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."

Comments

Re:3.0?

[Cid Highwind]

Actually, I recently tried the release candidate for the OS X Aqua version. It's horribly ugly (just like on other platforms), but it does seem to work.

Yup. And since Microsoft has dropped the only compelling feature that set Office for Mac apart from other office suites (VBA macros) and STILL hasn't made Entourage into a first-class Exchange client, OpenOffice 3 is now just as good (though not quite as good looking). Grats, OO.o team; adios, billg.

Openoffice? no thanks.

[fullgandoo]

Having made an honest effort for more than a year to switch to something other than MSOffice (removed MSOffice from Vista and installed OpenOffice, also installed NeoOffice on Mac), I have recently gone back to MSOffice.

There is such a huge difference in features and usability that there is no way that OpenOffice would gain any ground over Microsoft, in my opinion.

OpenOffice was an absolute torture. I had originally expected that after moving to OpenOffice, I would be able to convince everyone else in my office to make a move as well (eventually).

I guess that takes care of that.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[MrHanky]

What exactly were you missing? My two major gripes with OpenOffice were poor implementations of comments and tracking changes in Writer, and those are fixed now.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[neuromanc3r]

There is such a huge difference in features and usability that there is no way that OpenOffice would gain any ground over Microsoft, in my opinion.

I'm not a big fan of OpenOffice myself and I can't really say anything about features, but to praise MS Office's usability seems utterly absurd to me.

I am reasonably computer-savy, but if I have to do anything more complicated than typing a really simple letter, Word drives me up the wall. It constantly feels like I have to work against it, instead of having it do work for me.

Same thing in Excel: I'd rather use pencil & paper or write my own scripts instead for every calculation I have to do, than trying to get Excel to do anything that even remotely resembles what I want it to do

Mind you, I'm not saying OO is any better in that respect. I'm just saying it can hardly be any worse

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[timeOday]

Does it now have "outline view" mode?

Actually I'm not entirely happy with what MS Word outline view - I wish you could view numbered lists that way, not just headings.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[zappepcs]

When you stand there and hold up MS Office as 'the' standard, you are asking for ridicule. Remember that one size does NOT fit all. To say that MS Office is that one size fits all is ridiculous. It's quite probable that for any given conversation about office productivity software you'll be holding the rotten sea bass that nobody likes. Sure, in some conversations you'll be holding the golden calf, but it is likely that more often you will not be. This is true of any software package that you hold up as the 'one size fits all' solution.

With that said, every software package will have its detractors as well as fans. To say that there is no way it will gain ground is hubris. I laugh in your general direction. If you expected it to be just like MS Office, you are like a bad American tourist in Germany looking for a Starbucks.

It works, and for many people. Therefore your conclusion is not wholly aligned with the truth of the world. I'm not saying it's better, I'm saying it's different and depending on your requirements, it's likely that OpenOffice is better.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[Noksagt]

You can use PowerPoint templates from within Impress and you can download many more from oooextras and OO.o does have animations.

OO.o Calc has had some pitfalls, but version 3 is much improved. With several well-documented numerical errors that have survived in each new version of Excel, I don't know if that is the paragon to strive for.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[Leebert]

I largely agree, but every couple of months I check it out again. It's made tremendous strides since that abomination that was StarOffice.

To draw an analogy -- I remember using early versions of the Mozilla suite. It was hideous. Now I can't imagine a web without Firefox.

Give it time. This *is* a major version release, after all. Might be worthy of another go-around.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[lysergic.acid]

OK, i just popped open OO.org to verfy your claims. here's what i found:

• templates - check.
• slide transitions/animations - check.
• plain and simple editing - check.

unless you're just trolling, you might make a more convincing case if you actually listed specific complaints instead of, oh i dunno, pulling things out of your ass? honestly, there are a lot of things to get used to when switching from MS Office to OO.org (i spent most of my life using MS Office), and that transition can be pretty frustrating. but don't blame your own inability to adapt (or to even try to adapt) on the software.

neither MS Office, nor OO.org are perfect. personally, i've had problems with both of them. but so far i haven't heard a single legitimate complaint leveled against OO.org. so i have to conclude that these groundless criticisms are just knee-jerk reactions to having to adapt to a new office suite application.

the only problem i've had to OO.org is trying to make PDF documents with complex layouts using tables with varying column/row spans. but i've had the exact same problem in Word. all WYSIWYG editors have quirks like these, and i can't say that one is better than the other.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[AceofSpades19]

and how many years ago was this?

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[moosesocks]

Apple's got some intereting ideas in terms of Office Applications. They don't highly tout iWork, or even promote it that much, despite the fact that it shows quite a bit of promise.

Keynote is hands-down the best presentation app out there.
Numbers is considerably more intuitive than Excel, with its vastly superior UI. A few minor features are missing, though it's really a joy to work with.
Pages is the enigma of the bunch. Apple seems to want to combine the roles of the layout app with the word processor (Publisher vs. Word). They seem to have done a pretty remarkable job at the layout part, though the word-processing bits could still use some work. It's "different" enough that users might have a tough time getting used to it.

More importantly.... none of the apps are trying to mimic Office, OoO, or AppleWorks. If OoO tried to be daring for once, and adopted a completely new set of paradigms, rather than mimicking MS Office, they might actually have a compelling product. For now, though, it's a second-rate knockoff of an already mediocre product.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[Jesus_666]

I am reasonably computer-savy, but if I have to do anything more complicated than typing a really simple letter, Word drives me up the wall. It constantly feels like I have to work against it, instead of having it do work for me.

Do yourself a favor and learn LaTeX. Yes, it has a learning curve and you need lots of documentation and/or an internet connection to know which packages you need but at least it provides consistent results, doesn't reformat half of your text on a whim and isn't nearly as frustratingly annoying as any Word-like program.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[hairyfeet]

It sounds like you should have tried Oxygenoffice instead of Openoffice,as it comes with a lot more with regards to templates and such out of the box. Of course it takes them a little while after the latest Open Office release,so why not bookmark tham and check it out in a month or so when version 3 comes out?

That said I don't really think OO.o is really for the "power users" of MSO,because they get more use out of the little features that a good 85% of the public probably doesn't even know is there. Where I have had luck switching folks is the basic home users,where they are just writing docs,working up some basic spreadsheets,and maybe cooking up a contact list database. They,along with my older users who can't stand the stupid ribbon seem to have no problem making the switch to OO.o.

I have personally always been a believer in the right tool for the job. Since I have a copy of MSOffice 2K I picked up several years ago for cheap at the shop I worked at that is what I primarily use. But for my home users it would simply be stupid to spend even $100 on the student/home edition of MSOffice when OO.o does everything they'd use an office suite for for free. I also like how I can whip out a copy of OO.o 1.5 for those folks around here that are still using older machines and give them an office suite that doesn't slow their machine to a crawl. Both MSOffice and Open Office seem to be getting a lot more bloated IMHO. But if only MSOffice gets the job done for you please stick with it and enjoy. But even as a MSOffice user I'm sure you'd agree having choice in the matter is a good thing.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[fermion]

For a group environment, where pretty presentation is paramount over content, MS Office is a very good choice. Nothing is better at writing pretty memos. Nothing is better a writing pretty reports.

However, in many cases, Latex is the better form to write articles, books, etc. Text can be input first, and then formats added later. Sure one does not have the ability to put 10 different fonts on every page, but, again, this is where content rules. Version control and revising is trivially handled though cvs or svn.

Word processors has lead the current generation down a dangerous path of combining content and formating. Let's put the blame where it lies, with MacWord, encouraged people to play with formating and content at the same time. Though there are many advantages to WYSIWG, at least for small documents, it is disastrous for documents of any real size. Though style sheets help, the process does not encourage their use at the end. Therefore a text editor with a post processor still has advantages.

Also remember the drawback of almost all closed source binary products. If one does not have the software, one does not have access to the data. Again,for memos this is no big deal, but for real documents this is a problem. MS Word, Apple Pages, are all proprietary, and though some may claim that the format is open, or the software is free for viewing, it is not as clean a solution as text based markup solutions.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the same attitude that's been holding Linux back for years. Blaming the user because something doesn't work like they want it to may make you feel better but it does nothing to improve the adoption rate nor strengthen the user base. I agree with your claims but your attitude does nothing to improve the situation.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[harlows_monkeys]

Does it now have "outline view" mode

I don't think so. However, there is good news. On the forums on the OO site, the developers finally acknowledged that it's "navigator" mode (or whatever it's called--the thing they kept telling people to use who said they wanted something like Word's outline mode) is not an adequate substitute, and said that a proper outline mode is a high priority.

Unfortunately, they also said that implementing this will be a lot of work, so will take a while to get in.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[10101001 10101001]

1. Friendly OpenOffice user bends over backwards to get people to use OpenOffice.
2. Asshole MS Office user pragmatically looking for a free MS Office clone uses the friendly OpenOffice user to his advantage.
3. New, asshole OpenOffice user doesn't want to lift a finger for anyone.
4. The collection of asshole OpenOffice users quickly outnumbers the friendly OpenOffice users.

In short, the asshole, pragmatic users will inherently dominate the community of OpenOffice users no matter how much you espouse a belief in a friendly attitude to spur adoption. In fact, trying to put the face of "friendly OpenOffice user" as the spokesman of the OpenOffice community only enhances the negative effect when another asshole MS Office user tries to go with OpenOffice; statistically they're almost certain to run into another asshole.

What's the answer? Pragmatically, it's to start charging for OpenOffice. People will fake niceness for money, and money allows for scaling to demand. Look no further than Sun selling StarOffice. Or, we can pray that RMS somehow converts people into being enlightened idealists instead of short-sighted pragmatists.

Me? Personally, I'm not obsessed with wide-scale OpenOffice adoption precisely because I don't think adopting most or all the assholes who use MS Office is a good thing.

PS - By no means does this mean that most MS Office users are assholes. It's that the assholes are the people who jump ship first and are the ones who are most demanding on the resources of the friendly OpenOffice users. Even being a very small precentage of MS Office users, in raw numbers their shift to using OpenOffice makes them the dominate force.

PSS - I don't think the GP was being an asshole. I'm just trying to refute your logic.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[mvdwege]

How about you tell us what bugs you in Openoffice? Until you do, you put the lie to your 'honest effort'. As it stands, you sound like a Microsoft astroturfer.

Mart

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[Maxo-Texas]

I don't know man.. as of 2.4, I finally took my work over to OO.

And these are 200 page documents with many tables, lots of cross references, and many graphics.

After about a month, I started noticing things *missing* in word (like the crop picture feature in OO is intuitive while it is painful and "trial and error" in word) ( like the illogical formatting menus in word ) (and a few other things).

But hey, it's okay if you like Word. Some people like tomatoes, and some don't.

But with Word, you will pay the rest of your life.. and they keep trying to turn it unto a monthly subscription. I'll pass.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[Homer1946]

Actually blaming the software for being hard to adapt to is perfectly valid. Whatever aspect of a piece of software keeps users from adopting it can be considered a shortcoming of the software, not the users.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[zaivala]

I have had three major problems with OOo, which keep me from using it in my work. 1. .doc to .rtf conversions totally mess up the formatting and changes some of the fonts. 2. MailMerge, quite simply, sux, and if you're trying to generate documents for email, it can only generate an attachment in .odt format, which is unusable for most people I would be sending the emails to. 3. Grabbing text from a website is a royal pain. While MS Word does this just fine, OOo tries to cram it all on the first page, resulting in most of the text being shoved under the bottom margin. Yes, you can get it out, but it ain't easy or quick, and OOo *does* manage to see how much text there is and create sufficient pages to put it all there. All three of these have been reported; two of them have resulted in some part being listed as a bug, and the third just gets me "you're using the wrong tool" comments.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[DarkEmpath]

Um.. Yes, it can be worse, a lot worse. Microsoft's UI and usability is orders of magnitude better than OpenOffice.org's.

Despite all the dodgy stuff Microsoft has done over the years to gain marketshare, they wouldn't be able to maintain their position if everybody felt they "have to work against it, instead of having it do work for me" (as you put it).

If you'd rather use a pencil & paper than use Excel, then I'm really curious as to what it is you're trying to do. I genuinely believe you're not as "reasonably computer-savy" as you think.

And of course, you can throw anecdotes around, and name a thousand people that agree with you, but for every person that agrees with you, I can find a thousand that don't. And MS Office will remain the dominant productivity suite for home and business.

OpenOffice.org became usable around version 2.3 (well, the Writer at least), but it's still not is MS Office's league.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[Whitemage12380]

I can see how you interpreted the statement, but I think you're missing the point of the poster. His point was that the person he replied to had no legitimate complaints. This is true; there were literally no real, specific problems given. If there's anything that's unhelpful, it's complaining about software without giving any real reason.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[linhares]

Now if the GIMP people would take a few notes from the OpenOffice people, they might realize that observing a few cues from the defacto standard bearer really shouldn't hurt them.

YEAH, YEAH! Bring out the GIMP!

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[aussie_a]

Same with hardware. That's why Dvorak keyboards are worse then QWERTY ones. Despite the fact they're not, you know, actually worse but are in fact better.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[aussie_a]

My family call me a tight-ass because I think OOo serves all my needs and that there are no functions in Microsoft Office 2007 that would be more efficient.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[D Ninja]

Have you tried Office 2007 w/ the Ribbon? I don't know about you, but I find it excellent. So simple to use.

The only thing that would make it better is to have the ability to search for a term if you're not quite sure where to look on the Ribbon.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[aussie_a]

going to OpenOffice from MS Office is waaaaay easier than going to the GIMP from PhotoShop.

I find GIMP pretty damn easy to use. Do I use it for advanced features? Of course not. But then again, most home users don't either despite having it installed illegally.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[MrHanky]

No, it's not. Some times, you just have to recognise that some people are full of shit, and fullgandoo is definitely one of them.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[Bert64]

The only way to really make it easier to adapt to is to make it an exact clone...
People are resistant to change, wether that change is for the better or not, and in this particular case most have never been taught properly either.

You will find that people who originally used wordperfect will adapt to openoffice much easier btw.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[syousef]

I am reasonably computer-savy, but if I have to do anything more complicated than typing a really simple letter, Word drives me up the wall. It constantly feels like I have to work against it, instead of having it do work for me.

What you need to do is use the right tool for the job. It sounds like you're trying to use a hammer where you need a saw. For example if you're fighting Word to do things, you're probably trying to use it as a Destkop Publisher rather than a simple Word Processor. I've used Excel to do Astrophysics homework for my Masters in Astronomy. It worked well for simple calculations and graphing, but I wouldn't have used it to do anything involving Calculus for example (even though it can be fudged to approximate what's required sometimes).

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[Bert64]

Large numbers of people "have to work against it, instead of having it do work for me", walk around an office someday and listen to the complaints about msoffice apps...

They have maintained their position not by being any good, but by users not knowing there's any alternative, or users not having any choice (eg corporate settings or being forced to deal with proprietary formats), or users simply avoiding change regardless of any benefits that change may provide.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[Bert64]

Your right, one size never fits all...
Just as soon as the world starts using standard interoperable formats, people will gain the freedom to choose the size that fits them... Until then, proprietary formats will force people to use apps that don't suit their needs.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[Bert64]

The thing with image editing tools, is that image formats are standard...
It doesn't matter what app you used to edit an image, i can make changes to it with whatever app i choose and forward it on to someone else to do the same. This is how it should be, and people are free to choose the apps that suit their needs the best.

Personally i use GIMP because i very rarely need to edit an image, and when i do my needs are relatively simple and easily satisfied by gimp. Having looked at photoshop once or twice i find it rather difficult and alien, not that it's inherently difficult but because it's different to what I'm used to. Photoshop offers zero benefit for what i would use it for, but has several negatives (cost, inability to use it on linux, spending time learning it).

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[thetoadwarrior]

I feel sorry for your employer when he's employing a couple of mongs like you and your colleague.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[h4rm0ny]

I'd add to that the OP's extreme opinion as counting against his or her argument. If the OP says: "Open Office's Writer isn't as good as MS Office's Word, there are a few things missing for me," that would be a supportable statement. It might not be universal (most people only use the most basic features of either application), but it can be valid for some. Saying there is a "huge difference in features" I don't think is supportable and makes it look like a troll. They are pretty similar now in feature sets with not a great deal of difference.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[thetoadwarrior]

Actually quite often it is the user. The expectation is the user can be as stupid as they want and the developer has to bend over backwards.

This is like when usability "experts" that claim web developers need to change how they work for screen readers rather than the logical path of the screen reader company implementing new features to keep up with the changes in the web.

Holding back and or complicating work for millions of developers instead of having a handful update their accessibility software makes no sense.

This is also why, despite the fact that computer been around for ages, most people don't actually get better at using a computer. They're spoon fed this bullshit that says everything they do is perfect and it's all developer's fault for not making every bit of software in the world fully functional for people that evolution quite clearly bypassed.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[settantta]

You will find that people who originally used wordperfect will adapt to openoffice much easier btw.

Then there are those of us who started with Word Star 3 (and then went on to WordPerfect, then Word 6, tried to get an updated version of WordPerfect only to discover that there ain't no such animal :( ).

FWIW, I have a rating of Advanced skills in MS Word and Excel. I still prefer OO.o (been using it since the pre-1.0.x series), and I use identical methods. It's no more complex to use than Word, the Styles feature removes a lot of the formatting problems I run across in Word, and all my usual keyboard shortcuts are the same. Where's the problem? Or are most people simply too damn lazy to learn how to use it?

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[tepples]

What exactly were you missing?

Access and Visual Basic for Applications, in order to run commercial off-the-shelf accounting software for retailers that hasn't been ported to Base.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[0232793]

but so far i haven't heard a single legitimate complaint leveled against OO.org.

How about lack of anti-aliasing, making some presentations look a lot worse? (this has now been implemented but is not ready for 3.0 - is targeted for 3.11 http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=28526)

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[houghi]

That's not a curve. That is a wall.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[hairyfeet]

Well I live and work in one of the poorer rural states(AR) where you still see quite a few Win98 machines still floating around. Sadly because there aren't any Linux drivers for those damned Lexmark All-In-One printers,which is over 90% of what I see in users homes,I simply can't switch them to Linux. Hell the Linux compatible printer would cost more than their PC!

