OpenOffice 3.1 Released

harmonise writes "OpenOffice 3.1 has been released. According to the release announcement, this update received 'The biggest single change (half a million lines of code!) and the most visible is the major revamp of OpenOffice.org on-screen graphics.' See the OpenOffice 3.1 New Features page for a full list of changes."

Comments

antialiased!

[spud603]

Finally with antialiasing !

Re:antialiased!

[Burkin]

Well duh, a spinner doesn't require 50,000 lines of code to write and that Sun engineer needs to eat somehow!

Re:antialiased!

[Chabo]

Too bad they don't use antialiasing or any type of filtering for the thumbnails...

http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.1/images/image11-big.png
http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.1/images/image12-big.png

Re:antialiased!

[Anonymous Coward]

The new anti-aliasing feature is on the graphics (charts, etc). The text in writer has been anti-aliased for years, ass.

Re:antialiased!

[coolsnowmen]

Openoffice's antialiasing only affects things rendered by openoffice. So a .png link to my browser doesn't really show anything.

Re:antialiased!

[theshowmecanuck]

I never understood things like the zoom feature being the way they are. The only thing I can think of is that maybe they are trying to avoid a patent war with respect to the GUI controls. With these stupid business process type patents, Microsoft might have patented a "method to change font sizes using a spinner or drop down box". Or they may have patented a method of zooming in a word processor by clicking on the screen after clicking on plus or minus tool bar buttons. If it is isn't for this reason, then I agree, these would seem to be low hanging fruit in terms of usability that should have been picked years ago.

Re:antialiased!

[Chabo]

I know that they most likely didn't do any image processing or editing with OpenOffice, but if it was done in Gimp or Photoshop, setting the resizing operation to do bilinear or cubic filtering would make it easier on the eyes.

I was being facetious though. :)

Re:antialiased!

[spud603]

I think I got this thread off on the wrong foot. Text anti-aliasing has been around for a long time in OO.o (as a comment above says). In fact the new antialiasing is for the in-document drawings, which makes a huge difference both for working with images and for good-looking presentations.
It actually is a big deal that they did this, and I congratulate the developers on their good work.

Re:antialiased!

[Blakey Rat]

Haha... where do you even FIND a paint program that doesn't do at least bi-cubic when resizing? I hope they didn't use OpenOffice to resize the images, that's not exactly a glowing recommendation.

Re:antialiased!

[coolsnowmen]

Sorry, Had I known it was mostly a joke, I probably wouldn't have said anything.

Re:antialiased!

[aoteoroa]

I never understood things like the zoom feature being the way they are. The only thing I can think of is that maybe they are trying to avoid a patent war with respect to the GUI controls.

What's wrong with the zoom feature?

On the tool bar it looks like a magnifying glass. . . which is a fairly standard icon across multiple applications.

In the Main menu it is View ->Zoom..

Or simply hold the control button and scroll the mouse wheel, same as autocad, firefox, and probably a dozen other apps

Re:antialiased!

[JulianoR]

Still, they managed to miss the point completely...

I just installed it, opened OOo Impress and "Oh, nice!". Then I pressed F5 to run the presentation and... "WTF?!". They managed to get antialiasing in design mode, but failed to do it in the slide show... sigh.

Re:antialiased!

[Tubal-Cain]

The printer needs vector objects such as fonts to be rasterized at some point, and I don't think the Window Manager is involved in that.

Re:antialiased!

[Dextrously]

mspaint

Re:antialiased!

[Dextrously]

Just checked mspaint in Windows 7 RC1... looks like they added a ribbon interface to it, but it still doesn't antialias when scaling.

Re:antialiased!

[danieltdp]

This is applied to visualization. No impact whatsoever on printed docs. The anti aliasing we are talking about is to keep your screen smooth. At least that is my understanding on the subject

Re:antialiased!

[temcat]

And they still can't figure out how to make it follow DE's antialiasing settings.

Re:antialiased!

[xouumalperxe]

The printer needs vector objects such as fonts to be rasterized at some point, and I don't think the Window Manager is involved in that.

PostScript

Re:antialiased!

[theshowmecanuck]

Thanks for the control-scroll tip. I will use that a lot I think.

In Word you can either select the degree of zoom from a drop down combo box directly accessible on the tool bar or type in a custom zoom directly into the text box on the tool bar. In OO.o you always need to open up the zoom dialogue to change the zoom using either radio buttons or typing in the custom zoom into the field. It sounds like a small thing but it is a significant and frustrating piece of poor usability design for those who like to enter values (some people like concrete actions like). Eliminating the need to open up a dialogue box selecting the zoom size and clicking OK removes several clicks. Doesn't sound like much but when you have your stream of conscious focused on your document, it is enough of a distraction to be annoying. It also seems 'clunky' compared to how Word, and most of the MS Office products provide zoom functionality.

I don't think I am being very picky. You know if coding (which I don't do enough any more) or anything you do when you get into a groove, the annoyance of a bump or interruption in your thinking process is more than a little annoying as it can take a bit to get you back in the groove again. This is why I would like to see a more 'Word-like' approach to zoom. Given the price of MS Office I still don't install it on my own PCs or laptops, as OO.o works good enough. If I make a complaint about some feature of OO.o it is not to trash it, it is to try to make it better. If people don't say anything, no one will know that anything is wrong, or that improvement isn't necessary. The king won't put some damn clothes on. :-)

I think OO.o has come a long way, and is continually improving. I have used it before it was OO.o. I still use it. But it still needs improvement. But then again, very few apps are perfect including MS Office (I also don't have bias against MS Office or most MS products either... but please also realize I definitely don't like the abuseful purposes to which Microsoft uses its monopoly... and also that I did a lot of C unix programming professionally, and like working with Unix systems, so I am no Microsoft weenie. :) ). This is one area I would like to see improved. The least user action possible to invoke an action (like changing the degree of zoom) while still being intuitive, the better the user experience. But please don't be defensive (I can't tell if you are by your post, so if you aren't being defensive, my apologies), I am not one of the OO.o detractors. On the contrary, I advise people to use it if they don't feel they need MS Office or if their pocket book is not very deep.

Will be include in F11

[levell]

Fedora 11, which is due to be released in about 3 weeks, will have OO3.1

Re:Will be include in F11

[Kaeso]

Arch has had it since yesterday: http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/openoffice-base/

Re:Will be include in F11

[Anonymous Coward]

As a counterpoint, Fedora 11 will also have professionally packed packages and won't be run by a bunch of former Ubuntu noobs and script kiddies.

Re:Will be include in F11

[Zoxed]

>> Fedora 11, which is due to be released in about 3 weeks [fedoraproject.org], will have OO3.1
> Arch has had it since yesterday

That's nothing: Gentoo had it days ago: when it has finished compiling I will write a review :-)

Topper.

Re:Sorry but...

[arkane1234]

You're not flamebait, your just a liar.
MS Office doesn't come free, it comes via barter or monetary goods exchange. "free" is relative to what you consider worthy.

What, half a million lines of code changed...

[Anonymous Coward]

and still no Clippy the paperclip to help me write a letter?

Re:What, half a million lines of code changed...

[x_IamSpartacus_x]

He's there, he's just hidden in a useless easter egg that took 100 hours and 100,000 of the new lines of code. Yes, I checked... trust me... he's there.

Re:What, half a million lines of code changed...

[Corpuscavernosa]

Due to copyright concerns, OO3.1 will have "Stapley" as the office assistant

"I see that you're writing a document that will undoubtedly take up more than one page. Would you like help affixing these multiple pages together?"

Re:What, half a million lines of code changed...

[Hurricane78]

Just one question: Is he red?

Re:What, half a million lines of code changed...

[AmiMoJo]

No British/Canadian/Indian/Australian/International English dictionary to help you either.

Re:What, half a million lines of code changed...

[Corpuscavernosa]

Yes. Dammit. Now we're running into trademark problems too.

Re:What, half a million lines of code changed...

[prsinghdua]

Don't you get the microsoft motto: You've got problems, we've got dancing paperclips. A complete disastrous solution. Why does slashdot make me wait for comments? This is my third time copying and pasting this thing. you guys need to get a better system.

.5 million lines of code

[zindorsky]

Having a lot of lines of code is not necessarily something to brag about. In fact, it's more likely to be an indicator of badness than goodness.

If the product works great, people won't care how many lines of code it has. If it's buggy or sluggish or in other ways wonky, people might look at the code line count and point to that as the problem. ("It's bloated!" "It's so big no one can understand it or fix it!")

Re:.5 million lines of code

[gurutc]

So far the product (update) does seem to work great. Better than the previous version. I use the Calc program a lot, and it seems faster on some basic functions like loading files with forumulas.

Re:.5 million lines of code

[Tokerat]

NetBSD advocates claiming you trashed their "7-million lines of new code" in 3...2...1...

Re:.5 million lines of code

[jhfry]

Lots of lines of code CAN mean exactly what you say, bloat. However it appears that in this case many of the line changes were fixing issues and adding needed features.

For example, they significantly reduced some bottlenecks in Calc... they made Base more like access in that you can actually create an "application"... and they added some very nice contextual help in places where non-power users will find it very handy, like when they are trying to use a Calc function and can't remember the order of its arguements.

I would say that this is a decent point release for the OOorg team, evolutionary but not revolutionary. My only complaint is how much it is beginning to resemble MS Office; nice for adoption rates, bad for innovation.

Re:.5 million lines of code

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case, Sun said "about 500.000 lines of code were changed/rewritten" just for antialiasing, a task that "took 5 years to complete".

