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OpenOffice.org 2.4 Released
ahziem writes "The multiplatform, multilingual office suite OpenOffice.org has announced the release of version 2.4. New features include 5 PDF export enhancements, text to columns in Calc, rectangular selection in Writer, bug fixes, performance improvements, improvements supporting the growing library of extensions such as 3D OpenGL transitions in Impress, and much more. Downloads are available either direct or P2P. In September, OpenOffice.org 3.0 will add PDF import, Microsoft Office 2007 file format support, and ODF 1.2."
I can't wait for that. PDF import will turn OpenOffice.org into a poor-man's Adobe Acrobat.
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I'm using XMonad and all my OpenOffice menus open in the lower right corner (instead of directly under the menu bar). It worked fine with OO 2.3...
when 3 hits the market, there will be an outlook-like email client
If people can get past, can they get future? Best way to confuse a stoner
I'm really looking forwards to a native (non X11) Mac version. NeoOffice works OK but seems a bit slow. I see that about a week ago a new native development shapshot was released.
FWIW, NeoOffice, a Mac Os X port of OpenOffice.org just had a new release last week. It's based on the 2.2.1 code and adds Quicktime video support, import from scanners and cameras, Mac OS grammar checking in Leopard, and some more stuff. Details here. Don't forget if you download it to grab the latest patch too.
The insane thing is NeoOffice only has two code developers.
REGEXP search & replace! Supposing you're a geek... Of course we're all geeks here on slashdot, right?
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Looks like (with the 3D effeects) that they've taken a (nice) leaf out of the iWorks book. Cool!
http://www.apple.com/iwork/keynote/#effects
I think therefore I am... a Linux geek.
My life has been empty without the ability to switch between slides in STUNNING 3-D! I seriously just peed a little in excitement.
Come on; there's not even a reason to have *any* transitions between slides. Nothing says "Oh god, what an amateur" than seeing slide after slide spiral into another one, or slowly dissolve, etc. Transitions are just a way to waste your time trying out different possibilities instead of polishing your content or doing something else useful.
Klingon programs don't timeshare, they battle for supremacy.
I'm using Office XP Pro side by side with OO. There is really no major differences now between the two in my use of office packages. One thing is for certain, at this update rate I could not afford the MS version of updates, but with OpenOffice... meh, this is great. If I could get a car manufacturer to upgrade my vehicle for free once a year (new cupholders, dash panel, etc.) It would also be great, but I'll settle for what I get with OpenOffice thank you very much.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
There's a lot of negative crap posted there from naysayers.
It's a shame really, it's a nice little tweak, there's no reason to stick the boot in because you like Apple's products. They can coexist, this does not threaten the Apple mothership.
- it's not there (at least for Engrish users)... i did see a 2.3.1 X11 version and an alpha Aqua version tho...
Since when is a bug fix a new feature?
I'm not a big word processing or spreadsheet person. The only complaint I really have about OO is that it takes an eternity and a half to start up. Whether or not I use that quick-start-up feature doesn't seem to make a bit of difference. The only thing that feature does is making Windows many many seconds slower to start up. Does 2.4 improve OO's start up time in any way? Is this even an issue that the developers consider to be a problem?
When you have finished this cup of coffee your adventure will begin again.
I see Keynote used on big televised awards ceremonies a lot. The companies doing the graphics buy Macs to run Keynote, and they want Keynote for the transitions. Those kind of presentations are not done by amateurs. If OpenOffice is just going for the 'engineer making presentations to management' market then yes, OpenGL is a waste of time. However if they're looking a bit further then it is worth it.
On when they're going to fix autoformat? Has anyone else ever tried to make a resume in OO (god forbid you use bullets or tabs)?
I wish the OpenOffice.org project maintainers would PGP/gpg sign their MD5 sum files at the least, or if they can get a code signing key, Authenticode sign their installer on Windows.
PGP/gpg is available at no cost, and having the key available from keyservers (and signed by a good number of people) would provide basic software assurance.
I know this is a relatively small gripe, but just for integrity reasons it would be nice that they did so, so I knew a copy I have was not corrupted (or even worse, tampered with.) OOo does such a major role in day to day use for a lot of organizations that if a compromised version made its way around the Internet, it could mean a major disaster.
Last, and I know I'm boring with this, a number of companies won't install anything on their machines unless the files are cryptographically signed in some way. This is more of a legal CYA policy, but it would be nice to be able to use OOo in places like this and have validated, signed executables.