So I clean them up,give them a free AV along with FF and OO.o 1.5 and send them on their way. I have found in the sub 1GHz range OO.o 2.xx is simply a slug. It is a shame the MSFT is such damned greedy hogs because these are the kinds of machines WinFLP would be perfect for. Instead I'll just have to keep their old Win98 machines alive until they die out so they can switch to a used XP office machine. Why someone doesn't come up with an NDISWrapper for printers I'll never know. Can't be any harder than those damned wireless "chipsets" that are nothing but a firmware blob and Windows drivers. Sorry,going off on a rant. Anyway for the sub 1GHz machines that cross my path I go with 1.5, and switch to 2.XX depending on RAM at around 1.2-1.6GHz. A 2GHz with 512Mb seems to be the sweet spot for OO.o 2.xx.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[Risen888]

For what values of "document?" I do a ton of fliers and brochures, and after torturing myself for years, I've given up on office suites altogether and have been using Scribus for about a year. It's been an amazing change in the way I get my work done. Trying to do what I do in any kind of word processor is like pulling my own teeth out with rusty pliers. There is just no word processor built for serious layout work. Anyway, after a while acclimating myself to Scribus, I've never once looked back. I'm not trying to push Scribus here (I like it, but I do find it balky and slow at times), just saying that the whole word processing paradigm is not for everyone.

FWIW, when I do need to "process words" I do it in KOffice, but my use cases for that are very simple (letters, invoices, etc.).

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[Risen888]

If OoO tried to be daring for once, and adopted a completely new set of paradigms, rather than mimicking MS Office... ...then all the world's desk jockeys would rise up and say "Why doesn't this thing work like Office??!" Not that I am trying to praise Office's interface, quite the contrary. I find it to be an abomination before the Lord. And I agree with your assessment of OOo being a "second rate knockoff of an already mediocre product." But they've painted themselves into a corner. If they're competing with MSO, then that's what they're going to be compared with, like it or not, whether it makes sense or not, whether the MSO way is The Right Way or not. Can't win for losing.

If you want to check out an office suite that isn't afraid to bend some rules, check out the beta of KOffice. It's pretty b0rk3n even for a beta, but I find some of the UI choices they've made to be extremely interesting. Not that I always like them, but at least they're trying.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[Risen888]

...they wouldn't be able to maintain their position if everybody felt they "have to work against it, instead of having it do work for me" (as you put it).

Are you out of your mind? Walk around any office in America from 8 to 5 on a weekday, and you will hear at least 10 people say that exact thing. Microsoft Office's "usability" is an abomination before the Lord.

Note that I am not pushing OOo here, because their UI is in fact a half-breed knockoff of MS Office. In fact, I'd go further still. Remember the old saw "all hardware sucks/all software sucks?" Well, all office suites do suck.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[Homer1946]

Where's the problem? Or are most people simply too damn lazy to learn how to use it?

I always find it interesting, the idea that those that don't make the same choices as us, or value their time differently, are lazy.

It reminds me of the old saying regarding driving. No matter what speed we choose to drive, those that drive slower than us are idiots, and those that drive faster are crazy.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[Risen888]

I do see your point, really I do. You may be right, I don't know. What I do know is that I absolutely detest MS Office's interface, and by extension loathe the half-assed knockoff that is OOo's UI. Seriously, they had like 15 years of MS Office interface mistakes to learn from. Instead they seem bent on mindlessly duplicating every single one.

That having been said, I don't like Gimp's UI either. There's innovative and there's just bad. Never used Photoshop in my life so I dunno.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[mcrbids]

If OoO tried to be daring for once, and adopted a completely new set of paradigms, rather than mimicking MS Office, they might actually have a compelling product. For now, though, it's a second-rate knockoff of an already mediocre product.

You misunderstand what OoO is trying to be. They do NOT WANT to have an innovative, exciting product. They want a stable, reliable, cross-platform office product that's "good enough". They want to commoditize Microsoft Office. That's it.

It doesn't have to be "exciting" or "pretty", it just has to be good enough, compatible enough, and cheap enough (free) that people don't bother paying $500 for a copy of MS Office. And, around here, it's succeeded. We don't give many marketing presentations, so the fact that there are small incompatibilities with Office is a non-issue. We need to read documents created in Word, and OoO 2.x does that nicely. (except for DocX, and those who use DocX usually apologize for not saving in Word/2000 format)

It's not to say that they want OoO to suck, but they are going to be very, very conservative with features that aren't compatible with the "other" office software.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[Risen888]

Personally I can't stand Gimp because I very rarely need to edit an image and when I do my needs are simple. Why would I want to fire up that Sherman tank to crop a picture? Why doesn't Gnome have anything like KolourPaint? I mean, it seems like if your needs are more complex than Gpaint can cover, you're stuck using Gimp.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[Elektroschock]

OpenOffice 3 is much better than 2.4. More stable and mature.

However, the criticism of Meeks concerns me.

Crude as they are - the statistics show a picture of slow disengagement by Sun, combined with a spectacular lack of growth in the developer community. In a healthy project we would expect to see a large number of volunteer developers involved, in addition - we would expect to see a large number of peer companies contributing to the common code pool; we do not see this in OpenOffice.org. Indeed, quite the opposite we appear to have the lowest number of active developers on OO.o since records began: 24, this contrasts negatively with Linux's recent low of 160+. Even spun in the most positive way, OO.o is at best stagnating from a development perspective.

Does this matter ? Of course, hugely ! Everyone that wants Free software to succeed on the desktop, needs to care about the true success of OpenOffice.org: it is a key piece here. Leaving the project to a single vendor to resource & carry will never bring us the gorgeous office suite that we need.

What can be done ? I would argue that in order to kick-start the project, there is broadly a two step remedy:

        * Kill the ossified, paralysed and gerrymandered political system in OO.o. Instead put the developers (all of them), and those actively contributing into the driving seat. This in turn should help to kill the many horribly demotivating and dysfunctional process steps currently used to stop code from getting included, and should help to attract volunteers. Once they are attracted and active, listen to them without patronizing.
        * Distance the project from Sun: perhaps less branding, certainly less top-down control, reduce the requirement to 'share' all your rights over to Sun before you can contribute to the project. Better still, share ownership of the code with a non-profit foundation to guarantee stability and an independent future for the code-base.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[aaron.axvig]

Legitimate Plus for MSOffice 2007: It has the ribbon interface, which I find to be quite intuitive and makes nice looking documents way better than I ever used to be able to. Not necessaryily a complaint against OO.o, but it's the reason I won't be switching.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[Matt Perry]

If it is merely publication, QuarkXpress would be a much better choice than Words, which seems to get worse for each release.

QuarkXPress is a page layout program not a word processor. Although it does have some rudimentary text editing capabilities, it isn't designed for text editing.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[celle]

There is "lyx"(lyx.org), a graphical front-end for latex for the latex averse who don't want to program their documents.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[Your.Master]

It's not that simple. If you have a general method for interpreting arbitrary web content for screenreaders, I urge you for the sake of the visually impaired, and for the webdevs currently spending time on accessibility, and for the sake of your wallet, to go develop such screenreader software.

Blind people don't have to carry around scanners that interpret & speak out the arabic numerals on elevators and bank machines. The machines get braille.

A content provider interested in providing content to the visually impaired, has to provide content that the visually impaired can interpret. If you're not interested in providing to them, then that's fine (unless you are a business of sufficient size in some jurisdictions, or certain governments, etc...).

AFAIK there is no magic bullet technology being hidden from the general populous. It's not a choice between a handful of devs working on a couple of programs, and millions actually doing their job as content providers. If it's that easy, do it; I guarantee you there are buyers.

As for the last paragraph, it seems to contradict your earlier point. A few people working on the usability of computers vastly improves the situation for millions of computer users. Not to mention that it's not really between "using the computer knowledgeably" and "using the computer retardedly" in most of these cases. It's between "using the computer retardedly" and "not using a computer", which really doesn't benefit any developer.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[mmj638]

You may be referring to the 'Qwerty was designed to slow typists down' story which is a popular myth which seems to persist despite reason. The mythology alleges that the qwerty keyboard layout prevented typewriter jams because it slowed typists down. In reality, it avoided placing letters which are commonly used consecutively too close together on the keyboard, which if anything speeds typing up because commonly used letters are placed near the stronger fingers. The myth also alleges that scientific studies have proven Dvorak's speed or efficiency is better than Qwerty. This is mostly hype; conclusions are varied and there has been no clear sign of a significant benefit in efficiency in real world tests.

I think the bottom line is that Dvorak Simplified is a good keyboard layout but the extent of its benefit over Qwerty, or Qwerty's deficiencies, have been greatly exaggerated.

Here is the notable article from The Economist on the story, published in 1999. Make of it what you will: http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=356

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[gr8dude]

That may sound funny but is misleading.

If a program has a learning curve that looks like a wall, it means that you get to a high level of knowledge in a short interval of time.

(if time is on the abscissa and knowledge is on the ordinate)

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[temcat]

Hmn, I wonder what you missed in comment implementation then. To me, it's still broken. You cannot assign a comment to a range of text, and comment information is butchered on roundtripping between Word and Writer.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[MrHanky]

What I missed was being able to see the comments were there at all. It's still lacking, but at least it's more useful than annoying now.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[temcat]

Ah, got it, so you missed the bubbles. Yeah, that is more or less fixed now.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[marcosdumay]

Well, to be fair, LaTeX formats all your text at will from the begining. It is just that it makes a good work, so people don't care.

But I wouldn't try to push things that requite knowing emacs or vi into people. If someone is wiling to learn one of them, then LaTeX and r-cran are much better than any office package out there, but most people won't, and for them it is WYSIWYG all the way down.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[ivan256]

The ribbon is user friendly in exactly the same way that Wordstar hotkeys were user friendly on an old XT.

Really.

Yes. Really.

It's great for the things you use all the time. You know what the buttons do. You know where the buttons are. You can't imagine how everybody else doesn't find it wonderful too.

But if you're a new user sitting in front of the interface for the first time, or you're an experienced user trying to use a feature you've never used before, it's a chore.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[Jesus_666]

Thta's true but the grandparent wasn't most people. I do't recommend LaTeX to everone but it is my default recommendation when someone complains about exactly those bad habits of WYSIWYG word processors LaTeX explicitly doesn't have (unpredictability, "helpful" random reformatting of text etc.).

Some people simply aren't compatible with WYSIWYG word processors; to them it'd be easier to code a document in HTML+CSS or LaTeX than to coax Word into displaying something somewhat alike to what they envision.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[denis-The-menace]

I noticed corruption on-the-fly with Word (tm) because of how complex my doc was. I switched to OOo 1.x That was 5 years ago (or 275 document updates ago) and haven't see corruption yet, even as the OOo version numbers went up.

Re:Openoffice? no thanks.

[denis-The-menace]

He might have a point.

I submitted a simple request to have a "Comment" button added to the macro editor to comment out a bunch of lines in one shot. It was quickly assigned to someone. That was about a year ago.

Imagine how long it would take for a REAL feature request.

Re:3.0?

[LVSlushdat]

Umm... Isn't this old news?? I'm already running OO 3.0, the mirrors had it the other day... Looks fantastic! One more nail in the coffin of MSOffice....

PowerPC?

[nurb432]

No support for PPC OSX any more, or is it just delayed?

Re:PowerPC?

[drfireman]

The PPC version is hidden away with one of the openoffice "Projects" -- click on the projects tab, and then you're on your own, but eventually you get to an ftp site. I've found it to be very stable in light use (I mostly use the Linux version).

Re:PowerPC?

[settantta]

Sun can't build for PPC, simply because they have no PPC machines (I suppose they could use a cross-compiler, but then they'd be unable to test).

There are PPC builds available, however, thanks to the long-term efforts of a project member in Japan. He's been providing Mac builds since the early 1.x.x series, and has the support of some commercial entities in Japan. The PPC builds undergo the exact same testing as the Mac Intel builds, so they are just as stable. They are usually uploaded to a server at GoodDay.net

The PPC build will be available though (I'll be including it on the new DVD ISO image, which should be available in about a week). You'll either have to go to the server mentioned above, or look in the /contrib directory.

Re:PowerPC?

[russlar]

Dude, even Apple doesn't support PPC anymore.

Re:PowerPC?

[antdude]

Dude, give us money or Intel based.

Re:PowerPC?

[russlar]

Dude, where's my car?

Re:PowerPC?

[antdude]

And then?

Re:PowerPC?

[WiiVault]

Dude are you retarded? almost all current Apple software supports PPC. Sure they dont ship PPC machines, but that like saying the P3 isnt supported anymore, which it clearly is by most software.

Re:PowerPC?

[Vincman]

The PPC version is hidden away with one of the openoffice "Projects" -- click on the projects tab, and then you're on your own, but eventually you get to an ftp site. I've found it to be very stable in light use (I mostly use the Linux version).

can you be more specific than "and then you're on your own?" I can't find it.

Re:PowerPC?

[Gumshoe]

It's in the porting section.
http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/aqua-PPC.html

Re:PowerPC?

[Bert64]

It's here:

http://ooopackages.good-day.net/pub/OpenOffice.org/MacOSX/3.0.0rc4/OOo_3.0.0rc4_MacOSXPowerPC_install.dmg

And there are different language versions in the same directory:
http://ooopackages.good-day.net/pub/OpenOffice.org/MacOSX/3.0.0rc4/

Re:PowerPC?

[nurb432]

after looking i see this... haven't tried it yet.

http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/aqua.html

Re:PowerPC?

[Ash-Fox]

almost all current Apple software supports PPC. Sure they dont ship PPC machines, but that like saying the P3 isnt supported anymore, which it clearly is by most software.

Dude, nobody really cares about PPC anymore.

The Pentium 3 is not supported officially either anymore, but it works just out of the side effect that it's pretty much the same architecture as all the new x86 systems.

Re:PowerPC?

[WiiVault]

My point is that APple still supports the PPC. There are plent of Dual Dual Core 2.5 ghz G5s out there that are quite usefull. Heck many pro apps have just recently gone Intel and I can think of none that are not universal binary. So yes PPC is still quite alive.

Re:PowerPC?

[Ash-Fox]

There are plent of Dual Dual Core 2.5 ghz G5s out there that are quite usefull.

My old Intel Pentium II, 200MHz system is still quite useful. This really doesn't really mean anything.

So yes PPC is still quite alive.

You cannot say that when no new PPC systems are being built and sold.

I would like to see a feature list.

[LWATCDR]

OO.org works pretty well me but I am not really a big user.
I would love to see a feature list.
Also I would really like to see Base fleshed out. Or at least better documented.
I have tired to play with it but it just makes me nuts.

Re:I would like to see a feature list.

[Scutter]

I would love to see a feature list.

Took all of three seconds to go to the website and get it.

http://marketing.openoffice.org/3.0/featurelistbeta.html

Re:I would like to see a feature list.

[settantta]

Feature list is available here

Release notes are here

Re:I would like to see a feature list.

[settantta]

Also I would really like to see Base fleshed out. Or at least better documented. I have tired to play with it but it just makes me nuts.

Check the OO.o documentation pages. There's a full-on tutorial on Base being prepared. IIRC, the advanced setction is not quiteready, but the intermediate part is. Not sure if it's available as yet. You might also like to check out the OO.o wiki, which is where most of the documentation is developed.

Re:I would like to see a feature list.

[Kneo24]

It drives me nuts too. I find it harder to get the margins to match up to how I want them in OO. In MS Office, I can set them, and that's how it prints. Although that's just one minor gripe. Hopefully that's fixed. I also like to use bullets, and I found that OO's default bullet size was too big. I need them to be a few sizes smaller and could never figure out how to make them smaller. It's actually quite simple to do that in MS office. I've also found it difficult to set up individual margins or tabs for specific parts of the document with OO. In MS Office you just click where you want it to be on the ruler, hit the tab key, and boom, it just works as you want it to. I could never find any easy way to get it to work with OO.

But those are my only complaints with OO. I do a documentation for my job, and these two things are deal breakers for me specifically for those things. I need the documentation to look pretty and follow a specific format so the idiots that I work with have an easier time reading what I write. Maybe it's just my inexperience with OO that gave me problems for those things, I don't know. But what I do know is that I couldn't find out how to do them easily, if at all. With MS Office, I can not use it for years, go back to it, and still figure out how to do something in a matter of minutes.

Don't get me wrong, I push OO on people who don't have an office suite. An office suite is better than no office suite. I just with people who use MS Office would stop saving their files in something other than docx or rtf, or other stupid bullshit.

Case and point. My mom is in a community group, and they all need to use word processing and spreadsheets for whatever project they work on. Her and her neighbor do not have an office suite, so I downloaded OO for them and installed it. Well, people in the group who claim to be far more tech savvy than any five people on Slashdot put together (a bit of an exaggeration, but that's their attitude anyway) save everything in fucking docx. There's also a few people in the group who have older versions of MS Office. So it ends up being that only a few people can open the docx documents. I've tried telling these people how to save the file as .doc, but they insist on using docx and claim that I just don't know what I'm talking about, these other people are doing it, or that their PC is just too old (I personally built my moms PC so that it would outlast anything Dell or HP could put out in the next five years or so, it's a powerful machine in that regard).

So anyway. I've tried getting these people to use OO and writing everything in that and saving it as .doc if they were going to refuse to do it with MS Office (this way everything would be compatible with everyone in the group and any future people who joined). One person of that docx group downloaded it and hated it. His biggest complaint was that OO associated MS Office file types with OO, over writing MS Office's file types. I doubt he used it beyond that, but that was his "biggest" complaint with it. The guy told me the only way he could "fix it" was to uninstall OO. I tried explaining to him how there was other ways of fixing it, but he just looked at me like I was the stupid one.

I guess my whole point with that rant is that OO has a long way to go to grab market share from MS Office users yet. The average idiot is an idiot. They need to find some way to make sure they can't blow themselves up (metaphorically speaking) when even installing their software, as it's obvious they don't read what they're doing. I also hope 3.0 addresses some of my concerns with it. If it does, I will switch over.