And they didn't even simply abstract out the drawing and use Cairo -- they wrote their own antialiasing. So it looks a little different from all my other apps, and now I'll have yet another implementation of AA in memory now. (If that's not bloat, what is?)

The screenshots look prettier, but I'm not sure if this is progress or not. If they want to add another graphics feature, will they have to touch 500000 lines of code again, and take another 5 years? Or do they have their own ad-hoc Cairo-like abstraction internally so they can just add it in one area of the code? They don't say.

Re:.5 million lines of code

[DVega]

They didn't say the added .5M lines of code. They say they change-set is .5M lines of code. It could have been 0.5M lines modified or even deleted ;-)

Re:.5 million lines of code

[ichthus]

...*cricket sounds*

Ah, shucks. Apparently, neither of the NetBSD advocates are reading slashdot at the moment.

Re:.5 million lines of code

[Icegryphon]

HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY!!!!!!!
Half a Million is nothing.
The latest Linux Kernel is over 10Million lines of code.clicky
I would be willing to be office has more lines then that nowadays.

Re:.5 million lines of code

[nschubach]

*runs around stomping on all the crickets*

Dammit! I'm at work and I'm trying to sleep here!

Re:.5 million lines of code

[ConceptJunkie]

Reminds me of this weird guy in some of my CS classes back in the mid 80s who always used to brag about how long his programs were, as if more code was good. I remember him bragging about finishing some project with 5000 lines of code when I did the same thing in like 1500 line. I never took the time to figure out if he was bragging about writing thorough comments, which isn't _completely_ stupid, or if he was just a complete moron. He came across as the latter.

I wonder whatever happened to him.

Re:.5 million lines of code

[Tubal-Cain]

I, personally, wouldn't include comments in a LoC count.

Re:.5 million lines of code

[GF678]

My only complaint is how much it is beginning to resemble MS Office; nice for adoption rates, bad for innovation.

At least MS Office is TRYING something innovative (eg. experimenting with a new GUI). OpenOffice just copies the interface of older versions of MS Office. Where the innovation again?

Hell they don't even have a friggin APPLY button on their dialog windows. They should get the basics working before moving to something "innovative".

Re:.5 million lines of code

[Arthur Dent]

I think he's working in the cubicle next to me. Please come and take him back!

Re:.5 million lines of code

[Nutria]

At least MS Office is TRYING something innovative (eg. experimenting with a new GUI). OpenOffice just copies the interface of older versions of MS Office. Where the innovation again?

Some tasks don't need innovation, because they are already Really Good.

For example, the Win2k Start Menu (to which you can easily drag your most frequently used apps) and recent Documents lists, both of which are easily accessible from the keyboard.

Re:.5 million lines of code

[Nutria]

I remember him bragging about finishing some project with 5000 lines of code when I did the same thing in like 1500 line.

I remember that from College, too.

25 years later, more code is still Considered Bad, but I always wonder whether the code reduction is due to (good) Smart Programming or (bad) Excessive Cleverness.

Re:.5 million lines of code

[ConceptJunkie]

In my case back then it was Smart Programming. Pascal has little tolerance for Excessive Cleverness.

Re:.5 million lines of code

[Jesus_666]

It's easy to change 0.5 MLoC in a project like OOo: Just change the indentation rules and refactor. Bing, single largest change to the codebase.

Congratulations

[Abreu]

Screw the naysayers, congratulations to everybody working in OpenOffice.org

Re:Congratulations

[OglinTatas]

All hot female naysayers, 18-36 please report to my house.

Re:Congratulations

[Etrias]

Completely off topic, but if you have a bunch of hot female naysayers at your house, what on Earth do you hope to accomplish? It's like the kid in college who lined his room with posters of women in bikinis and never ever talking to a real live girl.

Re:Congratulations

[nschubach]

Screw the naysayers...

All hot female naysayers, 18-36 please report to my house.

Did you catch it that time? ;)

Re:Congratulations

[Tubal-Cain]

If they're hot, why have the upper age limit?

Re:Congratulations

[$0.02]

And all hot female YES sayers report to MY house.

Re:Congratulations

[Nutria]

If they're hot, why have the upper age limit?

Because gravity is a harsh mistress, no matter how hard you try to stay young, and professionally-taken pictures always look better than reality.

Improved looks?

[B5_geek]

I have heard for a long time how horrible OOo looked. Personally, I never understood what the problem was. The icons were clear and easy to dostinguosh between them, and the text-buttons were obvious.

Compared to the newest version of MS Office, I'd say that any version of OOo wins hands down.

Re:Improved looks?

[MrEricSir]

Especially compared to MS Office 2007. It took me about 5 minutes just to figure out how to print something. I mean, it's an office program. There should either be a big PRINT button, or a File->Print menu.

And ideally, a talking paperclip to help you stab your eyes out.

Re:Improved looks?

[FishWithAHammer]

File->Print menu.

There is. It's in the top-left corner.

Or, you know. Hit Ctrl-P, like every version of office ever.

Re:Improved looks?

[mdielmann]

The point of icons and menus is so that you don't need to know cryptic keyboard commands. If the preferred solution to the updated icon system is to use the keyboard, they've failed. If the system is so changed that experienced Office users can't find the things they always did in the old version and there is no simple help for "how do I do x", they've failed. (It took me 30 minutes to just see the macro ribbon in Excel the first time. Now I just use Alt-F11 if it's not on the system I'm using.)
Or to put it another way: The Ribbon system reminds me of the MacBook Wheel - everything you want to do is just a few hundred clicks away.

Re:Improved looks?

[644bd346996]

It's not labeled as the File menu. In fact, it defies all pre-existing conventions for what a file menu is supposed to look like, and indeed, to the untrained eye, it looks just like a conceitedly large logo. (I'll admit, on Windows the logo in the top left corner does activate a menu, but the only functionality in it is from the window manager. And the logo is supposed to be 1/4 the size of the Office 2007 logo.) Microsoft essentially hid all of the most important functionality in a completely non-obvious way.

Re:Improved looks?

[cyphercell]

If this was obvious your fucking post wouldn't be modded "informative". The irony is thick.

Re:Improved looks?

[hitchhacker]

The icons were clear and easy to dostinguosh between them..

There's no 'I' in "dostenguosh"...

-metric

Re:Improved looks?

[Bacon Bits]

I've heard the same complaint by Windows users new to Linux when talking about Gnome and KDE positioning the menu bar for the OS at the top of the screen. Or new Linux users when installing software complaining about the new convention of the package manager. Or the loss of the C:/D:/E: labels for disk partitions and instead having the unified logical file system present in Linux.

It's new. It's different. That doesn't make it bad. Being good with computers doesn't mean change causes you to experience *no* learning curve. The ribbon is a drastic UI improvement for most any application. It efficiently combines the toolbar buttons and the menu in a manner that makes sense. It's the most innovative thing to come out of Microsoft since... hell, probably since the Start menu. It's not perfect, of course. I didn't care for the orb myself, either, at first impression. I still think it could be better done. The ribbon is still awesome, and it makes it irritating to move back to earlier versions of Office or to OpenOffice once you've gotten used to it.

Re:Improved looks?

[arkane1234]

It's not impossible to miss. Most people don't look for a "start button" in an application.
It's against logic since it doesn't even say start. It just looks like an office logo of some form. The whole thing just looks like one giant pulsing mess.

Re:Improved looks?

[arkane1234]

Hey look everyone, it's someone who thinks they can pretend to be a newscaster pushing stupidity.
He's funny, everyone laugh!

Re:Improved looks?

[FatJuggles]

Do you use Office 2007 everyday? I use 2007 at work and it actually is easier to work with that Office 2003 and its menus that I use at home. The UI is not hard to get use to...just annoying for the first two weeks. After that, you wonder why it wasn't this way from the beginning.

It's like working on a laptop with a touchpad and then switching to a TrackPoint. You'll complain for two weeks and miss it dearly once it's taken away.

Use things first..compare..and then whine!

Re:Improved looks?

[inode_buddha]

Seconded, in a way. You see, I recall back in the day when I first started using linux. It took half a day on a borrowed computer and a pile of floppies, just to get a terminal. 6 months later, it took a similar effort to get X11 fron mit.edu working. There wasn't any office suite. Then Corel came along, with a native port of their word processor. I was so grateful for that, I bought the boxed set. OpenOffice might be bloated, but I so thank ghod everytime I have to install. Normally I'm not an anti-MS guy but I'm gonna break here: I so hope that IBM or Sun can use OpenOffice to screw MS in the arse so hard that it would make your eyes water.

Re:Improved looks?

[Toonol]

It's possible to miss.

My very computer literate son was telling my about his computer lab at college, and how it took him several minutes to figure out how to print from Word 2007. He ended up doing the Ctrl-P, which worked, but it was just a guess. A UI shouldn't make you guess like that. I don't understand, with all the UI testing MS does, why they didn't notice people fumbling around when asked to perform such a basic and fundamental task.

Re:Improved looks?

[Toonol]

I don't mind the ribbons; the problem is the disparate mix of UI elements between Office and the rest of Windows. If something like ribbons was the new standard with Vista and Windows 7, it wouldn't be a problem. As it is, ribbons is the "special office 7" interface, which is as annoying as having a special interface for every media player. It adds little fraction-of-a-second pauses whenever you use the UI.

Re:Improved looks?

[StuartHankins]

Not obvious enough to our users. You can't imagine the number of complaints we've had about this -- and the default format of files is Office 2007-only.

Several checklist items were added to our setup routines just to accommodate Office 2007, and retraining in many areas was needed.

