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OpenOffice.org 3.0 Is Officially Here
SNate writes "After a grinding three-year development cycle, the OpenOffice.org team has finally squeezed out a new release. New features include support for the controversial Microsoft OOXML file format, multi-page views in Writer, and PDF import via an extension. Linux Format has an overview of the new release, asking the question: is it really worth the 3.0 label?"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
/. ed already.
"TV, a medium as it is neither rare nor well done." Ernie Kovacs
It's not really the summary at fault. Seems like the whole http://www.openoffice.org/ is giving the same response.
Look, it's simple: 3.0 is not really 3.0, but it should be considered 3.0-developer-alpha-gold. The next release will be 3.2-beta-silver-GTi, followed quickly by 3.1.1.0-gold-gold-always-believe-in-your-soul, which may (or may not) be ready for end users. Provided no show-stopper bugs are found in that (& if they are they'll just be re-classified as "WORKSFORME" and the submitter flamed), the final 3.0.1.45 version will be released to end users (apart from those in Arizona and Ohio. They have to wait for 3.1.5)
This is so obvious you'd have to be an idiot not to understand it! Duh!
The main page is ./'ed but it appears the mirrors are still fine. Just use the mirror list in Google Cache.
http://74.125.113.104/search?q=cache:chsA7FTyP3wJ:distribution.openoffice.org/mirrors/+mirrors+openoffice&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
I think liquidpele just uncovered that Open Office is actually subsidized by the Pastafarian Church.
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
Or it will be once the openoffice.org sysadmin fixes their server. Major egg on the face there.
Anyway, this release has one feature that I've been longing after for years now: proper support for marginal comments.
While OO.o has long been capable of opening documents with comments in them, the user interface for reading those comments sucked HARD. The presence of a note was indicated by a tiny, light yellow rectangle at the end of the sentence. Easy to miss. And then if you wanted to actually read the comment, you had to hover your mouse over it to trigger a small yellow pop-up box containing the comment text (which would be cut off if it was a long comment). Basically, actually READING a commented document in OO.o was not practical.
This new version is much, much better. I tried it out using one of the copies that hit the mirrors before the official release, and it's soooo much better. Comments now actually show up in the margins, they've got little lines connecting them to the section of the document they apply to, and they're color coded by author. Hallelujah! Now I can finally quit depending on Word for grading student papers.
The only thing of any interest, then, is the PDF import/editing/export. Ironic, considering that the ad's on /. for this article seemed to consist mostly of Adobe Acrobat ads...
But if it really *can* import any PDF, allow basic editing and export, that could really be a boon. Other apps that allow that are either incredibly expensive, horrible to use or just too out-of-date. Does it support "encrypted" PDF's if you have the passwords, etc.? Does it allow image/text editing/extraction from a PDF? If so, then this update would be worth it for that alone.
The rest is just eye candy and basic bug fixes (e.g. >256 columns in Calc).
I have not RTFM. Nor the link. In true /. spirit, Let me state this - A new version number is sometimes needed for other reasons than adding more features.
At work I use Office 2007 from MS. Of the five systems at home, all but one use a flavour of linux with Ooo 2.x (mostly Ubuntu, but have an OLPC too). I recently decided to work on a work doc from home, but only when I wanted to open it, I realized it was docx format. I had almost given up - Ooo 2.x came before the 2007, so I did not expect support. But some desparate googling brought me to a filter that I could add, and lo presto, I could use the doc in Ooo! I had honestly not expected the functionality in Ooo 2.x!
I had given up based on version numbering and release dates, and most would too. A newer version number might prompt more of us to try harder. It helps!
Ashraya
How could they possibly implement OOXML support in OpenOffice? We've been hearing over and over how the OOXML spec is so convoluted and ill-specified that it is impossible for anyone but Microsoft to implement!
In a few days 3.01, 3.02 and 3.03 will be coming out, so I'll wait for those fixes to come out before I put down my hard-earned money
Best feature for me? New support for viewing a document as two pages side by side on the screen.
That alone for me is worth the upgrade for me, as I can now see two full size A4 pages on my monitor at home whilst typing. Thanks guys! that was a major annoyance with me.
OOXML *is* controversial and I expect a flame war - but they have read-only and I suspect it is a justified inclusion simply to keep abreast of current MS Office and help encourage adoption. I predict MS will be coming out with lots of new versions of this format, so lets see them keep pace....
Actually, it was down before Slashdot posted the story. I tried to access it a couple of hours ago, and it was down then. (Albeit without the ContentHelmNoodle error.)
Check your local friendly mirror. ;-)
They should just kill the minor versioning altogether and move to a "red label"/"black label" system.
