still would like to see a publisher replacement (for printouts and what not). Spicebird looks promising. It's based on Thunderbird and Lightning, but overall it seems much nicer. Like Thunderbird it's licensed under the MPL, GPL, and LGPL. I tried it out a few days ago but not throughly. Linux.com did an article on it recently, which, btw, is how I found out about it.

Re:still need an outlook replacement

[simong]

There was one in StarOffice. I used it in an Exchange environment with few problems (it used POP3/IMAP and LDAP so you had to be friendly with the admin) but it disappeared from StarOffice before Sun took it over and never appeared in OpenOffice. Wonder where and why it went?

Re:still need an outlook replacement

[Anne Honime]

I've really tried to use Evolution. And I mean really. I gave every version a chance, but I'm totally pissed that in the end (after a couple of months), this POS will crash my Inbox beyond repair. Always. Don't get me wrong, I'm a long time linux advocate. I used it (dual boot) since 1996, and switched completely since ~1998. I've been extremely patient with a lot of softwares, waiting for a level of stability that allowed me to actually work, meanwhile kludging around with whatever could produce satisfying interim results. But Evolution happens to be one of those rare case of promising software that never delivered something useful. This thing is still some kind of übercrap, FU beyond any hope of repair. As a result, I'm still stuck with Kmail at home, and Sylpheed Claws at work, which both miss a lot of useful functions, but *at least* show consideration to my data.

The only part of Evolution that never let me down was the RSS aggregator of the version 1.4. Know what ? They dropped it later. The only working part ! I don't have enough english rough words in my vocabulary to fully express how much I despise Evolution.

Re:still need an outlook replacement

[Anonymous Coward]

Well. The evolution in mail used to be outlook express -> Thunderbird

Unfortunately (Or fortunately) MIcrosoft released "Windows Live Mail Desktop". Which hands down is the best mail client I've used since Thor, the offline BBS Reader back in the 1800s.

Re:still need an outlook replacement

[IBBoard]

The last thing it needs is an Outlook replacement. I expect my word processing package to word process, not to try and manage my emails, personal contacts and calendar.

Bundling various document editors (word processing, spreadsheet and presentation) makes sense. Bundling database as an optional extra makes a bit of sense because Microsoft do it with Office and people expect it and use it (although it could easily be stand-alone if an interface for mail merging could be defined). Bundling mail as well makes no sense because it's not a document editor, it's a communication tool.

Re:still need an outlook replacement

[TheRaven64]

If you're looking for an Exchange / Outlook replacement you might be interested in Scalable OpenGroupware.org.

Re:still need an outlook replacement

[Miltazar]

Perhaps at one point. However at this point, in the company I am IT admin for, we use thunderbird quite widely as a Outlook(not express) replacement. If you take Thunderbird, and add in the lightning extension, provider extension, and use it in conjunction with Google Calendars, then it makes a very easy replacement for Outlook. We are split about even between outlook and thunderbird/lightning, which is mainly because some still prefer Outlook. Without exchange server and the such, the people using Thunderbird are sharing calendars and such alot easier then the ones using Outlook.

Outlook can sync up with google calendar as well now, but with the provider extension for Thunderbird you can specify which calendar to sync with Google. However in Outlook it syncs the entire default calendar, which has tended to accidently share private events with multiple people. I have no experience in regards to exchange server, so I'm not 100% sure how that compares to the Thunderbird + GCalendar experience.

Re:still need an outlook replacement

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're aiming for clever renaming of products you don't like in order to be insulting, I recommend you consult with a colleague who has a sense of humor first. This will insure you don't look like a babbling retard 13 year old.

Although I will throw you a point or two for not using 'M$'

Re:still need an outlook replacement

[Critical Facilities]

I don't understand your argument at all. You're trying to differentiate between a word processor being a document creator, and an email package being a "communication tool" as though the communication method isn't in effect a document itself. Furthermore, isn't the storage and classification of emails in one's inbox, personal folders, etc just a very crude database (in the sense that it allows a person to store, categorize, and reference messages)? If you can understand the need to bundle a database tool, why not an email interface?

I'm not trying to pick a fight, but I don't understand why you would specifically NOT want an Outlook replacement included, particularly considering that by most accounts, this is probably the single biggest hurdle to widespread OO adoption.

Re:still need an outlook replacement

[GuerillaRadio]

It's based on Thunderbird and Lightning

..very very frightening, me! Galileo! (Galileo)...

Re:still need an outlook replacement

[IBBoard]

The main purpose of an email client is to send messages, where the main purpose is the content of the message and not its formatting.

The main purpose of a word processor is to produce a document, normally reasonably large, that can be properly type-set for reading as if it were a printed page or to actually print it. It can also be used with the mail merge from a database to create a print run of letters. Similarly, a spreadsheet is about calculations and graphs and the presentation of numbers, while a presentation creator is about the layout and communication of information in a fancy and eye-catching/memorable way. A database is the odd one out, but as I said it can be used with a mail merge. Since there isn't a defined interface to communicate between any word processor and any database in the same way that a "mailto" link tells your browser to tell your OS to open its email client and use the specified data (as far as I know) then an exception for databases and their inclusion in an 'office' package (for the sake of simple databases and mail merging) makes some degree of sense.

To me the differentiation between those two is important. Besides, while other apps may logically work together (mainly focussing on word processing, which can integrate and contain spreadsheets and database data) there's no logical link to an email client beyond "it can send the documents as attachments". I guess you could argue "mail merge with my address book", but that just means you need a better separation of "what I want to mail merge" and "people I contact via email", or a separate app from your email client that handles all of your contacts.

By your logic then since an email is like a document then surely we don't need a word processor, OO Writer should be canned, and everyone can start writing and printing multi-page emails instead of messing around with these pointless .odt/.doc files.

Re:still need an outlook replacement

[Critical Facilities]

While it's true that, of course, there are substantial differences in the capabilities of word processors and email clients, I still don't quite understand your insistence on NOT including it with the rest of OO particularly since it's probably one of the ONLY things keeping a lot of people using M$ Office. I can understand if you have another email client you prefer (maybe you like only plain text, I dunno), but I don't get why it's such a big deal to have an Outlook replacement included in an open-source office suite that's basically trying to compete with M$ Office.

Re:still need an outlook replacement

[IBBoard]

An optional component may be okay at a push, but it just seems like a pointless diversion for the Open Office people. I use Thunderbird at home and at work (on our dev net, I have to use Outlook on the corporate Windows machine) and it's something distinct that has completely different criteria on it to an office suite.

By all means have one that OOo recommends as a good companion, but just because Microsoft bundle it in one package (or one of the more expensive ones) doesn't mean that the OOo team have to do the same.

And I do like plain text for emails - no point in having someone else's terrible idea of "good formatting" imposed on me or bloating the email with tags just so it can be shown in Arial rather than whatever font I choose ;)

Re:still need an outlook replacement

[jonadab]

> it just isn't a full office suite without [Outlook]

To each his own, I guess. Where I come from, malware installation is *usually* not considered an important office activity, so a lot of us can really live without that. Besides, OO.o is supposed to be cross platform, and I'm really not sure how that sort of thing would really be implemented in a cross-platform way. It seems inherently platform-specific to me.

> not to say that thunderbird isn't bad or anything

Thunderbird pretty much just does email (albeit, not really very well). There are *lots* of programs available that do email, some much better than others, and I really don't see the need for OO.o to do that either. I mean, if email, then why not also web browsing -- but we already have good open-source web browsers. A really _good_ open-source email program, something along the lines of Pegasus, would be nice to have, but there's no particular reason for it to be part of OO.o really.

As far as Publisher, it does not as far as I'm aware really do anything that OO.o doesn't do better, unless you count limiting the user's options with a bunch of badly-designed and rigidly inflexible wizards as a feature.

There are some major improvements I'd like to see in OO.o, but they're more along the lines of stuff that would actually be useful in the context of the tasks that OO.o is designed for, like a decently usable UI for defining and applying styles (that would make it much easier to maintain some kinds of word processing documents), the ability to rotate objects to arbitrary angles, the ability to flow text from the end of one frame into the beginning of another, the ability to embed vector graphics (SVG, eps, and maybe even wmf if possible) the ability to have different page formats for different sections in a long document (which Word could do back in the days of Windows 3.1), something analogous to MS WordArt (only, hopefully, more flexible), a simpler setup wizard for connecting to backends in Base, the ability to force a pagebreak after certain rows or columns in Calc, ... and, getting into the geekier, more power-user features... a straightforwardly usable recordable/editable macro system, a more complete spelling dictionary, incremental search, regular-expression support for search and replace, and so on and so forth.

Adding whole *kinds* of tasks to what it's intended to do seems much less useful and also much more likely to lead to unacceptable levels of bloat. I mean, if it's going to do email, why not also fifteen different IM and VOIP protocols, and videoconferencing, and... Ugh. Let communications software handle communications features, and let the office software handle document creation.

Re:still need an outlook replacement

[daliman]

Is this with POP or something? I've used evolution for about eight years now and I've never had my data destroyed in any way, but I've always used IMAP and kept a cached local copy for when I'm working offline...

Re:still need an outlook replacement

[Dog-Cow]

OO is not a word processor; it includes one. Microsoft Office is a suite of tools used by office workers. Most office workers have some need to communicate with others, and Outlook provides (part) of that capability. For OO to truly compete with MS Office, it will need to include a comparable tool. I never use Access, but that doesn't mean it isn't a valid business tool.

Re:still need an outlook replacement

[IBBoard]

I didn't at any point say that OOo is a word processor. OO Writer is a word processor, but OOo is the "office suite".

Yes workers need to communicate, yes Outlook is Microsoft's way of providing that, but why should the OOo team provide the full selection of what Microsoft does when there are already much more mature alternatives for the one part that isn't include and that isn't even directly connected in any way to the others?

For OOo to truly compete with MS Office it needs to do what it does that Office does well. You don't have to beat them on everything to be the best, just beat them on your strengths and leave the part that you've never touched to someone else who is even stronger at it.

It's like saying that to compete with Windows then Linux needs to bundle and be tightly integrated with a media player, a browser, a file manager, a picture viewer, a character map, some tacky games and whatever all else Windows includes. It doesn't. All Linux needs to do is do what it does well (be a stable and secure operating system) and let the Firefox/Totem/VLC/Xine/MPlayer/XMMS/Nautilus/Eye of Gnome/gThumb/etc provide the other functionality better than the core distro developers could.

Openoffice.org needs a more friendly website

[MMC Monster]

I'm not sure if it's changed recently (last time I was there was a month ago), but the website just points to bug reports when mentioning new features or fixes. It would be nice to give a synopsis page of things that the end-user would notice. Or at least point to some good reviews written on other websites if they don't want to waste the time doing it themselves.

Re:Openoffice.org needs a more friendly website

[vtscott]

In less time than it took you to post that you could have gone to http://www.openoffice.org and seen for yourself that the website looks good and has a nice big new user & general info link to a useful page with tons of information.

Re:Openoffice.org needs a more friendly website

[MMC Monster]

Yes. That's for a new user. What about someone who wants to find out what's new in the latest version (compared to 2.2.x or 2.3.0)?

ie: Someone who is thinking about upgrading but isn't sure if it's worth the effort.

Re:Openoffice.org needs a more friendly website

[westlake]

see for yourself that the website looks good

Maybe. But to my eyes this looks better: Office Online Home Page

O'07 already supported...

[i.r.id10t]

Been using docx, etc. with OOo under Ubuntu for months now, using Novell's conversion filter/whatever.

Re:O'07 already supported...

[Chode2235]

What are the advantages of using .docx, .xlsx file formats? I have set my office programs to save in the old .doc and .xls formats just because they seem to be more sharable with people who haven't upgraded. I also have thought to myself, "I have been using .doc for over a decade, why switch?"

So is there a good reason to switch?

Re:O'07 already supported...

[i.r.id10t]

I only got the filter installed because everyone else that I work with uses O'07, so I can open their stuff. I still generate things using the native OOo format and convert to either "old" office format or PDF before I send stuff out to them...

Re:O'07 already supported...

[Constantine XVI]

The only reason I've ever bothered with .docx is when I was doing a research paper (at school, didn't have my Ubuntutop on me), and I discovered '07's References feature. Having Word handle all your citations for you is something a student can't easily pass up* (and naturally, saving to .doc strips the references).

*Yes, I know there's LyX, but I've yet to find a portable version that doesn't crash/burn on startup

Still no Comment/Uncomment button in Macro editor

[denis-The-menace]

Am I the only one who thinks the Macro editor should have a button to comment or uncomment a selection of lines?
The things has a full fledged debugger with breakpoints and everything but they expect you to comment out code manually one line at a time?

OO 3.0

[monschein]

I'm looking forward to it. It looks to be visually impressive. Judging from the article OO 3 opened the .docx file with few flaws (one of them being the headers). The notes on the side seem pretty cool too. Seeing that one of the features is that it has official support for MAC may draw even more of a crowd to open office. Open source software is great...