Formulas and macros developed in Excel aren't the same, so one dept can't give one set of instructions to other depts not yet moved to Office 2007. In these financial times spending several hundred a pop seems more than an expensive transition, it seems a waste of resources.

Oh, yeah, it's bigger and slower too. Ugh. Where's the win in this situation again?

Re:Improved looks?

[danieltdp]

The point is you actually have to tell people about it. I've been watching people migrate to word 2007. Most of them didn't realize that the big word icon on the top left corner was hiding the original File menu.

Re:Improved looks?

[danieltdp]

Because on that place there used to be a smaller app logo that did almost nothing (close, resize, maximize, etc). People learned to ignore that area

Re:Improved looks?

[danieltdp]

But they were migrating from windows to linux. No reason at all to retain some cross logic. But when we talk about word 2003 and 2007, its a whole different ball game. It is supposed to be used by the same people

Re:Improved looks?

[FishWithAHammer]

It says as much on your first run of the application. Your users can't read.

Re:Improved looks?

[dan_sdot]

Yeah, I don't mind the ribbons either. I think they are actually nicer than the menus that became the standard a long time ago.
But you are right, the issue is that you never see that interface except in office.
They include some package in the latest Visual Studio that allowed you to put a ribbon on your application, but it cost extra. A lot extra. Which seems crazy because you would think that they would want people using the stupid format.

Re:Improved looks?

[sapphire wyvern]

In Win 7, MS Paint uses the ribbon interface.

Re:Improved looks?

[danieltdp]

No, they are stunned. Too many changes at once. Too much visual noise due to radical redesign of the interface. If only this changed, they would notice, but there is a huge ribbon thingy taking their attention

Re:Improved looks?

[achurch]

I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out why I myself hate OOo's interface, and I still can't quite nail it down. A lot of it was the fugly default menu/button scheme, though export OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=gnome fixed that. Part of it is undoubtedly the fact that OOo can't seem to get text antialiasing consistently right, and actually went backwards with 3.0 -- the line weights are all off, even on files that looked decent in 2.4. Part of it is the fact that it takes a measurable fraction of a second (sometimes more than a second) to just open a damn menu when I click on it -- I haven't seen any other app in years that's so sluggish. Part of it is that distracting two-tone background on row and column headers they added to 3.0. But overall, there's just something about it that makes me involuntarily go "eww" whenever an OOo window pops up.

I suspect a lot of these sorts of problems stem from OOo's apparent insistence on using its own homebuilt code for practically everything. Having written multiplatform code myself, I know that it can be difficult to try and connect the same code to completely different frameworks, and I know the temptation to code around the OS to make everything work the same way everywhere. But really, are most users going to care (or even know) about slight visual differences between platforms? Or are they going to be more interested in a program that's easy to use and (especially) easy to look at? I'd lean toward the latter.

Re:Improved looks?

[atamido]

But you are right, the issue is that you never see that interface except in office.

No, the issue is that only half of the Office applications use ribbons. They converted half of the applications in a suite to a completely different interface, and left the other half as is. Microsoft Office 14 will have a lot more of the interfaces converted to ribbons, which will help things be a lot more internally consistent.

If a new interface is better, then great, move all of your applications over to it. This moving a couple of applications over to it every few years just leaves it as that "other interface" that is too much effort to move to.

Re:Improved looks?

[backwardMechanic]

It's amazing - as Gnome and KDE look more like Windows, MS seem to be trying to recreate the old X11 environment where every application had it's own UI.

Re:Improved looks?

[Alex Belits]

So you tolerated the new interface that annoyed you for TWO WEEKS just because it came from your glorious masters at Microsoft.

I have a strong suspicion that you didn't ever try to do this with Linux, OpenOffice.org or any other piece of software that presented you a slightly unfamiliar GUI.

Re:Improved looks?

[musicalwoods]

I just wish there were a way to autohide toolbars or better yet, when they are detached make sure they stay where you put them when the program is restarted or refocused.

Re:Improved looks?

[DragonWriter]

It's amazing - as Gnome and KDE look more like Windows, MS seem to be trying to recreate the old X11 environment where every application had it's own UI.

I don't think this is a new trend, IIRC, MS has for quite some time had a habit of breaking its own Windows UI standards with new releases of Office and Visual Studio, eventually moving those elements into the standards just in time to break them with new changes in its flagship applications.

Re:Sorry but...

[RiotingPacifist]

It uses themeable widgets so it only looks ugly if you whole desktop does.

Word count

[simonwalton]

Does it offer the ability to have an auto-updating word count in the status bar yet? It's absolutely essential to many people, particularly copywriters who are paid to hit a particular word count. It seems like such a trivial thing to implement and has been requested many times.

Re:Word count

[rs232]

"Does it offer the ability to have an auto-updating word count in the status bar yet?"

I don't know, but if you msg the developers I'm sure they would give it full attention. I see here that someone in 2006 wrote a Macro to perform such a task.

Re:Word count

[bwalling]

2006? How am I supposed to get back to 2006 and get it? It's not like I have a time traveling phone booth or DeLorean sitting around.

Re:Word count

[Minwee]

Not quite, but it does have overlining and Shuswap language support.

Is that good enough?

Re:Word count

[oddman]

Does it offer the ability to have an auto-updating word count in the status bar yet?

This extension seems to do exactly that.

http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/eurooffice-my-progress

I've never used it, but I hope it works for you.

Re:Word count

[Etrias]

Ask your future time-traveling self to get it for you. Just hope he's not a lazy, selfish bastard.

Re:Word count

[Just Some Guy]

Does it offer the ability to have an auto-updating word count in the status bar yet? It's absolutely essential to many people, particularly copywriters who are paid to hit a particular word count.

OK, but isn't that a little backward? I've always written my article first, then edited it to hit word count. I don't think I'd work well to say, "oh, I'm at 2800! Better wrap it up!"

Anti-Aliasing!

[AtomicDevice]

"OpenOffice.org now uses a technique called anti-aliasing..."

WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF TOMORROW!!!!!!!

Re:Anti-Aliasing!

[barzok]

Shut up, Terry.

Re:Anti-Aliasing!

[poached]

seriously? You mean it didn't have anti-aliasing before? I can't believe people even used it.

Re:Anti-Aliasing!

[fabs64]

See this is the problem, one guy who RTFA makes a joke, and those who didn't can't see a joke when it slaps them in the face.

Re:Anti-Aliasing!

[Jesus_666]

I think it's about time OOo got proper FSAA support. But what about anisotropic filtering? Last thing I heard the driver setting for anisotropic didn't have any effect on OOo at all.

Also, any benchmarks on how FSAA affects the frame rate? I want my OOo to run with at least 120 FPS so I can use my shutter glasses with it.

Oracle?

[sageres]

Forgive me, but I am a bit ignorant on this, could someone tell me when and how it came to pass that Oracle now has relationship with Open Office? I see nothing of that on neither Oracle website nor Wikipedia, and not even OpenOffice website either. So why the Oracle icon on the story's headline?

Re:Oracle?

[0racle]

You must have missed it.

They have taken a little interest in a number of Sun and Sun related products.

Re:Oracle?

[Burkin]

Forgive me, but I am a bit ignorant on this, could someone tell me when and how it came to pass that Oracle now has relationship with Open Office?

You mean other than the fact that they own Sun and the OOo team is mostly Sun engineers? Yeah that was a pretty difficult one to solve.

Re:Oracle?

[Chabo]

Slashdot:
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/20/128246

Sun:
http://www.sun.com/third-party/global/oracle/

Oracle:
http://www.oracle.com/sun/index.html

Chicago Tribune:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/yourmoney/sns-yourmoney-0503leckeyfile,0,5105395.story

Re:Oracle?

[Fnkmaster]

Oracle is in the process of acquiring Sun Microsystems. Sun is the primary sponsor of OpenOffice, since they acquired StarDivision and their StarOffice product in 1999, and open sourced it.

Re:Oracle?

[IceCreamGuy]

Oracle owns Sun, which is the parent of OpenOffice. You never noticed the OpenOffice options when you do a Java update?

Re:Oracle?

[yoasif]

Oracle is buying Sun.

Re:Oracle?

[segfaultcoredump]

Technically, at this time oracle does not own sun.

They have announced that they will purchase them and the sale is pending, but until that time the two companies are totally independent and functionally must continue to operate as such.

So sometime this summer the oracle logo will be correct, but currently it is wrong.

Re:Oracle?

[maxume]

There isn't any rule to make it wrong. You can disagree with it, but that doesn't establish that it is wrong, just that you disagree with it.

Re:Oracle?

[djupedal]

Technically?

Did you just say 'Technically'...?

Are you out of your ever lovin', bag-on-the-side, just stepped into a hot steaming pile of pig-flu-poop of a mind???!!

Do you have any idea what that sort of retort encourages around here?

Oh...wait.... Ummm - nevermind.

Re:Oracle?

[hairyfeet]

So, anybody want to give odds on whether Oracle will let OO.o wither on the vine or not? Because I'm betting they let it rot. From everything I've read it is a royal bitch to code for, there are all these forks because of disgruntled developers( I prefer the Oxygen Office fork over OO.o myself, as it is much more usable out of the box than OO.o) from what I've read they have a serious case of NIH syndrome, etc.

Frankly it just doesn't feel like something Oracle would be interested in. By owning Java, Solaris, and the Sun server hardware they can deliver a top to bottom RDBMS solution while maximizing throughput and stability. I just don't see an office suite fitting into their business model. So I'm betting once Oracle has control they will slowly starve OO.o or just toss it to the community and let it go. So I really wouldn't be surprised if this time next year we are talking about the latest release of Go-oo or Oxygen Office because they have taken over development while OO.o rots. So anybody on the inside of either company want to give odds?

