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."

Comments

Mac Version

[rubeng]

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.

Most useful extension

[phayes]

REGEXP search & replace! Supposing you're a geek... Of course we're all geeks here on slashdot, right?

Re:Most useful extension

[Bert64]

It's had regex find/replace by default for years... Not sure if 1.x had it, but the beta builds of 2.x and everything since has.

Re:PDF import?

[morgan_greywolf]

Note the difference between Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader. Adobe Reader is one of several PDF readers available on Linux, along with evince, KPDF, xpdf, etc. Acrobat lets you create and modify PDFs. Right now, OOo only lets you create PDFs -- modifying them is currently not possible.

Re:PDF import?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Note the difference between Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader.

A note for clarification: Adobe Reader used to be named Acrobat Reader, so users mistaking one for the other have been understandably mislead by Adobe's own marketing in the past.

Re:Only one comment

[vertickle]

Thank them with your wallet. http://contributing.openoffice.org/donate.html

Re:hopefully

[xaxa]

Uh, has KMail gotten around to composing HTML Mail or making it easy to insert links yet? Last I heard, the developers seemed to have a philosophical thing against HTML for some reason.

KMail will compose HTML emails. At the moment, it won't reply to the HTML part of a multipart message in HTML, it will take the plain text part.

They don't have a philosophical objection to adding support for this though. I had a look on the mailing list a couple of weeks ago (this came up in a sub-thread somewhere). The current developers don't want to spend time implementing it, they're unpaid so they do what they want to do on Kontact/KMail. They're happy for someone else to add the functionality though, or for someone to pay someone else to add it.

Yeah, most of my emails are plain text, but I do end up sending links to people quite often, and having to copy a plain text link out of an email client into a web browser is a lot slower than just clicking on a link. It's also nice to send and HTML email from time to time. If you prefer not to write HTML email, that's nice, but I take it as a limit on choice. In the composer window, click Options, Formatting (HTML).
KMail highlights links it finds in the text, it's good at this (I've never had to copy and paste a link from a plain text message).

Re:PDF import?

[Schnapple]

Well, if anything, Acrobat Reader is more precise of a name. It reads Acrobat files. Seems pretty clear to me.

Yeah but I think the problem Adobe was having is that no one got that Adobe Acrobat != Adobe Acrobat Reader. They probably couldn't sell Acrobat at all since people saw they were charging $200 or whatever for Acrobat and said "Why would I pay for that? I can get 'Acrobat' for free online!" while at the same time wondering how one would make PDF files (this is before PrimoPDF and another hundred good ways to make simple PDF files became available). Worse than that, people would go to the Adobe site and look for "Acrobat", find the not-free Acrobat product instead of the free Acrobat Reader, think that suddenly they needed to pay money to view a PDF file, and leave in disgust. Renaming the product Adobe Reader, in theory, avoids this confusion and also makes it out like Reader is a generic viewing app that reads PDF's.

Re:bad timing

[Tranzistors]

Um, it is already there. Right now only release candidate.

Re:I wish OOo would sign (PGP or authenticode)

[Neon Spiral Injector]

Firefox and Acrobat Reader are distributed as signed executables. Plus, what's this? ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/2.0.0.13/KEY Oh, look Firefox has a PGP key.

Really, OOo should sign their executables.

Re:PDF import?

[Teun]

You can use PDFedit for editing.
Not perfect but often sufficient.