Re:OO 3.0

[Anonymous Coward]

MAC? Really...so network cards can run an office suite now?

Re:OO 3.0

[Dog-Cow]

MAC? Really...so network cards can run an office suite now? MAC stands for Media Access Control, something that is implemented by network cards. So the GP was saying that OO will support this protocol. And people complain about bloat in MS Office! :)

Finally!

[Swizec]

Finally us mac weirdos will be able to move away from NeoOffice and get to the sweet sweet sensation that is OOO. It was just way way too slow on Mac before because the support was fake.

Re:Finally!

[doh123]

ummm... Have you used the test versions? they need to do a lot.. NeoOffice has taken the OOO code base and made a better product... already supporting some things that OOO cant do until 3 is out. Unless OOO does something majorly different soon, I'll be happy to stay with NeoOffice, as its fast, stable, and well supported. And remeber to always up the memory usage by OOO and NeoOffice as well, unless your on a really old peice of junk computer, as it'll run much faster... even on OSX.

Re:Finally!

[Ctrl-Z]

Just use iWork like the rest of us mac weirdos.

Re:Finally!

[contrapunctus]

I use iWork but I'm worried that one day Apple will decide they don't want to keep making the software and then I have to convert (a lot of) files to another format.
So it's not that I don't like iWork (I love it actually), it's that I want my data in open format and it looks like odf is a good choice(?).

Re:Finally!

[nine-times]

I don't want to get in any sort of an argument, but I just wanted to say that I think the NeoOffice guys deserve a little respect here. OOo went for years just not giving a damn about Mac users and meanwhile the NeoOffice project produced a very usable piece of software.

Yes, NeoOffice is still a bit slow. Last time I tried the alpha OOo Aqua port, it was pretty slow too. Hell, OpenOffice is a slow on Windows and Linux. MS Office on Mac is slow too, for that matter. It seems like only Apple has put in the work to make an office suite on OSX that performs well. But NeoOffice is quite an achievement for a small collection of developers, and it works well. I use it on a regular basis, and don't have any significant problems aside from a slow initial load.

Re:Finally!

[db32]

Did you just offer to buy me a copy of iWork?

Re:Finally!

[manly_15]

I don't know, I think given Sun's wishy-washy support of OS X for OO.org in the past it's worth it to support NeoOffice at least in the short term. I haven't looked at Sun's work in a few months, but this thread gives some good detail as to the previous deficiencies of Sun's work for OS X support.

Re:Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want try a new aqua build http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/aqua.html DEV300_m2, which has some major improvements compared to previous builds.

Re:Finally!

[Laguerre]

Sorry, I meant to mod parent insightful.

Re:Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

But what would you want to stop using NeoOffice? After all, OOo is written by Windows developers who have little clue about how to build a proper Mac application.

Re:Finally!

[7Prime]

NeoOffice is a dead-end project. It's coded mostly in Java, which makes all the UI stuff insanely slow. OOO may start out slow on a Mac, but it has the potential to be just as fast as OOO on any PC, NeoOffice can never be, unless somehow they move fully away from Java.

Adoption of OS X in OOO means a fine product in the long run.

Re:Finally!

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Yeah, it really boggles my mind that Apple doesn't have Pages save in ODF, given the tiny marketshare Pages has. Heck, you can't even export to ODF, last I checked.

Re:Finally!

[ProfessionalCookie]

Have you ever looked inside a Pages or Numbers document package. It's almost self documenting. Images in folders accompanied by a gzipped xml file.

Re:Finally!

[contrapunctus]

Thank you, I never looked until now (didn't even occur to me that it was a package). I should have looked before I posted.

Re:Finally!

[Blakey Rat]

Yeah; can you name me a program to open those in Windows? I have a bunch of .pages files that are completely inaccessible to me, and I've Googled far and wide. Maybe I'm using the wrong keywords, but all I can find are suggestions to open the documents in Pages and export them into RTF or Word format-- that's great, but until Pages runs on Windows, it doesn't help me much.

It's one thing to say "it's a really easy format" and yet another to have a program that can actually read the damned things. As far as I'm concerned, Pages documents are as closed as anything else.

Re:Finally!

[nbritton]

You can download the 3.0 (DEV300_m2) Aqua snapshot here: http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/aqua-Intel.html

Re:Finally!

[nine-times]

I just downloaded it, and yup... still slow. Like NeoOffice, it's not so bad once you get it going, but it takes a long time to load, a long time to open a new document, and a relatively long time once you've started a document before you can actually start working.

I'll reserve judgement until the final version, though.

Re:Finally!

[nbritton]

OOo Aqua is a bit faster then NeoOffice on my system. Still very slow... But hopefully it's just debug code slowing OOo Aqua down.

Re:Finally!

[nine-times]

Yeah, I haven't actually timed them or anything, but given that they're both pretty slow, I'd rather stick with a release version of NeoOffice than an alpha of OOo.

Anyway, I really don't want to bash either project. I'm grateful to the people working on NeoOffice for having provided me with a very useful application for the past few years. I'm excited and glad the OOo team is working on an official Aqua port. Whether they remain two separate projects or find a way to work together, I wish everyone the best of luck.

Re:Finally!

[nine-times]

For reference, if anyone's interested, I recently tested the speed of some of the programs I mentioned. What I did was right-click on a Word document, and opened it in Word 2008, the latest OpenOffice Aqua alpha, NeoOffice, and Pages (in that order). And then I waited to see in what order the document would load, and which programs would make that document available for editing most quickly.

Now, this isn't the most scientific test, but the results that I got from loading these programs straight after boot was that Pages was the winner (by a lot) inspite of being started last. Next came Word 2008, then NeoOffice, and then OOo came in last by quite a bit. So I closed all the applications and tried again, after having loaded the applications in memory. Pages and NeoOffice tied this time, then Word, then OpenOffice (last again).

So again, OpenOffice is an alpha. There will probably be some performance improvements before release. Still, there isn't anything in this alpha that indicates that NeoOffice isn't as good as what OOo will produce.

Performance?

[Aetuneo]

Features are nice, of course, but how does it perform? How much memory does it take to run? Will it work well on relatively slow hardware, or do I need the latest and greatest to run it? Is it significantly slower than the last version, significantly faster, or about the same?

Re:Performance?

[Eil]

RTFA and ye shall receive:

http://katana.oooninja.com/w/openoffice.org/performance_improvements

Re:Performance?

[adpsimpson]

I'll probably get modded as troll/flamebait, but this is the most important question and I'm surprised there aren't already more people asking the same:

Features are nice, of course, but how does it perform?

Currently, Open office is good 80% of the time, but it lands so hard on the 20% where it falls that it is arguable whether it is 'usable' in any real sense of the word in critical situations.

My two personal examples are presentations, in which animations and slide changing all run so slowly that it becomes unusable (like, lags increasing from 1 second to over 30 seconds in the first 10 slides), and macros in large spreadsheets (one which typically takes 30 seconds to run on 10,000 lines of data in MS Excel was running 1 line per second in OOo).

Since I use Linux and do, daily, use open office, I'm personally very hopeful that this release may solve these, and other, long standing problems. However if it doesn't, I'll be looking at reinstalling MS Office through Wine. I've already used this setup extensively when I needed to run an Access-based program, and it hurt much less than Open Office does.

Re:Performance?

[coldmist]

Features are nice, of course, but how does it perform?

The real question, is will it blend? ;)

Re:Performance?

[FroMan]

I was going to mod you down because when I visited that link there were no ninjas at all. But I figured I would post my complaint instead.

Good, but the interface is still lagging

[nagashi]

I guess I'm one of the few that really really likes the office 2007 interface and really wish OO would adopt something similar. That's not enough to get me to switch (not an option anyway, running linux fulltime now). It's a little frustrating to see MS continually evolving their product in very visible ways, while OO has looked pretty much the same for 3 years now. If we want people to switch to OSS, we need to be visually superior to MS. All the back end superiorities of OO are not immediately obvious to many (free file format, multiplatform, powerful editable style system, etc), aside from the cost.

Whether your like or hate the office 2007 interface, at least MS is out there rethinking how people use applications, which tasks they need to access the quickest, etc. OO is sticking to the same old massive row of buttons. Koffice is doing more thinking along these lines, but personally I don't really like where they're going. But at least they're rethinking things.

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Wait, you're actually advocating putting developers on bling rather than actually making the product better? Thinking like that is the main thing that's gotten Microsoft to lose as many customers to OO as it already has.

Me, I'd much rather they put their heads to making OO run faster with less memory. It's truly pathetic that MS Office 2k3 runs faster under vmware+xp than OO does natively in linux.

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[Abcd1234]

at least MS is out there rethinking how people use applications

And by that, I assume you mean, at least MS is out there needlessly changing the interfaces for applications we've gotten used to over the past, oh, 20 years, such that they deviate from UI paradigms we've become intimately familiar with. Yes, thank goodness for that. God bless MS.

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[TheLink]

"It's truly pathetic that MS Office 2k3 runs faster under vmware+xp than OO does natively in linux."

Yeah, but I've mentioned stuff like that before and I got modded troll for it.

Hopefully 3.0 will be faster, I use OOo on Linux at work and it takes _ages_ to start.

If they get it right, maybe a lot of companies might actually switch from MSO 2K3 to OOo instead of going to MSO 2007 - since switching to MSO 2007 will require massive retraining/relearning, perhaps more than even switching from MSO2K3 to OOo.

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[Anonymous Coward]

bad luck for you but OOo dev can not do anything about this. The interace is completely patented so no other software will ever used this kind of stuff. You have to stay with MS Office 2007 if you like it.

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[ko9]

I was about to post the exact same comment, until I found yours. I agree, I have had a thorough dislike for MS Office for a many years now, because I could just never seem to use its interface. I was very pleased to see they'd totally reinvented it with the 2007 release, and I actually switched from OpenOffice (which I had used for years) to MS Office 2007, because I find this new interface more pleasant to work with. I think the problem with many of these projects is that they're rather unwieldy projects. By the time something is becoming really good, it's a lot of work to radically remake things, and it feels like you're jeopardizing years of work that is only just starting to pay off. It shouldn't have to be like that, in a modular design. The functionality in something like MS Office 2007 is still the same, the way to control those functions has just changed.

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[ko9]

Change is scary. The slashdot crowd has endlessly criticised MS for endlessly rehashing the same programs, too afraid of changing anything to do any proper innovation. It's rather saddening that the one time they actually took that risk of people being afraid of something new, and seem to have done it RIGHT (that is, rebuilt the entire interface from a user perspective), they now get bashed for changing their interface. Given the choice, would you continue to use the same horrible interface you have been using for 20 years, for the sole reason that you have been using it for 20 years... Or would you have the guts to actually admit you were wrong and create an interface the users would actually like more in the long run? What's even more sad, is that your comment was immediately modded insightful, probably simply because you flamed MS. I know Ill probably get modded 'troll' or something, with possibly some cynical comment along the lines of "you must be new here." but maybe one person will actually start thinking because of this, instead of automatically assuming that everything opposite to what MS does is The Right Thing To Do.

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[AndrewNeo]

Needlessly? Have you actually used Office 2007?
I didn't even know there was Research stuff in Office until 2007. You could never find anything other than the -most- used items in those horribly disorganized menus.

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[Blakey Rat]

And by that, I assume you mean, at least MS is out there needlessly changing the interfaces for applications we've gotten used to over the past, oh, 20 years, such that they deviate from UI paradigms we've become intimately familiar with. Yes, thank goodness for that. God bless MS.

Those bastards! Trying to increase the usability of their products! They should all burn in hell for it!

Seriously, WTF guys? Insightful? This isn't "insightful" this is "get off my lawn you kids!" Whether or not Office 2007's interface is great or terrible, at least you can say this about Microsoft: they *tried* to make it better. And that's a hell of a lot more than OpenOffice has ever done; it's been a rip-off of other products since day one.

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's truly pathetic that MS Office 2k3 runs faster under vmware+xp than OO does natively in linux."

Yeah, but I've mentioned stuff like that before and I got modded troll for it.

I hope this is attitude is changing. How is OO supposed be improved, if its shortcomings can't be discussed?

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[Blakey Rat]

Wait, you're actually advocating putting developers on bling rather than actually making the product better? Thinking like that is the main thing that's gotten Microsoft to lose as many customers to OO as it already has.

The Office 2007 interface isn't "bling." It's a new interface strategy determined from the results of dozens of usability studies, many of them real-world in office environments, not just some random thing someone sketched in a notebook.

The real problem isn't that OpenOffice should "put developers on bling," but that OpenOffice should get people who aren't developers. People who, for instance, are willing to run the usability studies, to come up with the big picture ideas to test. Psychologists to come up with those little tricks that make things appear faster and better without actually making them faster and better-- for example, the new progress bars in OS X and Vista both use a simple optical illusion to appear to be moving faster than they actually are. Even an artist, or at least designer, to set your color scheme up to look modern and fresh.

