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OpenOffice.org 3.0 Beta Released
Sean0michael writes "OpenOffice.org has announced their 3.0 Beta is ready for testing. The new version includes some great enhancements, including MS Office 2007 import filters, an improved notes feature, a built-in Solver component, and an Aqua interface for Macs. The site has a complete list of Beta features. Download your beta release from their site."
Congratulations to the OOo team on (finally) getting an Aqua interface running on Mac OS X. This is a great leap forward for the project and I predict will grow the project significantly in both user base and contributors.
I will probably get crucified for this, but one of the new features seems to be support for VBA! While this may not appeal to folks creating NEW solutions, at least we got a stepping stone for supporting old solutions on a non-windows/office platform.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Aqua interface for Macs.... not that NeoOffice is bad or anything.
Finally I don't have to launch X11 to open Open Office on Mac anymore. I look forward to the final release so that I can finally get everyone I know on Macs off Microsoft Office once and for all.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I am kind of tired of this OpenOffice.org beta stuff. In my opinion, this beta business is taking too long. Am I alone?
I'm missing the "complete rewrite of rendering API and functionality", as well as proper SVG handling (or EPS, or PDF, hell native support for any proper vector graphics format!), and other things that would keep Impress presentations from looking like ass. What about uniform lines, circles that look at least remotely like circles, etc.? What about proper inline (and display) math typesetting? Instead of trying to remain bug-compatible with MS Office at all cost, they should perhaps think about, well, not sucking as bad.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
> I was hoping to see something more than just another MS Office clone at least with version 3.0. How hard can it be to implement such a useful feature anyway? I can't believe they do not get enough requests for it.
The ability to edit PDFs.
I'm DMing a D&D game right now, and most people are trying to use HeroForge spreadsheets to build their characters and show them to me. Without MS Office, I can't read them. If there's a problem with character sheets for D&D, I can only imagine how many businesses and other groups have problems with OOO not recognizing MS scripts. Until OpenOffice, and a lot of other Open Source Software projects, understand this [that they need to be different], they aren't much better than what they emulate. In the areas that matter, they're very much inferior. Apple has been able to create UIs that are much superior to anything anyone else offers. Open source has failed to do so for 90% of their attempts. Unless the project is in that 10%, they could do better by moving towards the MS version rather than continuing what they're doing.
Ugh. I sound like a broken record: Every OOo update, I hope that the OOo developers will add an outline mode to Writer. And every release I'm disappointed. I really like OOo, but this one missing feature keeps me from using it for serious work becuase it makes large document planning and writing production in Writer sloooooow. It's been requested of the OOo team quite a few times over the past 4-5 years. ODF intuitively matches this concept, but implementing it apparently requires some nontrivial change to the Writer codebase. And a little more enthusiasm by those who could code it (wish I could). If I could direct my OOo donation to this one feature, I'd give $XXX instead of my paltry $XX donation. There's some background available here: http://serendipity.ruwenzori.net/index.php/category/writing
And to quote myself (http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=322381&cid=20912291): "...before some n00b who's never written a 200-page document jumps all over me: No, the OOo "Navigator" does not provide an outline mode. It provides something akin to a re-organizable TOC in a floating window, but it doesn't provide the productivity enhancements afforded by inline hierarchical control within the editing window. This is one function that MS Word got right. For example, in Word I can start typing and make a list in normal text, click into "outline mode" and either use a key shortcut or a single click-drag to promote/demote some text to headings (while leaving other items as content), or re-order paragraphs of text or headings. To do the same thing in OOo's Navigator, I need to switch to a different window to reorganize headings, but switch back to the editing window to resume editing content. I also need to switch between two windows to split a heading into two sections, switch back to move it, and switch again to resume composing content -- something I can do with a CR and single mouse-drag in Word.
Word: type, type, drag, type, type, [enter], key-combo, type.
OOo: type, type, switch-window, drag, switch-window, type, type, re-style, switch-window, drag, switch-window, type.
Come on guys, suck up the Not-Invented-Here pride and adopt this one feature that MS got right! Or do it one-better and improve on the similar inline hierarchical editing from FrameMaker+SGML. Or innovate some collapsible tag interface from something like the old HotMeTaL from SoftQuad. (But don't trash the Navigator; it *is* useful for final proofing, just not composition)
I think not...(*poof*)
So how exactly does the 3.0 beta release compare with Go-Openoffice.org 2.4?
The improvement in the collaboration/review/track changes is what I'm most thrilled about-previous versions have been so lousy as to be unusable (doing in text comments was faster/easier/clearer to the reader) so this new change looks so promising. I don't care if it's MS cloning-this was my main reason for considering buying MS.
open source modern art: laser taggi
If you have the status bar set to hide, it re appears on save
This is the most annoying bug to me and it seems to live on unnoticed
there already exists a bug report for this but, it would be nice if it would be fixed before the final version
its kinda sad to have such a GUI bug and its really annoying to always click "Shift+S" to save a document and to follow it with "Alt->V->B" to hide again the status bar
Yes, is says:
" Available Soon... PDF Import Extension
The PDF Import Extension allows modifying existing PDF files for which the original source files do not exist anymore. "
However, that was August 2007.
From what I've seen, this release still has the absurd 65535 row limit on Calc—the only reason such a limit was acceptable in previous versions was because MS Office didn't yet support more, but now that Office 2007 supports up to 4 million-some-odd rows, there is absolutely no excuse for putting that many or more into OpenOffice.
More than 65K rows is the killer feature that has gotten parts of my company to upgrade to 2007. Until and unless OOo supports it, there's no way we'll be able to use it as a full replacement for MS Office, as much as we'd like to.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Or can I finally open a spreadsheet with more than 256 columns or more than 65535 rows?
640k is enough for anyone right?
This sounds more like a version 2.4 or 2.5 than a 3.0 release.
Deleted
You got that backwards there, son. Even though I know you're either trolling or (more likely) astroturfing, I'm going to bite.
I can open a word document with OO. I cannot open an OO document with Word.
I can open a Word Perfect document with OO. I cannot open a WP document with Word.
OO has the cool cachet of the GPL, while Word is just another boring corporate moneymaker.
OO has fewer bugs and faster bug fixes.
OO costs nothing, while stupid people pay good cash for Word that could otherwise be spent on more important things like beer, games, and more beer.
The only thing Word has going for it is that the Uncyclopedia parodies Bill Gates (and even includes a real criminal justice system mug shot of him) but not Scott McNealy. I mean, if Uncyclopedia doesn't make fun of you your software must really suck, right?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Well, you do need to give them a few years. After all, being able to match Microsoft's bloatware takes time.
(Except for work where they provide Office) I am still happily going to return to sender any OOXM docs.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
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Is it any faster ???