Despite your atheist propaganda, you cannot deny that we whitnessing a miragulous miracle of HIs widsom and glory in full extend.
HIs noodle appendages haveth thouched the server and thus it displays his words to enlighten the unbelievers.
Behold the word: "ContentHelmNoodle"
In this time of unrest and crisis his tells us to trust in his tomatoe sauce and that we will be protected by his mercy and meatballs.
Finally! I can now recommend it to all my Mac friends.
-P
It's because you haven't configured your memory settings in OOo correctly otherwise it'd load almost instantly.
Send your resume as PDF. As long as even different Word versions can't open other Word files correctly there is no hope formatting will be preserved.
And if 'they' insist on Word files, you wouldn't want to work there anyway, as they are clearly deluded and stupid beyond measure.
Not kidding either, actually.
I think he is probably referring to the time to load a large complex writer document, which though it was a lot faster in the 2.x releases than 1.x is still slower than word.
Sounds like the default settings suck.
Its a fucking word processor - you shouldn't have to nergle your snerds correctly to get it working.
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
ContentHelmNoodle?! WTF?
The next thing we'll be serving our pages with ParkingBrakeTurboAubergines.
I "squeeze out a new release" several times a day. From different repositories, too.
I record my sleeptalking
Well I only use the Writer for majority of the time and I really welcome all the nifty changes that are in place. Good thing it is finally released, so when will the Linux distributions start to update OO 2.x to 00 3.0?
Openoffice.org has been KO'd. Here's where you can snag a torrent file though:
http://borft.student.utwente.nl/~adrian/bt.php
On a stock Dell low-end Dimension C521 running Vista Business, Open Office Writer loads in 9 seconds the first time, and in 1 second thereafter. Not really an issue anymore. Most of my apps take 5-10 seconds to start on this box.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
I work for a company that buys me MS Office. Given that I am out $0.00 for either OO or MSO, is it worth giving this a try?
Before you design for reuse, make sure to design it for use.
You obviously don't know anything about the 60's. At the time, people under 40 mostly supported the Weathermen, because they knew then that their government did not represent them and was in the employ of the military industrial complex. And he was not a "terrorist" -- he was a revolutionary. There is a difference. Washington was a revolutionary. The difference between them is that Washington won. As for your analysis as proof. Are your really that stupid? Yes, yes, you are.
You're right, OOo should release two versions, one for old computers and one for newer computers.
I registered a bug with OO 6.5 years ago, still unfixed, that causes spreadsheets to give utterly wrong results in even the simplest calculations. Sometimes OO treats a number as a string, and assigns it a value of "0" in calculations, e.g., 1+1 could equal 0 or 1.
Either OO should throw an error "can't treat a string as a number" or it should guess the number of the string is a valid number. But a major undetectable error like this is murderous, as has been testified to by the folks reporting the same bug after I did.
(Note the OO bug tracker seems to be having problems at this moment, so the link doesn't work.)
they're lysdexic.
Did you try opening it with the Open Office you already had installed? Because 2.4, last I checked, can read docx under Ubuntu. I've only ever used this feature once, but it worked fine.
Or possibly it should configure its own damn settings, and not try to do something retarded when theres memory pressure...
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
Maybe they should have just eaten a lot of prunes.
Dude, Symphony might suck giant donkey balls, or make users so happy they crap rainbows, but either way, since you haven't even tried it, of course your opinion is "relatively worthless" -- I'd even go so far as to say "completely worthless". Sheesh. At least try it out before slagging it.
(And no, I don't care about Symphony one way or the other -- something about this "I've never used it but I'm still qualified to bitch about it" attitude just pisses me off.)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I'm curious -- if the string is, in fact, wholly numeric, then what's the beef? How is this different from implicit casting? Or is implicit casting also wrong?
I'm not baiting, I'm actually confused by your ire.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Everything else has tabs nowadays, perhaps splitable tabs will come next in the form of tab views. You could have different zooms as tabs or different docs have have multiple tabs showing as a split view - then you could edit docs side by side which would be great for refactoring.
You can still download OpenOffice from one of the mirrors in the list on this page: http://ftp.stardiv.de/mirmon/mirror-state.html
OpenOffice.org: "It's fully compliant and supports Microsoft OOXML file format."
Microsoft: "AHAAAAHH!! That's not possible. Uh, ... I mean ... uh, ..." (Psst, hey, did we miss something? How'd they do that?)
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
Hi! You must be a Python programmer! ;)
(Full disclosure: I have two open source Python projects that I'm currently working on.)