It's called leasing.
You should compare leasing costs against buying + finance + depreciation. It's not so different.
Deleted
Python especially is very suitable for prototyping a project. The write it once to prove the concept and then rewrite it once you actually know what you need idea. C++ has lots of power but it is a finicky beast - one little mistake and your computer eats your children. Python is very forgiving, doing more what you want it to do than what you actually told it to do. It's referred to as executable pseudo-code for a reason. Then once you have your prototype complete in Python, if - IF it needs speed improvements then you rewrite the damn thing properly in C++.
Two things that bug me about OOo 2.3:
1) On Linux Impress can not handle more than a few slides before using 100% CPU power. We have several digital billboards (50" Plasma Tvs) and I was tasked with making sure they had something to display. No prob I thought. I set up 3 media pc cases with Ubuntu 7.10 (i386, onboard nvidia gpu) and installed OOo. I was having some problems creating the slide shows with OOo Linux. I switched to my Windows box and was able to create a basic slide show. (1280x720 resolution maybe 10 slides) I tried running the show on my Ubuntu desktop (amd64) as well as the media pcs (Ubuntu i386) and OOo Impress would jump to 100% CPU after a few slides. In the end I used Wine and PowerPoint viewer to display the slideshow because it worked without killing the CPU. Here's hoping 2.4 fixes this bug.
2) OOo base is unable to open a new form from a button on a form. I was trying to use OOo Base as a quick proof of concept for a new HR database. It is easy enough to connect Base to a MySQL DB and create a form to modify records. The problem came when I tried to create a search page. The search was fine. I could display the results in a table, but then there is no way to select a result from the table and then open it in another form. This is not really a bug rather than a much needed feature. At this point Base is ok for only the simplest of things.
the_crowbar
I can't wait to try out OOo 2.4 to see if they have fixed these two things.
Have you read the Moderator Guidelines
Auto-completing words when writing bullet lists. If you don't end the lines with full-stops, hitting Enter will auto-complete some random word instead of starting a new line. You're list of "My Favourite Animals" becomes:
catastrophicdogmaticfishfingermousetrap
Which, as you can imagine, is quite distressing.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
Hopefully, they fixed the table bugs on oowriter. Using oowriter as a way of creating long complex forms is a nightmare. Once the document gets over a certain page limit, it continually crashes, and is unrecoverable. I found myself installing my old copy of windows XP using innotek virtualbox and installing my old copy of office xp professional just to be able to create the document. Unless the table bugs are fixed, I don't see my reliance on Microsoft Office going away anytime soon.
I wander if circles and such draws smoothly on the edges as MS Office does. i guess that is related to anti-aliasing on drawing objects.
probably won't make into hardy heron
factor 966971: 966971
If you are actually compiling OO.o by hand, you do not need java. Just take a look at the Gentoo ebuild and you will see that if the "java" use flag is not set, there is no dependency on java.
I'm not not licking toads.
I finally finished compiling 2.0 and now this comes out!
I am going to write a letter!
[yes, this is clearly a terrible joke]
soffice.bin: 267 MB... And I even quit writer, so it's just the quickstart program using 267 MB... had the exact same problem with 2.3, can't believe they didn't fix something THAT obvious... It's got to do with the non-english dictionary I use. When I write a word wrong, it loads ALL included dictionaries into memory (german, thai, engrish, etc.) before deciding that it can't find the word, giving up and underlining the word. The 200 MB hogged memory is never freed either. There was an old bug-report about it, but they marked it "fixed" which I really don't understand. Anyone?
Openoffice still doesn't do good anti aliasing of vector graphics (for example, in a presentation). It seems idiotic to implement OpenGL "eye candy" before dealing with this half-decade old issue. Who is going to put up with crappy-looking drawings, just because they can now transition between them smoothly?
Here's one thread on the issue: http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=33584
What are you complaining about? Some of us gentoo users haven't even finished compiling the last release yet!
OO Base last time I checked was pretty much unusable, I heard the lead dev left some time ago and no one has picked it up yet. Is there any progress on that front at all? People always seem to leave Access out when they compare OO to Office...
I'm trying really hard to run my small business on GPL/Linux/FOSS, and am taking the time to start everything in ODF and whatnot. I'm getting used to Inkscape, which is nice for drawing resolution-independent business images. I'm also doing all the docs in OOo. However, I'm hitting a roadblock with displaying my SVG images in OOo documents, such as Impress and Writer. There's apparently no integrated way to carry an SVG image in an OOo document. Right now I'm having to export into PNG, which loses a lot of the good reasons to use SVG.
ARRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!!
Crap, I just downloaded the multi-hundred-megabyte 2.3.1 installer. Now I have to do it _again_.
Need an automatic screenshot taker? Try here.
One of the most annoying features of OpenOffice are all those modal dialog boxes. Why do I have to keep closing the formatting dialog whenever I switch between different bits of text? It really slows down repetitive operations. Many of the dialogs could become non-model, giving a much smoother feel to the whole program.
Frankly, I would have considered this a higher priority than 3D transitions for slide presentations...but I'm glad it's going to be fixed, only seven years after it was identified as an issue...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
PDF import is nice, but are there any Linux tools which can edit framemaker mif documents? FrameMaker still seems to have a large following in the technical documentation field, but there doesn't appear to be any support to edit those documents in Linux. Is that for legal reasons maybe? Or is there just not enough mainstream interest?
The major thing OO is missing for me on the word processor front is good outliner support. There was a note from the developers posted on their forums a while back where they acknowledged that adding this is important, and that the navigator stuff is not a substitute. So, the good news is, OO will get good outliner support. The bad news is that it is going to be a lot of work, so it might not be soon. :-(
I think it's only possible to edit one page at a time, but with pdftk it shouldn't be much of a limitation.
Try opening a .wk3 or .wk4 Lotus 1-2-3 file with this or Lotus Symphony. Oo opens it as raw text, Symphony says "unsupported format" meh...
It's downloading now so I may end up eating crow...
Reading the New Features list, it looks like, except for custom properties, they've put all their efforts into the sizzle and neglected the steak.
I'll say it again--without sections and competent support for duplex printing, swriter can't play in the major leagues. I still haven't found one of my Word documents so trivial that swriter will display and print it as intended. In some cases, no amount of tweaking in swriter can fix the problem. (Hey Guys: odd-numbered pages always go on the right, and it needs to be possible to have new sections start on the next odd-numbered page.)
Also, to play in the big leagues, you need competent user documentation and Help. OOo gives the impression that the developers felt that users should be required to suffer to show they deserved to use the product (apparently a widespread attitude among FOSS developers, judging from the dearth of user documentation). I don't mind clicking at random to see what happens if I'm taking a few minutes off playing with Myst; it's another thing when I'm trying to get work done.
If I ever get the time and the passion to contribute to a FOSS project, it won't be code, it'll be user documentation.
Only 18 minutes to go and I'll be able to install the thing--like my third wife: a triumph of hope over experience.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
WHENNNNN!!!! are those people EVER going to bother cloning Lotus Approach? It is just mind-boggling that they are too chickenshit or NIH to bother challenging IBM to resurrect or share WHAT IT CAN from Lotus SmartSuite and particularly Approach.
Proof of Concept? Hell, Approach does that hands down. Granted, it's "ancient" since it is mostly from 1992, thru 1999 to 2002 as for the major work in it, but prototyping is definitely something Approach does. It doesn't have an ERD, and table linking is rudimentary, but the GUI, the forms, the charts, the reports and work sheets and sorts and such (except for the lackluster cross-tabs) are MORE than worth their weight (or, ahem, area) in gold...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
It's about time OOo added this feature, sadly I have to wait another half a year for it. Good news though, I had to wait even longer for true regex support.
Their PGP key is useless... it has not been signed by anyone.
I'm curious, how long does it take to compile? I bet it takes a looong time. That's a beast of a program.
Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
I'd mod parent underrated, but as usual, i don't have mod points when I need them.
I completelly agree with you. It is absolutely mind boggling to me why they don't implement anti-aliasing in presentations, which doesn't "impress" me in the slightest. It is if they are specifically trying to make their presentations look bad. Until they implement this, I won't even consider downloading it. From time to time, I may glance over the new features to see if it will one day be implemented.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
I actually just finished compiling 2.4.0 on my ~amd64 box. I have a dual core amd X2 5200+ and it took a little less than 4 hours. Nothing like the old days when it would take a day or two!
I'm not not licking toads.
oooh, yeah, i guess i trolled there a bit, but OO is really a bitch to compile, and even when you tell configure to not use java, it still looks for it. i use a pure 64 lfs, and i tried compiling oo with different versions of gcc, changed the includes around, but it shuts me down every time, while koffice and abiword compile beautifully.