The problem is that all you have is developers. It takes a lot more than that to create successful software.

Me, I'd much rather they put their heads to making OO run faster with less memory. It's truly pathetic that MS Office 2k3 runs faster under vmware+xp than OO does natively in linux.

I agree, that's also important.

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you used it? That's always the complaint I hear from people that don't use it. The initial ramp-up was like a week. Some times it's hard to find the one obscure option that was there before, but that's extremely rare. It's much easier and faster to accomplish any given task.

MS actually did performance studies of the new UI, comparing new & old users performing a task - new users performed the task way faster in 2007 than in 2003, while old users performed the task faster in 2003 than in 2007... until they spent more time with the new UI. Then they too performed better. So the new UI has quantitative evidence of being better - not something you can generally claim about a UI.

I'm not a MS shill, I was just amazed with how much better the 2007 interface became and I wish I could get it running on Linux. Office is by far the single MS product which to this day has no effective competition in its market because its good, and not because its a monopoly (well, the file format thing doesn't make it easier, I agree).

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[tmalone]

I'm ok with the new office interface for the most part, though I do think they need to come up with some new icons for less commonly used items. Inserting objects into a presentation (if you want a video player that can handle mov files for instance) requires you to turn on the developer tab, then hover over the cryptic icons to find the "other controls" button. A menu would have made it easier because I could've just read the damn text instead of trying to figure out which 8x8 icon is the "other controls" button. Icons are great when they actually represent something. Icons make it really hard to find functionality that you don't know about. Text is descriptive, small icons are not. I had to go online to figure out how to insert an external control so that I could put my damn video in a presentation.

The new interface in Vista though is horrible. Explorer, which used to be a relatively useful app is now maddeningly difficult to use. I almost prefer the anemic command line to that POS. Instead of the big round menu button in the left corner to get at the now hidden functionality, we instead get the magic, "press the alt key" for the menu. I love mysterious functionality that is completely inconsistent. I like that they are trying new things, but sometimes new things suck.

The ribbon looks cool, so I'll give it that. The problem is that it is unique and does not appear to be optional. It resists people who can intuit things. The icons are great for people who are going to be taught things and can use the visual cues to remember. If you try to learn it yourself though, it actually resists your efforts. Most of those icons mean nothing and require hovering or trial and error; or you have to go find a tutorial. I guess interface design requires some give and take. I take issue with the general consensus that Microsoft did this wonderful thing with the ribbon. I think it is going to be great for teaching new users, but it will frustrate people who already knew how to use office, and also those who try to learn on their own, as they go.

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[Nimey]

I guess I'm one of the few that really really likes the office 2007 interface and really wish OO would adopt something similar. AOL, but the Ribbon is patented. Microsoft is willing to license it to third parties, but the programs using Ribbon can't be office suites.

That seems fair to me, since they /did/ come up with the idea themselves. I hope OOo does start using it once the patent runs out.

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[willyhill]

If Microsoft doesn't change an application, they're stagnating and can't effect change because they have ceased to be able to innovate. If they change it, they're deviating from the UI paradigms we've become intimately familar with.

If OOo suddenly changed their interface it would be hailed as supreme innovation, regardless of whether or not the changes actually work.

The question is, does the change make you more productive, and can you revert back to the usual interface if it doesn't. The first one is highly subjective, and depends on each individual user. Most people I've talked to about the Office 2007 changes say they are better off with the new UI, but a few have gone back to the old one because they didn't feel comfortable.

It's always better to consider all the aspects of the issue before making comments like these.

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[ELProphet]

Until you realize that Microsoft spent money to pull people off the street, and pay them to use the software while watching them. Most (>90%) of the users who have been using Office [98-2k3] for the past "20 years" find, within a week that they are as and often more productive with 2k7. Especially the "power users" who regularly do complicated things like track document changes, large mail-merges (1000s of addresses) etc find the new interface to drastically reduce the number of clicks. The HTML-esque markup strategy that Office has been using makes _much_ more sense to users when "styles" are boldly displayed at the top of the screen, and I've personally heard several users comment on how many fewer "weird formating things" happen in 2k7.

If you stop hating Vista and the management, you realize that Microsoft Office is the flagship MS product, and is the reason they exist as a software company.

(All my comments come from experience of migrating a college faculty with ~200 users to Office 2007/Vista over the past year. The 2007 migration is going much better than the Vista migration, btw...)

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you were modded as a troll due to your shit-headed signature?

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[Azarael]

It isn't an apples to apples comparison anyway, the fact remains that OO.org is still a Java application while MS Office is not. I strongly suspect that that is the main reason for the performance difference, although OO.org shows similar uptime performance problems to Firefox (Large sheets that have had a lot of calculations done to them get bogged down after a while, which is corrected by a restart).

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a point good sir.

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[unapersson]

"That seems fair to me, since they /did/ come up with the idea themselves. I hope OOo does start using it once the patent runs out."

I've not used 2007 yet, so correct me if I've wrong, but it doesn't look like a big jump from the menu in Bluefish that I've been using for years.

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[Knuckles]

It isn't an apples to apples comparison anyway, the fact remains that OO.org is still a Java application

Um, no it isn't. Too lazy to google for you, tough.

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[Knuckles]

That seems fair to me, since they /did/ come up with the idea themselves

Yeah, it would be fantastic if we had a different control method for every car brand, too.

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[Azarael]

Right you are http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Java_and_OpenOffice.org

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[Nimey]

It's a good thing we're not going to have a discussion about car analogies, then.

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[StarViking]

I hate to be the math wizard here, but given that the MSO version before 2007 was 2003 - exactly how many years do you think there was during which M$ "evolved" their product?

As I do the math (let me go find my calculator), it seems like if OO has looked the "same" for 3 years, then it's still got a full year to go before it is on par with M$, and that's with OO being a volunteer effort - not one where a bunch of M$ code monkeys have been paid big bucks to make MSO harder (albeit prettier) for me to use!!

According to their press site:

OpenOffice.org version 1.0 was released as open-source software on May 1st 2002. It proved hugely successful, and after more than 49 million recorded downloads, version 2.0 was released on 20th October 2005 If memory serves, there was MSO 2000, 2003, then 2007 - or 3 then 4 years between. Assuming an implied release date of September 2, 2008, the OO project has gone down from 3.5 years between releases (from 1.0 to 2.0) to just under 3 - OO is getting faster while M$ would appear to be getting slower...

I just think we should cut the people that do this for the good of a planet a little slack when they are actually executing faster on releases than over-paid M$ keyboard smashers are...

Just my 2 cents :)

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[rsborg]

The Ribbon sucks. It takes ages to get used to the "new way to do things" and they had no way to transition that I could find.
I missed most the shortcuts which they removed or reordered.

Plus it's slow and crashes a lot (Office 2k7, Excel in particular). Personally, Office 2k3 was not bad IMHO, and I still prefer 2k for the raw speed.
Microsoft just doesn't make software that well anymore. If it doesn't just outright suck (Vista) it's still slower with each revision.

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[Blakey Rat]

I think it is going to be great for teaching new users, but it will frustrate people who already knew how to use office, and also those who try to learn on their own, as they go.

Have you talked to heavy Office users who have upgraded from 2003 to 2007? We have several dozen in our office, and I've yet to hear one complaint about the change. I think Microsoft nailed the Ribbon almost 100%. (You bring up a good issue, but it's a pretty esoteric one as well.)

There are a lot of grumpy old men on Slashdot who will resist every change tooth and nail, regardless of how positive it is. For instance, your suggestion that you're almost on the verge of dumping Explorer and going back to the CLI.

(BTW, I have no clue what you're talking about there. Big round button in the corner? Do you mean the Start Menu? Hitting the "magic" alt button shows the XP-style menu for the window, but did you actually use that in XP? Other than the first time to set view options, I think I went my entire 2000 and XP career without ever using any items from that menu.)

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[cavebison]

I finally realise now, why MS went so far out of their way (and ours as users) to re-invent the Office interface - and, for that matter, Windows' in Vista. Differentiation! I see now that MS's competitors are using MS-like interfaces, and that gives the impression (to end users) that they're just as good as MS.

Hence the major UI re-think in MS Windows and Office. Otherwise I doubt they would have bothered; at least not to the extent of creating an entirely new paradigm, which also has its disadvantages (users don't want to re-learn their s/ware all over again). It staggered me that MS would do that to their marketplace, but now I see why! Differentiation from the competition.

Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging

[gomadtroll]

Maybe they 'modded troll' because it sounded like one, Slashdot has a hard time with the mod feature, like modding your post interesting. Hopefully people are not still talking about how fast an app starts, folks I know just leave them running while they work. I do have OO 2.3.1 running on an older laptop, no hard drive, runs Puppy Linux in memory and saves/runs OO from a USB 1 stick, now that does start slow, but runs just fine.

Hopefully...

[Shawn is an Asshole]

Hopefully that GUI is not the final version.

It'd be nice if they'd copy MS Office 2004 for OS X or Lotus Symphony rather than continue on with a bad copy of MS Office 2003. Notice the side bar? Floating on OS X (I prefer floating, btw), part of the window in Lotus Symphony. For me, at least, that is significantly more helpful than toolbars/menus or that irritating "ribbon".

It's also be awesome if Writer supported tabs and split editor like Eclipse. Those two features are one of the main reason I do everything I possibly can in Eclipse.

Re:Hopefully...

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

Why would the change it? I thought everything looks pretty on a mac - irregardless of functionality - thats how apple sells products, isn't it?

Functionality AFTER Aestetics!
Just look at the mac-air. It sure is pretty ;)

Re:Hopefully...

[AKAImBatman]

It'd be nice if they'd copy MS Office 2004 for OS X

Dear God, NO. Please no. I nearly had an aneurysm trying to click on the tiny little icons in the floaty window that is so difficult to reach and so easy to use to hide important things with. It's like Clippy, but more insidious! You're trying to read or type and THERE IT IS! THE TINY LITTLE USELESS WINDOW! GAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

...

Err... Yeah. Just don't copy the Office 2004 interface. It really is terrible. (Well and truly!)

Re:Hopefully...

[contrapunctus]

"Irrigardless" is not a word. If you are going to troll, at least use proper English so you have some credibility.

Re:Hopefully...

[kigrwik]

I believe (though I might be mistaken) that you may have fallen victim to a broad-spectrum troll attempt target towards
mac fans and "grammar nazis". :)

YHBT HAND

Re:Hopefully...

[MC Negro]

"Irrigardless" is not a word. If you are going to troll, at least use proper English so you have some credibility. It is a word, but only if you're within Boston city limits.

Re:Hopefully...

[Chris Burkhardt]

"Irrigardless" is not a word.

True. But irregardless might be.

Re:Hopefully...

[contrapunctus]

oops! still not a word :)

Great news but...

[squoozer]

This is great news. I've been using OOo for ages but lets face it before 2.0 it wasn't really up to scratch and even 2.0 has some pretty rough corners. I'm hoping that the release of 3.0 which sounds like it will have added all the missing features will also indicate the start of the "polishing" of this great product.

Re:Great news but...

[LaserLine]

Speaking of polishing OpenOffice, when are they going to implement Tango Icons? To me it seems like it wouldn't take much effort because most of the icons are done and the ones that aren't can be easily made by rallying up the community and have a competition. I still can't believe something like this hasn't been done. Fair or unfairly, there are plenty of users out there that will open a program to try it out for the first time to see that it looks like it's stuck in the 90s and never give a chance and never try it again. Something this trivial should have been a high priority.

Performance improvements

[EvilRyry]

Sounds like calc is in for a big performance boost. Its quite frustrating to take a simple operation which is nearly instant on Excel and then turn it into a 30 second operation on OOCalc. I'm downloading the beta now so we'll see where it goes.

For the scientists: ERROR BARS

[TheMeuge]

I am happy that after something like 5 years of suffering, the scientists finally get what they really need - definable range for error bars. Cause really, having to use Gnumeric for analyzing data, because OO 2.X was missing such a vital function was pretty sad.

Kudos to the development team for implementing these changes, and allowing me to further propagate open source software within the academic community.

Re:For the scientists: ERROR BARS

[Grokmoo]

While I agree that being able to define a range for error bars is nice, does anyone within the scientific community seriously use a spreadsheet for data analysis? In my experience the capabilities of Excel and the like are woefully inadequate for this purpose.

Re:For the scientists: ERROR BARS

[TheMeuge]

I am interested in the Standard Deviation, SEM, and a one- or two-tailed T-test. As a molecular immunologist, that's about all I need for 99% of my data analysis.. and I usually use a spreadsheet for it. Perhaps in other fields, more advanced applications are required, and perhaps for analyzing large sets of data from high-throughput screens I would need something far more sophisticated, but for now what I got suffices.

But if you can suggest a good data analysis application that runs on Linux, I will listen, and will surely try it.

Re:For the scientists: ERROR BARS

[Anonymous Coward]

does anyone within the scientific community seriously use a spreadsheet for data analysis?