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I can't believe they got to 3.0 and there is still no OpenType font support...
From TFBF (Beta Features):
> ODF 1.2 Support
>
> OpenOffice.org 3.0 already supports the features of the upcoming version 1.2 of
> the ISO standard OpenDocument Format (ODF). ODF 1.2 includes a powerful formula
> language as well as a sophisticated metadata model based on the W3C standards
> RDF and OWL. ODF is being mandated and adopted in a growing number of countries.
> In addition; ODF is being implemented by many vendors for many different
> applications.
When criticism is leveled against MS Office 2007 for not complying with ISO OOXML, even in the newest code level, there is the rightful counter that OOffice is no better at compliance with ISO ODF.
This appears to correct that problem.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
There, fixed it for you in the above comment. :P
Bah, who cares. When does the next version of Abiword come out?!
First the bad, I recently wiped out my Kubuntu install and went to the 64 bit version of 8.04 since I recently upgraded to a Core 2 machine. It's great, but the only 64 bit packages for openoffice are stuck at 2.4 (from Ubuntu). For an open-source project OO really needs to get on the ball with 64 bit package support!
I was using the development milestones before the firs official Beta came out and have been generally happy with the new version. However, the much advertised PDF import does not work yet and that would be a nice feature. I also have a wide screen monitor and the ability to look at two pages at once is a nice (and massively overdue) feature.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Does this still (for the lack of a better phrase) still suck donkey balls?
I have tried to use it on several occasions. I have one DB in it at the moment, but the OO V2 version is horrible in countless ways. Just searching a 2000 row database is painfully slow - yes, I know filters work better. But still, search should NOT be that slow, I struggle to think how on earth they've managed to write an application that can take 10 seconds to search for a text phrase in ONE FIELD of a database with only 2000 records. If you have a function that people are going to use, please make it work properly.
I used to hate Access too. I knew people who used Access databases on busy live web sites, so I have experienced ways in which Access can suck beyond the reaches of many mortals. But Open Office Base makes me want to go back to Access.
Oh, and yes, I know I'm mixing up DB engines (HSQLDB, JET) with the applications that use them, but the application is what the user (me) sees, so it inevitably takes the flak.
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
Two points:
I agree that on each platform OO should support that platform's accepted/native key bindings. This must at least be a configurable option; should the OO team want to make some other set of bindings the default.
One of OO's previous lackings was the ability to use basic Emacs key bindings. Reconfiguring the product to do this was a pain in the butt, and no one in the extended user community had taken the time to create something. I'm not an Emacs-bigot, but with tens of thousands of Emacs users out there, why wouldn't you want to address that market segment?
Hopefull both of these issues are eventually addressed.
Some poeple consider features to be more important than compatability.
Microsoft Word has many more (and more mature) features than OO.org and your post does not dispute this at all.
+4 "Informative" indeed.
Ad hominem attacks on an entire class of humans because they have different priorities and preferences. And this makes you smart, right? Brilliant.
Most people that use computers don't know jack shit about computers. And that's they way it should be. Just like most people that use cars, toasters, airplanes, microwaves, televisions and indoor plumbing don't know jack shit about those things.
BTW, Mac's support Ctrl-Click and Cmd-Click at all times and anyone that can't figure that out is a real freakin' genius. And the mighty mouse (the mouse Apple ships) has three buttons, a scroll ball and reacts to squeezing as well.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
i agree with all but the WP one. word opens WP files just fine, usually.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
OO has fewer bugs and you're much less biased than I am.
Most of them are a jumbled up distraction.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
I mean seriously. Other than being free, what does Open Office have that Office 2007 doesn't?
I get office 2007 for free, and it's absurdly better than the last OOo I tried. I write lab reports and the graphs sync with the data in the excell sheets automatically, and I can merge entire plots with a simple copy paste command. I can copy data from excell and paste it into word to make a table that looks clean, presentable, and more importantly, it auto syncs with excell if the data changes.
OOo has about the same functionality now that Office had 10 years ago.
I'll download OOo 3.0 and see what's changed. But I don't think it'll be compelling enough to make me switch from Office 07.
The thing that constantly annoys me about Open Office is the obvious lack of usability testing in the user interface. There are many many actions that simply require unnecessary and redundant, or millimeter accurate mouse movements and clicks. Extremely frustrating.
In this regard the product that Open Office is trying so hard to imitate does a much, much better job.
Now if only they'd lose GTK and go with QT4. ;)
Despite my being a huge "fan" and user of Open Source software, I have to respectfully disagree with your opinion.
While OpenOoffice.org has many features that are more than enough for the average user (e.g. Me), Microsoft Office has more and many that many users can't do without.
And Microsoft Office 2007 (once you get used to the "ribbon") is even better than Office 2003, which is better than anything from OpenOffice.org.
Personally, I'm happy with OpenOffice.org in Linux but I'm also open-minded enough to know that it's inferior to Microsoft Office 2003/2007.
It's pretty much a copy of Microsoft Office 2000 (which is 9 years old).
You get what you pay for...
When was the last time you used Microsoft Office and what version was it?
Scott
©20014 angrykeyboarder & Elmer Fudd. All Wights Wesewved
Compare OO.o,even the older 1.5,to say,Office 2K(best damned Office released IMHO) the speed will blow you away,even with the hidden Office service disabled. I personally think it is because Sun insists on tying OO.o together with the JRE. But not having tried tearing into the guts of OO.o I can't really tell for sure. All I know is on the 1.0-2.2Ghz 512Mb of RAM equiped machines I come across most often when working on SOHO computers OO.o is simply blown away by any version of Office. Of course,since most of them are running Win2k Pro(best damned Windows released IMHO) they can't run the pretty bloat that is Office 2K7. But I have tried OO.o 1.1-2.2 and have yet to find one that can match the speed and stability of Office 2K or 2K3.
That said, I am downloading OO.o 3 Beta as we speak and since I'm typing this on a 1.1Ghz with 512Mb running Win2K Pro(perfect for testing freeware before offering it to my customers) I'll be installing it and putting it through its paces as soon as the download completes. Maybe like Firefox 3 they've managed to trim some of the bloat,who knows. But IMHO OO.o on anything less than a 2.4Ghz with 1Gb of RAM is just too damned painful. But that is my 02c,YMMV.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I have an old neighbor that runs an emac that I help him with. He has moved on to OO, but still has loads of docs in Appleworks. I wonder if at least an input filter will be written?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Try to open a 5 MB specification document and you will actually know the difference.
Even a 2 MB doc, with another 100 Kb doc opened along with it is going to freeze every single time.
So, if we are looking for cheap word clone, yes, open office is the best one (I also use it), but one shouldn't be blind to the obvious negatives that it has.