Re:Oracle?

[BlitzTech]

Because Oracle bought Sun.

Re:Oracle?

[jbolden]

Oracle's business model right now is to tie enterprises to Oracle database products and tie oracle database customers to other enterprise apps. Essentially create the kind of lockin with things like PeopleSoft that Microsoft has on the desktop.

Enhance OpenOffice Base so that it acts for Oracle the same way Access does for SQL Server, heck push their forms product right into Open Office. Create all sorts of automated data features using Oracle Networking for OO Calc, especially for Oracle Financials. Create business interfaces right on top of OO Write. I can see it fitting wonderfully. They move to open office and find themselves getting more and more locked into the entire Oracle suite.

I'd aay

1/2 they let it rot
1/6 they keep funding it like it is now
1/3 they integrate it like I said above

Re:Oracle?

[feld]

The last thing we need is Oracle Forms in OpenOffice. We're finally rewriting our oldest forms to be the new web-based version. You know, so we don't have to go around with a dusty old CD and install Forms and Reports version 7 and then search for that pesky service pack (make sure it's the right one!) to get things working. Don't forget the registry entries you have to do by hand and the environmental variable you have to set in Windows. WHEEEEEEE!

Re:Oracle?

[feld]

Actually I just glanced at the CD in the corner of my desk -- it's even older than that! version 6i!

Re:Oracle?

[rackserverdeals]

There isn't any rule to make it wrong. You can disagree with it, but that doesn't establish that it is wrong, just that you disagree with it.

Uhm.. yeah there is. This isn't kindergarten where every child is a treasure and there is no wrong so we don't hurt people's feelings. Saying you're going to buy something isn't the same as owning something.

You can't go to a car dealership, tell them you want to buy a car then slap on your "I heart <topic>" bumper stickers on it and take it to the beach until you fork over the money.

Re:Oracle?

[maxume]

We aren't talking about me slapping a bumper sticker on a car that I don't own, we are talking about the guy who created this website slapping an Oracle logo on a story about OpenOffice.org. Presumably he must think are somehow associated now.

Re:Oracle?

[rackserverdeals]

We aren't talking about me slapping a bumper sticker on a car that I don't own, we are talking about the guy who created this website slapping an Oracle logo on a story about OpenOffice.org. Presumably he must think are somehow associated now.

And what does Oracle have to do with OpenOffice.org? They don't own Sun. They don't own OpenOffice.org they don't manage the project. The only connection is that sometime in the future they will purchase Sun and will own OpenOffice.org if the sale is finalized, which it hasn't yet.

Why are you having a hard time understanding the concept? Are you they type of guy that goes to the market, eats the food you're going to buy and then give the cashier the empty wrappers?

Re:Oracle?

[fm6]

So why the Oracle icon on the story's headline?

Because the editor stuck it in the Oracle category. Don't question Slashdot Editor Logic. That way lies madness!

Re:Sorry but...

[Tokerat]

You had me until "Microsoft"...

Compaired to competition

[RiotingPacifist]

The new features are nice, but does it have anything that beats Microsoft's offerings?
DRM & sharing for companies ?
Integration with online services (like google office) for home users ?

Obviously I mean other than running on Linux & mac natively, but does it beat gnumeric & abiword yet? I mean when im doing graphs OO (2.x) simply isn't as easy to use as gnumeric and is missing quite a few options.

Re:Compaired to competition

[Anonymous Coward]

The new features are nice, but does it have anything that beats Microsoft's offerings?

Price?

Re:Compaired to competition

[PitaBred]

DRM is a bad thing in general. If someone shouldn't see it, don't let them see it. If they should, let them. Filesystems have had read/write permissions forever.

As for graphs, I don't use them, so I don't know. But OO.o0 2.x is old... 3 is much improved overall. Why not try it first? It's not like it's free or anything.

Re:Compaired to competition

[base3]

DRM for sharing is a stupid idea and an oxymoron. There is no protecting a file's contents against someone with permissions to read it--if something's "hot" enough that the powers that be don't want me to print it and I need a copy to cover my ass, I'll take a picture of the screen with a camera if that's what it takes.

Re:Compaired to competition

[RiotingPacifist]

To a company with a policy of using it, it's defiantly a requirement to be able to tick that box.

Obviously all DRM isn't entirely effective but restricting what a file can be used for (on a locked down computer OFC) can go along way to preventing accidental breaches. Also while printing/emailing/copying a 200 page document takes minutes, but photographing it is going to take hours!

Re:Compaired to competition

[base3]

To a company with a policy of using it, it's defiantly a requirement to be able to tick that box.

Companies with such a requirement shouldn't enjoy a presumption of innocence in legal discovery. Better to act rightly than to sweat making sure no one can copy the evidence.

Also while printing/emailing/copying a 200 page document takes minutes, but photographing it is going to take hours!

Not necessarily--video camera + scroll wheel FTW.

Re:Compaired to competition

[DragonWriter]

The new features are nice, but does it have anything that beats Microsoft's offerings?

Well, bang:buck is infinitely better with OOo.

Re:Sorry but...

[armer]

Obviously you haven't heard of the Pirate Bay have you??? Hand in your badge...

go-oo.org

[Randle_Revar]

Personally, I am waiting for go-oo.org 3.1, as that is what goes into Debian, Ubuntu, SuSE, Gentoo and others.

Re:go-oo.org

[msh104]

Nice, didn't know that.

Re:go-oo.org

[Penguin Follower]

But they really need to pick a better name. :/

Won't download to my mac...

[Anonymous Coward]

I get some weird "download chooser" page, and if I select MacOSX from there, it won't download either. This is with Safari 4.

I think somebody is trying to be too "smart".

Re:Won't download to my mac...

[gibbsjoh]

I checked the full file list from the path to the Windows download and the Mac version isn't there yet - just the SDK. Checking the mirrors now.

http://openoffice.mirrors.tds.net/pub/openoffice/stable/3.1.0/

JG

Re:Won't download to my mac...

[gibbsjoh]

Top man!

Re:Won't download to my mac...

[BluKnight]

Grab the torrent from the download site. It's coming into my box right now.

Re:Won't download to my mac...

[tigerc]

I was able to get it on bittorrent. Link here.

Re:Won't download to my mac...

[StuartHankins]

I used the BitTorrent option and got it no problem (I use Transmission). The link is broken for the "regular" download.

Well, Duh!

[camperdave]

...the most visible is the major revamp of OpenOffice.org on-screen graphics.

Well, Duh! I'll bet the least visible is the off screen graphics.

compatibility

[muckracer]

I'd use it but I heard, it's not compatible with the OpenDocument 1.1 standard... :-P

sod off dancing monkey boy !

[rs232]

"OpenOrifice is still just a lame piece of software for people who are too cheap to buy quality Microsoft software

Dancing Monkeyboy

Re:sod off dancing monkey boy !

[labnet]

What a disturbing video.

In fact it descibes Microsoft...
1- The guy is incredibly unfit.
2- His face had the alpha male 'kill' look. (rather than a 'excited, happy, proud' look)
3- His actions looked like a gorilla defending its turf.
4- His first words were slightly xenaphobic.

now I understand the throwing chairs thing...

Re:sod off dancing monkey boy !

[ChartBoy]

4- His first words were slightly xenaphobic.

Of course many of us geeks are intimidated by Lucy Lawless.

Re:sod off dancing monkey boy !

[dave87656]

Scary. And to think some people willingly pay extra money to buy virus infected software from this guy?

You don't want antialiasing

[Colin Smith]

For fonts anyway. You want font hinting.

Antialiasing is horribly slow and is one of the things which makes Gnome in particular seem so sluggish. Go on, turn it off and watch those menus fly.
 

Re:You don't want antialiasing

[Mprx]

Font hinting is distorting fonts to make them uglier. I'd rather use a higher DPI display or increase the font size. And if antialiasing is slow you're doing something horribly wrong, because RISC OS had usable text antialiasing back in 1989. The only cause of slowdown in GNOME menus is loading icons from disc, and most of the time they will be cached.

Re:You don't want antialiasing

[tepples]

I'd rather use a higher DPI display

Which isn't available in common subnotebook PCs, in part due to Microsoft's restrictions on what qualifies as an "ultra-low-cost PC" eligible for a Windows XP license. That's why subnotebook monitors are typically 1024x600 and not 1280x800 or so.

or increase the font size.

And increase the scrolling. Increase it too far in a document format that doesn't allow reflowing (e.g. PDF) and you have to scroll back and forth for each line of text.

Re:You don't want antialiasing

[commanderfoxtrot]

I'm still amazed that RISC OS fonts looked so good back in the 1980s... that's 20 years ago.

Word in Windows still gets its kerning wrong.

Most important question

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

When it encounters a ODF 1.1 document with formula arguments separated by commas created by the MsOffice2007 SP2, does it throw up a really really big nasty warning dialog that says, "MsOffice2007 is using ODF 1.1, please contact the vendor and urge them to start supporting ODF 1.2. We will be nice this one last time and hack around the commas and make them colons. But best if you could persuade the vendor of ODF1.1 docs to upgrade to ODF 1.2"?

Re:Most important question

[master811]

FYI ODF 1.2 still hasn't even been finalised yet, so you can't really blame Microsoft for not yet implementing it until its finished.

Re:Most important question

[rliden]

Obvious troll isn't so obvious this time. I know it's cool to throw out a bunch of spin now, but it's just not true.