Yes, we do. Excel, Matlab and SPSS. Excel is very good for graphs. Even if the data has been analyzed in SPSS, I do my graphs in Excel. I mostly use Linux, but unfortunately Linux spreadsheets really suck.

Re:For the scientists: ERROR BARS

[glpierce]

They may be more complicated (or expensive) than you're looking for, but MATLAB, R, SPSS, and SAS all run on Linux. Though I wouldn't call SPSS and SAS "good", they're the most common applications used for data analysis some fields.

Re:For the scientists: ERROR BARS

[xtracto]

You should better go with a real statistical analysis package. Even for those kind of things in the long term it will be easier for you and they are more robust.

When I started my PhD I used Gnumeric for several statistical analysis however, after spending some time I had to learn to use a real statistical package. I went for R, which is very well known an accepted through the research community (mainly because it is the open version of S, and can be scrutinized). After using it for about six months I found it better to make even the most simple statistical analysis on it. Oh, and the charts really look professional. No matter what I did in Gnumeric (tried once in OpenOffice but its graphics capabilites simply suck \BBBbig Time), I could not obtain decent charts to add to a LaTex publication.

I would suggest rKward to use R. it is the best IDE (IMO, after trying several and trying and failing to setup several others).

One of the most important advantages of using a statistical package like R is that you can get it to output to standard output in a console. That way you can use whatever scripting language you know (I used GAWK, sed, and other bash niceties) to prepare your data to be included in whatever word processing/typsetting program you need. It really saves a lot of time.

Re:For the scientists: ERROR BARS

[proxima]

I am interested in the Standard Deviation, SEM, and a one- or two-tailed T-test. As a molecular immunologist, that's about all I need for 99% of my data analysis.

[...]
But if you can suggest a good data analysis application that runs on Linux, I will listen, and will surely try it.

I'm usually the first to encourage people to move beyond spreadsheets and use better tools for statistical analysis. That said, a spreadsheet is a really quick and easy way of doing simple data analysis, and it's perfectly fine to use it at such.

The problem comes in when people start trying to use spreadsheet applications for more complicated analysis or want to do more complicated graphics than a spreadsheet easily allows. If and when that time comes, it becomes really worthwhile to have at least one other tool in which to work. As the other reply suggested, R is a free (and excellent) implementation of the SPLUS language. The package is explicitly designed with statistical analysis and graphics in mind. In fact, a nice introduction to the language is Data Analysis and Graphics Using R - An Example-Based Approach by
John Maindonald and John Braun . You might be able to find the book at a university library before deciding whether to plunk down the money to buy it.

MATLAB is more of a general purpose language, which can be very useful for some fields and not as useful in others. It's definitely overkill to buy MATLAB to do basic statistical analysis, and it's probably not the best tool for the job unless you already know the language well. Most other commercial statistics packages (SAS, SPSS, Stata) have Linux versions, as this community has tended to be more server/unix-oriented historically.

To bring this back on topic, it's nice that OpenOffice.org is expanding its feature set in the statistical/graphing arena - I've personally found it quite lacking compared to Excel. That said, it's also important to know when you've moved beyond what a spreadsheet is relatively good at and find a package which can do the more complicated analysis. Spreadsheets and stats programs are both complements and substitutes in various ways.

Re:For the scientists: ERROR BARS

[gzipped_tar]

Agree with parent post. OO.o spreadsheet is good for visualizing the data in a WYSIWYG manner. I think (I may be wrong) a spreadsheet app.'s job is to tabulate first, and all the calculation/display stuff go to the second. This is analogous to that within a Makefile it is the rules that's the most important --- macros, functions and bell & wistles the second.

If you want good statistics experience you have R. If you want control over the details of the calculation and algorithm you have plain old C to crunch the floating point numbers. If you want high-quality diagrams to be inserted into LaTeX you can try matplotlib with the PDF backend (that requires Python, and Python modules such as NumPy are also doing pretty well in numerical jobs). I don't think any spreadsheet could win big outside its intended area.

Re:For the scientists: ERROR BARS

[Anonymous Coward]

R.

http://www.r-project.org/

It can do basic stats easily, procedurally generate journal quality graphics, and do just about any advanced procedure you could dream up. R: it's science!

Re:For the scientists: ERROR BARS

[shaiay]

R:
www.r-project.org/

Re:For the scientists: ERROR BARS

[Hatta]

What's wrong with tools like R, SciGraphica, or Gnuplot? Academia is thick with open source tools as good or better than their proprietary counterparts.

Re:For the scientists: ERROR BARS

[starwed]

I remember looking at the bug for this a while ago, and getting the impression that the devs didn't even understand exactly what the feature request was for.

I mean, they already had code to add error bars which were calculated from the data; I'd have expected just reading the values from the sheet wouldn't be that tough...

Re:For the scientists: ERROR BARS

[psykocrime]

While I agree that being able to define a range for error bars is nice, does anyone within the scientific community seriously use a spreadsheet for data analysis? In my experience the capabilities of Excel and the like are woefully inadequate for this purpose.

Yes, but one of the really awesome projects that is underway is R integration with Calc. It's very preliminary right now, but the goal is to be able to use R functions from inside Calc. Should be pretty sweet when it's ready.

Re:For the scientists: ERROR BARS

[Trogre]

Well, SPSS v16, SAS, R and MATLAB all work under Linux.

X error bars

[Phyrexicaid]

It looks like it's still only y error bars, I see no mention of the ability to add x error bars.
Makes it less attractive in a scientific environment (like undergraduate report writing).

Still no mention of an outliner mode

[mgkimsal2]

What more can I say? This has been requested and brought up for *years*. I really don't get why it's so hard to do, especially considering something that there's already indentation and structure support for lists. I'm not an OOO hacker, but this doesn't seem like something that has a huge technical hurdle preventing it from being done.

Maybe I missed it - there was no mention in the articles listed.

Wait - the first article linked to this page:
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/buglist.cgi?Submit+query=Submit+query&issue_type=DEFECT&issue_type=ENHANCEMENT&issue_type=FEATURE&issue_type=PATCH&resolution=FIXED&target_milestone=OOo+3.0&email1=&emailtype1=exact&emailassigned_to1=1&email2=&emailtype2=exact&emailreporter2=1&issueidtype=include&issue_id=&changedin=&votes=0&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=&chfieldvalue=&short_desc=&short_desc_type=allwords&long_desc=&long_desc_type=allwords&issue_file_loc=&issue_file_loc_type=fulltext&status_whiteboard=&status_whiteboard_type=fulltext&keywords=&keywords_type=anytokens&field0-0-0=noop&type0-0-0=noop&value0-0-0=&cmdtype=doit&order=Reuse+same+sort+as+last+time
  which mentioned an outline mode. Maybe it's coming after all?

Re:Still no mention of an outliner mode

[module0000]

What more can I say? This has been requested and brought up for *years*. I really don't get why it's so hard to do, especially considering something that there's already indentation and structure support for lists. I'm not an OOO hacker, but this doesn't seem like something that has a huge technical hurdle preventing it from being done. Requested for years eh? It's called open source, you should have added the feature "years" ago.

Re:Still no mention of an outliner mode

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not an OOO hacker Dunno... maybe that's why?

Re:Still no mention of an outliner mode

[Physics Phi1]

If you read the comments on the linked feature request, you would see that according to mba, one of the leading programmers on the project, that it would take a lot of work to make this work properly, because the different views are mutually exclusive. However, once it is introduced, it may be possible to use multiple views simultaneously, and also to include a draft or normal view.

How about better keybinding support?

[freelunch]

The newly designed splashscreen and about dialog are mighty impressive! But is there any word on better support for alternate keybindings? It shouldn't come as a shock that folks don't want to learn new editor keybindings for each appliction. Some of us prefer emacs bindings.

A feature to automatically load alternate bindings at startup would be nice.. Maybe even including some alternates with the release? I'd gladly contribute my efforts. This detail should not be left as a (somewhat clumsy) exercise for the user.

Or maybe we just need openoffice mode for emacs?

My one problem with open office.

[Overkill Nbuta]

I find that whenever i wanna do graphing in a easy manner, i find that to swap axis and data sets in open office is such a hassle. Along with the fact that to add a trendline/line of best fit. and equation of a line in open office just is such a pain in open office. Also i have random errors with trying to sum up a column in the spreadsheet, if they fixxed these issues I would find open office much better to use.

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[stoolpigeon]

Don't switch. If you are happy and have already ponied up for windows and office - have a great time. For those of us running other platforms and unwilling to get on the MS treadmill, this is good news. If for some reason you feel a need to move later, OOo will be there waiting.

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[TheMeuge]

Sure, if you installed a pirated copy of Office 2007, on a pirated copy of Windows, and you're happy with the functionality of both, you won't see any advantage. But for those who do not want to go down that road, the options are to purchase a $100 copy of Windows and fork over another $150-300 for the Office suite (depending on pricing).

But some of us prefer Linux to Windows or MacOS, and many others have problems with Office 07. For us, this is big and exciting news.

I understand that as long as it works for you, you don't give a damn about anyone else, but if that's the case, please choose not to care a little further, and refrain from posting.

VBA

[mwvdlee]

How about VBA support?

I heavily rely on scripting for my spreadsheets and generating text documents. The files themselves could easily be moved to OOo, but the scripts cannot. To make matters worse, the builtin scripting of OOo is crap. There, I said it. Somebody is probably going to bitch at me for it, but OOo's scripting requires 20 lines of complicated code for what you can do with 2 or 3 lines of VBA code. That is just not acceptable for a scripting language intended to be used by non-hardcore programmers.

Re:VBA

[hairyfeet]

Forking to the rescue! Here you go. Oxygenoffice has VBA support,as well as more templates,clip art,etc. Enjoy!

Re:VBA

[CastrTroy]

Even if the scripting was good, nobody is going to want to port all their scripts over to some other language, just to switch to a different office suite. If you do, you either don't have many/any scripts to begin with, or you must really hate your current solution quite a bit.

Re:VBA

[FST777]

Interesting, but the announcement says that support is only for Excel documents (so no VBA macros in Writer) and that the implementation is still under development.

Re:VBA

[SgtChaireBourne]

Yes, that's a tremendous advancement. Now you can finally say goodbye to those awful VBA scripts and the "programmers" that follow them as baggage.

It's not new, but OpenOffice.org macros and scripting support both Javascript and Python. So, you don't need to learn a separate language just for macros. Even better, you have a larger pool of people to hire from. And best of all, that pool is of higher quality not being limited to the self-selecting One Microsoft Way crowd.

Since both javascript and python are used in web development and XML tools handle OpenOffice's main format, the OpenDocument Format, there is much less overhead in integrating document management and web apps and less need for disparate skill sets.

Re:VBA

[FST777]

Gah.
A notch more digging reveals that this is not something specific to OxygenOffice. It is the result of a joint Novell & Sun incubator project (http://vba.openoffice.org/)

See also
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/VBA
http://www.linux.com/feature/58348

Re:VBA

[ClosedSource]

"It's not new, but OpenOffice.org macros and scripting support both Javascript and Python. So, you don't need to learn a separate language just for macros."

Sure because it's a known fact that VBA programmers are also experts in Javascript and Python.

Re:VBA

[hairyfeet]

Um,sorry but the only time I have seen VBA used is in Excel macros.What exactly are you doing that needs embedded code in a document? And wouldn't there be a better tool for doing it than a document? I'm not trying to flame here,just curious as to why you would need a document to run code. And isn't it kind of risky,security wise?

Maybe it is just me,but I never did get why Microsoft thought everything should be able to run code.I always thought that was what VB6 and other RAD tools were for-whipping off something quick when you need something in a hurry to do a specific application. But that is just my 02c,YMMV.

Re:VBA

[Anonymous Coward]

Open Office supports a Basic macro language very simlar to VBA,so I had no problem porting MS #Excel VBA macros to OOo Calc and vice-versa. I can simply copy and pasted functions into the IDE in order to use them in spreadsheet cells. The only caveats are that if you need to reference appplication objects, the object models are different, and in OOo you have to be more specific about calling the objects you intend to use (VBA often allows you to omit a reference and just guesses what it thinks you intended by context).

Re:VBA

[slapout]

I had a coworker who wrote a VBA script for Word that typed in characters from a text file and played back a sound file of someone typing!

Re:VBA

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that Word has macros, right? I'm trying to figure out how any of your statements apply only to Word, and not to Excel.

What are you doing that needs embedded code in a document? The same sorts of things that you are probably doing that requires embedded code in a spreadsheet. In one of my documents I have some code that displays a UserForm and requests for some input that is then propogated in various forms throughout the document. Could it be accomplished by other, more cumbersome means (bookmarks, references, etc.)? Sure. Does it work better and easier when I use VBA? Yes.