Open Office needs to go on a diet in a mjor way.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/odf-converter
Protector of Capitalist views,
Meorah
You forgot a big one: OO runs *natively* under more platforms than MS Office.
Method of processing duck feet
I'm with you that he went personal rather that try to retain a decent style of debate, but I do have some agreement with his argument that it's all a bit big. The main issue I see is that you may sit on top of a heap of horticultural fertilizer (to put it politely), and have little way of finding out.
:-).
The challenge is that you ARE sitting on top of a large program - the assorted calculations and decisions made in such a huge spreadsheet. Although it's not a "language", it does act as a large processing engine, and thus suffers the same problems of potential bugs hiding somewhere (and even before switching to OO I knew just how easy it is to accidentally allow Excel to "adjust" a formula (when you mess with row and column deletes/inserts). The difference with a "proper" language is that spreadsheets have near zero change control capability.
You're not alone in having this problem, BTW, it's a common risk factor in businesses that decisions are taken on data that is processed in basically an unaudited fashion - spreadsheets in critical business processes draw attention from any auditor worth his/her money..
You've switched to Office 2007 for a simple business reason: cool. However, from a risk management perspective you may want to start looking at a potentially more controllable way of handling so much data anyway. And when it's structurally and process wise sound (which I reckon to involve some query remodelling) you may find you no longer need a gazillion line spreadsheet.
Caveat: this assertion is naturally based on a total absence of knowledge of what you actually get up to with such a heap of data, it is after all Slashdot
Insert
Yes, but can OpenOffice run on ....
Er, can OpenOffice open Microsoft Works files?
Seriously, though. I try to recommend OpenOffice to people who come to me and ask. I then find out that they have 150 Microsoft Works documents that can only be read by two programs: MS Works Word and MS Office Word.
Microsoft should be forced to pay users for that POCrap, or go to jail for it, or put it away and allow system builders to put OOo on their computers alongside their 90-day trial of MS Office 20xx.
I've got no problem what-so-ever with cloning-just wish the cloners paid half as much attention to UI as they do to the features.
That's funny, I've had a company switch to OOo precisely because of the UI. Their sound argument was that Open Source products in general do not change UI so quickly and dramatically, allowing staff to grow with the changes.
The reason for that is simple: FOSS doesn't need an argument other than improvement for a new version. It doesn't need UI drama to give a bunch of sales people an argument to sell a new version, so once staff has been retrained (as they would have been anyway for a new version of Windows -Vista- and Office -2007-) it was equally possible to switch to a Linux build with OO.
The showstopper was in the backoffice to adjust available skills in dev and support in time, so they went half way and switched to OOo only as test. I suspect they'll take the Linux step as well once they've seen how OOo worked for them, but that's at least half a year away.
Insert
Even better than either is Filemaker. The latest version is truly the Swiss Army Knife of database conversion, extraction and analysis. Again you can treat it as pure middleware and pump the result out as Excel if that's what you want. The nice thing about Filemaker is that you can make your middle tier very robust and lock it down so you know no-one has messed with your data between the database and the presentation layer.
Personally, and this is just my prejudice and the way I work, I would never consider any solution that had a spreadsheet involved of more than a few thousand rows. It is just too fragile, too hard to audit and manage.
The fact is that at some point you run out of steam. In the past I have had to extract data from log files with over 1 million rows. I wouldn't use Excel. What is the cutoff point at which a spreadsheet becomes silly? There surely is one.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
... if adding a single word to the dictionary is still a three-click process?
Some poeple consider features to be more important than compatability
Yes, and almost all of them work for Microsoft.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Do you really find that many people with Microsoft Works documents? I'm not saying you don't, it's just surprising, as most corporate environments seem to be totally tethered to MS Office. I couldn't tell you the last time I used Works, to be honest, I didn't realize it was still being developed/supported.
So great. They've released some fancy new version with blah, blah and blah, none of which most people are terribly interested in.
Meanwhile, the thing is still a slow, bloated pig. Do we have to make efficiency some sort of feature, or provide fake goals and a shiny racetrack before people address the fundamentals?
Makes me sick to see open source apps follow the same fated trails as other bloatware
As a regular user of OO that's required to send RTF files to people, I really wish OO's developers would fix RTF saving so it wouldn't omit random formatting close tags. Saving an RTF in OO then reopening it still in OO shouldn't end up with a document with completely different formatting, because it didn't save where the 18pt bold font ended/12pt normal font started.
P.S. Since when can Word not open WordPerfect documents? I don't have Word installed here, but the last version I used (2000) had importers for WP documents.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3395
BTW: work has started on it.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Looking at the release notes I still don't see support for Shared files. Until that is available most of my clients can't use it. On top of the fact that linux,XP,2000 with OO runs like 2007 on Vista.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
Decisions in the workplace aren't being made by those who spell Microsoft with a dollar sign.
I read some long time ago that they were working really hard on the drawing primitives to improve graphics output for instance in impress. Does someone know if this will still be implemented in OOo3? I tested the beta but at the moment it is still not there :-(
This really keeps me from using Impress for presentations at work.
No, it's just that for most people compatibility no longer an issue.
I can't recall the last time I sent a Word/Excel doc to somebody who couldn't open it.
Nor can I recall having a WP file sent to me in the last decade or so. Besides, Word CAN open up WP docs saved in the WP5 or WP6 formats.
Now.. as a developer, I have done some pretty great things with Office. Not so much using Office as the platform (although everyones done a bit of that at some point), but moreso just automating it in C#/Visual C++ using its COM wrapper.
A good example is an MRP we wrote in C# that uses Excel as a reporting platform.
Many here just can't get past the idea that it's closed-source, a MSFT product, etc. Me? I just want to deliver the best software I can. We're a small company. Top Line growth is important. And I don't have the luxury of indulging personal preferences.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
OOo has about the same functionality now that Office had 10 years ago.
We have Word (and Word Perfect) at work, and I don't use anything in it I didn't use ten years ago.
At its best, an unused feature is bloat. At its worst it's a security risk.
If OO lacks a feature you need that Word has, you should buy Word. If not and you still buy Word IMO you're either not thinking clearly or you're spending someone else's money.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Half my damn students.. I occasionally teach undergrads and every semester I make it clear that I will not accept papers in microsoft works format and every semester without fail a dozen students email me a final paper in works format. It came for free on their computer and by and large we're talking about a level of computer illiteracy where they can't actually tell the difference between works and regular office, let alone acquire a copy of either office or OO and install it..
While OpenOoffice.org has many features that are more than enough for the average user (e.g. Me), Microsoft Office has more and many that many users can't do without.
If Word has a feature you need (especially one you ABSOLUTELY need) that OO lacks, then you should get Word; it's a no-brainer.