Look the 1.1 spec is just that and if Microsoft is implementing it properly then the problem is with the spec. I have always had some (large or small) problems opening ODF between different applications. That includes OpenOffice, MS Office, KWord, and Abiword. That points to a spec and implementation problem. I'm not going to blame any one of those project or vendors for that.

Re:Most important question

[iacvlvs]

Not blame them? Hell, we should thank them! Remember the last time they implemented a standard before it was finished? Remember the browser wars? the "best viewed in" buttons? the monstrous mess HTML became? ... the blink tag? :(

Re:Most important question

[gnud]

Unless the document claims to be ODF 1.2, I fail to see a problem. I mean, part of the point of having an open document format is that I can open my ODF1.1 documents in 50 years, right?

Re:Most important question

[syousef]

FYI ODF 1.2 still hasn't even been finalised yet, so you can't really blame Microsoft for not yet implementing it until its finished.

With an attitude like that...Will you please be my boss?

Re:Sorry but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Free isn't even the correct English word for 'free of charge'
Sorry to pick on you grammer nazi but if your going to do it right you should follow your own advice look it up...

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/free%5B1%5D

See number 10 'not costing or charging anything'

That is FREE as in *NO* cost. There are other meanings of free, not just your narrow minded ones. I am with the original guy if I had a choice between OO and MS Office for free as in no cost (which he apparently has). It is not even a contest, I would take ms office. If you are saying otherwise you are either deluded, maniacal, brainwashed, or a liar.

Here is what it comes down to. Yes I can get at the code. But guess what *I DO NOT HAVE TIME*, or inclination to do so. I have the capability, I also could really care less. I just want to use my programs in peace. I will use whatever I think is the best of breed. FOSS does not always mean that. In my experience it is usually mediocre. Sorry if I offend anyone but it is true. Some people seem to think because it is free that is better. There are real gems out there (such as winmerge, firefox) that I use every day. Other times such as with OO it is a 'good effort' but does not measure up. FOSS is getting there in quality. But it is slow going...

I will give OO a try again (have since 2.x days). It might be better this time. It might stack up ever since that crazy 2007 ribbon bar from office came out. I doubt it.

Re:what about the memory leak problems

[Anonymous Coward]

JMemory leak? With Java? You must be joking!

Re:Sorry but...

[Burkin]

This just in: Words in the English language can actually have more than 1 meaning! But the Stallmanesque rant was pretty funny.

Re:Sorry but...[insert ad here]

[laughing rabbit]

Dirty mouth?

Try Orbit gum!

Brilliant!

Looks native

[sjbe]

but it has had times where it seemed out of place on either Windows or OSX

And that's exactly why iTunes has been such a success on Windows. It looks just like a native app...

Re:Looks native

[nine-times]

Yes, iTunes has this problem on Windows. What's your point? I also felt it was a problem with Mozilla before Firefox came along, and it's still a problem with Quicktime, and Safari and Chrome to a lesser extent.

Pidgin on Windows, however, looks pretty native while still using GTK. Firefox is perhaps the reigning champion IMO for a cross-platform program that actually feels at-home on Windows, Linux, and OSX. So clearly it's possible. OpenOffice has been getting much better about this on both Windows and OSX, but it's still not-quite there as far as I'm concerned.

Re:Looks native

[Jesus_666]

And that's exactly why iTunes has been such a success on Windows. It looks just like a native app...

It does, actually. On Windows it seems to have become customary to ship your own GUI toolkit with your app (or just implement the whole GUI in Flash). There's no consistency at all and you can be happy if the widgets look more or less like the native ones. Between Winamp and WMP, iTunes doesn't really look out of place.

I think people dislike iTunes because Apple's Windows software tends to be pretty crappy.

Re:Sorry but...

[Anonymous Coward]

And Windows is free if your time and money have no value.

Re:Sorry but...

[644bd346996]

The phrase "gratis of charge" is redundant. "Gratis" suffices, although it has the unfortunate side effect of making you sound like a pretentious scholar that likes to toss around latin words that nobody knows.

Re:Sorry but...

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenOrifice is still just a lame piece of software for people who are too cheap to buy quality Microsoft software.

I didn't know Microsoft was in that business..

OpenOffice.org

[falconwolf]

it has had times where it seemed out of place on either Windows or OSX (particular OSX before it was a native application).

I use NeoOffice on my Mac and see no reason to switch right now.

when I'm using a program and I can tell it wasn't designed for the system I'm running it on, I count that as a problem.

What matters to me is whether it is and how much it's usable. That's one reason I won't switch for now, NeoOffice is quite usable. Then again I hardly use it.

Falcon

Re:OpenOffice.org

[nine-times]

What matters to me is whether it is and how much it's usable.

Yes, and that's a popular sort of opinion on this site, that "it works" is equivalent to "there's nothing wrong with it." I'm just saying that, to me, if a program stands out as clearly not being developed for the operating system I'm working on, then I count that as a problem.

Not because of anything so stupid "it offends my aesthetic sensibilities", but because if I'm noticing it as I'm using it, then to me it implies that there are probably inconsistencies with the rest of the OS that are sufficient to break my concentration. Like I said, OpenOffice is getting much better in that regard, but it's still feeling slightly out of place for me.

At this point, I don't count NeoOffice as being far different. I used NeoOffice for years, and even donated money. But that was back when OpenOffice didn't have a native OSX port. Now they look about the same, and perform about the same. Do you have anything in NeoOffice that you can point to as being better than the OpenOffice version?

Re:OpenOffice.org

[falconwolf]

Yes, and that's a popular sort of opinion on this site, that "it works" is equivalent to "there's nothing wrong with it." I'm just saying that, to me, if a program stands out as clearly not being developed for the operating system I'm working on, then I count that as a problem.

Consistency of the UI isn't particularly that important to me, I've used Linux, Macs, and Windows. I don't use menus all that much, instead I use key combinations for a lot of what I do. All those are pretty consistent across OSes.

Do you have anything in NeoOffice that you can point to as being better than the OpenOffice version?

No, but I see no reason to switch. For now NeoOffice suits me fine.

Falcon

looks nice

[FudRucker]

i found an annoying bug, if i make a mistake and want to use the backspace key swriter does nothing, the delete key does nothing, the arrow keys do not navigate, even h j k l (vim style) does nothing, i have a USB keyboard on linux and usbhid is loaded, all other applications work fine with these keys, whats the deal Lucille? i am sure there is a solution somewhere.

Re:looks nice

[thaig]

Probably something specific to your machine and configuration which you don't say much about, BTW.

Re:looks nice

[FudRucker]

fixed it, rm -r /home//.openoffice.org/* and re-started openoffice writer, i dont know why that fixed it, could be a corrupt or old/outdated xml config file?

Re:Greatly Unimpressed

[Penguinoflight]

Office 95, nice.

regexp

[leonbloy]

Any improvements in search-replace, with decent regular expressions support?
Last time I checked (2.2; and I believed it had not changed in 3.0) the implementation in Writer was rather crippled, limited the searching scope to a single paragraph... Searching for something as 'three consecutive paragraphs marks', or using the paragraph separator as a special character inside the pattern, was a pain.

Re:regexp

[dcroxton]

You can use the AltSearch extension to get that functionality.

Re:Stop trolling!

[he-sk]

Well, for an office suite it probably is. But I find the concept of an office suite fundamentally broken, just like the concept of a personal information manager. I want individual applications and sadly there is no good FOSS spreadsheet that I'm aware of. So I have to put up with the bloatware that is OOo Calc.

500,000 changed lines of code

[cybereal]

So someone decided to run a code tidying tool and dared to check in the results I guess?

No typography features

[alphabetsoup]

And still no support for typographic features like ligatures, old style numbers or true small caps :(. This is one thing Word doesn't support, and IMO will help Writer against Word.

Right now on Vista Notepad produces better looking text than either Word or Writer!!

printing in Calc

[J-1000]

Will this fix the printing issues in Calc? I was getting wild results before. Not even close to WYSIWYG.

500K new lines or changed lines?

[he-sk]

Is this 500K lines of *new* code or *changed* code? If the latter, not bad, if the former, yuck!

Re:Sorry but...

[thedonger]

MS Office/Excel won't open two files of the same name, and insists on only one working window, forcing the user to "split" in order to compare spreadsheets. OO Calc does both.

OO Writer has a button for generating PDFs sans any Adobe integration.

The advantage to MS Office is that your client is more than likely authoring documents on an MS Office product, and absolute compatibility is not assured. But I don't fault the OO developers for that.

Re:Sorry but...

[x4nit0s]

Sorry to pick on you grammer nazi but if your going to do it right you should follow your own advice

Yes, "YOUR" right his "GRAMMER" was teh sux, also while we're at it when you say you could care less you imply that you do care about the issue, as you have the ability to care less than you currently do about it.

Get a brane, moran!

Re:Sig

[JesseMcDonald]

"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)

What Plato forgot to mention is that the price good men pay for being involved in public affairs is to become evil men.

It seems to me being on the right side is more important than being on the winning side, though others may disagree.

Re:Greatly Unimpressed

[cptnapalm]

So... what else is usable on UltraSparc running OpenBSD ;)

MacOS X PPC?

[Knackered]

So, does it work on MacOS X PPC yet? No, it doesn't, it's either 2.4.0 or wait for NeoOffice to put out a 3.1 patch.

Re:MacOS X PPC?

[jtownatpunk.net]

Seriously, WTF?!? I can get it in French, German, Japanese, Swedish, Lithuanian, and Macedonian for FSM's sake. Why is English still at 2.4.0? It's been stuck there since...well...2.4.0.