Re:I would like to see a feature list.

[Kneo24]

Oh, another thing that annoyed me about OO was the that whatever "dictionary" they used for their spell checker was seriously outdated. When it doesn't recognize a word like "contactor" (neither does Firefox, go fucking figure), it just becomes increasingly annoying when you do go to use the grammar checker for any inconsistencies in your documentation, as now you have to keep in mind that OO has inconsistencies!

Re:I would like to see a feature list.

[LWATCDR]

I did find a tutorial but it seemed very limited. And I didn't see anything on putting in logic. It could just be me since I have always found DBMS to be annoying. SQL and a programing language always suited me better for some reason.

Re:I would like to see a feature list.

[Ash-Fox]

I personally built my moms PC so that it would outlast anything Dell or HP could put out in the next five years or so, it's a powerful machine in that regard.

With the gamer machine options those two companies provide, I doubt that.

Re:I would like to see a feature list.

[Kneo24]

Because, you know, the average person buys a gaming computer, instead of a normal desktop PC (Ok, so I wasn't exactly clear on that, but why would you think I really meant something that no one buys?). And those that do buy the gaming PC's are stupid anyway. I've heard, the reasons as to why an "experienced" person would buy a gaming machine, but in the end, it's still idiocy. (Hey, if you can waste time arguing on the internet, you can spend the time to spec the parts and build it yourself for a fraction of the price.)

Re:I would like to see a feature list.

[Ash-Fox]

And those that do buy the gaming PC's are stupid anyway.

I know seven intelligent people who did buy a Dell XPS laptop (Personally, I don't ever use Dell) instead of custom building some tower system. They aren't even gamers but from what I've seen, they haven't had troubles at all with them and the hardware is top notch.

(Hey, if you can waste time arguing on the internet, you can spend the time to spec the parts and build it yourself for a fraction of the price.)

Here has been my reason for buying from a company rather than custom building:

If one component fails and fries the rest of the system, I'm covered. If that happens on a custom built system, I'm not covered and will have to cough up the money for every part but the part that fried - note that the components used would be exactly the same components anyone custom building would buy.

Considering the fact that I can pretty much customize every part I ever wanted now and last time I did this, the price difference was £15 between home made and custom built (ordered from a company) with a two year warranty...

I'm just not seeing this great advantage, sorry.

Re:I would like to see a feature list.

[Kneo24]

So manufacturer's don't honor the warranty in the UK? Because otherwise, you are covered. Even if one component fries the rest, you have that warranty. Hell, I've seen Asus honor warranties even when they've expired. And those four year warranties that Dell or HP offers are bogus. Chances are that it if lasts one year, it will easily last four. It's just easy money.

I've dealt with Dell before, unless they've changed their policy, you either get 30 days or three months (I can't honestly remember), and after that you have to sign up for a plan. Most component related failures happen very soon, or near the end of the products "natural" life cycle. In either case, you have nothing to worry about.

And the price difference here in the states would probably be far greater. While you may only be saving roughly the equivalent of $30?, I'd probably be saving a good few hundred or more, which includes standard shipping costs. It still stands to reason that even if you're only saving $30 after everything is said and done, you'd still be stupid for not building your own. What are you going to do once the coverage runs out? Refuse to upgrade because you were a dumb shit who didn't want to take the time to learn how?

Re:I would like to see a feature list.

[Ash-Fox]

So manufacturer's don't honor the warranty in the UK? Because otherwise, you are covered. Even if one component fries the rest, you have that warranty.

I have been refused in the past repairs under the claim that it's not under warranty - I have fought with this and got nothing as a result. I will not be getting into this situation again.

I've dealt with Dell before, unless they've changed their policy, you either get 30 days or three months (I can't honestly remember), and after that you have to sign up for a plan.

I don't use Dell to be honest, so I'm not that familiar with their policies etc.

Most component related failures happen very soon, or near the end of the products "natural" life cycle. In either case, you have nothing to worry about.

I'm more concerned about the 'very soon' part, because that's generally when I don't have the money for it.

It still stands to reason that even if you're only saving $30 after everything is said and done, you'd still be stupid for not building your own. What are you going to do once the coverage runs out? Refuse to upgrade because you were a dumb shit who didn't want to take the time to learn how?

I have no problem building computers but if you're going to argue over "$30", I start to wonder if you even buy decent components for your systems.

I have kept some computers running for ten years, although I should really be getting rid of those systems now as I don't feel they will remain that reliable or useful for much longer.

Re:I would like to see a feature list.

[Kneo24]

You guys in the UK get fucked big time. No one wants to honor your warranties, no one wants to price what they sell you accordingly. ("We price things differently in different markets based on what will move the product" is bullshit if you're gouging your customers and they have no other choice but to pay said price.) It's no wonder that every time I play any game online with you lot, you're all cranky and whiny. You guys need a reach around, at the very least. (Haha, the "image word" that I'm seeing is "mounted"! How fitting.)

Re:I would like to see a feature list.

[Ash-Fox]

No one wants to honor your warranties, no one wants to price what they sell you accordingly.

I don't seem to have a problem with companies honoring warranties. The only issue I ever had with warranties was something that was not covered.

"We price things differently in different markets based on what will move the product" is bullshit

Google says, No results found for "We price things differently in different markets based on what will move the product".

I have no idea what you're talking about.

they have no other choice but to pay said price.

Uhuh...

It's no wonder that every time I play any game online with you lot, you're all cranky and whiny

Because people you meet in online games are a accurate representation of what they are in real life. Next you're going to claim that a sample of online gamers from the United Kingdom are a good sample of all kinds of British people.

Learn to troll properly, this is Sparta^H^H^H^H^Hlashdot, not Youtube.

Re:I would like to see a feature list.

[Kneo24]

No one wants to honor your warranties, no one wants to price what they sell you accordingly.

I don't seem to have a problem with companies honoring warranties. The only issue I ever had with warranties was something that was not covered.

Which is not what you specifically stated. You said that you had problems with manufacturers not covering an item that you thought was under warranty. (I took a wild guess and assumed you had read the length of warranty and didn't try to screw over the manufacturer by sending it in out of warranty.)

So what is it? Either they're not honoring their warranties, or are you trying to send them under warranty when the term has expired, or you voided it?

"We price things differently in different markets based on what will move the product" is bullshit

Google says, No results found for "We price things differently in different markets based on what will move the product".

I have no idea what you're talking about.

So wait, companies don't price things differently for other markets? Then why are copies of Valves games so fucking cheap in countries like Taiwan, or wherever, where people can't afford a $50 game, but can maybe afford a $5 or $10 game? Why was there controversy over people from not those regions not having the ability to play those games, or worse, when they typed in the product key properly?

The fact is, companies do do that. Australians complain all the time about the price of some items costing far more than they should in their country. You guys in the UK do it from time to time too. Though it probably wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for VAT being added to everything (just from a cursory glance at a random UK PC parts store).

they have no other choice but to pay said price.

Uhuh...

Let's see... you could... steal the stuff you want. (Good luck not getting caught at some point.) You could not buy the stuff you want. (Have fun not owning anything but wanting more than nothing.) Or you could pay the prices, feel slightly ripped off, yet have the item you want. (You piss and moan about prices, but swallow it.)

It's no wonder that every time I play any game online with you lot, you're all cranky and whiny

Because people you meet in online games are a accurate representation of what they are in real life. Next you're going to claim that a sample of online gamers from the United Kingdom are a good sample of all kinds of British people.

Bubble bursting time; the anecdotal counter point of yours only proves my point. You can't honestly say you've never ran into a good many of people who didn't talk some sort of shit when they didn't feel comfortable in their nvironment. Online anything isn't any different.

Take those 13 year snot bags you hear over their mic of any platform, all they do is talk shit. They do it because they can get away with it. If they couldn't, they wouldn't. When they're not doing it to some random stranger, they're doing it elsewhere. And that coarse language carries on into their daily routine when they're out in public too.

So really, in the end, you can infer a good many things from a sufficient sample size. No one ever said it applied to everyone. But seriously, you guys in the UK do whine a lot when you're online. If you don't like the fact that I'm saying this, then do something to stop the people around you from sounding like a whiny cunt every time something happens.

Learn to troll properly, this is Sparta^H^H^H^H^Hlashdot, not Youtube.

Please, if I wanted to troll you, I'd have done it by now. It's always the typical douche-bag that mentions trolling when someone says something they don't agree with, even if it was a somewhat spirited debate. Get over yourself.

Re:I would like to see a feature list.

[Ash-Fox]

Which is not what you specifically stated. You said that you had problems with manufacturers not covering an item that you thought was under warranty. (I took a wild guess and assumed you had read the length of warranty and didn't try to screw over the manufacturer by sending it in out of warranty.)

They only cover the item in question if it was faulty, not if it was fried by another component etc.

So wait, companies don't price things differently for other markets?

Oh price differences. Doesn't really bother me. We get paid higher salaries here because the cost of living is more expensive, in the end it all works out.

You could not buy the stuff you want. (Have fun not owning anything but wanting more than nothing.)

Yeah, I want a brand new Lexus, but I can't afford that in any country. :)

(By the way, I have no debts, no loans, no mortgages - I don't intend to start getting one too)

You can't honestly say you've never ran into a good many of people who didn't talk some sort of shit when they didn't feel comfortable in their nvironment. Online anything isn't any different.

:) I have actually, in the army nobody complained, we just got on with what we had to do. Majority of my civvie mates are the same too.

Take those 13 year snot bags you hear over their mic of any platform, all they do is talk shit.

Oh, you're a console gamer and you're whining about people being whiny on those online games - that really isn't surprising.

But seriously, you guys in the UK do whine a lot when you're online.

To be honest, I do communicate with many British people online, and there is really only two people I can think of that whine. I really do think it's an issue which depends by where and which British people you're hanging out with.

Please, if I wanted to troll you, I'd have done it by now.

But you are. You're bringing up irrelevant topics, speaking in a condescending manor while applying racial profiles to people which would probably get a 'rise' out of some.

There are many kinds of Internet trolls and you certainly fit the description of some, swinging the discussion into a completely off topic discussion while getting a rise out of some.

You may not think you are trolling, but that really doesn't change what you did.

Re:I would like to see a feature list.

[ReinoutS]

Oh, another thing that annoyed me about OO was the that whatever "dictionary" they used for their spell checker was seriously outdated. When it doesn't recognize a word like "contactor" (neither does Firefox, go fucking figure)

Surprise, Firefox and OO.o use the same (myspell/hunspell) dictionaries. If you want to contribute to the spell and grammar checking subprojects for your language, I am sure they will appreciate your help.

Kerning by default

[Noksagt]

Doesn't Word have kerning disabled by default? What do you recommend to people now? LaTeX?

Re:Kerning by default

[lysergic.acid]

the hell are you talking about? i'm still running OO.org 2.3.1 and it supports kerning just as Word does.

maybe you should stop using a fixed-width font like Courier/Fixedsys?

Re:Kerning by default

[amirulbahr]

Yes.

Okay, that was a joke. Seriously though, for the bulk of the audience of Slashdot, I strongly encourage getting familiar with LaTeX. It is such a relief the forget about formatting and just focus on what you want to write.

Not for everyone, but certainly a great option for anyone not scared of a markup language and some command line tools.

Re:Kerning by default

[The Master Control P]

Hehe... As a physics student, yes. I love cranking out perfectly-formatted reports stuffed with exquisitely-rendered equations while my friends try to keep MS Word from mangling matrices too badly.

(Not hating on Word, but it's not a science/math document layout system)

Re:Kerning by default

[Anonymous Coward]

Kerning is not just using different widths for different charachteers, it's about using different widths for different pairs of characters, i.e. moving small lower case characters a bit under an uppercase "T" so that the white space between them looks about the same as the space between e.g. an "M" and a "i".

Re:Kerning by default

[betterunixthanunix]

Real authors use troff?

In all seriousness, LaTeX/troff really do work better for writing HUGE papers with complex layouts and formulas. I've seen OOo and MSO consume tremendous amounts of memory trying to deal with lengthy engineering papers, whereas LaTeX/troff take a few minutes to CPU time to compile the paper and spit out DVI or PS.

Admittedly, typesetting software is annoying when you are first learning it, and you are sitting there wondering why you are inserting markup all over the place when all you wanted was a table, but after the initial hurdle it really isn't so bad. I'll admit, it really isn't for everyone, especially not for people who aren't comfortable entering commands into a shell, but for people who are, I'd recommend at least checking out LaTeX or troff.

What about NeoOffice?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using NeoOffice on a Mac for the last year+ while waiting for 3.0. Will NeoOffice continue on or will it fade away?

Re:What about NeoOffice?

[nawcom]

Well, the whole reason behind NeoOffice was to get rid of the X11 dependency. Since OOo3 doesn't need it anymore - who knows. Maybe NeoOffice will focus on modifying the interface to better match the Aqua interface. (not that i have any complaints about OOo3's interface)

Re:What about NeoOffice?

[domatic]

NeoOffice bases itself from Novell's go-oo semi-fork so it inherits the extra features of that version. They are working on NeoOffice 3 which will employ the 3.0 codebase but it is unclear to me whether or not they are still going to use Java to implement the UI. In any case, losing the need for X11 isn't the only reason for NeoOffice. If you want the solver, various import filters that the Sun branch doesn't include, or bugfixes the NeoOffice team have had trouble getting Sun to include then NeoOffice will still be worth a look.

Re:What about NeoOffice?

[JoeCommodore]

Well OOo Mac has recently been working (on Intel only) Neooffice has been improving the OOo/Mac user experience for quite a few years. I think OOo has to catch up as the last OOo RC I tried was pretty buggy. Most of NeoOffice bugs are missing features, not GUI hiccups or more serious issues.

Re:What about NeoOffice?

[domatic]

Because Sun is very slow to accept features and bugfixes from outside contributors and have made that process very slow and bureaucratic. Furthermore, Novell is including additional worthwhile features that the authors aren't willing to assign copyright to Sun on. Others have commented on the Sun's indifferent stewardship of OOO and the following does more to answer your question.

http://www.gnome.org/~michael/blog/ooo-commit-stats-2008.html

Mac OS X

[fermion]

It is wonderful that we have a native intel Mac OS X version(I know the neooffice people try, but it has not been stable for me). Thanks to the developers. My question is will there continue to be an X windows build for PPC macs. The PPC macs still have a good year or two years left in them, given that we will not see snow leopard for 12-18 months. It would be nice to have a version of OO.org to run them.

Re:Mac OS X

[settantta]

My question is will there continue to be an X windows build for PPC macs.

No ned for an X11 PPC build, as Maho is providing Aqua builds for PPC (see my comment above).

Re:Mac OS X

[alfredo]

It looks good, runs fast enough for my porpoises.

Re:Mac OS X

[Em Adespoton]

http://ooopackages.good-day.net/pub/OpenOffice.org/MacOSX/3.0.0rc4/

If there's an RC4 installer, I presume someone's going to compile the GM as well.

Re:Mac OS X

[JustOK]

It looks good, runs fast enough for my porpoises.

and they thank you for all the fish.

Re:Mac OS X

[Macrat]

NeoOffice runs on top of OOo code.. It is the OOo code that is not stable.

Re:Mac OS X

[seyyah]

It looks good, runs fast enough for my porpoises.

Ah, are the cetaceans now also running Macs? What's next, Proboscidea!?!

Re:Mac OS X

[alfredo]

Ha!

I have lost my towel, should I panic?

Re:Mac OS X

[alfredo]

A Flexicalymene that lives down the street has a Mac Pro. Even old school geeks love the Mac

Re:Mac OS X

[badkarmadayaccount]

Dude, more like 12-18 years. Whats up with this short term bullshit, is intel marketing that good?

Always felt a bit clunky to me oh and a question

[ACK!!]

Like MS Office of a couple of revisions ago.

And as a couple of other users said its not documented terribly well.

For the folks who use it day to day - do you actually get used to it or is it something you simply work around?

Just tested it

[akita]

It's was a rc, and a little slow sometimes, but it was good enough to import a batch of powerpoint presentations (a mix of 2003/2007) to convert them to pdf.

Re:3.0?

[larry bagina]

I believe they're adding VBA back next version. And if you want something native, Apple has iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote)

Re:Always felt a bit clunky to me oh and a questio

[Noksagt]

I use OO.o daily. 3.0 has some major improvements, and you should check it out.

I largely prefer OO.o Writer to MS Word now that OO.o Writer has better commenting and revision control. I can rely on it for 99% of my work, but I find I still sometimes switch to Word under Wine if I get a manuscript that uses EndNote (rather than Zotero) or very complex embedded equations.

I have grown used to Impress. PowerPoint users might still have grips. I prefer LaTeX Beamer, but sometimes need to make or read PowerPoint presentations & Impress gets the job done.

The new solver in Calc makes it more useful. I think I prefer Gnumeric still & find myself breaking out stronger data analysis or data presentation programs.

Re:Always felt a bit clunky to me oh and a questio

[drfireman]

Like any other piece of software, there are things you feel like you couldn't live without and things you have to get used to. I remember it felt clunky when I first started using it, but that went away very quickly. Some things are more elegant than in MSOffice, some less. I've been using v3.0 for a while now (beta and fc releases), and I like it quite a bit. One of the big clunkinesses, the graphical depiction of comments/notes, is now very nice. There are still some screen rendering oddities that don't get in my way but do contribute to the impression of clunkiness. On the whole, I imagine it's still clunkier than its commercial counterpart, but the gap is narrowing. However, I rarely edit documents that are more than a few hundred pages long, and I know many of OO's critics say that its shortcomings are especially obvious if you work on long documents. So I can't comment on that.

How has MSOffice come along in the same time? Is pdf writing integrated now? Do files still bloat to ridiculous sizes on repeated editing?

Using OpenOffice with no problems?!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I'm always sceptical when people talk about using OO seriously with "no problems".

It's strange that so many people on Slashdot make claims like this, yet for me and various people I know in real life, basic things like sorting in OO Calc seem to fail on any non-trivial spreadsheet. Heck, I even got the Undo command not to undo simple find-and-replace changes properly the other day.

