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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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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?