Re:MacOS X PPC?

[iamnothere900]

You can download OpenOffice.org Aqua for Intel and PowerPC with the bonus of native OSX widgets (no X11). They currently only have 3.0.1 and tend to lag behind the main releases.

Re:Stop trolling!

[deraj123]

I've been using Gnumeric for awhile and am quite happy with it. Happier than I was with OOo Calc anyways.

Re:Sorry but...

[pfleming]

Didn't have to wait long.

Re:Sorry but...

[arkane1234]

You've totally missed the point hah

My 2

[jbolden]

2 things I'm excited about are structured comments (ability to reply to a comment) and bidirectional text improvements.

Re:Sig

[Joey Vegetables]

There is a third option: work for the peaceful abolition of coercive government itself.

Coercive government, no matter how seemingly benign or "democratic," is nothing more or less than the institutionalized belief that some people have the right to rule over all the rest without their consent, but the rest are not entitled to rule even themselves. It is therefore very much a form of slavery. Like all other forms of slavery it is doomed to fail, but will continue to cause untold human suffering and evil of every kind until it ends. That makes it imperative that people of good will work together to alter its coercive and totalitarian nature (at a very minimum), or, preferably, to abolish it completely.

Without coercive government, people will learn non-coercive ways to prevent and when necessary resolve conflict. The link in my sig explains some of the details of how this might work.

Re:Stop trolling!

[he-sk]

I should have mentioned that I'm on OS X and don't run X applications if I can avoid it. I do remember Gnumeric from earlier times though, and I agree that it's quite good.

(Now, if someone could port GnuCash to Cocoa, that'd be great!)

Re:Sorry but...

[x4nit0s]

So he was being sarcastic when saying that FF is a good example of free software? I suppose... ah yes I see it now in that statement.

Re:Sorry but...

[msh104]

Welcome to the netherlands, where free only exists in freedom, and gratis only in price ;)

OO still has one major bug

[belmolis]

They still haven't fixed what I regard as the biggest bug in OO: the fact that file-opening and -saving dialogues default to the last directory it used rather than the current working directory when running on GNU/Linux. It is understandable that OO would use the MS Windows convention when running on MS Windows, but importing those conventions into Unix is a bad user-interface practice. There's a reason that Unix people move from directory to directory. For experienced Unix users who use different directories for different projects, the failure to track the current directory is very irritating.

Even if they feel it necessary to provide the option of using the MS Windows conventions for people switching from MS Windows to Unix, it should be an option, not a requirement. And I doubt that this would be hard to do: determining the default directory for those dialogues is presumably only done in one or two places and should be very simple to code.

Re:OO still has one major bug

[jbolden]

Open Office takes environment flags. If you are a Unix user just use $PWD

Re:OO still has one major bug

[belmolis]

If I understand you correctly, you're suggesting that every time I attempt to open a file I enter $PWD? That's more convenient than typing the whole path, but much less convenient than having the widget do the right thing in the first place and use the working directory as its default.

Re:OO still has one major bug

[serviscope_minor]

I 100% agree. I hate when prople import conventions from other operating systems. It's really annoying. Firefox does this too. Why, when selecting a helper application to open a link, do you have to navigate to /usr/local/bin/whatever? Why doesn't it check the path?

Re:OO still has one major bug

[theCoder]

I use this in (x)emacs all the time, so I thought that would be a really neat feature in OOo. However, when I tried it on Ubuntu it tried to read the file or directory named '$PWD' and didn't expand it to the environment variable. It could be because OOo is using the Gnome file dialogs and they don't support environment variable expansion. Too bad -- it would be really neat if they did.

Re:Sorry but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have two Excel 2007 windows open now - and yes, they are separate windows.

I have a "save as" function that lets me pick from XLSX, XLS, PDF, ODS, and many many more sans any Adobe or Open Office integration.

What was your point again? oh, right - you didn't have one, although I do agree about two files with the same name. That is a bit annoying.

thank you Zaske

[_|()|\|]

Let me just say "thank you" to Steve Zaske, a Microsoft employee who helped the OpenOffice.org team make an order-of-magnitude performance improvement. What Excel and Calc can now do in less than two seconds takes over a minute with Numbers 2.0.1 on my 2.33 GHz iMac.

Re:thank you Zaske

[khanyisa]

It's worth clarifying that although his blog post did help to point out a particular performance problem, he wasn't the one who coded the fix ...

Re:Sorry but...

[wakingrufus]

to be fair, MS excel has an option in the "window" menu that says "compare side by side" or something similar that will take both windows and put them side by side and link the scrolling between them.
i know this is in excel 2003. not sure of other versions.
I am a big fan of OO but i will not say anything to knock Excel. I think its a great program.

Great for Home / School use but...

[gnesterenko]

But still useless for any professional setting or high-level business education. Staistical and financial plug-ins are vastly inferior to MS Office. No VBA for business applications. These two alone make a hobby app for basic home uses, nothing game changing and certainly still not a real competitor to MS Office. That's not even mentioning the online collaboration tools of MS Office as well as Live Workspace. "The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."

Re:Great for Home / School use but...

[belmolis]

Why on earth are business people doing statistics in an office suite rather than in a real statistical package?

Re:Great for Home / School use but...

[RobBebop]

I'm sorry... but not including support for Visual Basic Applications makes it unprofessional? I don't believe I've ever seen anything that puts the terms "Professional" and "Visual Basic" in the same sentence. VB is a toy for high schoolers. Anybody developing VB beyond the 12th grade level had better be doing it to supplement a skillset unrelated to computer programming (for example: GUI design).

Re:Great for Home / School use but...

[jbolden]

Open Office has a BASIC, it also has user defined functions.

Re:Great for Home / School use but...

[serviscope_minor]

But still useless for any professional setting or high-level business education. Staistical and financial plug-ins are vastly inferior to MS Office.

That doesn't make it useless for professionals. Some professionals know how to use the right tool for the job. You know, like using something like R for advanced statistics...

Re:Great for Home / School use but...

[Danzigism]

I'm going to say I agree with you. I'm a big OOo supporter and I encourage the use of it in the right environment. But there are so many other software developers out there that depend specifically on MS Office for certain types of integration. In particular Outlook. There are lots of service ticket oriented programs that require Exchange Servers and Outlook. Sharepoint also is widely used on the enterprise level. If anything OOo needs to collaborate more with *nix developers to make a new small/medium business solution. Something that can make using LDAP, Samba, Linux Terminal Services, an Exchange alternative (looks @ Google) and a form of sharepoint for document management and internal company collaboration. Yes I know there are individual solutions for all this stuff but standardization and ease of use is the key. It doesn't have to be easy enough for a retard to do it, but it needs to be easy enough for people to become certified professionals with a specific standard so that if your I.T. guy dies, you can find someone else. These solutions need to get to the point where companies don't have to hire a full-time Unix/Linux I.T. guy, but they need to start focusing more on small I.T. firms so that they can implement something quick and manage it easily.

Re:Great for Home / School use but...

[gnesterenko]

Someone has never worked in a corporate park, so let me tell you how things work. Major financial institution gets massive transmission from multiple vendors every day that must be entered into the major financial institution's tracking systems. All is done with proprietary software and has nothing to do with any office application. But when it comes to extracting and dealing with this massive amounts of data on an every day basis, performing yield and variance calculations, performing large-scale data scrubbing (10s of thousands of securities), variable rates, prices, and that doesn't even BEGIN to enumerate all the pieces of data that must be shared across a network thousands of computers large, analyzed by individuals in multiple departments, reported on, transmitted, and then integrated back into proprietary systems tied to the corporate mainframe. When Open Office can do this, then you can come back and talk to me. And this is just one example. The automation capabilities of VBA MAKE the financial industry work. Without it we'd be in the stone ages in terms of the time it takes to do certain tasks - as in, non competitive and out of business stone age... What many people here fail to realize is that very few organizations out there do 'pure' statistics or 'pure' data-basing. They may exist, but they are dwarfed when compared to all the soft inter-mediate companies that need to move and analyze large amounts of data, daily, timely, and across large networks. Open Office isn't even considered an option. It simply cannot integrate with various proprietary systems and enable collaboration like MS Office can. And I'm talking about Office 2003 too, as businesses haven't even migrated to Office 07 on a large scale yet, and that is even more powerful in terms of collaboration. Office is not a professional development platform, I hope you realize. No one is talking about writing major pieces of software. What we ARE talking about is efficiencies that save companies billions annually. Until Open Office can do the same, it is irrelevant in the business world. At home or at school however, like I said, its a perfect solution.

Re:Great for Home / School use but...

[domatic]

"...The automation capabilities of VBA MAKE the financial industry work...."

Well that explains a lot.

Re:Great for Home / School use but...

[Homburg]

Openoffice has, and has had for quite a while, a fairly extensive scripting capability. I haven't used it extensively, but from what I know, it isn't significantly less powerful than VBA.

Of course, that doesn't really help those who have already developed a signficant amount of code for VBA, and don't want to have to rewrite it.

Re:Great for Home / School use but...

[gnesterenko]

"Of course, that doesn't really help those who have already developed a signficant amount of code for VBA, and don't want to have to rewrite it." You've hit the nail on the head there. It isn't that they don't want to. It's that it doesn't make any sense. I mean look at the financial details of the situation. An MS Office license is maybe $100-$200. That's less then the DAILY salary of someone who is being paid to automate any process with it. The cost of the software package is negligible next to the invested costs of having your people actually create something with it. That money has already been spent. Spending it again, for businesses, would be simply unjustified. It would be like making the same investments twice. Oh except you gotta retrain all of your IT to develop in Open Office, and then re-integrate it with all of your subsystems, and then retrain your employees to use it. No company in their right mind is going to do this.