You get what you pay for...
Not always! Often you pay far mor than for what you get. More expensive is not always better or higher quality. You usually pay for what you get, however.
When was the last time you used Microsoft Office and what version was it?
I had Excel and Access open at work today, probably 2000 or 2003 (not there right now).
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Yes, you can convert an OO document to Word with an open source tool. But that's Open source's strength; Microsoft didn't write the tool. My point is that out of the box, Word is useless for opening an OO document.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
That runs counter to my own experience. OpenOffice feels sluggish even on fast computers, but not a lot slower on slow computers -- at least not as slow as you'd expect. I used it a lot last summer on a Pentium III 500 MHz with 512 MB RAM, and speed was never an issue. I've also used it on a 266 MHz laptop with 320 MB RAM, running Debian, and even that was acceptable in use (it did load slowly, though).
OpenOffice's sluggishness is mostly an issue of feeling. I don't think I've lost even a minute, in total, from using OpenOffice Writer instead of Word on slow computers. In fact, I might have saved a bit of time, due to OOo's far superior styles implementation.
So lets see, we have a couple of extremely minor utilities (Transmission and Handbrake-without-GUI), a bunch of zealots claiming it is because Linux/C++/anythingnotmadebyapple suxx0rs, and some people debating whether look and feel counts (it doesnt, dumbasses).
Point proven, time to move on.
I'm sure I forgot way more than one big one.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Compare OO.o,even the older 1.5,to say,Office 2K(best damned Office released IMHO) the speed will blow you away,even with the hidden Office service disabled.
Though I agree that Open Office is damn bloated compared to MS Office in terms of Memory usage (the same spreadhseet takes over 100 megs of ram in OpenOffice, vs 15 megs in Excel isn't uncommon) I've learned to live with it, due to the cost/benefit of simply buying more Memory. RAM is damn cheap and has Far more utility, so I would rather buy 1 gig of (laptop) RAM for $50, than buy MS Office.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Quick tip:
Use a mirror, the official server is rather slashdotted and only gives ~20kb/s while a nearby mirror easily can give you speeds like 1mb/s
I haven't tried it, but apparently this modification of OO.org handles Works:
http://go-oo.org/discover/#ms-works-import
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
It has been as good and better than MSFT Office for some time now.
And, it just keeps getting better and better. I bet Bill and Steve just hate that, TOO BAD FOR THEM!
I use it almost constantly to unscrew screwed Office documents at work.
At home, it is my exclusive office suite.
OOo will frequently lack features in word... it's in a stern chase after all.
However, OOo is FREE and will only get better.
Most new Microsoft Word features are pretty obscure on the other hand and some of the recent changes make it harder to use.
M$ Word is a GREAT product.. that
* Costs a lot of money for most (tho I can get it legally for $20)
* Has planned obsolescence
* Can't read older word documents that OOo can.
* Crashes reading corrupted word documents which OOo *easily* reads and fixes.
---
Now...
The kicker is this...
I recently finally made the change over to OOo as of 2.4. Already, there are some things which are so much cleaner and so much more logical that I miss those features when I bring up word. Word just does some things nonsensically due to its history.
And already, there are some features in OOo which I miss in M$ Word (the cropping is SOOOOOO much easier and clearer in OOo than word-- working feels cleaner too).
---
So Ooo is like 9/9/9/10/9/10 while word is 10/10/9/9/10/10. Both are very good-- Both are better in some areas.
When you consider price, drm, and obsolescence tho OOo 10, M$ 1.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It's pretty much a copy of Microsoft Office 2000 (which is 9 years old).
Not even that. Word 2000 had outline mode, normal mode, and (IIRC) non-sucky change tracking, all of which I use, and none of which OO has.
Wait a minute there, what are you counting for speed exactly?
I will agree that OpenOffice takes comparatively long to *load*. However, that time is spent only once per day; it will typically remain in memory for the rest of the working day (if you are one of those quaint people that actually turn their PC off before going home - otherwise it can remain in memory indefinitely!). So that cost isn't all that important.
Where it counts is what you do with it, and in my experience, editing is as fast as MS Office, and scrolling through a document, or printing it, or turning it into a PDF, is typically far faster than with Word.
I'll ditto encoderer here:
Plus, there's one feature that really belongs more in the "Basic Functionality" category, and that's accurate word and character counting. As documented on the OOo bug list for some years now, any combination of double-byte Asian text + regular single-byte alphanumeric text results in "word" counts that are worse than useless. A number of Asian languages do not count by "word" so much as by character (and for that matter there still isn't much agreement as to what exactly is a "word" in Japanese). OOo gives a total "word" count for either the document or selection, but does not break out any included Asian text -- which MS Word does, and has done for longer than I can clearly remember (starting maybe with MSO 97?). This makes OOo a non-starter for anyone working with such Asian languages in any situation that requires counts -- which includes just about all academic and professional use.
There's a sample .odt file included in the bug report (direct linky) that clearly spells out the differences in how the two apps count from a UI perspective (can't speak to the internals). I'd love to pitch in with the coding, but I sadly cannot afford the time and energy required to dig through OOo's extraordinarily convoluted API documentation to figure out how to update the source code myself; I started the process, but gave up in disgust at how the docs are organized. I've still got MSO, so until such time as the OOo team can get around to fixing this long-standing bug, and / or produce more sensible API docs, I'll keep using Word.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Just downloaded the beta to check what has changed since I last tried OOo. Not much as far as I can see.
1) Bullet/numbered lists.
- Still cannot quickly (one mouse drag) change spacing between the text and its bullet/number. Something I can do in Abiword.
- "Clear formatting" does not clear the bullet/number.
2) Still no Normal mode.
3) Keyboard Shortcuts
- Still limited shortcut selection.
- Still assign a shortcut to a special character without recording a macro.
4) The new notes implementation is actually a step back.
- Word compatibility hasn't improved here. You cannot collaborate with people using Word when they use notes. Even if you don't change their notes, not all content is preserved.
- Now I can only see a note on a special page margin, instead of having it as a special markup in text with an option to read it on demand. Moreover, this margin increases with text zoom in Web Layout mode (WTF?)!
- Still cannot assign a note to a range of text.
5) Still cannot search and replace text with a specific named style.
And all of this is only after a cursory look, there is probably much more.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I regularly get Word files (usually containing 3 lines of plain text) that won't open on a number of computers I have, where I didn't feel like spending hundreds of bucks for Office.
And for the above poster running Debian? While I fully agree when it comes to Open Office on Linux that it runs beautifully on older hardware,it just doesn't run as well in Windows. And since most of the SOHO shops I deal with have Office 97 or 2K it isn't costing them anything to stick with what they have. That said,I run Office 2K through Crossover 6 on my Xandros Business Pro 4 laptop and it STILL runs rings around Open Office,even though Office is running native compared to MS Office running on an abstraction layer. I don't know if the code has just gotten too big and bloated or if what I have read over the years on the forums is true and Open Office had fundamental bugs in it when it was originally purchased by Sun.