Brother, you have spoken what my spirit cries every waking minute. Rejoice and fuck ponies!!!!! damselds (*(**(f yeu u yyu YU YU R^E^f5%FF6 fhdsjjjljlLJLJLJJLJLljfe6f5f5f5f5 i0ojpl
That is true for new cars. If you purchase a used car and plan on driving it until it's dead for good, there is a pretty big difference. At one point the resale value of the car starts to approach a value because a working car always has some value. At this point, the value of the car is probably below the value the car provides in your life.
There are exactly 42,935,718 letter sized sheets in a square mile.
I just installed OO 2.4 to work on a few spreadsheets and it feels really slow. The response (so far) was worse when working with graphs.
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
Many years ago, when I decided to go Linux on the desktop, I gave a presentation that I wrote in Java3D. It was about higher-dimension cellular automata and crystalline computing. I only did it that way because I was frustrated by an early version of Impress. It was mostly black, with all the action happening in primary colours, all zooming and winking, with call-outs orbiting points of interest.
At the end of the presentation I asked for questions. After I'd asked again, someone tore their attention away from the still-performing presentation and asked "What did you say?".
They've been working on it for a long time now, but it seems to be a very difficult task. OpenOffice seems to have serious design problems in this area, and fixing them apparently requires changes all over the place. We can only hope that they manage to put this in for 3.0, which, as far as I know, is the current target for this work.
Always got me how PDF is an "open standard", but hardly any programs can fully utilize it i.e. create and modify them. You'd think it's one of the most difficult things in the universe to implement or something. Maybe it is. It's also surprised me how slow it has been for the adoption of web and computer standards for vectors and graphical shapes and such. I thought it should have been something defined in HTML 1.0. "This is a letter. This is it's size. This is a sphere. This is a line. This is it's movement speed in this direction with this acceleration until time X is reached." Someone care to explain why it is that Adobe has ruled this domain for so long? Technically Flash was Macromedia I know, but it's just strange how this giant has gobbled up so much "exclusive" software that should have never been exclusive IMO had standards actually been implemented correctly and promptly. Also never did find out why it takes so much CPU/GPU power to move a circle around on the screen. Had something "Flash-like" (but with better performance?) been a part of the original HTML standards, our lives would have all been a lot nicer.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
First, the good part: Congrats on the Oo.org team for getting 2.4 out the door with so many new features. Second, the bad part: Why no 64-bit Linux version? The 32-bit versions don't run, and the installer codedumps. Even the .deb packages fail to install, because they're made for a 32-bit i386 arch. Ugh.
I'll have that crow medium rare.
OO Writer now handles duplex properly and has section-y features. For the first time, I can print my resumé duplex from OO with the pagination and page layout coming out right without manual intervention.
I'm not sure yet that it will properly handle a complex manual or report, but there's hope. It still hiccups on embedded Visio (edit causes an error and open opens it in Visio, but as a giant vector group; the Visio objects are disassembled). That's probably not going to get fixed as long as Visio remains in a class with only one instance.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
If you find documentation for OOo Help lacking, then use Extended Tips by switching them on at
Tools > Options > In the left sidebar, expand OpenOffice.org > select General > check the Extended Tips check box, click OK.
After that, you'll see very descriptive tool tips that should be able to explain a feature or a check box... You can also try out the Help Agent, although I am not using it.
Outlook is not just yet another POP/IMAP client - it is a good groupware client for a good groupware server. The way how it helps to manage meetings, tasks and notes is still one of the best. That's why Outlook is included to MS Office suite - it makes a work in the office easier. Even more - it is integrated with MS Office - you can preview Word, Excel and Powerpoint attachments in a way like with Google mail. One more comment on Kmail - it is not a cross-platform tool. If we try to deliver OOo to many computers with many operating systems - then why we even bother to to talk about Kmail. Thunderbird is a cross-platform email client. But again - when will it get all groupware-based functions to manage meetings, tasks and notes. So, Thunderbird cannot help either. Conclusion - most of MS Office 2003 users will still upgrade to MS office 2007 and pay a lot of money just because there is no Outlook-like tool in OOo.
Less is more !
Well, it looks like someone beat you to it already, with the most interesting issues being 72559, 72957 and 81365. Issue #72559 so far has 79 votes (which is quite a lot for a a bug marked as DEFECT) and since the changes involve the framework and drastically changing the UI, the target was unfortunately set to 3.0 /as this version reportedly won't support Windows 98/Me anymore :/.