Re:Great for Home / School use but...

[gnesterenko]

And what, exactly, does it explain? If you are implying that MS office has anything to do with our current economic situation, then there's little hope I have for educating you, but here goes anyway. Instead of FUD, try reading:
http://nymag.com/news/business/55687/
http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/finance/wall-streets-army-quants-controls-mind-money/
And lets not forget all of YOU people, who for years spent frivolously, lived outside your means, got loans when you shouldn't have, and then blamed everyone for giving you the bad loan in the first place. Its just like malware and viruses - most of them spread because people are idiots, yet you immedietly try to lay the blame on MS for having an unsecured OS. F that. Its the sheeple that are to blame, the software just makes it easier to hurt yourself, doesn't do it for you.
Lol, in fact an old lyric just came to my mind typing this: "They say music can alter moods, and talk to you. But can it load a gun for you and cock it too?" Think about it.

Re:Great for Home / School use but...

[domatic]

*Whooooooosh!*

Re:Great for Home / School use but...

[RobBebop]

[Microsoft Office] just makes it easier to hurt yourself

This feature you're talking about... you say that OpenOffice can implement it if they integrate with VBA functionality?

The fact that you've isolated the world to (a) home use, (b) school use, and (c) financial institution use shows you're blissful ignorance of the situation. Furthermore, the fact that your participation in (c) seeks to leverage technologies that are like a square peg in a round hole provides even more evidence.

I recall an era before computers when accountants uses notebooks called "ledgers" to manage their money. Things were certainly slower than they are today... but maybe that was a good thing, because if you try using broken tools to build a house, don't be surprised when the house falls down. The lesson to financial companies is don't use Microsoft Office to manage money. Personally... I think you're exaggerating the situation because my impression is that most of the big financial companies have large software staffs to develop proprietary in-house applications and I doubt they'd be wasting their time with unmaintainable Visual Basic apps... but feel free to argue that point if you want if I'm wrong.

Re:Great for Home / School use but...

[rmcd]

I find these discussions bizarre.

First: Yes, VBA is a big deal in the corporate world. VBA incompatability is a dealbreaker for openoffice in many situations. Anyone who doesn't know this is simply out of touch with corporate computing. You don't have to like it, that's how it is.

Second: Yes, of course VBA and Excel aren't the "ideal" solutions for many of the tasks for which they're used. But they're very convenient and quite powerful. It's like a mechanic using a screwdriver as a crowbar, hammer, etc. It's handy, and most of the time it works. Sometimes it doesn't work and it can end up costing more time and money than simply having used the right tool at the outset, but convenience is the overwhelming consideration.

Seems to me there's no point in having a discussion where both realities are not acknowledged at the outset.

Re:Great for Home / School use but...

[prsinghdua]

Even high schoolers can program in c, c++, or java!

Re:Great for Home / School use but...

[gnesterenko]

You are very much correct. THe large corps DO have large in-house apps for managing their money. I never said that they did, which you keep saying that I did. What i DID say was that Office, and specifically Access and Excel (the rest is fluff), allows them to A) analyze large amounts of data by directly integrating Office with aforementioned in-house applications 2) communicate and secure this data across the intranet, allowing each dept that needs to touch/alter/view the data have at it with ease 3) automate the before processes to derive some sort of outputs and 4) either aggregate those outputs for management review or 5) use the outputs to enter new data back into the in-house apps, automatically. In other words, Office is a tool for collaboration and automation of data handling. NOT managing money. CERTAINLY not advanced statistics or financial model designs - though it is very capable of handling simple every-day statistics and financial models. I wouldn't use it conduct a risk analysis, but I routinely use it to analyze the entire bond market universe worth of Bloomberg market data for price/rate changes and calculate their potential impacts on my firms holdings. In fact, that feature alone - Anyware RealTime is the name - (Bloomberg terminal integration plug-in) is an Open Office killer. You just can't compete with the business tools that Office has. It has nothing to do with formula functions and only slightly to do with scripting capabilities. Open Office does indeed allow rather extensive programming since it can incorporate not just Basic, but java as well. Wonderful for IT apps, but overkill for non-IT applications. VBA was specifically designed to make every day tasks done with the suite easy and automatic, saving much much time. The fact that you think keeping accounting records in "ledgers" was the one thing that held back the degradation of our financial institutions shows YOUR blissful ignorance of the situation. I've already addressed where you should be laying the blame. Guns don't kill people. People kill people. I will point you once again to http://nymag.com/news/business/55687/. What you are arguing is a point I actually agree with. Some progress shouldn't be shared because people who don't understand it fully can still use it to harm others, sometimes MANY others. It all started with the printing press and this unrestricted sharing of knowlege with people who didn't develop or deserve it it has led to all of societies problems today. But, it is nothing we can ever do anything about, so while you can make snide remarks about MS causing the world to collapse, recognize it for the easy forum target that it is, not actual reality.

impress font resize

[js_sebastian]

A single feature in impress, and it's exactly the 1 feature I wanted. From TFA:

Impress now has convenient toolbar buttons to increase or decrease the font size of text quickly and easily. Make your text fit perfectly in seconds!

If this is what I think it is (make the whole slide text larger or smaller with 1 click) it was badly missed. This is IMHO better than the auto-resize approach powerpoint uses (at least by default) which leads a lot of people to inconsistency across their slides and generally too much content, because you can always fit more as it keeps autoshrinking.

Re:Greatly Unimpressed

[UnknownSoldier]

> The UI is still the Office 95 clone, which works how we used to design user interactivity *15* years ago.

And the wheel is a THOUSAND years old. Quit whining about just because something is old, that newer is better.

But then I shouldn't expect better then someone who doesn't even have the balls to post with a name.

Re:Sorry but...

[Tubal-Cain]

although it has the unfortunate side effect of making you sound like a pretentious scholar that likes to toss around latin words that nobody knows.

Depends where you live. Gratis is not unknown here in central California because of the large hispanic population. The meaning in spanish may not be 1:1 with the meaning in English, but it's close enough. We non-spanish-speaking people still know what it means thanks to bilingual signs.

Outline mode?

[mgkimsal2]

I suspect it still doesn't have an outline mode.

From the new features page:

Outline levels within paragraphs

Writers of documents with complex ordering formats can now specify a new paragraph and paragraph style attribute "outline level". This transforms a normal paragraph into a heading, independent of any list style or paragraph style.

Almost looks like it might be it, but I doubt it. They'd have just said "outline mode" if that's what they meant. Perhaps in another 5-6 years OOo will have an outline mode?

I'm torrenting it right now to try, but it will still take a bit of time. Anyone who's installed it care to set me straight?

Great! Finally OSX/PPC Support!

[nurb432]

Ok, just kidding.. :( Sux to be us US PowerPC holdouts and be stuck with a 2.x version.

Re:Greatly Unimpressed

[Tubal-Cain]

ed, vim, emacs, probably LaTeX...

Re:Stop trolling!

[jbolden]

What exactly does "good" mean for you? That's a bit generic if you think that Excel and OO-Calc aren't "good" you must mean something quite non mainstream.

Re:Sorry but...

[danieltdp]

His point was that all this options came on office 2007. Oo is doing it for a long time. Maybe MS got the ideia from Oo? Who knows?

But I digress. The worst part of MS Office nowadays is that rubber bar. People can disagree, but IMO it sucks quite a lot

Re:Greatly Unimpressed

[danieltdp]

I have to confess that I prefer a 95ish look than that ribbon thingy

Re:snap-to grid for rulers...

[SteveFoerster]

You're not the only one, and even though it sounds like a small thing, it's a significant part of why I still use MS Office at home rather than OpenOffice.

MS ODF

[Tubal-Cain]

Any effort to accommodate MS's ODF screwup?

Re:Stop trolling!

[he-sk]

I haven't used Excel in ages but since it's part of MS Office it's roughly comparable to Calc. Honestly, I could care less about all the bloat that an office suite implies. I'm talking about things like collaboration, versioning, recovery, and so on.

I only use Calc but have to have the complete suite installed. I'm using standalone applications for all my writing and presentation needs. I also have hourly backups.

So what I'm looking for is a standalone FOSS spreadsheet application. Other users have suggested gnumeric, but there's no OS X port and I rather use Calc than run gnumeric in X.

BTW, when I last used Excel the experience was way better than Calc on OS X is now.

Re:Sorry but... [SCNR]

[achurch]

Dirty mouth?

Try Orbit gum!

Brilliant!

Just like the sun!

Burma Shave

Calc text input completely hosed on OS X

[OverZealous.com]

I love OOo. I've been promoting it whenever possible to anyone who can use it. It handles a lot of things very well.

Also, I am aware that the Mac version is fairly recent, so I expect some quirks. But it's been long enough, and they still haven't gotten basic editing keystrokes working in Calc. In fact, there is no way to even change those keystrokes. When I'm editing, I regularly use (Shift) Opt-Left/Right to navigate text. In OOo, I now have to use the mouse (ack) or arrow around letter-by-letter.

It was bad enough when only Shift-Cmd-Left/Right worked, but now just about all of the keyboard shortcuts are completely missing on Macs.

And before you suggest Tools > Customize, there are no commands for navigating tokens within Calc. In fact, as far as I can tell, Calc completely ignores text-editing keystrokes now, which is a real shame, since Writer handles them all with aplomb.

Re:Sorry but...