And wouldn't there be a better tool for doing it than a document? Sure, if I was really bored I could design a full application to do that, but why do that when I can just add a little VBA code to an already existing template. Couldn't you just use a separate application to handle the situations where you use VBA in Excel? After all "VB6 and other RAD tools are for whipping off something quick when you need something in a hurry to do a specific application"

And isn't it kind of risky,security wise? And using VBA in Excel is less risky how?

Consider yourself informed.

Re:VBA

[maz2331]

Seems like a nice step, but what's REALLY needed is an Access replacement. Seriously. That's the only thing keeping me using MS Office at all.

Re:VBA

[LunaticTippy]

There are a lot of applications I have seen. At my work there are controlled documents that have code-enforced standards and workflow. Validation of data, naming conventions, file location, pdf copy filed somewhere else, email notification, etc. All built in to a template. It isn't how I would have designed it, but it works.

Re:VBA

[hairyfeet]

Actually,I never said VBA in Excel was a good idea,either.I have just met a lot of guys that have whipped off some funky Excel+VBA to get it to do something.In most cases if they would have had access to VB6 or a similar RAD tool they probably wouldn't have done it,but they didn't have much choice.Kind of like rubbing sticks together to make fire-it works but it sure ain't pretty.

And I don't have anything against VB or VBA.I know MSFT can have my VB6 when they pry my cold dead fingers from it.I don't know how many times I've played the hero to some little mom&pop by whipping off a quick and dirty replacement of some "have to have!" app that they picked up from lord knows where that won't run on anything but ancient junk.For a lot of these little mom&pop places a quick and dirty VB6+access database will serve them well for years.I know I should probably learn .NET or something,but I'm mainly a network and hardware guy and languages change too damn quick.And I have yet to find ANYTHING that you can whip off a quick multi-form GUI connected to a database as fast as VB6.

So hey,if VBA crammed in a .doc floats your boat,I say more power to ya. I just never seen the VBA tricks outside of the Excel guys.But if that is what you need I think Lotus and Staroffice both had better VBA support(IIRC,Staroffice has a VBA to SBA converter built in) than OO.o.Personally I have tried just about all the different office suites and I think I will stick with old MSFT Office 2K.Runs great on old hardware,and plays nice with the VB6 I have on my laptop.I am probably just partial to VB6 over VBA because I have so much code lying around that I can reuse. But that is just what floats MY boat,your boat floater may vary.

Re:VBA

[uniquename72]

Um,sorry but the only time I have seen VBA used is in Excel macros.What exactly are you doing that needs embedded code in a document? Word is the tool of choice for publishers and copyeditors. Macro use is very common for both.

Re:VBA

[mwvdlee]

Which is my point.

For my private spreadsheets, I'd be willing to do the conversion if it were mostly a search&replace and some minor, known tweaks. Or even if a good tool existed to do the conversion for me. As it is, I have no solution.

As for businesses, even if a 1:1 quality conversion tool existed, the sheer size of the operation could be prohibitive. VBA conversion adds considerable cost which may not be compensated with reduced price of OOo.

Re:VBA

[mwvdlee]

Anything beyond the most basic macro's will reference the object model. If you need to do things conditionally or in loops, you need to reference the object model.

Re:VBA

[CastrTroy]

A better solution may be to convert everything, but not to another scripting language inside your office suite. If it's that important that you need a program, you should probably have a real software project for it. Putting everything in a spreadsheet may seem like a good idea when you start, but it really does tie you to that platform. A little programming here and there isn't bad, but if it's something you require for you day-to-day business needs, you should probably do a proper software project for it.

Re:VBA

[mwvdlee]

So in order to make DATA independant on the environment, instead of putting it in a DOCUMENT, you suggest creating your own application to store it in?

I just want a few extra functions on top of all the other spreadsheet functionality I need, and you suggest recreating the entire spreadsheet application?

I could make some arguments why this is just plain stupid, but it's just a waste of time if you can't figure this out for yourself.

Re:VBA

[FST777]

Late reply, but hey...

We have two apps that communicate with each other via Word. Our CRM-app makes a CSV with contacts to send an email or a fax to, it starts Word, Word has a VBA macro in normal.dot wich reads the request and makes up the document. We can then run another macro to send the document by email or fax via the other app.

No, this is not a clean solution, but it is the one the company bought many years ago. Back then, it seemed like a good idea (and granted, it works). This is the feature that prevents us from upgrading to OpenOffice.org, as much as we'd like to. All our presentations (we give courses, so they are many and complex) are done with Impress, not PowerPoint. When we use spreadsheets, it probably is used by both Excel and Calc. But when we need to write a letter to a relation, we have to use Word (even for normal snail mail, since it provides the necessary trackback in our CRM-app).

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

Or if my computer came with a copy of windows, and I got an educational copy of office from my school and have full access to ms tech support, it isn't worth the trouble?

The original post wasn't meant to troll for comments - but it appears that it has - does anyone have any COMPELLING reasons to switch? Because I havn't seen any advantage in switching, and I have no problems switching to a superior (for my needs) product.

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[jimicus]

If you've already got Office 2007, then that money's gone. You might as well get some value out of it.

Where OO.o has the potential to come into its own is:

• People who can't afford the full version of Office and are either not capable of or not comfortable with pirating it.
  
• Businesses who are looking at the amount Office costs per annum and would like to reduce this.
  
• People who can't/don't want to run Windows.
  

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[gwait]

If you're happy with your current system, then you are right, there are no compelling reasons for you to switch.

For the rest of us, linux users, mac or windows users who don't want to pay for MS Office, and for anyone who prefers their documents be stored in a truly open format that won't forcibly be obsoleted by the vendor in 12 months when they need another stock price bump,
we are glad that OO continues to improve and remain a viable set of office tools.

why I avoid OOo

[Aurisor]

I run linux on my desktop, and I spend a decent amount of time making charts, editing documents, and so forth. Unless it's an enormous hassle, I'd always rather boot into Windows to get my office work done, honestly because of three major issues:

1) Charts - 99% of the time when I'm using a spreadsheet, it's just to make a quick graph of some data. The MS office charting features are really simple to adjust after the fact, while the OOo one is like pulling teeth.
2) Performance - OOo feels less responsive than I'd like, and it takes a long-ass time to load. (Blame java? :) )
3) Aesthetics - OOo still looks like it's stuck in the mid 90's. MS Office has nicer fonts by default.

Anyways, I'm not trying to flame or criticize. I'm just honestly presenting the reasons why I don't like OOo in the hopes of fostering some good discussion.

Re:why I avoid OOo

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

OSS is about providing choice, and OO.o is excellent value for 'free'. Being free (or open) does not make it better than being proprietary or costly - it simply makes the initial cost much smaller.

It is almost like getting a free razor, but having to buy blades - if the blades are expensive (or it is more costly to use the 'free' alternative), then why use it?

I've used OO.o on my linux box because I do most of my major word processing on my macbook/pc/whatever is closer, and I use microsoft products on both. IMHO, I'd rather pay for something that works well, rather than use a performance poor alternative.

I think that the majority of people who trumpet OSS/Free software for commercial application are being penny-wise and pound foolish. The extra startup costs of buying proprietary (but professionally supported) software far outweigh the benefits of 'free' software.

It isn't really 'free' if you spend more time trying to get it to work (or waiting for it to work, or dealing with frustration) than a solution which costs more initially, but runs without minimal issues.

Re:why I avoid OOo

[roe-roe]

1) Charts, I will give you are a *little* difficult to make, but by no means is it easier in excel. I think the the chart making paradigm itself needs some refinement

2)As far as performance, upon opening the first OOo program, it loads all of the libraries and other sundries it needs to load, opening the second application is much faster.

3) If you need fonts install fonts, what is so difficult about that, heck if you are on a debian machine, 'apt-get install msttcorefonts' and voila! all those wonderful microsoft fonts that you pine over.

I have been extremely happy with OOo ever since 2.0, even MSO2003 users have been emailing me their docs because they get a docx and they can't do anything with it.

Re:why I avoid OOo

[Neil Hodges]

Sounds like a job for LaTeX, R, and some CAS, but it'll take forever to type it all up.

Jokes aside, I never liked office suits because of their quirks. One that bothers me a lot of is where Word decides to make the bullets in a single-level list in two different sizes because you pasted something. Granted, I only used Word while on the job and don't touch word processors otherwise, I can't say anything for OOo. If I had the option, I'd stick to LaTeX and import EPS figures from R and Maxima (and so on).

Re:why I avoid OOo

[Anonymous Coward]

My main grievance is how highlighting support is broken when switching between Office2003 and StarOffice/OpenOffice.

Another issue I have is notes. With MSOffice, viewing and editing notes is easy. With OOo/SO, I've always found it a pain. As a student who writes term papers (and I can imagine many Professionals using the notes feature, as we've also used them at one of my jobs), this is simply unacceptable.

Re:why I avoid OOo

[magus_melchior]

To be overly optimistic*, the first 2 issues are things you can raise with the OO.o dev community-- or, if you have some coding skills, implement on your own and submit as a patch.

As for the third, I can only say that MS Office has the advantage of licensing with commercial font foundries. Free-as-in-libre fonts are still in their infancy (I can only think of 2 projects off the top of my head).

* Optimistic, because I hear that submitting a bug report or patch that actually gets implemented is akin to, well, pulling teeth.

Re:why I avoid OOo

[the_womble]

I agree with 1). It is not a problem for me because I do not do many charts, but if you do do a lot of charts it I can see it would get irritating.

2) You can turn off Java. There are also some other optimisations you can do.

3) You could use IBM's Lotus Symphony. The next version (currently in beta), is a tailored version of OO with a very nice, very modern looking UI. The problem is that it uses Java heavily and is even more bloated and sluggish than the usual version of Open Office.

You might also look at Gnumeric for spreadsheets. I find OO Writer works fine, although I prefer Lyx.

Re:why I avoid OOo

[m50d]

KOffice fixes at least 2) and 3); I'm surprised it doesn't get more attention. It might be worth a look, at least for some things.

Re:why I avoid OOo

[MojoStan]

I have been extremely happy with OOo ever since 2.0, even MSO2003 users have been emailing me their docs because they get a docx and they can't do anything with it. After "fixing" their docs, do you tell them about the Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats? Or are their system admins too incompetent and/or tight-assed to install it?

Re:why I avoid OOo

[junglee_iitk]

3) Aesthetics - OOo still looks like it's stuck in the mid 90's. MS Office has nicer fonts by default.

Oh, come on!

export OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=gnome

And I work on a machine with 512 MB ram and 2 GHz athlon amd, and although it is sluggish, it is NOT intolerable! And please please please try this alpha - I am blown away! Beside all the things that already mentioned in TFA, you can now change templates on the fly in impress! AND it has got pretty tables from MS Office 2007.

You get this for free, you get this on Linux - I wish I had money to spend it on the development. I have more respect for Sun today.

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

Is this the only value that OO.o has? That it *ISNT* MS office? I'd say that is a poor reason to switch.
Free = good reason to start using it, however.

I'dd really like a lesser learning curve..

[Anonymous Coward]

While feature complete, I'm always lost when using openoffice. Yes yes.. I've used openoffice since 1.0 (think it was included by default in red hat 8 ?), seen how sloowly it worked and how dizorganized did it felt at that time; version 2 was really a god send - however, for most tasks I'dd prefer Abiword or KOffice as they have a simpler user interface and unlike OOo, I never experienced any learning curve(as in "it just works TM").. I could do anything I want without too much hassle..

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

I'm sure someone will say "Don't support MS" - sure, good argument - but I'm I'm looking for reasons to leave office07 Did you read the article? How about my comment?

How is this marked as insightful?

He/She might be an insightful individual, but this comment is more trolling than (and completely irrelevant to) my original question!

Re:Tastes Differ

[TheMeuge]

Superior is a term that I find to be overly broad. For ME personally, Ubuntu Linux is the OS I prefer to Microsoft Windows. I find it more responsive, the UI more intuitive, and the user control far more prolific, which allowed me to customize it to an extent I didn't find possible with Windows, even as a relatively expert user. Furthermore, I find that the system UI and various applications allow me to be more productive. I use OpenOffice, because that's the best developed Office suite that I can use on the OS of my choosing. But even on Windows, I have encountered circumstances where I preferred OpenOffice to MSOffice.

You may have a different opinion, and that's OK, because that's exactly the kind of CHOICE that the open source community praises - the CHOICE to use some Open Source, all Open Source, or none, at will... a choice that a complete monopoly of one company would not allow.

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

So, if I understand your thinly veiled criticism of MS (and apple, and any other vendor which uses proprietory lock-in), OO.o is better because it uses open standards?

Well, thats one good point. I honestly appreciate your effort in actually answering my question.

Re:Tastes Differ

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

So, what is the advantage of OO.o - not linux?

(Yes yes, I get it. You love linux, thanks for sharing. Can you stick to the topic at hand and stop whoring your favorite OS. Besides, Ubuntu? c'mon, be a man and use gentoo)

SVG import

[jabuzz]

Wake me up when I can embed my XML based SVG graphics into my XML documents.