And have they fixed the font embedding that kills PDF export from Writer yet? It's only been a bug since forever, with more votes than almost anything else in the bug tracker.

As long as this sort of thing is going on, usability isn't even an issue: OO isn't even useful for more than throwaway work, and it actually seems to be getting worse in the 2.x series to the point that it's not even useful for much throwaway work either.

Re:Using OpenOffice with no problems?!

[markdavis]

I represent over 150 business users that use ONLY OpenOffice for word processing, spreadsheet, etc, and I can attest that we do use it seriously with very few problems. Your comment is way-over-the-top wrong.

Are there some missing things that we would like to see? Sure. But that hardly justifies "isn't even useful for more than throwaway work".

Re:Using OpenOffice with no problems?!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I represent over 150 business users that use ONLY OpenOffice for word processing, spreadsheet, etc, and I can attest that we do use it seriously with very few problems.

Do you? "Seriously"? Or just for quick letters that any old text editor could cope with and trivial data tables in a spreadsheet without any real calculation or data processing?

Your comment is way-over-the-top wrong.

Or your particular users have been very lucky, depending on your point of view. Have you tried sorting spreadsheet data where some affected cells contain formulae? Have you tried undoing a search and replace that used the options beyond plain text? These are data corruption bugs, not some minor UI tweak. These are the sort of crazy bugs that betray fundamentally broken underlying models, and which cost people whole documents if not noticed and worked around immediately.

Re:Using OpenOffice with no problems?!

[linhares]

I'm always sceptical when people talk about using OO seriously with "no problems".

I'm always sceptical when people talk about using software seriously with "no problems". -->There, fixed it for you.

Re:Using OpenOffice with no problems?!

[thetoadwarrior]

Sometimes OO has had different ideas to Word as to how big margins are when I open Word docs but I haven't had that problem with 2.4.

I've never had problems with spreadsheets but to be fair I don't use xls files that often. I prefer to use CSV so I know it'll work with any program I write without any issues and the programs can output the same thing with ease too.

Re:Using OpenOffice with no problems?!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Oh god somebody's disagreeing with me he must be an idiot or a liar.

Or, as I actually wrote, we could just have different experiences or be talking at cross-purposes.

It's not like the bugs I've mentioned here are hard to reproduce if anyone else wants to try what I described, so I'm not sure what your beef is with my position. As I said, this is what makes me sceptical about people who claim to have lots of experience using OO for non-trivial things, yet never to encounter the little problems I seem to find any time I start trying to do anything at all complicated.

Re:Using OpenOffice with no problems?!

[markdavis]

We do everything that a typical business would tend to do with it. Our company newsletter (8 pages, with lots of graphics, columns, frames), wiring diagrams, signs, letters, budgets, expense analysis, small databases, manuals, pdf exports, data parsing, inservice presentations, flowcharts, labels, dealing with lots of Emailed .doc, .xls, and .ppt's, etc.

Are there some bugs? Yes. Although we have not hit any that have prevented normal use or to cause us to not trust OO. But having conversed with MS-Office users- they have bugs also. There are bugs in just about every huge/complex program on any platform.

And I have reported some of those bugs and (as you also said) watched some of those bugs not get corrected over years. However, they don't prevent us from using the software, "seriously", for many years.

Re:Using OpenOffice with no problems?!

[betterunixthanunix]

I've used OpenOffice.org throughout college, for various papers, including papers with reasonably complex layouts and levels of embedded objects, and I only started having problems when my documents became excessively long. MS Office didn't handle those documents any better, and so I've just migrated away from WYSIWYG editors all together, which I've discovered is pretty common in my field.

Frankly, any generalization is inherently misguided. OOo is extremely useful for certain tasks, and I have seen people do things with OOo that they couldn't see any way to do with MSO. OOo has some problems, yes, but to claim that there is absolutely no use for it is just as bad as claiming that there are no problems with it at all.

Re:Using OpenOffice with no problems?!

[Ash-Fox]

Or your particular users have been very lucky, depending on your point of view. Have you tried sorting spreadsheet data where some affected cells contain formulae? Have you tried undoing a search and replace that used the options beyond plain text? These are data corruption bugs, not some minor UI tweak. These are the sort of crazy bugs that betray fundamentally broken underlying models, and which cost people whole documents if not noticed and worked around immediately.

I have used OOo excessively for spreadsheet usage - while I don't mess with .xls files... The only real issue I've ever had was generating graphical charts which are so difficult in my opinion.

Other than that, formulas, mass search and replace etc. All worked fine for me.

Re:Using OpenOffice with no problems?!

[Risen888]

I'm always sceptical when people talk about using software seriously with "no problems". -->There, fixed it for you.

I'm always skeptical when people talk about using software seriously with "no problems". -->There, fixed it for you.

Re:Using OpenOffice with no problems?!

[linhares]

I use British spelling, you insensitive, ignorant, grammar nazi, clod.

This time...

[linhares]

...I've not only RTFA, but also DTFS and UTFS, and the only thing I can say is: Just in time for a major economic recession, right Mr Ballmer? Now all we need is to get rid of your tax, which, with help from the recession, will be duly done.

Re:Sure.

[hobdes]

Apparently it does autokern:

Miscellaneous Features

• Autokerning Enabled by Default

Re:3.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm tired of Mac users saying open source programs look ugly. Instead of whining why not open up photoshop and design something better?

You're obviously some kind of designer since you use a Mac so why not make a mock up and get someone to make it into an interface?

Font Embedding in PDFs

[Noksagt]

And have they fixed the font embedding that kills PDF export from Writer yet? It's only been a bug since forever, with more votes than almost anything else in the bug tracker.

Can you elaborate (perhaps with a link to the issue), please? OO.o has embedded all non-standard fonts in PDFs for a while now...

Re:Font Embedding in PDFs

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Look at issue 43029.

Notice that it is classified as a feature request rather than a bug and its target milestone is only 3.2, despite being first created more than three years ago, having over 200 votes, and numerous comments on this issue and its various duplicates showing how it's a complete showstopper for using most professional grade fonts with PDF export.

This bug has become the standard counter-example in on-line discussions to all the OSS advocacy that claims many eyes make all bugs shallow, products will naturally develop according to users' needs because people can contribute their own patches, etc.

Re:Font Embedding in PDFs

[Maxo-Texas]

I waited for rectangular cut and paste for about 3 years.

Version 3.2 isn't far away.

It will happen.

Re:Font Embedding in PDFs

[baileydau]

I waited for rectangular cut and paste for about 3 years.

Version 3.2 isn't far away.

It will happen.

Do you mean block selection mode?

In OO 2.4 you can find it under Edit -> Selection Mode -> Block Area
Or you can use Alt + Shift + F8

Re:Font Embedding in PDFs

[mpe]

Look at issue 43029.
Notice that it is classified as a feature request rather than a bug and its target milestone is only 3.2, despite being first created more than three years ago, having over 200 votes, and numerous comments on this issue and its various duplicates showing how it's a complete showstopper for using most professional grade fonts with PDF export.

This sort of thing isn't uncommon. The difference here is that you can actually see this going on. With a proprietary product you'd have little way to know if a "bug report" has been converted into a "feature request" or how many people wanted it done.
I've seen a "bug report" become a "feature request", but once this has happened even the person who originally submitted it can't see what's happening with it.

Re:Font Embedding in PDFs

[Your.Master]

And until then they won't use it, because until then it's unusable for anybody that needs that feature.

Re:Font Embedding in PDFs

[pbhj]

Look at issue 43029.[...] it's a complete showstopper for using most professional grade fonts with PDF export.

Why obscure the situation, why not mention that this is only with "CFF-flavour OpenType fonts (*.otf)". How many people, not using DTP packages, are that fussy about the font they use that they won't accept a near analogue TTF font. Does it real make that much difference if people reading your text do so in Times.otf versus Times.ttf - like I said for professional print jobs you can be fussy but OOo is not a professional print production application (though it can be used as one).

This bug has become the standard counter-example in on-line discussions to all the OSS advocacy [...]

Such an important bug only has 12 subscribers - ie people that care enough to get notified when it is fixed. Doesn't seem like a major bug to me. I'd go with the classification as enhancement - a specific font file format support (not the font per se but a specific file format for the font) seems like something that doesn't actually stop anyone writing documents. FWIW. It will be a good enhancement to add as OTF is on the rise, but it's only really kicking off as of this year IMO and so OOo isn't so far behind the game on this.

Re:Font Embedding in PDFs

[Maxo-Texas]

Yes.. Like I said- I waited for it for about 3 years. It was missing in 1.04, I entered a ticket- got merged to another existing ticket, voted for it, got regular updates, and finally saw it go in.

Re:Font Embedding in PDFs

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I guess we just have different perspectives on this one, though your comment suggests that perhaps you're not appreciating the signifance of the bug. Personally, I consider it pretty much a fatal flaw if you can allow your user to develop an entire document using professional grade fonts (almost all of which have been supplied primarily in the format in question for years now), render everything OK on-screen so there's no warning of any trouble ahead, and then let the user find that those fonts have been arbitrarily substituted by completed unrelated fonts that happened to be OO-friendly only at PDF export time and with no workaround possible. That's a nasty, nasty trap, and I've helped people rescue entire design projects that were in danger of being sunk by this one.

Also, I don't think you can read much into the bug having only 12 subscribers. It's been there for years, with numerous dupes and similar comments being added but no sign of progress. I imagine that most people interested in it do what I do: unsubscribe to spare yourself the never-ending chain of depressing e-mail, but check in with each new version to see if it's fixed yet. Remember, 200+ people have voted for this one (not counting all the dupes).

Re:Font Embedding in PDFs

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

But resources are scarce (aren't they always?) and tasks have to be prioritized.

I work in software development, too, and I understand the need to prioritise tasks. However, this one does have 200+ votes and it keeps getting reported as a dupe, so it seems the OOo team's priorities don't necessarily match those of their user base. And yet, the OOo marketing materials do still highlight the PDF export as a major feature of the product, and the evangelists do still argue (despite the presence of a similar feature in Word 2007) that this is a reason to switch from MS Office to OOo. You can't have it both ways.

Add to that the fact that the people behind OOo is just common people, with their own priorities

But they're not, though, are they? Almost all contributions to OOo come from Sun people, and the project is infamous for making community participation difficult. The more cynical might suggest that this approach is behind the stagnation in OOo development that's been reported in a few of the other geek forums over the past week or so. In any case, OOo is not your average OSS project.

If this issue is really important to you, you should consider making your self more important to the OOo community, by participating actively in mailing lists and discussion forums where features are prioritized.

It's not that important to me: I just use other software instead these days. OOo's quality, usability and power usually aren't enough for my needs, even if it is free. That's fine, and of course I don't expect any particular say in how they choose to run their own project when I'm not paying for it.

However, if you're going to have discussions like this on forums like Slashdot, full of people encouraging others to use OOo and talking about the wondrous virtues of the OSS approach, I think it's only fair to show that it doesn't work out that way for everyone so that those who might be considering making the switch can be more informed when they try it out.

Looking forward to 3.0

[emarkp]

I cofounded a company last year and we decided to use Office 2007 since we're consulting with clients.

Wow it's been bad. Office 2007 has been a nightmare (endless bugs--crashing when accepting revisions, randomly moving to the top of the document as I'm paging through it, etc.), and interoperability with clients hasn't been as important as we thought.

I can't wait to use 3.0 in the office.

Re:Looking forward to 3.0

[onefriedrice]

I've never seen those problems with Office, nor have I ever heard of anyone else having those problems... Weird.

MS Word PDF support

[Noksagt]

How has MSOffice come along in the same time? Is pdf writing integrated now?

There is a gratis download from microsoft to allow this feature. Adobe did not want them to ship it built-in to MS Word (arguing that MS's near-monopoly would do damage to sales of Acrobat). I think MS is pushing their own XPS format more heavily, to some success (at least I seem to get them from PHBs).

The new version of OO.o has a plugin that can import PDFs for editing. So it still has Word beat in the area of PDF handling.

Re:MS Word PDF support

[BhaKi]

Actually there's a good reason why ms wouldn't want proper PDF support in ms office. One of the chief driving forces behind the adoption of ms office is network effect. People who use ms office force their peers to use ms office because of the notoriously unimplementable nature of the file formats. PDF, on the other hand, is an open ISO standard. If there was proper PDF in ms office, then the network effect will be severely hindered. And that's very unacceptable to ms.

Re:MS Word PDF support

[Blakey Rat]

Yeah, but that aside, it's super poor-form for Adobe to crow about how open and standardized PDF is, then sue a competitor for implementing it. If you didn't want PDF in Word, you shouldn't have opened up the format idiots. Adobe's trying to have it both ways, and shame on Microsoft for backing-down.

Re:MS Word PDF support

[linhares]

...and shame on Microsoft for backing-down.

Why? It's a winner for those pricks. They do not support an open standard (pdf), and their "open" formats get the benefit of the network effects. Meanwhile they point the finger at Adobe. Just the regular fuck-your-customers, fuck-your-competitors, fuck-your-partners, and fuck-justice day at microsoft.

Re:MS Word PDF support

[BhaKi]

I don't see how Adobe is related to the topic. PDF is not an "Adobe's format" anymore. PDF can be implemented by anyone without requiring any deals or license from Adobe. There are hundreds of feature-rich open-source implementations. PDF has nothing to do with Adobe.

Yeah, but that aside, it's super poor-form for Adobe to crow about how open and standardized PDF is, then sue a competitor for implementing it.

Whom did they sue? Can you give us some references?

If you didn't want PDF in Word, you shouldn't have opened up the format idiots.

What Adobe wants is irrelevant. Nobody needs Adobe's permission to implement PDF support. Anyways, can you give us some reference to Adobe's behaviour?

Adobe's trying to have it both ways,

Again. Evidence please.

and shame on Microsoft for backing-down.

ms didn't "back-down". It truly hates the idea of providing proper pdf support.

Re:MS Word PDF support

[Blakey Rat]

So you actually think it was a conspiracy on Microsoft's part.

Of course, the code *does* exist. It shipped in preview versions of Office 2007, before Adobe got pissy. It's available for free download on their website right now... so I guess that kind of blows holes in your conspiracy theory.

It's impossible in your close-minded world that Microsoft actually developed PDF support because:
1) Adobe said it was an open standard and anybody was welcome to use it
2) Their customers requested it?

Doesn't Occam's razor kind of suggest that instead?

Re:MS Word PDF support

[Blakey Rat]

I don't see how Adobe is related to the topic. PDF is not an "Adobe's format" anymore. PDF can be implemented by anyone without requiring any deals or license from Adobe. There are hundreds of feature-rich open-source implementations. PDF has nothing to do with Adobe.

Yes, everybody thought so. Then Adobe got pissy at Microsoft for implementing it. This news was widely covered everywhere, including Slashdot.

Whom did they sue? Can you give us some references?

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39273094,00.htm
http://software.silicon.com/applications/0,39024653,39159285,00.htm
http://www.techweb.com/wire/software/188701275
http://www.pdfzone.com/c/a/Authoring/Adobe-to-Sue-Microsoft-Over-PDF-Support-in-Office-2007/
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/4509/53/
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1012_3-6079320.html
http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft_to_Drop_PDF_Support_in_Office/1149284222

I have to correct myself, though: They didn't actually sue, because Microsoft settled first (by relegating the PDF support to a optional install.)

What Adobe wants is irrelevant. Nobody needs Adobe's permission to implement PDF support. Anyways, can you give us some reference to Adobe's behaviour?

Yes, everybody thought that. Then they got pissy at Microsoft for implementing it. Wow, this conversation is kind of repetitive.

ms didn't "back-down". It truly hates the idea of providing proper pdf support.

Actually, they did. Is your memory seriously this short? It only happened, what, 2 years ago? It was covered in all the trade press, extensively, it got probably 1000+ comments on Slashdot stories. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

Re:MS Word PDF support

[BhaKi]

I have gone through all those links and I couldn't find any statements from Adobe. All I can see is that a person named Dave Heiner, the deputy general counsel at ms, is shouting "Adobe wants to sue us". There are atleast 3 issues with this:

1. Can you believe an ms spokesperson to be honest?

2. Does Adobe have the financial strength required to go on a legal battle with ms?

3. Can Adobe sue a heavy weight like ms for implementing an ISO standard?

They didn't actually sue, because Microsoft settled first (by relegating the PDF support to a optional install.)

Can you honestly believe that making PDF support optional can remove the supposed "legal problem"? Moving open standards into optional parts and locked "standards" into default setups has always been ms's strategy whenever they're forced to provide support for the open standards. Look at how they worked around the demand for a standards-compliant IE by providing a standards-compliant mode in IE8 but not making it default. And the present case is no different.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

I think you have swallowed a lot of FUD pills given by ms's media partners.

Re:MS Word PDF support

[Your.Master]

Are you serious? He gave multiple links from disparate sources. This is a conspiracy from Microsoft?

1. Not unconditionally, but you can't necessarily assume he's full of shit either.
2. Yes.
3. Yes.

This was big news. Adobe refused to comment on many occasions, other than to say they hadn't yet decided whether they were going to sue.

Also, IE8 is standards-compliant by default. They did that in reponse to the demand for a standards-compliant-by-default IE8. Both beta 1 or beta 2 renders in standards mode by default. This was also big news.

http://www.cio.com/article/22058/Adobe_Speaks_Out_on_Microsoft_PDF_Battle

Here's Adobe's statement. They basically justified disallowing MS to use PDF on the basis that they believed MS would embrace, extend, extinguish it.

And yes, I can honestly believe that making PDF support optional can remove a legal problem, with or without scare quotes.

Re:3.0?

[AceofSpades19]

OO.o 3.0 is still at RC 4 according to openoffice.org

Re:3.0?

[Neoprofin]

I don't mean to start trivial arguments, but you can't really use "nail in the coffin" until something is dying. Like it or not MS Office is INCREDIBLY popular and well accepted across multiple platforms.

Torrent

[revealingheart]

OpenOffice 3.0 was released on BitTorrent a few days ago, download link: OOo_3.0.0_Win32Intel_install_en-US.exe.torrent

The RSS torrent feed (via OpenOffice P2P Downloads) has different languages, OS versions to choose from.

