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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'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 don't understand why people think that OpenOffice gets better the more it's like MS Office. OpenOffice.org seems to try hard to be an MS Office clone, but it's like the Linux distros that try to be "Windows-like"; Windows is the reason we want something else, so why are you copying it?
Macs, for instance, do looks of things differently than Windows and Linux, and people are attracted to them because they're different, not because it's just a way to do MS-things, the MS-way, with non-MS program. Until OpenOffice, and a lot of other Open Source Software projects, understand this, they aren't much better than what they emulate. The feature bloat in both Office and OpenOffice is gross.
-Matthew Riley "TofuMatt" MacPherson
I have a website
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.
No, people are attracted to macs because they're pretty and they're not windows. Yes, you have a few /. dorks who run it because it's "bsd with a pretty face" (never mind that it's actually Mach) but most people who run macs run it because it's pretty and because "zomg it's expensive that means it's good!!!111onehundredeleven" -or they run it because you can be a drooling mouth-breathing idiot and still operate a mac (it's hard to fuck up wich button to click on a mac, isn't it?).
People who use macs -most people who use macs- don't know jack shit enough about computers to explain what's good or what's bad about the way MS does things.
In this particular instance, this is a real and useful feature, especially for people looking to perform a large migration to OpenOffice and away from MS Office. Simply put, this feature means less work for people trying to perform such a migration and that is better than more work. That seems quite understandable to me.
I would LOVE reveal codes. Unfortunately, I don't think that their object model is like WordPerfect, where everything is stuck inside one big layer. I wouldn't expect "reveal codes" to happen in Word or OpenOffice... it would certainly not be trivial to implement.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
There's no reason to be against some feature just because it emulates what MS Office does. MS Office does some things well, and it'd be foolish to not implement those features just because it's like Office. Similarly, it'd be just as foolish for Microsoft to ignore the features that OSX does well just because it's made by Apple. Imitating competitors and improving their features is part of what makes good software.
http://www.mhall119.com
I use MS Office 2007 at work. I don't have a choice in the matter. If we start delivering documents in any other format, our clients will have a conniption fit. If we can't open a Word file because our office suite isn't perfectly compatible with the file, we have a major problem.
Unfortunately, I sometimes have to take my work home with me, where I don't want to pay the MS tax. The more easily I can work with Word and Excel files with OO on my home computer, the happier I am. The more OO screws up my cell formatting and causes things to print incorrectly, the more likely I am to turn to the dark side at home.
Before anybody brings it up, no, it's not an option to explain to our clients that open source and implementing open standards is the way to go. We get files from governments at all levels and work for dozens of different clients. Most of them are a hell of a lot bigger than us and won't care if some engineering consulting company thinks an open program is better. Changing office suites is a big deal to some companies. Just look at the feedback MS got for changing to ribbons in Office 2007. People bitched and moaned that they couldn't find anything and it took a whole click more to do a something they had done in three clicks before.
The GP post pointed out that OOo now is trying to support VBA. You then said you don't understand.
It's simple: there are a lot of documents out there with macros attached. If OOo gets compatible VBA support, suddenly those documents will work with OOo. Right now those documents don't work.
For example, I used to work at Microsoft, and at review time the HR department would send us a Word document with macros attached. Thanks to the macros the document was a little data entry form, and you could click on radio buttons to rate yourself. Now, a web form is a much better solution here, and I'll bet that MS uses web forms for this now. But how many of these macro-enabled documents are out there now, in current use by businesses?
The Word example is pretty trivial. It's more interesting when you consider a spreadsheet with macros. How many half-baked business modeling tools are out there that were hacked together in Excel with macros? And the guy who hacked them together quit long ago, and no one understands the thing, and they still use it?
So, in summary: VBA is important because (if it works right) it will make OOo a viable alternative for the current locked-in installed base of Microsoft Office users.
And it probably isn't just people hoping to steal customers from Microsoft who want VBA. I'll bet there are plenty of people out there who want this for themselves, so they can finally ditch the MS software and just use OOo for everything.
By the way, I'll cast my vote right now for Python as the "native" scripting language of OOo (and all free open source software). It's clean and tidy, which makes it easy to use for anyone.
And not to defend someone who is acting like a stuck up git (I haven't read the quote), chances are that he's right, it sounds like you're using a speadsheet to do the job of a database. When someone tells you you're using a hammer to cut wood, you can't just tell them that it costs them little to put serrated edges on the hammer's head and that they should just darn well do it.
http://www.mhall119.com
Because I'm not that committed to it. $10 is less of an investment than actually writing it (assuming I value my time).
Most of them are a jumbled up distraction.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
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.
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.
Spreadsheets are a throwaway item - you can dump the data to them, do the analysis you want, and bin the intermediate steps in a matter of a few minutes leaving you with the condensed overview you were always looking for. It takes significantly longer to setup an Access database to do the same thing.
And yes, I speak from experience. My company is currently moving away from a 20 year old UNIX based legacy system where most of the reporting is done via CSV dumps (routinely greater than 65,000 rows) and Excel - Excel is easy to use, easy to pick up and most of our userbase already has a grounding in it which means there needs to be zero IT interaction with these people when they need data analysis. They know what they want, and they know how to get it - the spreadsheets are in existence for half a day maximum. We can't say the same about Access.
Its all very well and good to say 'use a database', but theres a whole load of shit that comes with that statement that takes time, money and ability to do. There is a significant portion of the market that is stuck using legacy systems that date back to the ark, systems that can write out ascii text files and thats about it - thats when it starts paying to get creative, and spreadsheets are a fantastic way to be creative with very little outlay.
... if adding a single word to the dictionary is still a three-click process?
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
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
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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.
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 is usually somebody in an organization that informs management of the best ways to use computer resources - and unfortunately for you it appears they may have dropped the ball. If I suggested sending managers reports that were raw spreadsheets with more than sixty five thousand rows I would be laughed at. There is a lot of decent reporting software out there.