Re:Tastes Differ

[TheMeuge]

"So, what is the advantage of OO.o - not linux?"

OO is free and runs on Linux. MSO is not free and doesn't. My choice of OS has thus limited my choice of Office applications. What is there not to understand?

Or are you simply trolling?

Re:Still no Comment/Uncomment button in Macro edit

[Anonymous Coward]

A kludge I used to use way back in filemaker to disable a block of code was "if 1=2 then ... end if"

posting anonymously because I don't want to admit to using filemaker. Better than foxpro or access, I guess.

Blame java?

[oyenstikker]

No. I have installed the latest OOo release without Java. Still takes a long-ass time to load.

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[stoolpigeon]

I read it - and you said your main question was "How does this make me more productive?" and my answer stands - "It doesn't". OpenOffice.org is not 'better' than Microsoft Office from a standpoint of pure utility if you find Windows to be an acceptable platform. In fact Microsoft Office has some features and capabilities that OpenOffice.org does not have.
 
So I'm not sure what you seem upset about. That you couldn't incite some kind of flameage over this?
 
Me I use OpenOffice.org on Windows and Linux because I have a lot more considerations that are important to me and I value freedom over immediate utility. Your post implies that this is not the case for you. And as I said, should that change - it will be there for you. With no cost to download and install beyond a bit of bandwidth and a very small amount of time, try it out if you are really curious.

A New Look at Desktop Windows

[Doc Ruby]

I know it's too late to get it into OO.o 3.0, or Firefox 3.0, but what I'd really love to have on my desktop is for any app that shows a document of any datatype/mix (and most of them do), to be able to show two of those docs side by side (or above/below) in the same window. Without window widgets interfering between them. So I can really look at both side by side.

Comparing them, editing one against the other, using one as instructions to modify the other. In fact, if every window panel could slide open (side/side, or up/down) into two, each displaying a different doc (of the same type, or even of different types), that would really increase my productivity. Using one doc as a guide to another is an extremely common use case for most people. All the extra window dragging/resizing/aligning, every time a pair of docs are used, is a hassle of prohibitive annoyance.

What would really be great would be "generic windows" into which I could assign panels from arbitrary different external apps. So I could open a configured document that would spring up with a Firefox window already showing in the 2/3 left side of the main window, and an editable OO.o Writer document in the right 1/3. I could, for example, save "configmarks" setting some page (eg. instructions) as the default in the browser panel, and some template (eg. my letterhead/footer) in the Writer panel. I could have compound docs with different configmarks in each. And let the other GUI widgets for the parent apps get called when I use the compound doc's menus/toolbars, combined together.

I'd love to have quick access to arrangements of windows in stacks of tabs, each with a compound doc with Firefox, Evolution and Writer (or Calc, or any other GNOME app) panes in their usable panels, pointing to each of the actual docs I'm using right now.

GNOME (and KDE, too, with its own apps) could have the windowing-level messaging and composition features to do this. I'd love to stop "using Evolution while using Firefox" and instead just send messages while browsing/searching the Web. It also seems to me that such compound docs would be a lot easier to swing over to my mobile devices, which have such a small screen and clumsy manual controls. Is there a way to do this without rewriting all the apps to use "external panels"?

At the very least I'd like to keep a config that I open, which in turn opens several different independent apps, and just arranges their windows for that specific use. Including which doc gets opened in each, their arrangement on the screen. Is even that simple organization possible in the GNOME window manager? If not, then in KDE?

Re:A New Look at Desktop Windows

[Blakey Rat]

I think you're talking about Apple's old OpenDoc concept... but maybe I just don't really get what you're explaining. Just FYI, pictures are worth several thousand words, especially when describing GUI features.

Re:A New Look at Desktop Windows

[Doc Ruby]

I am indeed talking about what Apple was working on with OpenDoc, and then Bento from their Taligent JV with IBM. I was working with Apple at the time, and it never materialized. Later, it was promised that HTML would deliver that, but it really doesn't. Or rather, its compound docs are achieved by sacrificing most of their widgetsets and local interactivity.

So since you guessed OpenDoc from what I described, I think you get it. I can't give pictures, because I don't have any. But if you think GNOME or KDE or something can do it now, I'd love to hear about it. OpenDoc was a promise made a decade and a half ago, and I still haven't seen anyone keep it. And it's needed now, more than ever, with so much complex relationships established between different docs, and more (and less sophisticated) people needing to work on them.

Re:A New Look at Desktop Windows

[Blakey Rat]

If you can embed a Excel sheet, complete with all the Excel controls/menus/features/etc into SimpleText, why would anybody buy Excel from Microsoft? (And, of course, it means the SimpleText document would be huge to incorporate all that functionality-- not sure if that was ever addressed.) It didn't help that all the preview technologies (CyberDog, for example) completely sucked and crashed all the time.

That's why it never worked. Which is an interesting point, because the concept could actually work in open source, if open source implemented it.

Re:A New Look at Desktop Windows

[Doc Ruby]

If you can embed a Excel sheet, complete with all the Excel controls/menus/features/etc into SimpleText, why would anybody buy Excel from Microsoft? (And, of course, it means the SimpleText document would be huge to incorporate all that functionality-- not sure if that was ever addressed.) It didn't help that all the preview technologies (CyberDog, for example) completely sucked and crashed all the time.

That's why it never worked. Which is an interesting point, because the concept could actually work in open source, if open source implemented it.

Well, the real OpenDoc model wasn't like that. The model was that OpenDoc "compound documents" were docs that hosted the GUI from external apps like Excel and SimpleText in embedded panes. So to "embed an Excel spreadsheet in a SimpleText doc" you'd really embed each of the Excel doc and the SimpleText doc, in a compound OpenDoc. Each of the two external docs would manage their own data. You'd have to buy both apps to embed their data.

Which is why it didn't work. Microsoft pulled off this feat with Office, because Office bundles all the cross-embeddable apps in a single distro. But in 1993, we hadn't yet evolved to MIME types for data types. Apple itself still relied on Creator types in data docs, which were still "owned" by their creating app. Only later would it become easy to open a doc with an app that hadn't created it, especially if that doc was to use two different apps that used the same data type (eg "HTML").

The other reason it didn't work was the difficulty of IPC among the different external apps maintaining their embedded data, and whatever process was maintaining the OpenDoc operation. Apple tried to do it with AppleEvents, which IBM wanted to serialize into CORBA across networks, which was the basic architecture for their Taligent JV. But, like whenever someone tries to use CORBA, the project was too ambitious (and straitjacketed by CORBA's top-down hierarchy of service categories), and it failed. Again, MS pulled it off with DDE, but that only really worked with Office apps because DDE was such a limited protocol. When MS went to COM, and then COM+, the limits of those protocols (like the corruptible/nonrelational Registry) on MS' hard to distribute and scale architecture always killed it for anyone who didn't have access to the Windows source code and its in-house whizzes.

But in fact the point is still interesting. Because now, in 2008, we've got Linux Desktops with very solid IPC. MIME types and protocols are registered with the OS, for different use modes (read/edit/etc) and prioritized lists of apps to access objects of a given datatype. Networks can even access a single object in different formats using HTTP Accepts values. And of course we've got the open source, all of it inherently networked, including URLs and even X itself.

So I wonder whether there's already some obscure apps or techniques already approaching this presentation style. For example, my "weak request" for opening a doc that just launches and arranges/aligns separate docs each in their own app's frame could be done with a shell script that opens their windows with X params for positioning their corners appropriately, all at once. But it would be good to have a simple GUI, like a GNOME desktop panel widget, that let me arrange my windows, then save them in that batchfile.

Which would be a good start. But really there's probably some GNOME or X innards that could go further. Open the separate apps minimized and somehow export their relevant GUI panels to a single compound doc, with their app data and menus/toolbars/context-menus all wrapped in the compound doc. But which would save the individual data types as separate data via their respective apps. And then launching a single icon would open the compound doc's frame, launch the apps that the compound app's data objects each depend on, and recompose the data inside the compound doc as it was arranged. So the compound doc would stor

Re:A New Look at Desktop Windows

[Valfather]

KDE sort of has something like this in konqueror. You can split a window into panes, and put different ioslaves in differnt panes (ftp, filesystem, html are the only one's I've tested). You might even be able to get something like Kwriter in one, and I'm sure that kpdf and the integrated text editor would work. It is called "KParts", and seems to have been designed with this kind of thing in mind.

Re:Tastes Differ

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

If I was trolling, I'd have ignored the content of the posts and just spouted random fanboy love for OSS. I was asking a question, and expecting help/answers.

I guess I should have remembered that /. attracts both the extra-intelligent and the extra-ignorant. (I'm not sure which category I fall into, either ;)

But if you insist... gentoo is still better than ubuntu.

About the interface

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the interface is starting to remind me of filematrix:
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Enter_The_Matrix.aspx

Maybe they should take Mozilla's lead and implement the kitchen sink?

Wonder if it'll fix my Paste issue

[Jason Levine]

My OpenOffice.org installation seems to like crashing on me when I paste text into a spreadsheet. It doesn't happen every time and there doesn't seem to be a pattern to it. When it happens, though, all open documents lock up and I need to open Task Manager to close down the processes. When I restart OpenOffice.org, the documents claim to be "recovered" but the changes aren't really there. I can then re-do my Paste operation and it won't crash. It's quite annoying. And yes, I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling. And yes, I've submitted bug reports which weren't fixed. (Granted, I know that it's hard to fix bugs that seem to crop up at random times.)

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[jimicus]

"Free" is a pretty good value, and for people in the situations I discussed it merits further investigation.

However, you said yourself that you already have Office 2007. Unless you're using a pirated copy and you're uncomfortable with that, then it's fair to say that there's little to tempt you away and all the documents in .docx format to keep you there. It's fair to say that OpenOffice is still playing catchup with Microsoft.

Having said that, Mozilla was playing catchup for years and look where it is now that Firefox and Thunderbird have been split into separate projects. In two or three years time, who knows?

Major flaw in the build-process

[mi]

This does not affect the users directly, but it is a major pain for integrators/porters. OO.o has a terrible habit of bundling all of the 3rd-party software packages, that it uses, into its own source tree. I'm talking about (probably missed some):

• agg
• bash
• bitstream-vera
• bsh
• bison
• boost
• curl
• db42
• dmake
• expat2
• freetype
• icu
• jpeg
• firefox (or some other Mozilla-based browser)
• libmspack
• libsndfile
• libtextcat
• libwpd
• libxslt
• neon
• nss
• nspr
• python
• sane-backends
• STLport
• unixODBC
• unzip
• vigra
• xmlsec1
• xt
• zip
• zlib

If they could, I'm certain, they would've bundled Java too, but — fortunately — Sun's license prohibits that... Now I realize, that this is done to offer "a single package" to those, who build it on their own, but nobody does. Everybody gets these from their OS' integrators. And the pain for us is enormous, because to force OO.o build to stop its silly ways is a serious undertaking. For some of the above packages there is --with-system-foo configure-flag, but not for all, and the default is to always use the bundled one, so support for the external ones bitrots quickly...

Most of the local builds don't bother and so end up wasting disk space and CPU-time rebuilding packages, which are external to OO.o. The end results are also bloated, duplicating stuff, that's already installed on the users' systems and without bug-fixes, which have already gone into each of the respective package since its most recent "bundling" into OO.o tarballs.

Download a source tarball and see for yourself... Something like: tar tjf OOo_OOG680_m9_source.tar.bz2 | grep 'z$'. No other software project does this on this scale and for good reasons — it is Just Wrong[TM]. OO.o better clean up their act in this respect...

Re:Major flaw in the build-process

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this is done for the 90%+ of users who don't give a rats-ass about the 30+ dependencies needed to get OO to work. One of the really, really, really, GREAT things about OO, is that it is a single download, single install, and no annoying "I can't run because program XYZ is not installed..please install it and try again", followed by "I'm sorry, you need at least version 1.2.3.4.5.6-555.6.6.6.6 of program XYZ for Open Office to run".

Too bad they can't find a way to bundle and integrate Java as well..that would fix most fo the other issues floating around for folks.

If that was how OO worked on Linux, it would have been a complete failure. Most people don't know or care about the dependencies, they just want the Program to install and WORK with no hassle. If it means a couple of megs (or hundred megs) of duplicate apps/files/etc..who cares! Hard Drive space is cheap.

Purists can rip apart the OO distribution and modify it and rip out the duplicate files/apps to their hearts content, just don't force your puritanical ideals on everyone else who just want apps to install and function with no hassle.

Re:Major flaw in the build-process

[gzipped_tar]

Hey, why not bundle gcc and the kernel with it :-P

Re:Major flaw in the build-process

[Anonymous Coward]

If that was how OO worked on Linux, it would have been a complete failure.

That's how most other software works on Linux.

Most people don't know or care about the dependencies, they just want the Program to install and WORK with no hassle.

Most people can install from their distro's package manager, which will handle the dependencies automatically.