[Richy_T]

Yeah, well, in other parts of the world, having a decent vocabulary isn't considered a stigma. A fairly common word in use in the UK when I was growing up. Man, I've had to stop using so many good words since I moved to the States. The looks of incomprehension wear after a while. Not to say that the States haven't got a whole lot going for them though...

Re:Sorry but...

[JoCat]

I used OpenOrifice once -- I accidentally opted in to the Open Sores license and have thus far been unable to opt out or uninstall the software.

No MDI

[pavon]

Seriously. We have to go through the normal upgrade cycle each time MS Office is released, and I have not seen a single improvement to Office in the last 3 releases. And it's not just because Office is mature and has nothing left to fix. I have a list of things I would love to see done, the top of the list being to kill fucking MDI. For the sake of those oddballs like me that would like to do something completely unreasonable like display two spreadsheets on different screens. Or to display a tall-skinny spreadsheet and a short-wide spreadsheet, and have room to show different application in the left over space. I know, this is crazy talk. No one has monitors larger than 15 inches, and using applications in any mode but fullscreen is heresy. Next thing you know I'm going to be asking for the ability to overlap applications using a concept called "windowing".

Re:Sorry but...

[Trogre]

To those of us who have done business with them, it is painfully apparent that they are.

Re:Sorry but...

[atamido]

I also could really care less.

Sorry to pick on you grammar nazi but...
http://www.orble.com/images/i-could-care-less.JPG

Classic UI = Major reason to prefer OpenOffice

[gustep12]

This is what I have found too: I don't like MS Office 2007, where many features are too hidden away compared to what I am used to. For example, if you need to change the line thicknesses on a chart. Simple things like that.

For that reason, I've been sticking to MS Office 2003. It's clear, it's reasonably simple, and most importantly, it's the way I expect things to work. So if OpenOffice actually maintains this style of GUI, and MS doesn't, then this is one of the most convincing reasons yet to use OpenOffice.

And yes, thanks for Anti-Aliasing of figures, this is great. One of the worst things about MS Office is the horrible integration of EPS files into MS Word documents: They only show up as a horrible preview, which appears to be just the opposite of anti-aliased: Extra-crude and jagged. I don't know why they did that (licensing, I presume), but it makes it annoying to work with EPS files, which publishers often request in the authoring process for printed media. Here, the horrible rendering quality and lack of anti-alias is an obvious weak spot in MS software.

Similarly, I like Adobe Illustrator very much for two simple reasons: it uses anti-aliasing during the drawing process, and it has "intelligent" snap-to guides and points. This makes the on-screen work pleasant to look at and intuitive to interact with. Compared to that, many 2D CAD programs suck because they don't use anti-alias during the creation/drawing process, and your work looks "crude" by comparison.

An pleasant-looking GUI and intuitive interaction are major usability factors. In the 3D world, I like Alibre Design for that reason, which has snap-to and click-select-edit abilities in 3D similar to Illustrator in 2D, and yet still makes it easy to work with precision: You create your rough shape(s) with the mouse in a few clicks, and then fine-tune things like exact dimensions, chamfers, etc. with a combination of mouse and keyboard. All the while, your piece of work is pleasantly rendered, drag- and rotate-able in single 3D window.

OpenOffice with good object rendering (full anti-alias, hopefully also good EPS support) and intuitive interaction (classic menus, transparent shapes for dragging, etc.) sounds like a very attractive package.

Re:Sorry but...

[chromas]

I live in the US; Woohoo!

F11

[reiisi]

Release candidate works fine (for a home PC) on my ancient clamshell iBook. I was surprised at how not-heavy OO.org is on that guy. 300MHz G3.

Starts a bit slow, like Java, but once it's running, it's useable.

I installed the release candidate to check a bug in the part where the installer sets up the boot partitions and walks on the Mac OS 9 drivers, which means you have to boot from something else, run the Mac OS 9 hard disk setup for the version of the OS you're running, and "refresh" the drivers if you want for to multi-boot with Mac OS 9 so your kids can run the bundled games. Nope. I need to send the guys working on that bug a working clamshell iBook with maxed RAM and a largish HD. But I guess I put a higher priority on my kids playing games than on getting that bug fixed.

The games RC installs are working much better on PPC than they have in the past, too.

clearing the recent document list in OOo

[fudgefactor7]

There was a nice addin that let me clear the history, but in 3.1.0 that addin no longer works. I wish OOo would just add that in (if they did, I missed it somehow.) That would really be nice to have.

Re:You Get What You Pay For

[wolverine1999]

you're probably just a troll but you were using a beta version (the bug is in the beta).

Switch to GO OO - it's super stable and doesn't have that bug from my experience...

Re:Stop trolling!

[jbolden]

The original poster said it meant, "collaboration, versioning, recovery, and so on." which sound kind of heavy to me. Your list I don't know. I'd say maybe Saig or one of the older curses based ones (can't get lighter than that).

Will there be an updated Novell fork?

[kriston]

Will there be an updated Novell fork, too?

Re:Sig

[Nutria]

the peaceful abolition of coercive government

You do realize how incredibly much that is not going to happen, given the very definition of coercive.

Re:Sorry but...

[westyvw]

I bought Office for my business and still switched to OpenOffice. OpenOffice works better for large documents, the integration with Calc is better, the document format is easy to manipulate with other programs, I could install it and freely share it when I needed to, and use it on any platform I choose.

Hands down the better application.

Application looks dont mean much when you are producing 3000 page document for a nice tidy sum of $$ and want to get the job done. Lyx may have been a good choice too, but for the collaborative parts I do, OpenOffice fits in a little better.

And if you need all the functionality of the latest Power Point, you just give bad presentations.

Re:Sorry but...

[westyvw]

Oh so Office finally started adding some functionality? If they keep trying maybe Microsoft can catch up! Nah, they don't think of anything new...just look at Windows 7

Re:Sorry but...

[eyore15]

Sorry to pick on you grammer nazi but if your going to do it right you should follow your own advice

Yes, "YOUR" right his "GRAMMER" was teh sux, also while we're at it when you say you could care less you imply that you do care about the issue, as you have the ability to care less than you currently do about it. Get a brane, moran!

believe you meant to say "YOUR (sic) CORRECT. Right implies directionality.

Re:Sig

[Joey Vegetables]

There are noncoercive methods of resistance. No government, no matter how violent, could last long without at least the implicit support of those whom it enslaves. If people were willing to refuse to be enslaved . . refuse to support the violence done by it in their name . . . it would collapse overnight. That has not happened very often but it has happened on occasion, for instance in Romania and a few other Eastern European states circa 1989. It could happen again. It could provoke a violent response of course . . . and probably would if only a few of us resisted. But if enough of us resisted, it could never get us all. If enough of us cared enough for freedom to risk even a little for it, we would have it. The fact that we don't is therefore at least as much our fault as government's. I have trouble looking at myself in the mirror when I recognize this. It is very easy to point out the corruption, cowardice and decadence of our so-called "leaders" and I do so regularly. It's much harder to admit one's own. But we must. Revolution truly does start in hearts and minds, and by far the most successful kind is the kind that occurs without violence, at least on the part of those who resist. Perhaps one day I will truly be ready for it, but until then, I suppose I deserve to be a slave. But my children, and their children, and all of our children, do not. I hope and pray I will leave them a free world, or if not, at least the most free world I can help to achieve.

Re:Sig

[Nutria]

Thank you for the Eastern European examples. I had forgotten about them.

In most of those countries, though, most of the same people are in power, and many pine for the "good old days" of state control.

The older I get (in my mid-40s, and remember cursing being 12.5 months too young to vote for Reagan), the more I think that most people want to be ruled. I.e., that (among other classifications!), there are (with some overlap between "(1) and (3)" and "(2) and (3)"

1. Rulers,
2. Followers, and
3. Individualists.

"Followers" are the greatest chunk of humanity (some American Revolutionaries even wanted to make a king of George Washington!!), although many want the "petty freedom" of being left alone until something bad happens. IOW, there's a reason why Ben Franklin came up with his security/freedom aphorism.

Re:Sorry but...

[V!NCENT]

That's because Gratis means Free of charge...
Gratis of Charge means Free of charge of charge...

Re:Sorry but...

[V!NCENT]

Welcome to the English Oxford Online Dictionary: http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/gratis?view=uk
Oh and welcome to Latin BTW...

Re:Sorry but...

[V!NCENT]

Yup. It comes from Latin.

Re:Sorry but...

[dave87656]

quality Microsoft

I'm confused. Which one is it?

And besides I've been using OO for a couple of years and my buddies at work are constantly amazed that I've been able to everything they can with their $450 MS Office package, read all their files, including Macros. Some day, though, they will actually find something that they could do which I couldn't, but they haven't found it yet.

Re:Sorry but...

[dave87656]

Well, I'm sorry to hear that. I installed it with a single click (on linux and not much more on Windows) and in about 10 minutes. Don't know what you're doing wrong.

If you installed it on Windows and you had to reboot Windows 3 times, perhaps the problem is Windows.

Re:Sorry but...

[dave87656]

If you are using Windows, you uninstall it just like any other piece of software including MS Office.

You don't have to opt in to anything. You have to agree to the license which basically says you are free to use it your heart's content but if you convey it to someone else you have to convey that right as well. Where's the problem?

I've read a couple of these anti-Open Office, anti-Open Source posts and they all seem to have the same irrational point: "I installed OO and it took forever and after that I had to reboot windows, sell my house and work as a slave in hot fields in India."

It's good software, it's free and it works. Use it if you want to. If you prefer to pay several 100 bucks for the same from MS, you're free to do that, too.