Re:3.0?

[carlzum]

If Snow Leopard's Exchange support is as good as advertised it could make Entourage irrelevant.

Re:It was just too slow for me.

[mysidia]

OpenOffice is ok for Linux and OS X platforms that need to import with M$ file formats.

I.E. It's better than the alternative that existed before it.

It doesn't mean it's as good as it should be.

I am reminded of how Mozilla was upon first release, before it was gutted and rewritten, before the Mozilla Suite was replaced with FF.

We want a lean, mean, FAST, lightweight wordprocessor, just like FF is a FAST, lightweight browser.

Unfortunately, at this time OpenOffice is not that. OpenOffice is another 8000lb gorilla of a software program, much like M$ Office is.

Even though it does not have all the featuers Office users want or care about (to prevent them from switching to OOo), it still has so many features unnecessary for many users as to be quite bloated.

What we need is a lean mean word processor like FF and a thriving extension community like FF has, to add any perceived missing features.

I.E. the software should be bare bones, but if you want X obscure feature that M$ word has, there's a set of plugins you can install to get it.

Re:3.0?

[rubah]

Not as nice as NeoOffice when I dl'ed it :)

Re:3.0?

[hairyfeet]

Correct me if I'm wrong,but doesn't Open office have a VBA converter? I remember awhile back when I was using Star Office that they had one and since Star Office is based on Open Office I figured they both had it.

That said I never really got the whole embedding code in a document bit. It seems like if your users got used to having code running in a document that it would be a lot easier to pass them a .doc filled with nasty exploits,and why not just,you know,build a damned app to do the job? We've had VB6 and VB.NET for years and both can whip off an app pretty damned quick. And then you aren't tied to a document reader/writer simply to run your code.

Re:3.0?

[MightyYar]

Yes, because God forbid things should be pleasing or enjoyable.

Do you root for the Borg?

party like it's 2-0-0-8 (a.i.g style)

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure they invited all those open source contributors, right?

Re:It was just too slow for me.

[dbIII]

Speed actually improved going from 1.* to 2.* - it actually ran reasonably on laptops that can barely run win98. I've only run the beta of 3.0 on a high end server so can't comment on it's speed in normal situations.

The real speed killer with at least previous versions of openoffice is it does a huge amount of disk access on startup so systems with slow disks (eg. DMA is disabled) take a very long time to start up. On MS Windows you would also get very slow startup times of openoffice on a highly fragmented disk.

Spreadsheets are a hassle if you are used to paticular MS Excel quirks just as Excel is a hassle for those used to paticular MS Works quirks etc etc. Graphing from spreadsheets is a paticular inconsistant mash in both MS Excel and openoffice so whatever you've put the effort in to learn there is going to be easier.

Re:3.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

interface diversity is much less like the borg than the interface consistency of os x, is it not?

RC4 is the final version?

[assassinator42]

I just download 3.0 out of the stable directory on the CS Utah mirror and it shows as OOO300m9 (same as RC4)build 9358.
I tried the PDF import plugin, but it doesn't give me any options and imports it directly as a slideshow with messed up text.

Re:RC4 is the final version?

[Nimey]

Perhaps they're using the classical definition of "release candidate" (this is a candidate for being tagged as the release) instead of the newer usage equating to "late beta".

Sounds like the PDF import plugin is still beta regardless.

Re:RC4 is the final version?

[Compuser]

Everything parent reported, confirmed here. Plus, this release is a pig. Starts real slow. When I switch to an open OO3 document from some other app, it takes a good few seconds before the menus are useable. This office suite feels like one extended self-inflicted denial of service attack.

Re:RC4 is the final version?

[pbhj]

Depending what you're wanting to do it may be helpful to note that Inkscape has a pdf importer.

Re:3.0?

[BronsCon]

Seven of Nine is very pleasing to the eye and I'm sure many would find her quite enjoyable.

Re:3.0?

[BronsCon]

Then, as a pretty sharp Unix programmer, why don't you make a better looking interface? I think his point still holds water.

Re:3.0?

[jlarocco]

Yes, because God forbid things should be pleasing or enjoyable.

Know what I enjoy when I'm using a piece of productivity software like OpenOffice? Getting my work done so I can go do something else.

The computer is a tool. Especially when using something like office productivity software. I don't sit around pondering the color scheme of my screw drivers, or whether or not my wrenches "go with" my hammer. Likewise, I don't spend time contemplating the visual attractiveness of OpenOffice. It lets me get my work done, that's good enough as far as I'm concerned.

Re:3.0?

[kklein]

And if you want something native, Apple has iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote)

Meh. I use Keynote as my main presentation software, but I am thinking of switching back to PPT. It is very easy to use, and looks great, but when you're going to a conference, you end up exporting to PPT anyway, and then you have to edit that PPT in Powerpoint to fix all the things that didn't make the jump. It's wonderful if you're sure that your laptop is going to work perfectly.

BUT

Pages is useless. No, I don't really mean that... It has a lot of nice features. I love the layout of the way it handles comments and changes for collaborative document creation. I like its styles sidebar (unlike the tiny little shitty "Inspector" in Word). It has a very nice, non-obtrusive-but-powerful UI (as one would expect, from Apple). But it just plain can't do tables for shit. This, actually, is also why I didn't use OO.o on Windows, and why I couldn't switch to Linux when I got off Windows. Nothing does tables with the power and flexibility of Word.

And Numbers? Seriously, now. It's a toy. And, worse still, it follows that evil design philosophy that says spreadsheets are a way to make pretty tables. They aren't. They're calculating and information manipulation machines. When I'm in Excel, there's no mistaking the fact that I'm working with information. I only engage the formatting tools to keep information straight. They should never be fronted.

Finally, however, what prevents iWork from being a viable alternative to MS Office is the same thing that stymies OO.o: It isn't MS Office. It just plain makes no sense to use these products in any context where someone else might need to work on them. Unless you ran a company and could set the standard, neither are a real option. I get away with using Keynote, but that's it.

Both iWork and OO.o have some really compelling features that I miss in MS Office, but ultimately, MS Office runs the world. And I, at least, am forced to live in the world.

YMMV.

KOffice2 will be coming soon

[BhaKi]

You might want to try out KOffice2 which is going to be released in a few months.

Locale

[bravni]

OK, so I give it a try for the first time since I switched back to non-free OS world (many, many years ago).

The good: it is about 1 million times faster and more polished than 1.x iterations.

The yummy: the perspective of writing macros in Python instead of craptacular VBA

The puzzling... and maybe the ugly: I have yet to find a way to set OOo locale to "system locale".

Microsoft did a pretty good job with the regional settings, allowing for a lot of customization. Very useful for people who juggle with around 4-5 languages on a daily basis (with accents, chinese characters, and other oddities) and like to have a very customized "common ground" locale. I like to be able to write my dates ANSI style, separate my 3 digit groups with spaces, count in meters, use $ as a currency symbol, and then some.

It is just natural that an office suite should inherit all those settings from the OS (or at least provide a setting to do so).
And so far, it appears that OOo does not have this basic functionality? The "default" option actually sets the application locale to the same used for localizing menus (i.e. if the application menus are in en_US, then the standard en_US locale - including units, date, number formats) will be used...

Looks like I am stuck with Excel for quite a while then.

pdf saving and editing

[EreIamJH]

I used version 2.4 for essay writing during some recent post-grad study and now that I'm used to it I wouldn't go back to ms-word. The ability to save as pdf was really convenient.

Version 3 has the ability to edit pdf - that could be a killer feature.

Re:pdf saving and editing

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Version 3 has the ability to edit pdf - that could be a killer feature.

Why? PDFs are useful for distributing material in a reliable way. They have never been designed to be an easily editable format, other than for forms and the like perhaps, and it would be crazy to start treating them as such.

Also, in case you didn't realise, PDF export from Word is available as a freebie plug-in from MS in Word 2007, and it doesn't have all the font bugs OO Writer has! (See my earlier posts in this discussion for details.)

Re:pdf saving and editing

[EreIamJH]

PDF export from Word is available as a freebie plug-in from MS in Word 2007

You get to download a freebie plug-in for your expensive wordprocessor, I get to download a freebie wordprocessor with a freebie plug-in.

I win.

Re:pdf saving and editing

[EreIamJH]

[PDFs] have never been designed to be an easily editable format, other than for forms and the like perhaps, and it would be crazy to start treating them as such.

Forms are exactly what I had in mind. In the last week I've used Openoffice to fill in a pdf criminal records check form and an thirteen (!!) page professional license application form.

Re:pdf saving and editing

[Ash-Fox]

It has options that leave OOo behind

Maybe I'll believe you when it will catch up to small things like hyperlinks that OOo can do.

Re:pdf saving and editing

[pbhj]

Also, in case you didn't realise, PDF export from Word is available as a freebie plug-in from MS in Word 2007, and it doesn't have all the font bugs OO Writer has! (See my earlier posts in this discussion for details.)

I think it's a bit much to laud over us the "freebie plug-in" for Word (200UKP on its own, or for "Microsoft Office 2007 Professional for PC" it is 449UKP, that's not the most expensive version either).

Plenty of money has been paid for that plug-in.

Re:pdf saving and editing

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

But since most of us already have Word at work anyway, PDF export is hardly a killer feature to make us switch to OO at this point, is it? And of course, your typical business isn't paying anything like the prices you're quoting per user, nor is anyone who received Word bundled with their PC, nor anyone with access to a reduced price via say academic or employer connections. In fact, I'm not sure I can think of anyone I know who has a legitimate copy of MS Word but actually paid anything like the nominal list price for it.

Tool Analogy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your screwdriver is primarily used by your hands with tactile feedback. Visual feedback is there too, but is minimal. (I daresay almost any sighted person could manage to use a screwdriver blindfolded pretty easily.)

A computer is used by both your hands and eyes with virtually all visual feedback. With rare exception, the only physical feedback is the feel of the keyboard and plenty of people use that to justify buying better keyboards.

Yet for some reason you have no problem denigrating others for wanting something they are going to stare at for 8 hours a day to be visually appealing. Why? You mean you will do a better job given a dull, drab image than one more suited to your tastes? You mean eyestrain will not affect you at all?

Well, if so, bully for you. For the rest of us we'll realize that just because a tool is a tool doesn't mean it has to be a shitty tool.

Re:3.0?

[Hurricane78]

We are Borg, you insensitive clod!

Oh, and: Resistance is futile. Form follows function!

Re:It was just too slow for me.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It should be noted that OO.o is not especially OSS-ish in terms of its history and evolution. OpenOffice is Sun's FOSS release of code(starting in 2000) from Staroffice, which Sun acquired with its purchase of StarDivision in 1999. In StarDivision's hands, the StarOffice line goes as far back as a word processor running on a Z80 with CP/M.

I am very grateful that Sun released OpenOffice, having a FOSS way to interact with .doc and friends is quite nice to have; but my hopes are greater for the OpenDocument format that OpenOffice helped bring about than for OpenOffice itself. Unlike the case of FF vs. IE, were IE sucked horribly and encouraged nonstandard web development, OO.o vs. Word is important because .doc is a proprietary mass of lockin, and standards are needed; but Word is a much more competent product than IE ever was.

Re:3.0?

[xstonedogx]

You must be a project manager.

Re:3.0?

[westlake]

Hmm, trust a Mac user to complain about what a program GUI 'looks' like. Form over function - sigh...
.

When you live within an office suite for nine hours out of twenty-four, six days out of seven, the UI matters.

Re:It was just too slow for me.

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

We want a lean, mean, FAST, lightweight wordprocessor, just like FF is a FAST, lightweight browser.

Firefox used to be a fast, lightweight browser. They seem to have been looking for the plot since some time in the FF2 era, though, and FF3 is such a monster that despite the Mozilla gang's irritating efforts to convince me, I still haven't upgraded any other machines beyond the first one I used to try it out.

Re:3.0?

[MightyYar]

I don't sit around pondering the color scheme of my screw drivers, or whether or not my wrenches "go with" my hammer.

So you are in Home Depot and they have two identical hammers. One is god-aweful looking, like all hot-pink and looks like a professional designer never touched the thing. Yeah... let's pick up that one.

If OO.org was compellingly better than MS Office, then I'd be inclined to agree with you. But it has fewer features and is generally lacking in more areas than it has strengths.

Re:3.0?

[MightyYar]

Yup. Funny what happens when you stretch an analogy to its breaking point.

Party like its 3.0 :)

[pianoman19403]

Ha, Oct 13th is my bday too... I'll raise a pint to open office on monday!!!

Re:Party like its 3.0 :)

[corychristison]

It is also Thanksgiving up here in Canada.

So I will be raising a glass to the launch of OO.org 3.0, your birthday and giving thanks!

Re:3.0?

[Sentry21]

and STILL hasn't made Entourage into a first-class Exchange client

Anyone find it funny that the iPhone got ActiveSync/Exchange support before Entourage did? Maybe the MBU wasn't willing to pay the licensing fees?

Re:Always felt a bit clunky to me oh and a questio

[Blakey Rat]

Does it have an equivalent to Word's Normal View, and are the outlining features on-par with Word's?

Last time I tried OpenOffice (about a year and a half ago), there was no Normal View, and the outline mode was simply pathetic. I seem to also vaguely recall that you couldn't split the scrollbar, but that might have been an earlier OpenOffice problem...

Re:3.0?

[Kjella]

When you live within an office suite for nine hours out of twenty-four, six days out of seven, you should find a new job.

Re:3.0?

[BronsCon]

Communications Directory in a company that has no IT Manager.

Same thing, in the short view.

Re:3.0?

[BronsCon]

Err... What I meant to say was...

Mod parent insightful.

So, mod GP insightful.

"Outline View" in Open Office is Navigator.

[jvin248]

It's called Navigator and it's under Menu/Edit/Navigator. A good description on use and nuances is http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2008/03/an-equivalent-o.html

Re:3.0?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Nothing does tables with the power and flexibility of Word....worse still, it follows that evil design philosophy that says spreadsheets are a way to make pretty tables.

I'm confused -- your complaint is that the word processor won't let you build pretty tables, but also that the spreadsheet does?

It just plain makes no sense to use these products in any context where someone else might need to work on them.

If you can, it absolutely makes sense.

There was a time when there were some competing products, and they had some compelling features, but it just plain made no sense to use anything other than Internet Explorer.

Firefox changed all that. And the Web is a lot more interoperable because of it.

That said:

YMMV.

Indeed. In fact, some people are still tied to IE -- even just an IETab in Firefox -- because of that one last website that won't work.

Re:3.0?

[Drencrom]

Meh. I use Keynote as my main presentation software, but I am thinking of switching back to PPT. It is very easy to use, and looks great, but when you're going to a conference, you end up exporting to PPT anyway, and then you have to edit that PPT in Powerpoint to fix all the things that didn't make the jump. It's wonderful if you're sure that your laptop is going to work perfectly.

Have you tried exporting to PDF? Unless you have some fancy animations is the best way to have a portable persentation. Almost every pdf viewer has a full screen mode for presentations.

Re:3.0?

[snoggeramus]

... or start caring about software that allows you to get the job done. Then go home.

Re:3.0?

[SanityInAnarchy]

So you are in Home Depot and they have two identical hammers. One is god-aweful looking, like all hot-pink and looks like a professional designer never touched the thing. Yeah... let's pick up that one.

You know, I would. A hot pink hammer? Hell yes!

Tastes vary. I'm not going to attempt to defend OO.org's UI, as I haven't touched it in awhile, but there are plenty of cases where I've seen a UI make the right choices -- better choices -- yet be shunned because it is different than what you're used to.

Oldest, best example I know of: How many people use the dvorak keyboard layout? Even among a generation which has never had to touch a real typewriter in their lives, and for whom qwerty is completely pointless?

I've been guilty of that myself. OS X arguably has some better consistency even with certain keyboard shortcuts (home/end), yet it was so different than what I'm used to that I'm grateful to be back on Linux again.

If OO.org was compellingly better than MS Office, then I'd be inclined to agree with you. But it has fewer features and is generally lacking in more areas than it has strengths.

And as long as that is the case, that is also the conversation we should be having -- not whether it's "pretty".

Fact: Ubuntu (via Compiz) has prettier desktop effects than Vista. Yet Vista has more users than Ubuntu. Would more eye candy "sell" more copies of Ubuntu?

Re:3.0?

[cayenne8]

"So you are in Home Depot and they have two identical hammers. One is god-aweful looking, like all hot-pink..."

Hey, even Gay handymen need tools too, eh?

:)

Re:3.0?

[zullnero]

Hi, I'm a Mac. I'd rather pay a lot of money for a proprietary closed source piece of software used to make a document, than to download a free piece of software (and hopefully donate a few bucks) that can make an equally good document, because if the software interface I use to make documents does not exactly and precisely match the look of my environment, I am incapable, and even paralyzed, at even the thought of making such documents with such an unfashionable looking interface.

Re:3.0?

[Malekin]

These numbers speak tones.

That's fucking awesome! How do they make them do that?

Re:3.0?

[CajunArson]

Yes because Campbell's gives away all their products for free and Microsoft's Chicken Noodle 7 has a $400 license.... Ever heard of a non sequitur ?

Re:3.0?

[linhares]

So my argument is a non-sequitur? Which part of it? That FOSS is easier on the wallet, or that a recession favours cost-cutting? There is a deep recession coming up, and the stockmarket reflects it clearly. If you are uninformed, let me cheer you up. Here's The Economist, part (i):

...stockmarkets into freefall. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down by 7%, and suffered its biggest-ever points loss. Perhaps fittingly in an economy that is in danger of sliding into depression, the only stock among the 500 in the S&P index that finished higher was Campbell's Soup. The S&P closed 29% below its peak. Reflecting fears that consumer demand will wilt, shares of Apple Computer, creator of the iPhone, fell by 18%.

And here's The Economist, part (ii):

A 90-year-old woman about to be evicted in Ohio shot herself last week. (She survived, and the mortgage firm forgave her debt.)

FOSS is a little easier on the wallet than Microsoft. A recession is cost-cutting. OO.org is one nail in the coffin of Microsoft Office. And that is my argument, and it's no non-sequitur, as much as you may like reality to be different. Please refrain from throwing chairs at me.