If it means a couple of megs (or hundred megs) of duplicate apps/files/etc..who cares! Hard Drive space is cheap.

It's really sweet of you to offer to buy bigger hard drives for all OpenOffice users. But what about RAM? What about bugfixes (sometimes including security fixes) that get fixed in the external package but not the bundled version?

Bundled libraries are just wrong, period. Get over it.

Re:Major flaw in the build-process

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard Drive space is cheap But memory is not, and you get duplicates for those libraries, increasing bloat even more and reducing performance.

Re:Major flaw in the build-process

[Hatta]

He's talking about the build process, not running the app. If you care enough to build it on your own, you should know to install foo-dev when ./configure complains that you don't have package foo. Getting those build dependencies out of the source and into the OS where they belong isn't going to affect the end user.

Re:Major flaw in the build-process

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

What do you suggest as an alternative? Audacity has essentially the same problem but I never found a good solution other than bundling all of the libraries and trying to make system libraries an option for bundlers. Some reasons why it's necessary to bundle certain libraries:

• There's no standard repository for such packages on Windows and Mac. So all of the Win/Mac developers need a good place to get those libraries
• Many libraries don't come with build files for Win/Mac, and the upstream authors aren't interested
• Many libraries use crappy build rules that aren't as portable as the main program
• Sometimes a patch or bug fix to the library is necessary for the program to run. Even if you submit it upstream, users with an earlier version installed get a broken application.
• Some libraries have many incompatible versions floating around that claim to be the same library, so the app can break if linked to the wrong one
• Upstream authors sometimes release new versions that actually break old functionality - again, leading to a broken app. Sometimes it's better to stick with a previous known-good version.

Do you have a better solution in mind?

Re:Major flaw in the build-process

[mi]

Hey, why not bundle gcc and the kernel with it :-P

You may think you are joking, but the maintainers of the FreeBSD's port of OpenOffice.org have in the past insisted on building their own version of gcc — just so that OO.o was built by the compiler they new as "good".

The asinine practice has since stopped, but the port named gcc-ooo is still here, and its description says:

GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection includes gcc, g++ for OpenOffice.org compilation This port installs the various front ends as gcc-ooo, and g++-ooo into the ${PREFIX}/bin directory. WWW: http://gcc.gnu.org/

Re:Major flaw in the build-process

[mi]

Do you have a better solution in mind?

Yes, I do:

* There's no standard repository for such packages on Windows and Mac. So all of the Win/Mac developers need a good place to get those libraries So host the repository for them — you already do that anyway, if you bundle these things with your own app. But don't pessimize decent systems for the sake of Windoz (Macs have FreeBSD's ports system, BTW, so they should be fine). * Many libraries don't come with build files for Win/Mac, and the upstream authors aren't interested. Same as above — host the sources and the build files for these packages, but don't bundle them with your app. * Many libraries use crappy build rules that aren't as portable as the main program Same as above. * Sometimes a patch or bug fix to the library is necessary for the program to run. Even if you submit it upstream, users with an earlier version installed get a broken application. Provide a patch instead of the entire source of the 3rd party package. Be sure to reference the 3rd party's ticket-number, where your patch is being discussed. Implement a work-around if at all possible. * Upstream authors sometimes release new versions that actually break old functionality - again, leading to a broken app. Sometimes it's better to stick with a previous known-good version. You should try the hardest to update your application to move on to along with the changes. Falling back to the "previous known-good" is very seductive, but is wrong — the 3rd-party package will continue evolving, and you don't want to make (and subsequently maintain) your own fork. The longer you wait to catch up, the harder it will be... And you will have to maintain it, as problems — security holes in particular — arise...

You describe valid problems, but the bundling is not the solution... It is seductive, but it makes the long-run (much) worse for all concerned — including yourself...

Re:Major flaw in the build-process

[Anonymous Coward]

As always, it is a good idea to check to build large releases such as OpenOffice.

The thing I don't seem to like is that OpenOffice is a heavyweight package and doesn't appear to be modularized enough to allow users to install only oodraw and ooimpress (which are separate source distributions), but nothing else. If only OpenOffice could be built in the same way you can build Gnome/KDE (plenty of options to add/remove components).

I was thinking more of having core OpenOffice libraries such as: liboocommon, liboolang, liboomedia, etc and then having your user-space applications such as oodraw depend upon those core libraries.

OpenOffice is a very large project with what appears to be poor architecture when it comes to building the software. Other large projects such as Gnome/KDE split everything up into modular pieces to make the build task much easier. Why doesn't OpenOffice do the same?

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[nahpets77]

"...and I got an educational copy of office from my school and have full access to ms tech support..."

Not everybody is a student with access to cheap educational pricing. Also, how many licenses do you buy if you have several computers? Technically, you need a license for every computer; so what do households with 2 or more computers have to pay MS for valid licenses? Since OO works perfectly fine for most things (especially short reports for school), I don't see how it's worth paying for MS Office unless you really need some specific functionality only available in MS products.

Re:Tastes Differ

[TheMeuge]

I think after this exchange, the singular appropriate response is:

fuck off.

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[MMC Monster]

Actually, if you already plunked down $ for MSOffice and only use one OS, there is not much reason to get Openoffice.org. If you are thinking about buying a new Mac or try the plunge into Ubuntu or another Linux OS, openoffice.org is a pretty good option. The reason is to keep your options open in the future. You are not limited to what features MSFT wants to put in the next version of office (for instance, less macro support in the next version of MSOffice for Mac OSX, if you want to get an Apple Mac in the future). This is the same reason to use .doc instead of .docx when creating files in MSOffice now, by the way.

Standards Boost

[lseltzer]

With two products supporting Office 2007 files it should be easier for standards bodies to countenance adopting it.

Re:Standards Boost

[SgtChaireBourne]

Which two products? The specification currently before the standards bodies is not implemented anywhere by any application. Parts of it are. Parts of it aren't. Parts of it aren't even specified. And even if it were, the licensing still does not allow free software implementations. Not even MS Office 2007 supports the specification before the standards bodies.

MOOX isn't helping the ODF standard, which by the way is currently the standard for office documents. It's hurting it. It's even hurting the standards process: MOOX target is the same functionality that is already available in OpenDocument, and ODF is already the standard. OpenDocument already has many applications supporting it.

Novell is history. We all know that. It was up and down for a while, but went down for the count when it signed the deal to infect as much of its product as possible with proprietary specifications during a five year span. We're about halfway through that span.

Hybrid PDFs: fully editable PDFs with embedded OO

[Chrisq]

The feature that is not yet available Hybrid PDFs: fully editable PDFs with embedded OpenDocument files (issue 65397) is a real killer. What it means is that you can attach a PDF to an email that anyone with normal PDF software can read. If the recipient has open office then they will be able to edit it too.

This will be really useful in that you can avoid having to distribute some files in "exported .doc format" so that it can be read by anyone and edited by other editors, or attaching two separate files.

crop?

[jank1887]

seriously, will I be able to dynamic crop an image yet? I.e., click the toolbar button, and drag the image handles? The extra crop dialog window with the 'specify crop distance in inches from each edge' BS is really annoying.

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[spikenerd]

Don't switch. If you are happy and have already ponied up for windows and office - have a great time.

I consider my time too valuable to spend it developing skills with a product to which I don't have the "keys". Effort spent learning a proprietary product is less productive than effort spend learning a free product, period--even if (and especially because) you have to pay money for the proprietary product.

Ok, but did they fix the PDF writer?

[trelayne]

I have this problem that I would have thought should be easy for them to fix. If I try to export to .pdf a writer document (say a CV), some characters kern very badly (some pairs right on top of one another).

It seems like an easy one to fix... anyone else notice this obvious problem?

Re:Ok, but did they fix the PDF writer?

[mean_value]

I followed a bug like this a while ago. I believe it's been fixed: http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=74609

Re:Ok, but did they fix the PDF writer?

[trelayne]

thanks for this. Yes I suspected it happened only with times new roman but never got around to testing it. So I'm assuming the new version is delightfully cool!

I can also use the presentation tool to make foldable pamphlets. They should consider marketing that ability as well... or maybe make a new tool in the suite for people who want an easy alternative to the non-free pagemaker..

Macro Recorder?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use plenty of macros in MS Office. Not perfect, but I can do a lot. Macros in OO? I did eventually managet to implement some pretty cool stuff, but seriously painful. Built-in macro recorder worthless. Didn't manage to get the alternative one installed. Help files on macros are close to worthless. Until this is fixed I can't switch,

Re:Macro Recorder?

[denis-The-menace]

Help files on macros are close to worthless.

No, They ARE worthless.
They go on about how to use the Organizer when simplifying the layout and popup would do.

I'm trying to create a cut-n-Paste macro that select stuff based on content.
It is brutally painful since you cannot use the macro recorder to record the selection process because you can't search AND select text at the same time!

Also, you don't have a way to discover what commands exists without using the macro recorder.

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[houghi]

Where I work, we are in the process of going to 2003. I am Betatesting right now. No, I am not kidding you. It does the job of what we need. (2000 is becoming a bit slow)
Also for our 100 sites (or so) we are testing OOo as an alternative to Office. The main tool we use is websites.n

I seriously have no idea why they do not use Linux. On 95% of our PC's it could be implemented right away with almost no user impact. The only one would be using FF instead of IE.

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[downix]

Well, let's see...

docx, cannot be used for government work, contract work, most inter-office communications at this time, any international work

OOo supports the importing of docx from the '07 guys, but also supports those formats that have been accepted as standards, such as odf, so if you want government contracts you'll need OOo anyways.

So, you can run '07 and have to have 2 solutions, or OOo and have 1.

Sparse spreadsheets

[rbanffy]

I would love if the Calc could support an arbitrarily large number of rows or columns. There are times 1024 columns won't cut it.

Besides, Excell 2007 has the bragging rights here - up to 65535 columns, IIRC.

In order to achieve more market penetration, OOo needs to do things Office can't.

Can't Sun hire a bunch of financial analysts, scientists, statisticians or anything like that to ask them to write a wish list of what a dream spreadsheet should do, implement it before Microsoft and gather some good PR for OOo?

And, while we are at it, I would love to see numbers with error margins as valid numeric data. That would be the single largest paradigm shift on spreadsheets since Visicalc and it's one badly needed. If it's done right, it will be a gateway to uses spreadsheets have never been able to touch. I suspect many financial and business analysts would love to see this one.

Presenter also could use some fancy 3D transitions.

Re:Sparse spreadsheets

[Blakey Rat]

Just FYI, according to this site: http://visio.mvps.org/Excel_2007.htm Excel 2007's limits are:

16k Columns
1M Rows

With the highest possible cell being: XFD1048576 (In Excel 2003, it was IV65536).

(Now comes the obligatory "you should be using a database!" post.)

Re:Sparse spreadsheets

[digidave]

I wish Calc would keep the row count up with the newest version of Excel, which can handle something like 1 million rows. That would make a bigger difference than anything for me.

Re:Sparse spreadsheets

[frank_adrian314159]

OK! You should be using a database for that much data! HTH...

Re:Sparse spreadsheets

[rbanffy]

"(Now comes the obligatory "you should be using a database!" post.)"

Spreadsheet users can't care less about how it's implemented as long as they can manipulate their data the way they would like to.

Being able to summon such immense data sets within a familiar tool ought to be really cool.

Sorting still unstable

[KanjiMonster]

Instead of fixing fundamental flaws like the the sorting algorithm, they chose to add new features. So OO 3.0 is still no viable alternative to MS Office :/.
This is an over 4 year old "feature request". Currently marked as "to be fixed in OO 3.x".

Free MATLAB clone

[Physics Phi1]

There is also a program called Octave, which appears to be a MATLAB clone. I have never used this, but some old (2007) lab documents in the physics department at my uni refer to it.

OoO Guide for vi Users?

[RailGunSally]

Geeks of Earth,

Does anyone know of a package of some sort that will shut off all of the "helpful" bells & whistles? I'm a crusty old vi user who recoils in pain and rage every time one of these GUIs insists on jumping in and doing things for me. I like OoO very much. I would love it if if would get out of my way and let me do precisely and only what I am trying to do. Thanks.

Looking forward to the new Solver

[whitehatlurker]

I have been waiting for the multivariate solver for some time, and it would be the big win for me in the list of things mentioned in TFA. I hadn't noticed that you couldn't display more than one page in Writer.

As for error bars, I have to admit that I use Gnuplot rather than spreadsheets for a lot of my plots, and if any Gnuplot developers are out there, support for the OOo format for plots would be appreciated ... it would be nice to be able to just open a gnuplot graph in 'Draw and annotate there.

performance?

[GNUPublicLicense]

You mean openoffice was written in C in a multicore/memory cache wise way? :)

Obviously not.

[Anonymous Coward]

You make a grave mistake, sir.

I have a truly wonderful proof of why this is so. Unfortunately the margin in both OO.o 3.0 and Slashdot is too small.

FIX macro support in Calc?