My blog
Why did the OO.org guys go to the trouble of coding all the way up to 3.0.0RC4 for OS X PPC and then not release a final version? Why bother with all that effort if you're not going to actually release it?
I make my resume in OO.o and save it to .ODF.
I then take screenshots of it (or print to postscript), then paste the cropped screenshots into OO.o and save that result as a .DOC file.
And hey, it keeps formatting exactly as you want it! :)
Actually, I'm a translator, but yes! I have dabbled in Python. :) Does your previous comment mean that you don't like the implicit casting in Python? If so, why? Again, I'm not trolling -- I'm honestly interested in your views.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
They work fine.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
torrent magnet link for the Win32 English version, with JRE: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:IK2EAKZIEQ7VDH5CYDPYQ6MLL4FEUNLG Regular torrent link for Win32 English version with JRE: http://borft.student.utwente.nl/~adrian/torrentphp/torrent.php/OOo_3.0.0_Win32Intel_install_wJRE_en-US.exe.torrent Only 5 DLs, 51 seeds (including me) at the moment. The download was fairly quick.
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
This happened last time. Not one week after I download the 150MB+ installer, they come out with a new version.
Need an automatic screenshot taker? Try here.
Does your previous comment mean that you don't like the implicit casting in Python? If so, why? Again, I'm not trolling -- I'm honestly interested in your views.
Cheers,
Well, yes and no. It's a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can be very powerful -- grab a number from a string and start using it with no need to convert it. OTOH, it can cause subtle problems which you may not notice at first. My first programming languages were C and Pascal, so the implicit casting in Python is kind of weird, but kind of cool in a way.
I think a good programmer can spot such problems. But should we expect spreadsheet designers to be good programmers?
My blog
The official site which chooses which mirror to redirect you to is still up. You can use the form here to be redirected to a mirror for the version you'd like to download:
http://openoffice.bouncer.osuosl.org/download-form.php
I would be happy with the program as long as as a damn spell checker is functional after you install OOo. I installed the beta the other day and it seriously took me a half an hour of scanning through forums and messing around to get it working. And this was after already knowing that I had to do something from much earlier releases! Sure, it's easy once you know how, but it's a really bad first impression when you recommend the program as a alternative to MS word, only to end up receiving a phone call because the thing isn't spell checking! If a web browser can do it, there's not excuse for this. Of course, OOo isn't the only program guilty of this, (I'm looking at you too Abi word!)
I heard Scott McNealy speak last week. I asked about OOo in the context of team projects where everyone else is using Windows/Office. I wasn't given an answer. The problem with OOo is that it's best for 'home' users or people that don't collaborate at all. For individuals it's perfect, but you won't be asked to join any projects if everyone knows your documents will be full of weird margins and text sizes.
I'm not a programmer. However, I do design spreadsheets. I can't imagine why a designer would intentionally pass a string to a function expecting a number. If it's a matter of end-user input, use data validation.
The spreadsheet designers put strings into formulas...
Why would you do this?
Request a Linux Shockwave player here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/email/wishform/
"Forbidden Links, Forbidden Fruits; Nothing to Eat, Nothing to Poot".
(Yeh, i know it's lame... but some may see it funny just the same...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
causes a Church of the Poisoned Hind, you'll need MaxiPriest to restore you from having gone blind...
(Sorry, this from the prunester runester...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
"Anyway, this release has one feature that I've been longing after for years now: proper support for marginal comments."
I hope you don't forget to remove disparaging (marginal) remarks from the margin/s...., hehehehe
(My comments in the margins we not truly bad, but the system devise it had me bad...)
(Prunester Runester/Punster Munster attacks!)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Wouldn't that have been a better starting point than that thing they call Symphony, which is quite a let-down to me, as I was hoping SmartSuite would have been the basis. Symphony is the name of an earlier Lotus product that got eclipsed by Lotus 1-2-3 and Lotus Approach.
I am most deeply saddened that IBM simply cannot strip out the stuff to which they do not own patents, then ask the Open Source community to restore the broken functionality, then encourage people to comb the code and rebuilt then non-IBM patents version into a patent-free NEW SMART SUITE.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
are reminding me of "Return of the Living Dead", where two characters woke up from the gas leaked from the drum.
The younger one said to the older one, "You stupid asshole!"
The older one said, "You better watch your TONGUE BOY if you like this job."
"LIKE THIS *JOB*????" exclaimed the younger one....
Do you like your job? (hehehe)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Ummm, Python is strongly typed. Try to add "1" and 1 sometime and see what happens. I think you have it confused with Perl.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
A Linux x86_64 (64-bit) version of OpenOffice 3 is available from the openoffice.org website.