Re:3.0?

[Macthorpe]

Why not try comparing to companies in at least vaguely the same field of endeavour? Like IBM and Apple.

I think this is possibly the first time ever that I have seen somebody predict Microsoft's downfall because they aren't performing as well as soup.

Re:3.0?

[diamondsw]

Are you missing the point? OpenOffice on the Mac, "native" or not (I don't know what warped definition of native they're using, but just because it's not X11 does not mean it's native!), looks like complete ass and has no platform integration. Microsoft Office, on the other hand, has gone to great lengths to be attractive and even *gasp* innovative on the Mac, and support native technologies.

OpenOffice is great on Windows and Linux, but near-unusable on the Mac.

Re:Always felt a bit clunky to me oh and a questio

[bm_luethke]

"However, I rarely edit documents that are more than a few hundred pages long, "

If you are working with those documents MS Office sucks royally anyway - you are MUCH better off with real publishing software. At that size when two things equally suck the one you know better is the easier one (and you can always point to the features you "need").

For "small" (0-200 page documents) they are not that far off from each other. One does one thing better, the other something else. If you have spent years learning ones strengths and weaknesses and then try and switch it is *tough* to do because of that (and the larger the document the more true that is). When I was a "new" user of either one (around '01 to '02 with respect to writing commercial documentation) I tended to prefer OO. However since the world was MSOffice oriented and they didn't play well together then I only used office.

Since I now only use an office suite to fill out time sheets and write small documentation to send to the technical writers I just use OO. Heh, since I am sending things off to technical writers to do with whatever they want too I normally just use VI and text files now anyway - any formatting I apply is removed anyway. However, once I learned it in my previous job, for a paper of 10 pages or over (especially one that needs special formatting) Latex is so far superior to either one that it isn't even a contest - it also works well for really large documents to boot. There are even some really nice WYSIWYG editors out there for Latex too.

OpenType Fonts

[OverZealous.com]

As a Mac user, I'm excited to finally be dumping NeoOffice. I hate the system-deep installer. With OO.o v3, it's a proper single-directory bundle. Installation is just drag-and-drop. And no more random boat - the OO.o icon is slick and looks great in the dock.

My biggest complaint with OO.o (and I use it exclusively now, and have moved over my parents from MS Office with no issues) is a frustrating bug with OpenType fonts. They always render fine, but exporting to PDF (something I do often) converts them to some other random font.

Looks like it will be fixed, but not until 3.2 — which feels like forever, since this has been an issue for a very long time. It's especially frustrating since some of the best free fonts out there are OTF fonts.

If you to help increase the visibility of this bug, please vote for Bug #43029.

Re:OpenType Fonts

[pbhj]

It's especially frustrating since some of the best free fonts out there are OTF fonts.

What fonts in particular? I'm curious.

Re:OpenType Fonts

[dbIII]

With NeoOffice I get the impression that those guys saw open source, missed the point, and saw it as a bridge to sell. There is a lot of that about and it really doesn't matter if you put in a lot of extra work yourself (eg. Xming derived from Xorg), this mentality of taking completely open stuff that others have put a huge amount of work into and turning it into shareware is a step backwards.

Re:OpenType Fonts

[OverZealous.com]

Check out exljbris. I hate sharing a good source, but he deserves the recognition. Amazing fonts, most are free, and many inlude ligatures, custom kerning, etc. Very high quality, probably higher than most paid fonts!

Re:OpenType Fonts

[denis-The-menace]

If you to help increase the visibility of this bug, please vote for Bug #43029.

Ok, I voted.(2 votes, too!)

Now, will you vote for one of these?
RFE: ability to merge cells already merged http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/showvotes.cgi?issue_id=2131

Generated HTML changes default spacing http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/showvotes.cgi?issue_id=14600

Outline View (aka MS Word) http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/showvotes.cgi?issue_id=3959

Re:3.0?

[linhares]

Same-industry stocks do not point to an economic downturn. Here we go, again.

You are making a straw man of my argument: I do not predict the downfall of Microsoft. I do predict a gradual slowdown of sales of Microsoft Office.

I'm sure you can think hard and see that these are two separate issues, though related.

Re:3.0?

[Macthorpe]

I misunderstood your point, but I still have to disagree.

If the major players are having problems, it doesn't just affect the sales of proprietary products. Funding for open-source projects will also dry up and development will stagnate. Recession does favour cost-cutting, but that doesn't only affect things that the consumer has to pay for. I think you're missing the bigger picture.

Flamebait?

[xstonedogx]

Finally! I have been waiting forever for someone to take me seriously! It's like everything I say is a joke!

Re:3.0?

[BrokenHalo]

And as long as that is the case, that is also the conversation we should be having -- not whether it's "pretty".

Indeed. And since we've seen so many posts whining that OOo is a heap of shit because it has "...fewer features and is generally lacking in more areas than it has strengths", I would like these posters to actually justify their argument with a proper list - bearing in mind that most shortcomings have been overcome by 3rd-party macros or add-ins. The only really important feature missing as far as I'm concerned, is a decent bibliographic facility. And in my experience, EndNote's offering is none too reliable in the Windows world.

As far as the interface is concerned, I don't really see what the problem is. If you are running a Linux box, OOo follows along with whatever GTK+ theme you use, so you just pick one you like. The Mac NeoOffice version fits in comfortably enough without scorching retinas. After all, the damn thing IS only supposed to be an office suite. If the interface is so stunning that it has you quivering in your chair with serial orgasms, it is failing at its primary purpose. I certainly wouldn't hold up Office2007 as a paragon of UI splendour. Most people I know think it's the most misbegotten, counterintuitive, spastic piece of excreta ever spawned. At least OOo's interface is reasonably intuitive.

Re:3.0?

[linhares]

Yes, funding for FOSS dries up as well. However, the codebase for OO.org and other projects is not going anywhere. Even Microsoft is aware that "OSS is long-term credible".

Re:3.0?

[JustOK]

well 512Hz is C, 426. 7Hz is a, 480Hz is b ...

Navigator != Outline view.

[zooblethorpe]

Sorry Charlie, but the Navigator don't quite cut the mustard. Please read through the (lengthy!) comments posted to Issue 3959, which incidentally has apparently been on the books since before OOo reached version 1.0. I think you'll find that, as useful as the Navigator can be, it still falls short of what people need.

(On the plus side, it seems the devs have finally agreed and understood what folks were clamoring for, and are in the process of massively reworking document views to allow for this. However, the heavens only know how long this might take to make it into a release -- various other potentially show-stopping issues are still on the books years later, despite what must be much simpler coding to fix them. Extrapolating, this seems to speak of either not enough resources, or an overly complicated API. The API docs are indeed plug ugly to wade through, whatever the case.)

Cheers,

Re:Navigator != Outline view.

[jvin248]

I agree that Navigator is not exactly what people want in Outline View (it's one of the features I myself continue looking for as I do some writing and used to use this feater in MSOffice)...

but my point: there _is_ a feature that is closer than nothing (as most of the wailing is about) and possibly be workable for many. It's as elegant as using a rock for pounding nails, but at least there's a rock.

As you mention it is very likely a while before improvements (partly because there's at least a "rock" and other more pressing issues). And there are some code structure issues that make it tougher to implement than it was in MSOffice.

Glad to hear your updates that the devs are understanding the "customer wants" and are thinking on how to solve the issues. There's a chance now and I can't hardly wait for developments here.

Re:Navigator != Outline view.

[Elektroschock]

Novell's Meeks critisised the development process of SUN. Novell forked OO.org.

NeoOffice claims that it speeds up the OO.org 3 series.

So maybe the problem is SUN Microsystems and their red tape.

Btw, the link to the Paris Party

Re:Navigator != Outline view.

[zooblethorpe]

Thanks for the Micheal Meeks link, that was very informative and in line with what I have observed in following OOo since its 1.0 days -- requirements are too cumbersome, the docs too byzantine, and developers simply can't be bothered to put up with all the extra hurdles that get in the way of contributing. Meeks's analysis shows a decline in the OOo developer community, which seems to be an unfortunate, albeit completely understandable, response to Sun's poor management of the project. I hope at least that some OOo derivative might work out -- perhaps NeoOffice, or IBM's Lotus Symphony.

Cheers,

Re:Navigator != Outline view.

[zooblethorpe]

I keep meaning to install the latest version of IBM's Lotus Symphony. The last version I installed impressed me for having resolved some of the issues that prevent me from using OOo -- I'm a Japanese-English translator, so getting accurate word / character counts is vital, and OOo completely drops the ball on this one, but Symphony actually gives me useful count data. I'm not sure about Outline view, but it wouldn't surprise me if Symphony did this better than OOo, too. Plus, Symphony apparently uses a good bit of the OOo codebase, and it reads and writes ODF and MSO files. The downsides are that it's still slow to start (possibly because it's built on top of the Eclipse platform), and I'm not sure about its status as FOSS. It's certainly free-as-in-beer, at least. You might find it's worth taking a look.

(Note that I have no relation to IBM at all. I'm simply a former OOo user frustrated by the glacial pace of improvements, and happy to find an ODF-based alternative that seems to actually work. :)

Cheers,

That's not a bug!

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

It's a feature

Re:3.0?

[Fallen Andy]

I guess they'll update the website for the celebration...

Downloaded final 3.0 from majorgeeks on Thursday evening (Ath, Gr).

The splash screen doesn't indicate a release candidate and help->about says its 300m9 (build 9358).

The good news is that it really does load faster (which is great for me because I'm running on a really old notebook (6 yrs old)).

Andy

iWork ODF

[donstenk]

The only issue I have with the iWorks suite is that Apple decided to introduce yet another file format, seriously pissing off their customers who have started a petition to include ODF. Whilst ODF and DOC are supported by the nifty 'TextEdit' most of my work is done in Pages and Numbers and if it were to be possible to use ODF as the default file format Apple iWork users could exchange documents easily with OpenOffice users giving the format another boost.

I will try the new ooo and see where it is at.

I do like MsOffice 2008, have run the trial but it is a bit slow (despite 4gb ram) and on the expensive side for a small business with 4 users.

Re:iWork ODF

[Ma8thew]

At least iWork uses zip compressed XML. Would be great if they'd implement editing of ODF though.

Re:iWork ODF

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple introduced the correct file format.
It is, as always, the customer who is wrong.

Re:It was just too slow for me.

[aussie_a]

Isn't it open source? If so why hasn't anyone ported it? After all if there's a demand, then surely that's where the open source community has the advantage over the closed source community.

At least, its what we're always hearing. Perhaps it isn't as feasible as people here claim?

Re:3.0?

[cerberusss]

It's true that the world runs MS Office, however that's the corporate world. Small companies rarely have the need to export their internal documents to the outside world. So, OO.o is fine in that case.

Re:3.0?

[The Master Control P]

I've come to a conclusion about those who say "write a patch" if you say there's a problem with something. Either they truly don't understand just how powerfully it turns people off from using their software, or they do know and it's an intentional "fuck you" to those they decide are "outsiders."

Either way, the outcome is the same: They actively drive users away, in FOSS's case back into the comforting arms of Microsoft. It creates a rift between reality and the developer's perception of reality, which results in the project not moving towards progress but orthogonally to it, or worse away.

And here enlies the problem with the "write a patch" types: I gaurantee you I can find an aspect of your computer you aren't an expert at, and you'd be pissed at me if I threw it in your face when you asked for help. Your accountant doesn't tell you to fix your own damn tax problem, the mechanic doesn't derisively laugh because you don't know how to re-gap your own spark plugs, and as a user of FOSS I'd prefer not being snidely mocked just because I don't dedicate hours a day learning your little corner of it. For all the egalitarianism of FOSS, there is still fundamentally a business relationship between the programmers and the users. Until we learn that and put a lid on the "write your own patch" people, it will never equal proprietary software except for a handful of diamonds in the rough.

Why so thorny? Because I've been a recipient of that attitude a few times. And not even my hardcore nerd's reverse tact filter could stop it from getting under my skin.

I'll take conceptdraw office thanks...

[blahplusplus]

... http://www.conceptdraw.com/en/

Re:Always felt a bit clunky to me oh and a questio

[seyyah]

For me at least, it's still faster to load MS Office under wine than to open OpenOffice. That being said, I do use it (wrote my thesis in it) but I feel my document writing future might be in LaTeX.

No, no more feature lists!

[DiegoBravo]

Please no more... just focus on what is currently implemented (or annoyingly implemented.) First of any, do not conform with ".. opens MS Office files" ... Please try to make a smooth interoperability. I believe most OO users have to deal with MSOffice users, and it causes a really bad impression when you provide an exported "to MS Office format" doc with bad and unpredictable looking (as usual.)

Offtopic, but can't resist!

[rts008]

I did not know it was Thanksgiving in Canada.

Cheers! from Oklahoma, USA. *tips back glass of vodka*

Happy Thanksgiving, and wishes for many more!

Re:Offtopic, but can't resist!

[PopeRatzo]

did not know it was Thanksgiving in Canada.

I've often wondered, do you guys in Canada have the Fourth of July, too?

---there's the pitch...

Re:Offtopic, but can't resist!

[corychristison]

No... we celebrate Canada Day on July 1st, though.

Some reading for you.

Re:3.0?

[skreeech]

So does it work horribly on mac or are mac users unable to use something that works on windows and linux?

Re:3.0?

[Bert64]

OpenOffice is trying to maintain a consistent interface across platforms, so that it's familiar... MSOfice on the other hand looks and behaves completely differently on the Mac...
OpenOffice is the same app, MSOffice for Mac is a completely different app which pretty much only shares the same name as the windows counterpart.

It's like windows mobile vs osx on the iphone, windows mobile is a completely different os that has virtually nothing in common with desktop windows aside from the name, osx on the other hand is based around the same codebase and the biggest differences are related to the gui which has to be different for obvious reasons... it still has the same bsd-based backend as desktop osx.

Another documented OOo bug...

[No Panic]

A nasty bug that's stopped me from introducing OOo at the office is bug #53184

It seems the Windows version of OOo can't open files that are on a Windows file server that happens to have a "_" character in it's name. In our case, there's only one such unlucky server in the entire site, but that's the one that our people most commonly use. MS Office users can click on those files with no issue, but nothing happens with OOo. That is, OOo just closes with no warnings, no error messages. The poor program just dies silently.

In http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=53184, status says it's "fixed", but the activity log shows it's never been merged into the release version. This is the 3rd release since the bug was declared "fixed", but it's still not released. Scroll to the bottom of that bug report to see the story.

Related discussion here... http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=52413

Maybe I should just fix it muself...

Re:Another documented OOo bug...

[RonnyJ]

That OpenOffice bug appears to have been first reported over three years ago, would be frustrating/confusing to those affected, and it doesn't sound as if it would be excessively difficult to fix.

After 3+ years, the latest post says "Sorry, no time left to integrate the fix into 3.0 code line". That doesn't fill me with too much confidence.

Re:Another documented OOo bug...

[Elektroschock]

What are they doing at OO.org? This should not happen!

Re:3.0?

[magarity]

Depends on what country he lives in - in some places that would be a swank and easy gig.

Re:3.0?

[thetoadwarrior]

But will Campbell's funding for Minestrone condensed soup dry up?

Until you start providing those numbers we're going to have to assume you're not looking at the bigger picture.

Re:3.0?

[thetoadwarrior]

If they did that then they wouldn't have time to mince about in the coffee shop with their fellow Mac users discussing their superiority.

Bugs fixed?

[frisket]

The question is, will they have fixed the notorious bug which allows the user accidentally to paste entire chapters into a footnote?

I've had two users come up to me recently saying they were editing their footnotes and suddenly the whole of the next n chapters "just disappeared".

More to the point, do OOo even care?

Re:Bug in page sequence

[Bert64]

I saw those bugs in older versions of msoffice (2000, 2003) on certain documents, could never work out what was causing it...

Colours

[Stuidge]

The biggest problem I find with OO.o is the unpolished and sometimes downright stupid UI design decisions. For an example try this:

• Open a new document (e.g. presentation)
• Create a new shape (e.g. rectangle)
• Try and make it a non standard colour (e.g. Slashdot green)

You can't easily. To do this you have to right click on the object, select styles and formatting and go to the Colours tab, where you encounter the most unintuitive UI for adding colours to the internal palette. There's not even the Saturation/Hue picker for new users. Just RGB values. Frankly: absolutely appauling. And don't even bother transferring the document to another machine and trying to modify the colour, it will drive you insane. I appreciate all the effort that's gone into it, but there are places where it is a battle to get it to do what you want. And that isn't productive or fun.

Re:3.0?

[PopeRatzo]

I agree. After all, how pretty does a blank page have to be?

I've spent a great part of my life doing my best writing with an extremely plain application called Nota Bene. I don't use it any more, but a white box can be serene, and serenity leads to creativity and productivity, at least for me. Hell, I won't even let my wife put a vase of flowers on my piano.

I think it's funny that the same people who insist on editing web pages in BBedit all of a sudden want their word processor to look like Peggle.

The French?

[PopeRatzo]

'OpenOffice.org is throwing a launch party in Paris on 13 October'

Who throws a party on a Monday?

Screwdriver color schemes

[tepples]

I don't sit around pondering the color scheme of my screw drivers

Unless you want to be able to find the right screwdriver in your set. In that case, you might want to label the handles like Craftsman does for its precision screwdrivers: one color for standard, one for Torx, and one for Phillips. Feel free to draw your own analogies to being able to find things in a GUI.

Re:Screwdriver color schemes

[pbhj]

Just use a universal screwdriver, aka "hammer". For extraction, YMMV.

Re:Screwdriver color schemes

[shaitand]

That would be feature that adds function not aesthetics. If anything OO.org's interface is MORE functional than MS Office. Especially the new 'improved' office interface.

Re:3.0?

[GaryPatterson]

It's like the difference between The Gimp and Pixelmator.

Both do image editing (and in this case The Gimp is a more powerful tool) but Pixelmator fits in with the look and feel of OS X and works extremely well with other Mac apps. In fact look at the two websites - The Gimp's site looks like crap. Having used both to some degree and not needing the full power of The Gimp, I dumped it for Pixelmator a long time back. The UI is unbelievably far ahead of The Gimp.