And while I doubt we'd ever see Sun do this,IMHO if they really want Open Office to be a MS Office "killer" then they need to take each individual component(writer,calc,etc) and one at a time rebuild them from the ground up for performance,stability, and integrative ease of use. If they were to do that I have no doubt with the way MSFT keeps getting more and more bloated with their products that OO.o 4 could run rings around MS Office in every category.
And just for the record when a SOHO has me build them a new machine I install OO.o right along with antivirus and Firefox. For me it has become a standard install. But on older machines it is just way too damned slow even with JRE disabled for me to recommend.But that is my 02c,YMMV.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I don't know why people here get so cranked up about Open Office Writer features. I hate word processors. I've always hated word processors. I will likely always hate word processors. LaTeX has been out for forever and a day. Once you go that route, word processors become downright annoying and cludgy.
I like spreadsheets for some things. In the past, I've bumped into Calc's row limit, which used to be higher on Excel. Excel is, in my opinion, the best thing Microsoft has *ever* done. They can keep the rest of their garbage and shove it up their ass! Oh and give me all my money back for selling me operating system licenses I never used because I couldn't buy a laptop all those years without their shit on it.
Impress is good, wish it had more clip art and shit. What am I saying? I don't give presentations unless it from my IDE with an application demo.
Anyway. Great job to the Open Office team and a sincere thanks for their hard work. It's much appreciated by many people.
Microsoft Word Viewer - it's free.
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
Same here, which is why we avoid Microsoft lock-in like the plague it is. Do you have the luxury of watching your hard work vaporize because the next version of Word drops some of the functions you use, and the current version won't run on Windows 7? Maybe you'll get lucky and neither of those will happen. A lot of us in IT aren't so lucky, though, and have watched the rug get pulled out from under us on key projects.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
yes, but what happens when suddenly the Word Viewer stops working for some obscure new Microsoft Word format? Microsoft has been known to simply stop supporting certain formats. Last year it dropped DBF support for Microsoft Excel.
Embrace, Extend, Exterminate.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
OO has the cool cachet of the GPL, while Word is just another boring corporate moneymaker.
.docx adn they tell me the same, I have to tell them to buy a US$100.00 software (unless they only need to read it).
It is simpler than that.
If I send someone an ODF file and they tell me "I can not read this file, what program do I need?" I just need to send them a link to openoffice.org and they can download and install the software in any platform.
Whereas, if I send someone a document in
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I think the problem is not the Java issue, but that when you run OpenOffice it loads a lot of crap that you do not use (that is why Word is separated from PowerPoint and from Excel).
Word open faster than OpenOffice even using Wine. That is quite ridiculous.
The problem (AFAIK) is that OpenOffice code is a horrible deformed beast.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Simple:
LaunchD
Bonjour (Dynamic DNS Stuff (mDNS))
iCal Server
Thats just a few
I think it depends a bit on how formal a formal study is. Given the "effectiveness" of those usability studies I'm not too unhappy with the state of OO. It tends to amuse me to read the claims that new software UI will save "minutes per day" where the efficiency drain in having to retrain people is totally ignored in that calculation, so maybe I've gone a bit cynical after 25 years of computing.
:-).
In the days of IBM AT (286) I had to code for people that were actually *scared* of computers. I can tell you that that teaches you about usability, wel before that became a sales argument
The nice thing about open source based development is that it's partially merit driven. If a UI is stupid you can either throw a verbal brick at the developers or suggest an alternative. The latter approach might even be listened to if it's sensible. Does that replace a proper study? Don't know, but as said before, it seems to work for me and a number of people I convinced to give it a try.
So IMHO the jury's still out on that one. I find Vista and Office 2007 prove that throwing buckets of money at it isn't working either. Vist has the worst UI for an OS I've ever had my hands on. The tragic bit is that some FOSS people still think they have to copy it, even when it's bad. The new KDE menu is IMHO thus also a step in the wrong direction.
Insert
The machine used out on the floor is a typical 1.4Ghz Dell with Win2K Pro and 512Mb of RAM. They have one IE6 window open that connects to the credit check app given to them by DirectTV. They have a VB6 app(cooked up by yours truly) that stores names,address,and billing info for record keeping and printing receipts on repair work. And finally they have Firefox setup so the secretary can surf on her break along with a list of parts houses stored in the bookmarks for when a customer brings in some off brand for which they don't have replacement parts for. So in this case(and most of the places I end up working for) Office is launched several times a day when the secretary needs to whip off a letter to be sent to a customer. Since the little VB6 app I wrote them has a slot for birthdays they'll open up a pre-made "thank your for your patronage and happy birthday!" letter and customize it,or they use it for correspondence with other companies,etc. On an older machine like this it just wouldn't be smart to leave it open all day since writing letters isn't really a core part of their business.
That said,I just put Open Office 3 through its paces with a test letter I use for such purposes that has text,graphics,TOC and formatting and I was nicely surprised. While it still took longer to load than Office 2K,it wasn't enough of a difference to be irritating. And while it used more RAM for the same document(78Mb VS 62Mb) it actually used less than MS Office on a blank sheet(46 to 53Mb). So I would say that when Open Office 3 comes out of Beta I will be recommending it to those who have an older computer but no copy of Office. I will also be recommending it to those that want a little more modern office suite without having to learn that stupid ribbon as the new Open Office looks surprisingly like MS Office 2K3, which is what the vast majority of my customers seems to prefer in a layout. I'd say with the better performance along with the more modern UI that Open Office has really turned it up a notch and given us a valuable tool for those of us that don't want to get stuck on the MS Office upgrade treadmill. Bravo and job well done,Sun and Open Office developers!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
if thats the only requirement you have, thats slack. for one of my classes the instructor would ONLY accept docx documents for papers. my database intro class is ENTIRELY access 2007 ditto for word processing and spreadsheets. I got office 2007 as a student for 60 bucks, because its basically required. ive had to use it so much at the end of this semester, in fact, that i barely boot into linux anymore, because i just had to reboot to do my school work :(
i get 2 weeks off from school, 2 weeks where i wont have to dual-boot, then i have to start the aforementioned Access class, and intro to programming, which will undoubtedly require me to program something for Windows
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
How the heck am I supposed to get used to these Text menus? I need a ribbon!
downloading an entire office suite is a god damn hassle when someone just wants to read a document. i tried sending papers to friends so they could proofread it for me and help me out (im a lousy writer), and nobody wanted to be hassled to download an entire office suite, then install something, just to read it. it was *far* easier to save the document as .doc and just be done with it.
