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Open Office Plans To Party Like It's Version 3.0
penguin_dance writes "The Register reports that 'OpenOffice.org is throwing a launch party in Paris on 13 October' to celebrate eight years, and hopefully announce the release of version 3.0. Some notes: [OpenOffice.org 3.0] will support the OpenDocument Format 1.2 standard, and be able to open files created by MS Office 2007 and Office 2008 for Mac OS X." As maj_id10t notes, though the OO.o site does not yet carry an announcement, "Lifehacker has posted an entry stating the final release of OpenOffice 3.0 is available for download via their distribution mirrors."
Unfortunately, I mostly tried to make presentations and had to compare with Powerpoint. It was very frustrating trying to make even basic presentations. Everything from lack of templates, animation or even plain and simple editing was lacking.
My colleagues had a similar experience when trying to switch from Excel.
And we were actually the ones who took it upon ourselves to make try to make a switch and then convince others.
You got lynched by the GNU zealots, but the truth stands that OOo is a huge steaming pile of crap whose only redeeming feature is .doc support. Once .doc is forgotten we won't have to put up with this Java ad gone bad anymore.
That said I don't use any Office clone much anymore. LyX writes the papers for me.
Hmm, trust a Mac user to complain about what a program GUI 'looks' like. Form over function - sigh...
As a homage to 1999, OpenOffice.org is going to be renamed ?.org.
A party for OpenOffice 3.0 is a brilliant idea. They can start it up, go drink, pass out, and when they crawl out of bed the next day OpenOffice should just be done loading and ready to run.
"and be able to open files created by MS Office 2007 and Office 2008 for Mac OS X."
Time and time again, Slashdot users say OOXML can not be implemented by any third party. This release means that OO.o is compatible with MS office and that OOXML is a perfectly fine format.
No, I get to download a freebie plug-in for my moderately expensive word processor, you get to download freebie crap. I win.