If you're going to use an app for any length of time, it should be as comfortable as possible. This is obvious for cars, for furniture, for workplaces but somehow it's a debated point for software applications. Aesthetics are important, and for some reason Mac users care a lot about the concept.

That's a long answer to your somewhat troll-y question, but there it is. Mac users can certainly use apps that work on Linux and Windows, we just choose not to if something more usable exists.

Re:3.0?

[GaryPatterson]

I see your non-sequiter and raise you a Zen koan!

"A Student asked his master 'What is Buddha.' His master answered 'Three pounds of flax.'"

I think we can both see what that means for FOSS! Tough times ahead, eh?

On a less unhinged note, I'm not sure why a comparison of two companies in completely separate industries indicate a trend in one industry. Can we flip this and say that the use of FOSS will decline in food-related industries? I mean, mineral industries are in a downturn, as are real estate company stocks. Does that counter the soup point?

Re:3.0?

[MightyYar]

Tastes vary.

Oh, I agree! People bought AMC Gremlins, after all. Hell, I hear two GM employees even bought a Pontiac Aztec - though I'm not sure I really believe that.

I was responding to the Apple troll who implied that it was some kind of negative personality trait to like your computer applications to look nice.

Oldest, best example I know of: How many people use the dvorak keyboard layout? Even among a generation which has never had to touch a real typewriter in their lives, and for whom qwerty is completely pointless?

I'm actually typing Dvorak right now :) But I think that his study has been more-or-less discredited. It would be very interesting to see a new layout which is completely optimized for modern computing.

yet it was so different than what I'm used to that I'm grateful to be back on Linux again.

I like Linux, but consistency is not its strong suit :)

Fact: Ubuntu (via Compiz) has prettier desktop effects than Vista. Yet Vista has more users than Ubuntu. Would more eye candy "sell" more copies of Ubuntu?

To be honest, I think it has. But I think the main reason that Linux never catches on is the near complete lack of advertising. Advertising works.

And as long as that is the case, that is also the conversation we should be having -- not whether it's "pretty".

Agreed, though I see no problem in MENTIONING it in a list of other disadvantages.

Re:3.0?

[MightyYar]

One of the big problems IMHO is documentation - especially documentation for driving the application with macros. Unless they've pushed documentation big-time for this release, it is exceedingly difficult to start out macro programming in OO.org.

Most people I know think it's the most misbegotten, counterintuitive, spastic piece of excreta ever spawned.

I haven't spent enough time in 2007 or 2008 to really comment well, but 2004 on the Mac is a pretty nicely done Mac application. The little contextual tools palette that they use is really nicely done, especially on a widescreen monitor. My main beef with Office 2003 on the PC was that it hides menus by default. That said, I can't really complain about OO.org's menu layout.

Re:3.0?

[MightyYar]

I think it's funny that the same people who insist on editing web pages in BBedit all of a sudden want their word processor to look like Peggle.

I don't think it's a deal-killer for people... just something to stick in the negative column. Like if you were comparing two cars and one of them was ugly.

Re:3.0?

[MightyYar]

Yeah, and I realized after I posted that one mother's day I actually bought a whole set of pink tools for my mother :)

Re:3.0?

[TheRaven64]

I recently switched to LaTeX Beamer for my presentations from Keynote (my Keynote CD was damaged and my hard drive died so the only way of reinstalling was to pirate or buy another copy - yay proprietary software). The only thing I missed was the presenter mode, where the laptop screen displays the current and next slide, the current and elapsed time, and the notes. I wrote a little app to do this, and now I can't see myself going back to Keynote (I also wrote a little LaTeX package that outputs notes as an OpenStep property list, so you can import them in to the app easily. Eventually I want to store this in the PDF as annotations so that any PDF viewer can view them). It's just much faster to write presentations with Beamer, and the PDF output is much better for people to navigate themselves.

Re:It was just too slow for me.

[Ash-Fox]

Firefox used to be a fast, lightweight browser. They seem to have been looking for the plot since some time in the FF2 era, though, and FF3 is such a monster that despite the Mozilla gang's irritating efforts to convince me, I still haven't upgraded any other machines beyond the first one I used to try it out.

I find Firefox 3 is a lot faster than Firefox 2 and when comparing the speed differences with the Firebird series, I still find Firefox 3 handles large amounts of pages in tabs better and it is more responsive. However, the original Firebird does use less memory when it comes to just using it for a single page, no other tabs etc.

I disagree with your statements for the reasons above.

Re:3.0?

[pimpimpim]

tables! Now I remember! Tables have driven me nuts with Openoffice. I had a table at the end of my page, and inserted a newline. There was no way to remove the newline without the table. For some reason they got fixed together for ever and always. That and getting the background color of a table cell took me a long time. The old granddaddy of tables is also not perfect: I did have MS Office crash on me last week just removing a table row! The equation editor of OO is excellent however. MS really messed up that one, especially if you are using different office versions at some point, and the equations may or may not show up... Overall, Openoffice is ready for light to normal use at the moment, much more so than two years ago, and will probably surpass MS office in usability and stability in the not to distant future.

Re:So OOXML is a viable format

[gbjbaanb]

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.

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.

there,. fixed that for you.

Re:3.0?

[TheRaven64]

I am a UNIX programmer (technically, I'm a freelance writer, in terms of what provides my income, and periodically an academic, but I have done a fair bit of UNIX programming, and taught , operating systems design last year). I am also the co-founder of an open source project which focusses on UI design, although currently we're in the stage of building the tools we need to build the end-user systems we want. According to Ohloh.net, we have 514K lines of code in our repository, and I am responsible for touching 140K of them. We actually do have someone whose real job is a designer working on the project, and one of my last commits was a new compiler infrastructure for a language sufficiently friendly that he's started writing code as well as contributing graphics.

So, I have to ask, what have you done that gives you a right to complain about the contributions of others?

Re:3.0?

[TheRaven64]

Actually, I'd much rather use Vim and LaTeX than OpenOffice on my Mac, but occasionally people send me documents only OpenOffice can open.

Re:3.0?

[TheRaven64]

While I agree that the grandparent is engaged in some first-rate asshattery, I'd just like to make one comment. You say:

Your accountant doesn't tell you to fix your own damn tax problem, the mechanic doesn't derisively laugh because you don't know how to re-gap your own spark plugs

The difference here is that you are paying your accountant and your mechanic for their expertise. Most of the people who receive comments along the lines of 'write a patch' have not contributed anything. On the Free Software project I co-run, we have a designer on the core team. He provides a lot of really high-quality artwork and some good UI ideas. If he comes to me with a feature request, then it goes quite high on my TODO list. Why? Because he's contributed to the project in ways that I am incapable of replacing with my own effort. I recently refactored a big chunk of my code to make it more reusable for someone else. Why? Because at the same time as asking me to, he sent me a diff fixing a few of my bugs.

Free Software is about cooperation. I only benefit from sharing my improvements if other people do as well. We both benefit from not having to reproduce the other's work, and so can get on with things we want to do much faster. If you want something done, then you have to convince me that it's in my interest to do it for you, usually by offering something in return. Whether this is code, artwork, documentation, or money is up to you. If you don't offer anything then the reply will be 'patches welcome' which means either offer me something of value in exchange for my time, or offer someone else something and get them to send me the patch.

Re:NeoOffice

[Ash-Fox]

i run OSX, and I'll be sticking with NeoOffice instead.

My reason is the GPL.

Why are you using OS X again?

Re:It was just too slow for me.

[mysidia]

Ported what to what?

Just because there's public demand for something doesn't mean the OSS community works meaningfully to solve that demand.

Re:3.0?

[westlake]

When you live within an office suite for nine hours out of twenty-four, six days out of seven, you should find a new job.
.

Where?

MS Office isn't simply Word or Excel or Outlook or PowerPoint. It is every application that is woven into the MS Office eco-system. Your Small Business Accouting progran, for example.

For your employer, there is no excape. The office suite is in use 24/7/365. Staffing matters. Deadlines matter. Productivity matters.

The temp has to slip into place without a glitch.

Re:NeoOffice

[Ash-Fox]

Because driverless gNewsensian purity is too much work, dear.

One would suspect you would be using a Linux system at least then with the drivers, but you went further than that and used OS X for ease of use.

Now, having been a OS X user and a neooffice user, I am aware of the many faults in Neooffice. From the stability issues to various UI issues and I cannot imagine someone who gives up functionality/ease of use over licensing, would be still using OS X after this.

Or, if I flip this around, would be using neo office for it's lack of ease of use.

Your line is so fine, that I cannot see it.

What about you? Perfectly pure, are we?

No, I don't care too much for licensing schemes. I do understand them however and their philosophies.

What I care about is what I consider superior technology, which is why I use Linux with binary drivers (I truly consider it technologically superior in many ways to any other OS offering out there), VMware (rather than some FOSS solution like dropbox or qemu - I use it for testing and development under the same OS and other OSes), Steam (running under crossover) with my game collection, KDE and it's applications, Firefox (rather than say, Iceweasel) etc.

Things like GPL/LGPL/BSD/MPL/Apache licensing are just frosting to the cake, they don't influence the decisions I make on what system I use.

Re:3.0?

[Registered Coward v2]

Umm... Isn't this old news?? I'm already running OO 3.0, the mirrors had it the other day... Looks fantastic! One more nail in the coffin of MSOffice....

While I like and use NeoOffice for my personal Mac (I like to not pirate software even though I could have from my work machine); OO (and NeoOffice) are barely driving the first nail in the coffin. My work machine has MS Office; and every client I have been at uses it as well. Why? It's the standard and volume licenses are relatively cheap - I doubt very many people pay anywhere near the list price for a copy. As long as it is cheap enough it will remain the overwhelming favorite; "free" is not enough to get people to switch. Here's the challenges as I see them for OO and NeoO:

1) Very few people even know they exist
2) MS Office is teh standard and most people like to play it safe plus
3) MS very aggressively prices its products when needed (such as a full MSOffice suite for $60 for students)
4) People view FOSS with skepticism - how will I get support?; How can I be sure it is reliable?; etc.
5) Many people can pirate a work copy for use at home if needed so it's essentially free anyway.

Re:3.0?

[Registered Coward v2]

While I agree that the grandparent is engaged in some first-rate asshattery, I'd just like to make one comment. You say:

Your accountant doesn't tell you to fix your own damn tax problem, the mechanic doesn't derisively laugh because you don't know how to re-gap your own spark plugs

The difference here is that you are paying your accountant and your mechanic for their expertise. Most of the people who receive comments along the lines of 'write a patch' have not contributed anything. On the Free Software project I co-run, we have a designer on the core team. He provides a lot of really high-quality artwork and some good UI ideas. If he comes to me with a feature request, then it goes quite high on my TODO list. Why? Because he's contributed to the project in ways that I am incapable of replacing with my own effort. I recently refactored a big chunk of my code to make it more reusable for someone else. Why? Because at the same time as asking me to, he sent me a diff fixing a few of my bugs.

Free Software is about cooperation. I only benefit from sharing my improvements if other people do as well. We both benefit from not having to reproduce the other's work, and so can get on with things we want to do much faster. If you want something done, then you have to convince me that it's in my interest to do it for you, usually by offering something in return. Whether this is code, artwork, documentation, or money is up to you. If you don't offer anything then the reply will be 'patches welcome' which means either offer me something of value in exchange for my time, or offer someone else something and get them to send me the patch.

That's fine; but to the OP's point - don't expect people to adopt your software or to embrace FOSS if they get the "write a patch" reply. As far as they are concerned that means it's just another buggy program with no support that's not worth their time to use or install. Beyond that, they will tell others not to bother when the use of FOSS is mentioned.

If all you want is a small community of active participants that's fine and your choice. However, those that want wider adoption of FOSS need to understand how the "write a patch" mentality prevents them from achieving their goals.

Can't wait

[motang]

Can't wait for this to be finalized, I have been using it on my Windows XP machine for a few weeks now and like it very much. Hopefully Ubuntu will updated once 3.0 is out.

You wanted a list

[temcat]

http://osnews.com/permalink?226219
http://osnews.com/permalink?226313
http://osnews.com/permalink?226315

They're old but still mostly valid.

Re:Always felt a bit clunky to me oh and a questio

[Matt Perry]

If you are working with those documents MS Office sucks royally anyway - you are MUCH better off with real publishing software.

What software would you recommend?

Re:3.0?

[lordholm]

If your CD is damaged, you could install the Keynote Demo (http://www.apple.com/iwork/trial/) and just type in your license key...

This assumes that you where using the latest Keynote, but it is probably possible to get a demo for an old release somewhere.

Re:3.0?

[firmamentalfalcon]

What if the job is something he likes to do?

Also, the UI is sometimes important. Though UI may be nice for eyecandy, eyecandy is not nearly as important as the other things a UI includes: mainly efficiency and cleanliness.

Re:3.0?

[celle]

Maybe businessmen should learn to adapt their wordprocessing methods and mindset (just like when they started using word) to what works better just like in everything else they do. When you don't adapt you're often not in business very long. Yes, it's fundamentally a business relationship except that users/businesses get to use the OSS for free and OSS programmers, except in company supported projects, burn up their limited spare time on writing the software for little if any return.

Re:3.0?

[BronsCon]

Director.

Typos, gotta love 'em.

I've used OO.o professionally

[Trackster]

I've used OO.o professionally for years. I never had a single problem transitioning to it from MS Office when I first started (in '05).

Also, I haven't had any serious problems with it except in two areas. The first is that the database component is indeed a toy. That part's useless but I don't use databases much anyway. The second is more important to me though. OOO Draw is an _extremely_ powerful graphics app. It's very easy to use and I've turned out professional quality work with it time and time again. However, it just plain stinks at exporting graphics with transparency and shading to either raster graphics or PDF's. I literally have to use cheap hacks like print screen-then paste-and-smooth to get good raster graphics out of the thing.

Overall, I give OOO a B. It covers enough bases for regular users and small businesses. It's about 80% of MS Office for 100% off the price... Not bad.

Re:3.0?

[BronsCon]

My asshattery was intentional, in response to someone else's intentional asshattery.

If you follow the thread it play out like this:

-----

Complaint about UI on Mac version

Suggestion that Mac Photoshop gurus do a mock-up UI and submit it to the project

Proclamation that said Mac user was, in fact, a UNIX programmer

Suggestion to then skip the mock-up and submit step and do it yourself

-----

The original suggestion was a very valid one; namely, if there's a graphic designer out there who thinks they can come up with a better UI, provide a mock-up of it to the project for consideration.

The asshattish reply led to the asshattish suggestion suggestion.

The fact of the matter is that there is a system in place for fixing these things and complaint about them outside of said system or without suggestions on how to go about fixing the problem, especially comments that fall into both categories, are completely unproductive and generally not welcome.

If you have a problem, talk to a project developer about it by submitting a bug report or commenting on an existing bug ("Hey, I have the same problem, here's when it happens."). If you have a solution to a problem or a suggestion regarding finding a solution to a problem, submit it via that same channel.

If I had to scour the web looking for every random post about a problem with my software, how much time do you think I'd have left to fix it?

Right. That's why there's a centralized place for my users to complain about my software. If they don't complain there, I don't see it. I have users who understand this and I have users who don't. I have seen my users who do understand flame my users who don't understand and, frankly, I appreciate it; though I would appreciate it more if they would direct those people to the proper channel to file their complaints, so I can flame them directly for ignoring the big text on the log-in screen on their desktop before I thank them and begin working on fixing the problem.

Yes, this is a corporate environment. My users are my employees. They were trained as to the company policies regarding the reporting of software issues. Would I treat people who have a choice this way? Well, if they know where they got the software and can't figure out that's where they should complain about it, honestly, what do you think?

Re:3.0?

[BronsCon]

What has the person who actually complained about the contributions of others done that gives him the right to do so?

I was suggesting a solution to his complaint.

Nothing to mozilla

[matt me]

Look at some of the small bug numbers (2000) on the mozilla bugzilla.

Firefox 3 has regressions from Netscape 4. For example, you can no longer middle click a submit button to submit the form in a new tab. That bug is ten years old. Someone commented, "if this was an other kind of mistake, it would be elementary school by now".

Re:3.0?

[Hucko]

Dvorak discredited? But I've just begun teaching myself!

Re:3.0?

[emjoi_gently]

Of course small companies have to exchange documents with the outside world. Perhaps even more so. You are very reliant on your clients and suppliers and have to bend to interact with them neatly.

Re:3.0?

[shaitand]

'Your accountant doesn't tell you to fix your own damn tax problem, the mechanic doesn't derisively laugh because you don't know how to re-gap your own spark plugs,'

If I were an accountant or a mechanic and you didn't pay me you best your arse I'd tell you where you can stick your tax problem and spark plugs.

In the commercial software world, the interface is being designed for you with the intention of making it appealing to you. In the FOSS world the interface is being designed for the developer, who is writing the software for their own use. Not for random other people who are freeloading on the project.

If you don't like something about the project, you are welcome to A) Try to convince someone on the project of your point (and they still might not be willing to do the work for you) B) Write a patch and fork your change if those working on the project don't agree or C) Pay someone to do B for you, maybe even the developers.

Beggars can't be choosers.

Re:It was just too slow for me.

[shaitand]

FF3 is a dramatic improvement over FF2. The memory leak issues are finally fixed entirely. The browser is stable and extremely fast.

I'm an on-site tech and install FF3 on varied configurations and systems dozens of times a day. Whatever you experienced it was local to your machine.

Like doing layout on the photocopier

[dbIII]

Why? PDFs are useful for distributing material in a reliable way. They have never been designed to be an easily editable format

Oddly enough many office clerks have missed the point entirely and require PDF editing stuff to get things done the way they want to - just like how they used to make composition changes on the photocopier. While I think there should be specialist PDF editing stuff around (and I've done it myself with the gimp on an image level and little changes in vi on the text level) I don't think it really belongs in a mainstream office package. For one thing I like to send my resume in PDF and be reasably sure a recruitment agency is not going to hack it to unusable bits like I've seen idiots do when I've sent it in MS Word format. Also for contracts you want a print format like PDF and not an editable format like MS Word or MS Excel - I am astounded when these are sent in easily changable formats.