:(
.doc so the editor can read her submissions.
dont get me wrong. id prefer openoffice. id prefer if Word, etc could open ODF documents, itd be nice, but right now its a pain in the ass sometimes. as i mentioned in a previous post, i *have* to use office 2007 for school. it bugs the hell out of me, but then again, office is used everywhere
OO is good for plenty. my sister got a job writing some copy for a local newspaper, and her word trial was up....OO works for her, as long as she saves to
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
Perfectly good TINSTAAFL point, but another way is developer's conferences.
Microsoft gives out a lot of free stuff - I got my copy of Visual Studio 2005 and Office 2007 from these, along with the first (non-public) Internet Explorer 7 beta.
They really believe that having developers (and therefore software) on your platform is important. Software packages are probably the only thing keeping people from switching to a Ubuntu-style distro in droves.
DATABASE WOW WOW
Unless I read incorrectly there was no prior point to dispute... but if you'd like to iterate said features then we could maybe have a discussion about them, as the inverse is true. The GP post wasn't meant to be a complete list of the ways OOo is better than MSO.
Perofrmance is one of the reasons I gave up on OOo/NeoOffice and took advantage of the Home Use program my employer offers as part of our MS licensing deal. $20 for MacOffice 2008 is a better value to me than OOo/NeoOffice right now. I can't reliably open Word documents for my wife using NeoOffice, and the whole suite is just a pig. Plus the graphing in the spreadsheet is more trouble than it needs to be as compared to Excel.
This is not a flame post and I'm not bashing on OOo at all. OOo puts up a valiant effort that they should be commended for, but at the end of the day Microsoft actually got it right this time.
Nice to see this out. However I am disappointed that PDF import even when it is ready will only be added as an extension. It should be part of the core. I was also hoping for a few more big features. Even the improved Crop feature in Draw/Impress was a feature that a developer did as a side job in is free time http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/improved_picture_cropping_for_draw Will 3.0 include some of the features that were forked off with Go-OO http://go-oo.org/ ? ie: -SVG support - So we can import Inkscape documents ... remember SVG is a standard also.
-MS-Works import - This would be nice as many home users use this as it cost less then MS Office
-Improved EMF rendering - I have not done this in a while but EMF quality was poor
-WordPerfect Graphics import
-GStreamer integration
-Rich fields support - some of the features OOo people said they would not support.
-Other Go-oo features
I am not trying to start a turf war, but there are some nice features. I would think that there might be time to integrate some of existing code i.e. Works support etc into OOo before 3.0 is final. AS the other features have been sitting in Go-oo they might be considered stable enough to port back to OOo at this beta stage.
- Microsoft Expands Document Interoperability
- "Expanding on its customer-focused commitment to interoperability, Microsoft Corp. today announced the creation of the Open XML Translator project. The project, developed with partners, will create tools to build a technical bridge between the Microsoft® Office Open XML Formats and the OpenDocument Format (ODF)."
From the "Contributors" section of the project's "About" page:TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
Use Inkscape 0.46.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Time to change schools to a place that knows how to teach you to understand computers, not just how to be a button pusher.
and most of them sit there unused...
the majority of ms office users could easily get by with either openoffice or abiword/gnumeric. basic typed documents and simple spreadsheets are the most common types of documents and many users simply do not do anything more "involved" than that, ever, with ms office.
the only reason we have ms office (or windows, for that matter) in our office is because we support users and companies that buy them, and the most common reason they give us as to why they did is simply "because everybody else has them", NOT because they NEEDED them.
we promote and support open source solutions wherever possible. we live and work in a poor, rural part of the US and not everybody has money to burn on things they don't truly NEED. saving a couple hundred bucks or more by skipping ms office and maybe windows, too, is one way a lot of people can save some cash (so they can afford other things like food, electricity and fuel; which are all steadily rising in cost).
so what if the open source product is missing feature XYZ; how many people actually use feature XYZ and is it really crucial to have in the first place? is it worth spending $$$ just to have it? is there another open source product that'll work better? or can you simply do what you need to do a different way and save the money? the beauty of open source projects is that if people do want and need feature XYZ, it stands a chance of being added.. or if you're so inclined, you can add it yourself. how often do big, greedy corporations actually listen to their consumers instead of the ka-ching their money makes when they blindly hand it over?
There are a few other things you can do as well.
http://www.zolved.com/synapse/view_content/28209/How_to_make_OpenOffice_run_faster_in_Ubuntu
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
http://www.linux.com/feature/118986
And since we're on the topic, let's also see Impress vs Powerpoint and Calc vs Excel:
http://www.linux.com/feature/119546
http://www.linux.com/feature/119513
Conclusion: evenly matched.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
I routinely work with documents well in excess of that size (usually slideshows with 30-100 slides and 30-70 MB) and the last several builds of OOo haven't given me nearly as much trouble as MS Office XP/2003 did. OOo 2.1 and earlier did sometimes have a bit of trouble locking up with multiple big documents open, but not anymore. The 64-bit Linux builds run especially nicely and they're pretty snappy as well, even on my 1.06 GHz (C2D ULV) system. I also do work with some pretty big spreadsheets (10k rows X dozens of columns) and OOo 2.2+ has been more stable than MS Office as well, the 64-bit Linux builds particularly.
OOo also starts up instantly if you are willing to part with 30 MB or so of RAM and use the quickstarter, otherwise it's a 2-3 second load the first time you open the app after you power on your machine and then almost instantly after that.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
OOo also has the ability to export to PDF, which is something I use very frequently. A PDF is even better at preserving original formatting than using Office 2007 to send somebody else running Office 2007 a .docx file as they may not have the font you used or have different printer metrics adjusting their margins. Very rarely will somebody have to edit something, so PDFs work very well. If they need to edit the file, I usually tell them to edit the PDF as most people with Office also pay a bunch of money for Adobe Acrobat or then I will send them a .doc file along with the PDF, noting that the PDF is what the original was supposed to look like and any mangling of the .doc is their computer's doing.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
It is because it is ANNOYING to have to learn how to do the same thing two different ways. As most folks expressed, MS Office is the standard in the corporate world.
Phanboiz don't get that just because it is MS, it doesn't mean that the interface is done the "wrong" way—and vice-versa. In fact, doing the interface the MS way IS the right way to do it, because THAT IS THE CONVENTION.
MS: Everyone drive on the right side of the road.
OO: your teh sux!!!!11 the left syd is bettr!!!
MS: Every commercially-made vehicle is configured at the factory to drive on the right side of the road, and everyone learns how to drive this way.
OO: i dont kare? you dont doo it right cause if your right handed then it is easier to drive on the left so thats better okay!