[Anonymous Coward]

But what about fixing macro support in Calc? The primary complaints I have heard from die hard MS Office users is that their Excel macros simply don't work in Calc.

Two for one

[SgtChaireBourne]

Why would you need VBA programmers? We're talking about the product in the article, OpenOffice.org 3.0, and that does not use VBA.

You get javascript and python macros. So that means you don't have to waste money on a bag of shit just to do macros. You can have your macro programmers with a comp sci background. And you can have them participate in web development and other projects.

So it kills two birds with one stone. You are less likely to hire MS boosters who will run their little anti-technology jihadz against you from inside your own office, work is so much easier without them around. You get programmers that can participate in more than one area. Win-win situation.

Re:Two for one

[ClosedSource]

Well, you said "you don't need to learn a new language". Did you assume that all the readers of the comment were javascript or python programmers? There are plenty of companies with software engineers that don't know either of those languages (or VBA for that matter).

Outliner

[wonkavader]

But where's the outliner? OOffice desperately needs an outliner -- not one with a lot of features, but one which works simply, and can be used as a basis to write from. Trying to use the navigator or the auto-numbering system is a nightmare, not a work-around.

Not all main drives are hard

[tepples]

If it means a couple of megs (or hundred megs) of duplicate apps/files/etc..who cares! Hard Drive space is cheap.

Not all computers have a hard drive. Some have a flash drive instead.

Or to put it another way: Would you complain about installing a separate operating system for each application and then just running them all in one big ass VM?

I hope it really will be faster

[Enleth]

There's something wrong with 2.x if it can *alone* make my system (Core Duo 1.83, 3GB DDR2) really sluggish, even though it is normally running KDE, VMWare Server with Windows Server 2003 inside and several applications on both OSes quite effortlessly. It's not normal for a damn office suite to be more resource-demanding than an operating system, is it?

Re:I hope it really will be faster

[Hatta]

The operating system's job is to get out of the way and run apps. Your OS should always be less demanding than your applications.

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the only value that OO.o has? That it *ISNT* MS office?

I would say the other really big plus is that the document format is an open standard which is properly implemented by a number of independantly developed products (OO, Abiword, Lotus Notes etc.), so it's pretty much guaranteed that you'll still be able to read the files (assuming the physical media is readable) in 10, 20, 30,... years time. There's no such guarantee with any proprietry format. MS OOXML is not a real substitute since apparently it contains undefined binary blobs and other undefined features, and comes with difficult to interpret rules about whether/how non-MS products can use it.

Re:Tastes Differ

[Neil Hodges]

I love Gentoo as much as the next guy, but do you really expect a random person to be able to do configuration to the extent the modern BSDs require these days? Although I don't use it too often, I've found that the autoconfiguration works better than that of Windows much of the time when I do.

For editing documents, surfin' the 'Tubes', and sending e-mail, who wants to spend two days just to get everything installed (and possibly configured)? Okay, I might, but some random person would probably not be so inclined.

More Bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

Just what we need, more features stuck in by marketing to suck our resources

Answer: Open Type fonts

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been a devoted user of OO since its beta days. I started using it because it handled mathematical formula better than MS Office.

However, I've run into one thing that is a serious problem with OO, and it's only going to get worse:

Lack of support for Open Type fonts.

Why is this a problem?

Because Open Type fonts are basically the standard for typography today, and OO doesn't provide full support. You can't print out a PDF if the document font is in Open Type format, for example.

So a major office suite doesn't even support the current font standard.

I've had to use other software because of this issue, and as non-Open Type fonts become scarcer and scarcer, this problem will get worse.

I'm willing to cut them some slack, but as far as I know, this isn't even a target for OO 3.0, so it's basically postponed indefinitely. I.e., it's not being addressed at all.

Maybe something has changed in the last couple of weeks, but last I checked, it wasn't being addressed.

Writers need AUTOSAVE

[zymano]

autosave saves every word written instead of the current time based systems,which saves every few minutes.

Writers want this. Computers can't be trusted. There are a few times when power supplies fail or computers crash. You don't want to rewrite an important few paragraphs.

This is great feature which writers would warm to and the word would spread. Microsoft doesn't have it.

I don't know who to ask at the OO website.

Re:Writers need AUTOSAVE

[RealGrouchy]

I don't know who to ask at the OO website. A couple years back, I wrote up on the OOoforum.org website (note: "bugs" include feature requests).

Reporting OOo bugs is hardly a user-friendly experience, especially if you've never done it before. Heck, even now when I want to report a new one, or vote for an existing bug, it takes me a while to figure out how I did it last time. But at least you can!

- RG>

Re:Writers need AUTOSAVE

[zymano]

I did it.

And what about some features that are missing?

[stasike]

Like: Will I be finaly able to actaully fill my application built in OpenOffice.org Base with real data? No typing data in manually or copy & paste from an ... aehm ... spreadsheet DOES NOT count as a means to import data. Will Regular Exressions in OOo Writer finally work according to the standards - I mean proper support of \n as a paragraph end and NOT manual break?

Cross Platform Fonts

[govt-serpent]

I hope those wonderful guys do something about cross platform fonts, so that the docs I edited on Windows opens with the same fonts on Linux and not mess up the formatting. Cross platform portability is OOo's big selling point, no?

Agreed

[mpapet]

go file a bug with as much useful feedback as you can provide

I agree. You know as well as I do the Free Riders with complaints who don't submit feedback out there are a legion unto themselves.

Missing the Point

[mpapet]

It's possible that Microsoft could have a better tool for the job. They don't for 90% of end-users, but maybe this is one of those corner-cases where they do?

That's why I think the problem is in OOo's user interface, not on its internal table support.

Which is why the person who tackles the issue will have some complicated coding to do. It may be more gui-fied coding, but complicated nonetheless.

The comments were not meant to be offensive. I like everyone else, run into GUI implementations that don't work well for me and yet others love. We all run into it sometime.

Yup

[Colin Smith]

Evolution is big slow and buggy enough to replace Outlook.

Actually Thunderbird is just as big slow and buggy also.

A lot of the performance problems are font related

[Colin Smith]

2) Performance - OOo feels less responsive than I'd like, and it takes a long-ass time to load. (Blame java? :) ) Nope. It's your fonts.

Really. Turn off all the anti aliasing, rendering, sub pixel smoothing options in Gnome/XFCE as well as within OOo and then try using the menus, scrolling, switching windows etc. The whole user interface speeds up across the board, (and much of the rest of Gnome, firefox, thunderbird (and xfce) as well)...

It looks like shit, but it's faster shit. Basically Linux needs some good high quality system fonts so that the anti aliasing, smoothing etc aren't required so much. Recommendations on good fonts welcome BTW.

formulas in Impress

[nguy]

One of the most frustrating misfeatures in OpenOffice is that it's impossible to put formulas into running text in Impress. I don't know whether that's for PowerPoint compatibility, but it makes Impress a pain to use for anything mathematical or scientific.

It would seem to me that the educational market is really important for OpenOffice, why isn't this being fixed?

Stats

[__aazsst3756]

After using open office for a couple years I had no plans to ever purchase MS Office again. Upon returning to Grad school, it became a necessity. Several classes require regression analysis, and the subsequent checks (student t or F, R^2, etc.). They also want the original excel file in an attempt to check for originality. I'm convinced regressions are the most used stat tool in upper classes. This is a glaring omission from OO.

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[gwait]

Ok, to spell it out,

If you use an open standardized file format, you are not forced to spend money on new licenses, deployment costs, and training,
like you are forced to by the vendors of closed format software. Spending time and money because the vendor forces you to is lost productivity.

One company I was at managed to avoid moving from Office 95 to for a long time (it was good enough, thanks) until they could no longer buy more seats for new employees as the company expanded.

Once that happens, then everyone has to upgrade to the next version, like it or not, because they make sure the file formats are different enough that you have to upgrade.

It's also a benefit of using an open source tool, never mind the file format argument, no one can take it away from you, and you can always have as many copies of your
deployed version as you need, forever.

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[Petrushka]

Well, since I've got office 2007 already, why would I switch?

In my case, I use OOo because I need documents I create today still to be accessible to me in 10 years' time. I've had too many disasters over the years with old documents becoming permanently inaccessible, either when migrating between different word processors (e.g. when I first moved to MS Office, ca. 1993), different platforms (moving between Mac and Windows back in the mid-90s), and different versions of MS Office.

I need long-term access to my own documents. And now I don't have to worry about it any more, because they're all stored in an open format. That kind of security is something you'll never get from MS Office -- or at least not without the threat of extending and extinguishing.

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[westlake]

People who can't afford the full version of Office and are either not capable of or not comfortable with pirating it

Tell me how you can afford the consumables and not the software. Tell me who is paying retail list for a legit copy of Office.

Businesses who are looking at the amount Office costs per annum and would like to reduce this.

Changing your core business software is never simple and never without a price.

The MS Office system includes components not to be found in OpenOffice.org. Outlook is simply the most visible example.

It is trivially easy to find and recruit workers trained in MS Office. You have fifteen years experience in-house. There are countless third party programs and add-ons that integrate with MS Office...

People who can't/don't want to run Windows.

...or the Mac.

Which would currently be about 0.65% of OpenOffice.org's potential market. Operating System Market Share for February, 2008

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[MojoStan]

Not everybody is a student with access to cheap educational pricing. Also, how many licenses do you buy if you have several computers? Technically, you need a license for every computer; so what do households with 2 or more computers have to pay MS for valid licenses? Since OO works perfectly fine for most things (especially short reports for school) I'm not disagreeing with your point (or agreeing with the GP), but a single retail license of the $120 "Home and Student" version of MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote) allows installation on up to 3 computers per household.

This version is limited to non-commercial use, but you mentioned "households with 2 or more computers" and "short reports for school," so I thought this was worth mentioning just in case you didn't know. If you don't need the other popular (mostly business-related) apps (like Outlook and Access), then I think it's a decent deal. Of course, its price is not as good as OpenOffice.org's.

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[jimicus]

The MS Office system includes components not to be found in OpenOffice.org. Outlook is simply the most visible example.

I know. Yet still some organisations seem to think they can get on quite allright without those components. cf. Ernie Ball, Bristol City Council and Munich Council.

I accept that these cases are the exception, not the rule. But the OP's question was "what's in it for me?". My answer is "One or two things, but probably not if you've already gone out and bought Office" and that is what it remains.

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[nahpets77]

I see what you're saying, but my experience has been that even $120 is way too much for most people; they end up pirating Office and all the rest of the "must have" programs that are non-free. Another reason beyond price to push OO is to simply break the monopoly of MS Office products in schools and industry; the more variety we have, the better it will be for everyone in the long run.

Native Aqua support

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an exciting development, if it means speed gains compared to NeoOffice. However, I don't see how anyone can complain about the speed of NeoOffice compared to MS Office on Mac.

I happily installed MS Office 2008 on my MacBook thinking it would be faster than Office 2004, since the new version was Intel-native. It was actually MUCH slower, especially the initial load time. That's what drove me back to NeoOffice, and for my purposes, it's great - and much faster than either version of MS Office for Mac.

Great job, OOo & NeoOffice teams!

You DO use other programs & graphing!=spreadsh

[Anonymous Coward]

Matlab is NOT a spreadsheet & I am surprised you'd confuse it for one.

SPSS's data view mirrors a spreadsheet, but it is hardly the general purpose office program--it is geared for statics.

Both of these programs indicate that you do use special tools beyond an office spread sheet for data analysis.

Excel is very good at quick-and-dirty graphs. It is not so good at making presentation quality graphs & many turn to Origin/SigmaPlot/KaleidaGraph/etc. (commercial) or Grace/SciGraphica/HippoDraw/etc. (free/open source).

A spreadsheet is not a program specialized to make graphs. It is a tool specialized to do tabular calculations. For this purpose, Gnumeric & other Linux spreadsheets really do shine.

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[westlake]

Ernie Ball

No offense intended. But this story is getting really, really old. (2003) Rather more interesting is the fact that MS Office accounts for 67 cents of every new retail dollar being spent on software.

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[westlake]

I need long-term access to my own documents. And now I don't have to worry about it any more, because they're all stored in an open format.

Now all you have to worry about is maintenance of the readers and the preservation of the files - against hard drive failures, fires and other accidents. I have my own solution: it is called "print" and the media is paper.

Tables?

[nbritton]

Now that Impress has table support does that mean Draw has them too? IIRC they both use the same engine underneath.

Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough

[Petrushka]

Astonishingly, use of one does not preclude use of the other! Bizarre idea isn't it? And in fact print is a very useful back-up to have in the absence of continued software support (it's how I've managed to restore many older documents that were no longer electronically accessible). Of course, it's a bit harder to transport several bookcases' worth of paper around the world than it is to transport a single pen-sized USB flash drive.

It's peculiar to think that the advantages of electronic storage had not occurred to you, as they're a significant chunk of the reason we're all here on Slashdot. Oh wait, maybe they had and you're just being a prick.