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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
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.
Maybe a bunch of users should get together and form a bounty on it. I'd gladly throw in $10 to have reveal codes.
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*)
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.
I have not looked at any code, so I do not know this for sure. If you can convert the document on the fly to an XML like format then reveal codes should be trivial to implement. Heck, I would accept the XML in a another window/pane as reveal codes.
Sadly, I believe that the OpenOffice developers are thinking the same way, Microsoft has thought of MS Office. The must be thinking, all users are dumb enough to never want anything more abstract than WISIWYG editing with some useless hidden formatting characters shown.
I think Openoffice Writer is a nice product, it is too bad they do not aim to improve it beyond MS Word.
Nothing worse than having garbge/redundent/misplaced formatting staying hidden just to bite me on the next change on a large document. This is still my prime reason to not use OpenOffice (or MS Word) to create any serious document of a substantial size.
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
I can't believe they got to 3.0 and there is still no OpenType font support...
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.
No, no, no. You have it all wrong. In Unix, everything's a file. In open source, everything's a beta! It seems to be creeping into some proprietary software as well. Actually, I have this theory that the entire universe is just a beta project; it would explain a whole lot about these people around me...
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Simple:
LaunchD
Bonjour (Dynamic DNS Stuff (mDNS))
iCal Server
Thats just a few
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?