MS: Look, everyone has been driving on the right for 20 years. We've done usability studies and double-blind testing to verify this is more efficient.
OO: your teh sux!!! mie cars will drive on the left only and youll be eaten mai dust!!! because mai cars are freefreefree as in beer lololol wtf?
MS: Good luck with that.
OO: mai car is v. 3.0 now so youll see every1 will want some and youll crycrycry
MS: What are you, 12?
OO: shutup!!!!!!!1 your gonnna be sory!
Yeah, right.
Btw you can control openoffice the same way through it's java and c++ interfaces.
I wish that the OO folks would improve the HTML that it exports. It is way too verbose, hard to read and modify, and because it uses so much low-level presentation markup, stylesheets have little effect on it. It also doesn't correspond as well as it should to the document as rendered by Writer or to what the PDF output looks like.
But it requires Windows, which isn't free...
Ditto with my students in 100 introductory computer informations systems class I teach.
.wps format. Even after the joys of .rtf and OpenOffice have been illustrated (along with the evils of OEM bloatware).
I deliver the same message about Works documents ("don't send 'em") and OpenOffice ("don't spend $ on Office until you really need to...and then use the school's academic pricing to get a full suite for less than $100").
Invariably a handful will deliver the
Invariably, during the second or third week of class, somebody will announce they've purchased the discounted "student version" at their favorite big box store (Word, Excel and PowerPoint only) for $140; had they paid attention and used the school's license, for $50 less they could have had the full Professional version. Even if they didn't need the Outlook, Access and Publisher apps, they certainly could have used the extra $50 back in their pocket.
I also give them the option to review the OpenOffice user experience and compare its functionality with Office as a term paper equivalent; there are few takers for this...
Even if Office 2007 is better, are the extra features worth $110 (assuming you don't need ALL of the new features) or $400 if you actually do need all the new features? I know it isn't for me, and I'd love to know just how many people here on slashdot do actually need those extra $400 worth of features.
yes, and people place things on page with spaces (or the advanced ones, with tabs).
:)
:)
yes, and people mix outline numbering, paragraph numbering and manual numbering throughout a long document.
yes, and people insert automated table of contents only to edit it manually later, thus rendering it non-updateable ever.
yes, and people set paragraph style to heading, then manually format it into a normal paragraph look-alike.
yes, and people have no idea what non-breaking space is, so they write date together with the month or initial together with the surname to prevent them from appearing on different lines.
for 99% of msoffice users, kword or abiword would be an overkill, not to talk about openoffice.org (or try to talk about what features oo.org has that msword doesn't).
the knowledge general population has about using "basic" office software, the documents that result from this - that's a huge mess.
so touting feature count (which is debatable on itself) at this point just sounds a bit silly
sorry about the rant, just 10 minutes ago i had a prolonged conversation with a colleague about this very same topic, so i had just recounted most of the usual abuses
Rich
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons...
Indeed the decisions aren't made by those who spell MS with a dollar sign. For big enough workplaces, the decisions are made by a few members of committees who receive bits of paper with currency signs on them from Microsoft (or equivalent incentives).
Due to silly email address assumptions from an ex MS VP turned lobbyist, I was cc'd in emails addressed to selected people involved in the decision process for a government body that could influence other government bodies. A few of those emails were at the limit of corruption attempts: invitation to weekend events in exotic places with all expenses paid to discuss business opportunities, how "open" OOXML was, the "economic collapse" that the Open Source movement will cause or the importance of "software choice" (read buying form BSA affiliates). Funnily enough, quite often those invitations landed in my mailbox at most two weeks before the end of the process on the topic the lobbyist wanted to discuss.
I saw the same kind of behaviour from most IT suppliers in my previous private sector employers, so I can only guess it is the standard behaviour with "large" customers.
You know, you are getting more than Microsoft ever offered to you to pay for. What comes with the Mac version of OOo? Everything, including Base. What comes with the Mac version of Office 2008? I certainly don't see Access anywhere in the list. FileMaker Pro costs a pretty penny to get database support.
MS Office 2008 for Mac: $314.99
FileMaker Pro: $274.99
OpenOffice.org: $0.00
We have a winner folks. If I owned a Mac, I'd be more than happy to pay $0 versus $589.98. But if you still want to go the latter route, at least Amazon will ship it to you for free.
I run Ubuntu skinned to look like a Mac on a PC. Go figure.
What about olap cubes? I can't access them in OO, but I can in excel, when will that change? :)
As for me, that's the most important thing - everything I need is working now.
There is one more thing, what about compatible-excel-like com interoperability, so that it could just use OO Calc instead of excel in my applications?
I use NeoOffice, which is actually OO.org in a different wrapper, and I've noticed that it seems to have as many features as MS Officeâ"at least, as many of the features as any human is bound to use in a lifetime. What are mature features? You mean they have age lines?
Runs on my platform :
- Microsoft Word No
- OpenOffice.org Yes
Case closed.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
In addition to the 65k row limit in Calc. Another absurdity is why OO can't quite manage to render a doc in the same way Word does.
.doc I come across.
I'll use Word over Writer, simply because I'm sick of reformatting every
I've read about this. Supposedly you can also control OOo from .NET (C#). But I've seen a total of one trivial example and nothing else.
Controlling M$-Office is easy and *VERY* well documented. The only thing I've really seen for OOo concerns Java developers and is an enormous tome of API docs (API docs seem to be considered "documentation" in Java land). I'd really like to use OOo in my apps but there just isn't much information readily available.
If there is documentation, articles, and examples I'd seriously like pointers to them (substantive ones - not "Hello World" noise).
Using "Common Sense" is being either to arrogant or to ignorant to ask people who know more about something than you.
That I definitely have to agree with since I do a lot of collaborating on manuscripts.
Sadly for me OOo is definitely behind in that area since I prefer Writer to Word for the styles implementation.
They've even released a 2007-format plugin for 2003 and built a PDF exporter into Word 2007. They make it easy for you to make documents other people can read.
i tried sending papers to friends so they could proofread it for me and help me out (im a lousy writer), and nobody wanted to be hassled to download an entire office suite, then install something, just to read it.
If it's just proofreading, then why not use plain vanilla ascii text? Why do you need fonts and page setup just for proofreading?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I'm running Kubuntu 8.04 on a 4 year old Dell Dimension with a gig of RAM. I hadn't opened OO.o since my last reboot (from when I upgraded from 7.10), so none of it was already loaded.
On this older PC, the initial load of OO.o Writer took 5 seconds by my wristwatch. Subsequent loads took about 3 seconds. That should be fast enough for anyone, except maybe for people who compulsively close every application that they haven't used in the last 30 seconds.