Re:It was just too slow for me.

[aussie_a]

Just because there's public demand for something doesn't mean the OSS community works meaningfully to solve that demand.

That isn't what all the OSS zealots would have you believe.

Re:3.0?

[kimvette]

In an economy like this, if your job provides your living expenses PLUS savings and discretionary spending, you keep your job even if it sucks or you have an asshat for a boss.

Re:Always felt a bit clunky to me oh and a questio

[ddyer-bennet]

Which? The documentation?

Since the alternative for me is Microsoft, whose documentation is voluminous but horrid, I actually find the Open Office documentation a reason to use it.

Re:3.0?

[The Master Control P]

It comes down to what you want from FOSS.

If we're content with small closed communities that play only to themselves, that's a perfectly valid goal. It's a lot easier, certainly. You get it the way you want and basically enter stasis.

I can tell you from experience that's what's happened to BZflag - There are still fundamental bugs in it's collision detection that have been there for about 10 years that no one has any intention of fixing. I'd estimate it's played by the same exact 1 or 2 thousand people total, and it's what they want. Never mind that about 99.5% of other game players want things like vertical aiming, hit points, terrain, and a working physics engine. Never mind that my friend honestly couldn't understand how any FPS could lack such things, the closed community has what it wants and has zero intention of venturing elsewhere. And that's their right... I just hope they know that it will never be accepted outside a tiny niche. Games might not be the best example subject, but it's the perfect demonstration of the mentality. If a community does this, it will either contently go nowhere or be furious at it's perpetual inability to match, let alone exceed, it's commercial competition.

So which is it going to be? If we're content with FOSS being a set of walled-in gardens then by all means let's call anyone who isn't a programmer that has the gall to criticize our interfaces or feature sets a worthless freeloader and tell them to stick it up their asses. I personally hope to see a blooming open-source metropolis supplant the closed model, but if the echo-chamber submit-a-patch-or-STFU mentality wins, It Will Never Ever Happen. I'll repeat the point of my original post: There are very, very few things that will repulse potential users or developers more than snide derision at their suggestions.

tl;dr: If you put up a sign that says "free automotive help" and then tell anyone who has ideas that differ from yours to go fuck themselves, don't be suprised when people not only keep paying for car maintenence despite the availablity of a free alternative but tell others to avoid you.

Re:Always felt a bit clunky to me oh and a questio

[kimvette]

Check out Scribus -- it's a F/OSS desktop publishing program. From the Scribus web site:

Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout. Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.

However, a major essential feature it's missing is import filters to migrate away from other publishing programs - especially that crap Microsoft Publisher so many people have locked themselves into. However, there are free services to convert the files to free oneself from the grip of Microsoft Publisher.

Re:3.0?

[SanityInAnarchy]

I'm actually typing Dvorak right now :) But I think that his study has been more-or-less discredited.

*sigh* Here we go again...

In short, no, it hasn't. I don't remember how or why I know this, but vaguely, I remember that there was some accusation that he was so directly involved in the testing procedure that he could easily affect the results. I also remember that this part was completely untrue.

I like Linux, but consistency is not its strong suit :)

Then what does it say about OS X that, in some ways, I found this feature to be less consistent?

I know, that's the opposite of what I said before -- and, in most apps, OS X is very consistent about what these mean. Even in Terminal.

What's not consistent is how the fsck you're actually supposed to go to the beginning or end of a line. Most places, that's command+left/right... except in Firefox, at least if you're not editing something, that does back/forward... or in Terminal, where it's shift+home/end, and is really up to the Unix app in question.

Except in vim, where that doesn't work at all.

Firefox is a third-party app, so maybe not worth mentioning. But Terminal is preloaded, even advertised on the Apple website. Granted, it would've been a lot of work to overhaul every Unix app they shipped, from bash to less -- but that's exactly what they did with GUI apps!

I'm sure some of my Mac friends could find plenty of other, better examples, but that was the biggest one for me. I'd have gotten used to it eventually -- thankfully, I only needed the Mac for a week or two before my new Ubuntu laptop came.

I think the main reason that Linux never catches on is the near complete lack of advertising.

IBM gave Linux a Superbowl ad. Several, if I remember.

Granted, they didn't actually say what Linux is, and they were talking more about open source. They could have been ads for free culture. But it has had advertising.

It worked for Firefox, but it hasn't (yet) worked for Linux. Maybe it can work for Ubuntu, at some point...

Agreed, though I see no problem in MENTIONING it in a list of other disadvantages.

Fair enough, but that doesn't fit the hammer analogy.

Re:3.0?

[shaitand]

'If we're content with small closed communities that play only to themselves, that's a perfectly valid goal. It's a lot easier, certainly. You get it the way you want and basically enter stasis.'

No, that is the result of refusing to accept patches. Suggest that someone take the initiative for something they want is simply choosing not to be someone elses bitch.

If I get myself some tea and offer to fill your glass while I'm at it and you tell me you want milk instead I'll tell you fetch it yourself. The same is true when I scratch my software itch.

If you want a feature the developers aren't interested in and they invite you to submit a patch, that is an opportunity. Contribute in some way, hire a developer to work on gimp. Appeal to some of the corporate paid developers who DO have the goal of mass adoption. Hell, write some documentation for the project and you are more likely to get a slice of developer attention.

Some projects like bzflag might well be in stasis. It could be for many reasons but its not for asking people to contribute their fair share. More likely it is because they don't want the features in question and they aren't about to accept your patches at all!

Re:3.0?

[cerberusss]

What I'm noticing in my small company, is that I send out lots of documents for which it's not necessary for clients to edit these. Thus these all become PDF.

For data exchange, plain CSV is often used. That format predates MS Excel by at least two centuries :-)

Re:3.0?

[The Master Control P]

I started writing an elaborate reply, but I realized that there's no point; It's not a matter of deducing which idea is right if you start from different axioms.

If FOSS's goal is simply collective itch-scratching, OK. Don't expect to be relevant to anyone outside a closed community.

The sentiment expressed by Linus, that the destruction of Microsoft will be an entirely unintentional side-effect of the Open Source movement, is demonstrably incorrect exactly because of the closed-community phenomenon. Programmers build their walled gardens, and being intimiately familiar with the software they've written simply don't see faults, or don't see the faults as faults, and thus the program stagnates at near-unusability for others.

And again, if that's all one wants, fine. I personally hope to see the aforementioned blooming metropolis of open software that displaced the closed model, and if that's ever going to happen then the idea that you can't have a voice unless you've contributed has to go.

There's plenty wrong with my computer: If I try to use my video capture card without reloading a kernel module with settings looked up on an obscure wiki, it will lock my computer up dead. Mplayer has serious issues with audio sync with .flv (think multiple seconds per minute in some cases). The audio recorder programs for both KDE and Gnome are an exercise in frustration [I just want to hit the fucking red button and save a .wav, aaaaaauuugh!]. Kontact seems to be having some scaling issues as the number of messages from my RSS feeds drifts towards fifty thousand. It was very stupid of Gentoo to install x86 binaries of grub and grub-install for a no-multilib profile. It also kept clobbering my resolv.conf on boot until I killed some line in some archaic boot script.

Are you going to tell me to learn 6 or 7 codebases, from all levels of the software stack and all of them way outside my area of interest or expertise, before I'm allowed to say that these are real problems which need to be fixed? Do you seriously think I need to look up some obscure capture cards and submit documentation before bttv developers should pay attention to the fact that bttv nukes my machine upon use unless I re-modprobe it with the right -card flag, or Gentoo devs fix whatever it is that's autodetecting wrong (Mandrake 8.2 got it right nearly 5 years ago)?

And once more, if that's how you want to feel, OK. Just don't expect outsiders to take Open Source that's done that way seriously.

Re:Always felt a bit clunky to me oh and a questio

[temcat]

Just finished 600-page translation in Word 2003 SP 2 under Vista - no problems, not a single crash (!), even saves were mighty quick.

Re:It was just too slow for me.

[temcat]

SoftMaker Office 2008 is lean and mean, though proprietary. It has excellent MS compatibility (way better than OO.o). Costs less than $100. Doesn't have macro recorder though, which is a shame. (It has a VBA analog that's called BasicMaker)

Re:Always felt a bit clunky to me oh and a questio

[temcat]

No.

OpenOffice? Works like a charm.

[JSchoeck]

I've switched to OpenOffice about 2 years ago and wrote several papers and reports with it. Compared to MS Word I had much fewer problems while still being able to use all the features I need.

For me, OpenOffice simply works and I will never return to MS. The only problem is that the layout gets a bit mixed up when working on MS Word files with people that use Word. Simple solution: don't use Word. ;)

Latex is easy..

[js_sebastian]

..so long as you don't have to write your own classes/styles etc. I've never programmed in latex myself.

Most of the time you can just download a style file from the website of whatever you are writing for (or use one of the standard ones if no style is provided) and then start writing text.

Yes, you need to learn to write \chapter{Title} to get a new chapter but it really pays off when you cut 3 chapters out of a document and paste them into another one with totally different formatting and it all just works.

Try doing that with word. You either paste with formatting and it's all formatted wrong, or paste without formatting and it's all standard text. Either way you have to reformat everything.

Plus versioning inside the document format is just a bad idea, a simple text-based format like latex can be versioned with any standard versioning tool and really allows collaboration with any number of co-authors.

Re:3.0?

[HuguesT]

Eye of the beholder. I can't believe how much stupid bad press the Gimp is getting. It's a Free application, no one is forcing you to even look at it !

Pixelmator's site is horribly commercial to my eyes, full of needless animations, of superlative words like "breathtaking" and full of icons all pointing to the link "Buy".

The Gimp's site is lightweight and points to the documentation in 15 languages and the source code. Definitely does not look like crap to me, but each to their own.

BTW Pixelmator is an open-source success story, since it's core techology is ImageMagick and Cairo.

Re:Daring? Wrong brand

[TaoPhoenix]

You missed Version 1.0.

It was Exciting! It was Daring! Not a single feature was recognizable!

Unfortunately, this created a problem when it was time to get something Out The Door for DaBoss.

What they have now is the "Transition Away from MS Office." You can fork/skin the UI later to suit your whim.

Re:It was just too slow for me.

[mysidia]

That's more like an equivalent to Opera than FF.

While the software may be great, being non-free/non-open source is a dealkiller for converting the masses to it.

Because you see, it costs them to give it a test spin for 6 months.

People are definitely more likely to try out a free product, even though they've already invested in M$ Office, than to buy yet another product.

Think of what a waste of cash it is to have bought two word processors; there is a psychological impediment, due to the belief of "sunk cost" in terms of their M$ Office investment.

Re:3.0?

[BrokenHalo]

I haven't spent enough time in 2007 or 2008 to really comment well, but 2004 on the Mac is a pretty nicely done Mac application.

Agreed. I have Office 2004 on my Mac laptop, and it's OK. Though in practice, I usually use NeoOffice, since I actually prefer it.

No, I was talking about Office 2007 (haven't tried 2008), which I hate, loathe and despise. MS seems to have gone out of their way to break the interface to force everybody into a new learning curve. Which, in my opinion, is a good bonus point for OOo/NeoOffice, since anyone with a reasonable grip on earlier versions of Word (or even WordPerfect) shouldn't have any difficulty with the OSS project.

Buying two word processors may even be smart

[temcat]

It definitely costs money to try out even free software - just not in license costs. And SoftMaker Office has a trial version (though unlimited only for 7 days.) And if you consider a wide-scale deployment, I'm sure SoftMaker will be happy to offer you full version for longer evaluation.

IMHO the smartest overall migration strategy for productivity software would be to divide users into categories by tasks they perform and compatibility level they require, then provide each category of users with the software that is just enough for them. For example, "power users" that require a lot of features, 100% compatibility and high productivity will use MS Office, and for "light users" OO.o will suffice. The downside to this is that you have to perform the study (for non-zero cost) and then support different office suites, but monetary benefits may outweigh the costs anyway.

Re:3.0?

[shaitand]

'If FOSS's goal is simply collective itch-scratching, OK. Don't expect to be relevant to anyone outside a closed community.'

FOSS has been working that way for decades and I'd dare say its fairly relevant outside a closed community.

It's not a question of listening, its a question of prioritizing. There are only so many hours in the day and developers can only work on so much. They have to choose and just like anyone else, they are going to choose to spend that time working on their concerns and not yours.

If you are a developer contributing to their project or even another project then your concerns are a higher priority.

If you help with documentation, again your concerns are higher priority.

If you are paying them, then your concerns ARE their concerns.

If you are some random guy who contributes nothing to their project or even a project they use then you are just a freeloader and your concerns are of the lowest priority.

That doesn't mean you get no voice. If you are bright, you'll use a paid distribution and present your concerns to them. You paid them, your concerns are higher priority to them. Their concerns in turn are likely of much higher priority to the developers of the project in question.

Nothing is in stasis. The system works well, with things becoming more and more stable and user friendly every day.

'Just don't expect outsiders to take Open Source that's done that way seriously.'

Pretty much all open source works that way.

It seems to work out much better than closed source. Your little bug crashes YOUR computer. Vista crashes millions. The major commercial Anti-Virus apps trash half the systems they are installed on.

Re:3.0?

[MightyYar]

MS seems to have gone out of their way to break the interface to force everybody into a new learning curve.

I agree that their approach was strange... I mean, until 2007, their office suite allowed shortcut keys from Lotus 1-2-3 to work! Now they dispense from including a MENU BAR??? What were they thinking?

On the Mac, I can't buy 2008 because it doesn't support PC macros. That's the main reason that I use Excel, so that's straight out. OO.org doesn't fit the bill here, either because I have to actually distribute these things to the MS Office crowd at my job, and they won't install OO.org. I already lost the fight to build a tool with Python instead of Matlab, even though Matlab was far from necessary and it would have saved them thousands of dollars on licenses. No one knows Python, so...

Re:3.0?

[MightyYar]

I'm actually glad that Apple left the BSD layer more or less alone and treats it as a compatibility layer... can you imagine trying to port all of these unix apps if they made their flavor of unix strange?

Firefox is not very Mac-like, though it is getting better. I guess that is why alternate browsers are still pretty popular on the Mac. Hell, I'm pretty big into Firefox, but sometimes I use Safari until the lack of ad blocker drives me back.

In earlier versions of OS X there were worse interface inconsistencies because Mac has two very different APIs, but most of these have been corrected... or maybe most apps are just Cocoa now. The worst violations now seem to be X11 applications... but again, I'm glad that they didn't try to force something and just left it as a compatibility layer.

I don't find much consistency in Linux unless you are talking about using apps that share a common toolkit. The Gnome apps are pretty darned consistent with one another... as are the KDE apps. Run a KDE app within the Gnome environment, though, and it really stands out.

IBM gave Linux a Superbowl ad. Several, if I remember.

I wasn't saying that no open source ads exist, just that you need advertising to achieve popularity. I mean, I'm sure you could point out some fringe case of something that became popular by word of mouth, but in general this is not the case. I'd love it if OO.org just became a standard, but frankly I think that this is a pipe dream without some advertising campaign. Firefox is an excellent model, and has done very well without breaking the bank.

Re:3.0?

[SanityInAnarchy]

can you imagine trying to port all of these unix apps if they made their flavor of unix strange?

Except that if you don't port, people complain (and rightly so) that the app is too different. Any X11 app is automatically going to have at least one thing obviously "wrong" with it -- command+Q will very likely quit more than one app.

I don't find much consistency in Linux unless you are talking about using apps that share a common toolkit. The Gnome apps are pretty darned consistent with one another... as are the KDE apps. Run a KDE app within the Gnome environment, though, and it really stands out.

However, run a GNOME app (it's an acronym, actually) in a modern KDE environment, and it doesn't, so much -- there's actually a gtk+ skin that implements qt themes. In other words, pretty much the whole KDE look is mirrored in the GTK app.

But then, pretty much the only GTK app I use on a regular basis is Firefox, and even the difference between the two, at least in keystrokes, isn't much. Certainly nowhere near the difference between text in TextMate and text in Terminal, or an X11 GUI vs a Cocoa GUI. I won't even mention Classic.

Not that there aren't the occasional oddballs -- TCL/TK apps are going to look hideous, no matter what your main environment is. And most of the more interesting alternate window managers are crazily different. But these are the exception, not the rule, and not something any decent platform can avoid.

Ah, well -- I started this discussion saying it was my own bias, and it looks like that's still true, somewhat. But I'm not sure it's possible to have an unbiased discussion about this, unless we go find the guy who only ever uses Linux VTs. And he'll hate them all equally.

I wasn't saying that no open source ads exist, just that you need advertising to achieve popularity.

I'm just saying, it doesn't look like these ads had much of an impact.

But maybe you're right -- maybe it takes a certain critical mass of exposure before you start to see results. But I won't speculate -- marketing is such a black art anyway.

Re:3.0?

[MightyYar]

Ah, well -- I started this discussion saying it was my own bias, and it looks like that's still true, somewhat. But I'm not sure it's possible to have an unbiased discussion about this, unless we go find the guy who only ever uses Linux VTs. And he'll hate them all equally.

Nuthin' wrong with preferences... and it's not like you said anything that's incorrect. Just a civil discussion :) Personally, I like Linux and MacOS - just happen to be using MacOS because of momentum and app availability. Though if I were deciding today, I'd sure have to look at Linux more now that Wine lets you run many Windows apps. Back when I started, Wine was a cool novelty. With everything running the same processor and virtual machines and stability all around, it matter a lot less anyway. Even Windows is stable enough that I can run a Linux VM in it at full screen and not really notice.

I'm just saying, it doesn't look like these ads had much of an impact.

I think IBM is doing pretty well... the superbowl ad was an IBM ad, after all. Firefox popularity exploded after they started making marketing into a priority. Of course, it helps that it also happens to be a really nice browser... I agree that it isn't a clear relationship - lots of heavily advertised products fail, after all. Just my humble opinion :)

Re:Always felt a bit clunky to me oh and a questio

[Matt Perry]

Check out Scribus

Thanks for the link to this. It looks like an awesome program.