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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."
Aqua was what shipped with Mac OS X 10.0. What about Quartz?
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).
If people can get past, can they get future? Best way to confuse a stoner
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.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
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...
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.
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.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
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.
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).
It's ready for prime time. OO does not have any greater number of annoyances than commercial software.
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).
The meme is dead, long live the meme!
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?
creation science book
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.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
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.
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.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
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.
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.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
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(?).
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.
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.
.doc format" so that it can be read by anyone and edited by other editors, or attaching two separate files.
This will be really useful in that you can avoid having to distribute some files in "exported
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.
Hey, why not bundle gcc and the kernel with it :-P
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
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...
Bundled libraries are just wrong, period. Get over it.
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.
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...)
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.
Software Freedom Day!.
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.
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.
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