Once loaded, it seems to sit and wait for me to type something about as quickly as any other program.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
That shouldn't have taken more than a few minutes:
"Access, I'd like you to meet my friend, Database. Database, this is Access. You two have nothing in common, but maybe you'll find something to talk about anyway.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
So now you can apparently select a range of error bars, but only y error bars. You *still* cannot set up x error bars! I love OO, but it's really annoying to have to use another graphing program when this one would do what I need it to with a bit of tweaking.
The meme is dead, long live the meme!
I stand corrected.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
"Same here, which is why we avoid Microsoft lock-in like the plague it is"
Plague? Oh, please. But if it was really "same here" for you -- if sales growth was important -- then you would be happy to embrace a ubiquitous business platform.
We use OSS tools, as well. Not much Java, but plenty of LAMPP.
"Do you have the luxury of watching your hard work vaporize because the next version of Word drops some of the functions you use, and the current version won't run on Windows 7"
Honestly, I've been doing this for an awfully long time and this has NEVER happened to me in any meaningful way.
I mean, were you just pulling the "drops some of the fucntions" line out of thin air? I've been doing VBA scripting and/or COM-based integration since Office 97 (when it was introduced, I think) and we still do maintenance and change requests on apps from that era.
I really doubt you're a dumb guy -- based on your UID alone I'd like to think you know what you're talking about -- but you do realize that backwards compatibility has been sacrosanct in Windows and office?
And that Windows 7 currently is nothing more than rumor, but if it does ship to the specifications talked about today, it will all be source compatible? And that it may, via a VM, be binary compatible?
Further, are you suggesting that Unix, Linux, and OSX will never break binary compatibility? (Especially considering OSX already has).
Honestly, the only platform on which I'd feel backwards compatibility is more assured than on Windows is on Mainframes/X-Series Minis.
And that's an entirely different beast.
Ya know.. I'm a fan of elegance. Elegant code. Elegant solutions. Windows is not elegant. My daughters and wife use macbooks. For non-work computing, I use one as well.
But having dogmatic "principles" in software development is an academic exercise that just has no place in a small company that wants to be successful. And really, it's a joke to me anyway. It makes about as much sense, to me, as arguing Ford versus Chevy. Or Coke versus Pepsi.
There's nothing wrong with specialization. Nothing wrong with a company specializing on fixing Chevy's or building solutions using only OSS software.
But if you reached that decision not based on your assessment of market needs and personal competence, but instead based on some missionary-like notion that you need to save the world from the "plague" that is Microsoft, then honestly, your business deserves to fail.
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean texts are pretty much never counted by word -- they are counted by character (or syllable in the case of Korean), not including whitespace. This is standard in both academic and professional settings. MS Word appropriately separates Asian and Western counts, and the Asian count does not include whitespace. OOo's character count does include whitespace, rendering it stupidly error-prone even for Asian-only text samples.
If you're at all interested in how the two counts work out, even just in terms of idle curiosity, please look at the .odt file included in the bug report (links: Issue 17964 bug report, Asian Count Sample.odt)
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Major corporation.
Corp spends a few million a year on M$ so we all get the top 8-10 M$ products for physical production costs for use at home. Actually, i think we get it below physical production costs.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Let me give you a real-life example involving Microsoft, even if it's one that I've used a few times before. The company I work for built depends heavily on a FoxPro program with a 15 year history. Although it wouldn't have been my first choice, it's served us well over the years.
But now it's dead. There will never be a version based on .NET. There will never be a FoxPro 10. It may or may not run well on Vista (although they have a community-supported side project called "Sedna" that hopes to cobble something together). Now we're scrambling to port our mission-critical application - the one that keeps revenue flowing - to something more future-proof. The current version still runs great, but there's no assurance whatsoever that we'll be able to use it a couple of years from now. VB6 legacy apps are in the same boat, but we're lucky enough to only have to deal with one deprecated technology at a time.
So, yeah, my warning wasn't hypothetical. Redmond giveth and Redmond taketh away, and there's a very real risk that the components of your livelihood will simply disappear. Ours did. Fortunately, we (and from the sounds of it, you) are nimble enough to shift directions and move on with something new. We'll pull through this unscathed. That doesn't mean the transition will be pleasant, though, and there's a lot of other stuff we'd rather be spending our development dollars on.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Hmm. For a year or so, I used StarOffice 5.0 on a 60 MHz Pentium with 32 MB main memory and oodles of swap, where most of the program lived (on SuSE Linux, of course). Nothing has felt slow since then. You youngsters just have it too easy.
That would not seem to be extremely pedantic so much as extremely wrong. While OOo3 does support ODF 1.2 which is not yet an ISO standard, it does not do so exclusively. There is a drop down in the Options UI to select the ODF version to use.
Well given that Java is from Sun and that .NET is from Microsoft, it's hardly surprising that MS Office is mostly geared for .NET usage and Openoffice.org is mostly geared for Java usage.
No, you can use M$-Office from Java just as well. I think the issue here is: documentation.
Using "Common Sense" is being either to arrogant or to ignorant to ask people who know more about something than you.
That said,if you have a copy of MS Office(I haven't tried with 2K3 but I have with 97,XP and 2K) get the trial version of Crossover,or if you are good at the Wine voodoo,use it. Install MS Office. Then see when one starts quicker and uses less memory and CPU. For me MS Office 2K starts in half of the time of Open Office 2.2 and uses anywhere from 20-50% less memory depending on the function. The fact that Office 2K can function better even though it is going through an extra layer leads me to believe that what I read on the Staroffice forums years ago is true: that there were fundamental bugs in the code when Sun bought it which has never really gone away.
But having used OO.o Beta for a couple of days now I can honestly say it is a BIG step in the right direction. While it is still slower and uses more memory,it isn't nearly as bad as 2.2 is. And the more modern 2K3 layout will please many of my customers who believe that Office 2K3 is the most efficient when it comes to getting work done. So as soon as it comes out of beta I'll be adding it to my "handy dandy tools" cd that I carry with me to every job. But this is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Wow, and that's in CS - I teach sociology so at least my lot have some sort of excuse for computer illiteracy.
Just curious -- what's stopping you from running Fox Pro 9 until the bits crumble into sand?
For example, in the early part of this decade my partner and I were able to cut a small niche out for ourselves doing data-level integration w/ the Symantec ACT! program.
The reason I bring it up is that Act! uses a Fox Pro DB. We still get change and support requests and when we do it's a bit like taking a time warp because I just use all the same tools and all the same custom libraries that we wrote 7 years ago.
(VB6, coincidentally enough)
Anyway, every situation is different, I'm just curious why the lack of an upgrade path is a bad thing. It's not as if Microsoft has disabled FoxPro and is requiring a migration over to SQL Server Express or something?