Prior versions were available for download only in Linux/i386 versions. If you wanted a native 64-bit version you would either have to compile it yourself (which is supposed to be a real undertaking, though I've never tried it myself) or simply use the one that your distribution provides.
The filename for the 64-bit Linux version is OOo_3.0.0_LinuxX86-64_install_en-US.tar.gz
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Then consider switching the entire project team to OpenOffice. It's free (unlike MS-Office, where as a user community you're forced to upgrade when the first team member starts using the MS-Office-du-jour he got "for free" with his new laptop).
I've had consistently bad experience with collaboration using MS-Office because of incompatibilities between MS-Office revisions and the cost of rectifying that situation.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
> It's one of those things that used to pop up and ask us to buy stuff before adblocker came out.
The internet still has those!? I thought they vanished several years ago because I haven't seen one in so long.
The catch phrase these days is "the Cloud". Google Docs is now the new competitor to MS Office. OpenOffice.org is doomed to a 1995-2007 world. The rest of us will move on and up. I am alread 95% Google Docs. I do all my financing, testing, and data collecting from it. I have been using in almost entirely since I picked up my Teaching Certification with Dallas ISD. I now use it for lesson plans, worksheets, presentations, lectures, and just about everything else. Google Docs leaves MS Office and OOo in the dust when it comes to portability. I do all my work at home, and don't even have to worry about which flash drive it was saved on. I know its safe in the Clouds.
I've given up on Slashdot's comment scores.
Sure.
>>> import decimal
>>> d=decimal.Decimal
>>> a="1"
>>> b=1
>>> print d(a)+d(b)
2
My blog
Great link! Forbidden You don't have permission to access /servlets/ContentHelmNoodle on this server.
Apache Server at www.openoffice.org Port 80
Download from your favorite distro: Debian Experimental already has it in and works well within KDE 4.1.2 and Gnome. I've been using the RC candidates for a while.
As long as we're casting about:
:-)
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
....the opposite of irony is ebony
To sit at 3-oh as the prince of your chair.
[apologies to Will Smith]
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Sort of answering the thread: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/OpenOfficeorg-Grows-Up/?kc=rss
When Sun Microsystems bought the little-known StarOffice productivity suite in 1999, and soon thereafter released the product's code base as open-source software, it was unclear how far the arguably quixotic initiative might reachâ"and what damage it could possibly wreak on Microsoft's ironclad grip on the office productivity market.
Now, nine years later, Sun is on the verge of a major 3.0 release of the project that grew up around that code base, OpenOffice.org. While OpenOffice.org hasn't achieved the same measure of mainstream adoption as its ideological cousin, the Firefox Web browser, the freely available office suite has helped advance the state of file format standardization, to the extent that Microsoft first developed its own open file format and is now prepared to include support for the ISO-standard OpenDocument format in Office 2007.
It wasn't IBM but Sun... My Goof!
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Ooo is often VERY good at importing MS files, sometimes it's better at it than than MS apps, because the Ooo guys know that their code has to respond elegantly to unexpected departures from the strict file specs due to undocumented MS wrinkles. So if you use MSWord, you should probably have a copy of Ooo installed too, for emergency file-recovery purposes: if you ever get a corrupted Word file that Word refuses to read, there's a fair chance that Ooo will still be able to import it (and resave it in a format that Word can read).
Eric Baird
Blowing things up that don't belong to you may be antisocial, but doesn't automatically make someone a terrorist. Same goes for graffiti, public demonstrations, shoplifting and civil disobedience.
Terrorism is about leveraging disproportionate fear to achieve political ends, often with a deliberate randomisation factor to spread fear more widely (sort of like the the inverse of the lottery's "It could be you" slogan).
Similarly, you don't have to blow things up or destroy property or create immediate physical harm to be a terrorist. One can "terrorise" with dummy bombs or fake bomb threats, or threats relating to third parties ("boogeymen").
In fact, technically, what the Bush administration did when they used unrealistic warnings about an Iraqi WMD programme to insist that the US population supported their invasion, could be argued as being terrorism. "Do exactly what we say or the terrorists will get you" could be argued as being a form of terrorism if the threat is unrealistic, as could "Let us do what we want or the terrorists win".
So, given Condi's infamous warning about mushroom clouds, the attempt to push through draconian legislation in the wake of 9-11, the insistence on the need to invade Iraq and the characterisation of dissidents as being on the side of the terrorists (and then the use of the resulting ongoing war to help them get their second election win) ... I guess we could classify this administration as reasonably successful terrorists.
Eric Baird