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Sneak Preview of New OpenOffice 3.2
omlx writes 'The last developer milestone (DEV300m60) of OpenOffice.org has been released. The next version of OpenOffice.org 3.2 has more than 42 features and 167 enhancements . The final version is expected to be available at the end of November 2009. Many companies have contributed to this version, like RedHat, RedFlag and IBM, making OpenOffice more stable and useful. I couldn't stop myself from seeing new features and enjoying them. So I downloaded the DEV300m60 version. After playing with it for many days I could say that OpenOffice developers have done very good work in it. Well done!"
Based on the section headings from TFA, I gather that version 3.2 is more secure, faster, more international, and more easier.
Apparently a grammar checker isn't one of the 42 new features.
Now now...
If you have used Microsoft Word to write your blog you would have seen that "more easier" is kind of green-underline (i.e., it does not make sense).
That hurt even *my* eyes... and my native language is not English.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
5 characters isn't much to bruteforce anyway.
I suspect they eliminated a password length requirement because the security of the password is really up to the needs and desires of the user who set that password. If I have a password length of 5, then someone who wants a trivial password to keep casual lookie-loos out is going to choose 12345 anyway.
("Amazing! That's the same as the combination on my suitcase!")
Allow me to choose one character minimum and I'll choose one character and use it. No real loss in security, and since I'm choosing the level of security it's my decision to make. I can't sue OO for "lack of security" because OO is simply allowing me to choose how secure I want my stuff.
Someone who wants to protect (as in really protect) their document is going to choose a 50-character password with a mix of uppers, lowers, numbers, and scrunchy special characters. Then it'll be so secure, even the original author can't open it.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
One of the "fixes" is that it will convert text cells to numbers in formulae if it can. This is one of the major differences from Excel that led Microsoft to move all their formulae into a different namespace, in order to prevent users from seeing behavioural inconsistencies across products. That's the way they put it, The Internet described it as deliberately breaking interoperability. I'm agnostic on that distinction, but OOo is now in line with just about every other spreadsheet in existence including Excel, Gnumeric, and Google Docs in this respect. It will be interesting to see what happens to the msoxl namespace when this comes out. I don't know if 3.2 will convert the msoxl namespace formuale to the default namespace when it opens an Excel ODF file.
It's interesting to see how many companies are putting work into this product considering the gradual rise of online based office suites like Google Docs.
In early 2008 I went through some personal events that caused me to suddenly lose access to my primary desktop. When a co-worker introduced me to Google Docs, I immediately liked the idea of having all my important documents be stored somewhere that I could access from any Internet enabled device. Since then I've also come to appreciate the ease of collaborations using Google Docs. I've had whole discussions about requirements documents that went on completely through Google Docs - the client would type in some basic concept of what they'd wanted, I'd reformat it to more formal requirements while they watched, they'd edit, I'd start working and add in notes or questions as they came along, they'd add in replies... It's been absolutely fantastic for streamlining off-site development processes.
And now I hear Google is planning on capitalizing further on that aspect with the upcoming Google Wave... And Microsoft is planning to release an online version of Office 2010... And I'm yet to hear of similar plans from the OpenOffice scene.
Which makes me sad. I've been an OpenOffice user for most of the last decade... Started using it when it was still StarOffice, before Sun bought and open sourced it. I'd hate to see it fall by the wayside.
The site is slow and may be intermittent, so here's the text:
--snipsnip--
Home
A sneak preview of new OpenOffice 3.2 part 1
By FahadTue, 10/20/2009 - 17:20
The last developer milestone ( DEV300m60) of OpenOffice.org has been released. The next version of OpenOffice.org 3.2 has more than 42 features and 167 enhancements . The final version is expected to be available at the end of November 2009.Open Office 3.2
Many companies have contributed to this version like RedHat , RedFlag and IBM, making OpenOffice more stable and useful. I couldn't stop myself from seeing new features and enjoying them. So I downloaded DEV300m60 version. After playing with it for many days I could say that OpenOffice developers have done very good work in it. Well done !
I will review in this post some interesting features : more secure , faster , easier and more international.
more secure
Detect if non-encrypted streams are in encrypted document:
OOo expects that an encrypted document does not contain any non-encrypted streams starting from ODF1.2 version. The exceptions are the streams that are part of the ODF format: "mimetype", "META-INF/manifest.xml" and signature streams that follow the pattern "META-INF/*signatures*".
The manifest.xml is part of the document signature now:
In OpenOffice.org 3.2, the manifest.xml will be signed . This will introduce the limitation that macro signatures can't be introduced after the document was signed, because this would need manipulation of the (then) signed manifest.xml.
ODF document integrity check:
The document integrity check proves now whether the ODF document conforms the ODF specification. It mainly affects the ODF1.2 documents. If an inconsistency is found, the document is treated as a broken one, the office suggests to repair the document in this case. The macros are disabled in repaired documents.
Faster
Many issues have been fixed in order to make OpenOffice.org faster. The happy news that OpenOffice.org 3.2 is now faster than before in many aspects. The startup now 30% faster in Windows. Many issues have been ironed out in Writer (6 issues) and Calc (10 issues) regarding loading and saving times.
Now I can see that OpenOffice is faster than before but still there are many things have to be done in speed side.
More easier
Default button in password dialog now is "OK" :Default button in password dialog
Although it is a small change but it makes OpenOffice more usable . Now The OK button in the password dialog is the default button again .
Remove the password length limitation:
password length limitation" The current minimal password length limitation ( 5 characters ) is outdated and makes no sense any more. Thus the limitation is removed, although the password is not allowed to be empty. "
Import of password protected Microsoft Office XML documents:
This is a great feature. Many people asked me how we can open password protected docx/xlsx files. All document types are supported including: MS Word 2007 documents (*.docx, *.docm) - MS Word 2007 templates (*.dotx, *.dotm) - MS Excel 2007 documents (*.xlsx, *.xlsm) - MS Excel 2007 binary documents (*.xlsb) - MS Excel 2007 templates (*.xltx, *.xltm) - MS Powerpoint 2007 documents (*.pptx, *.pptm) - MS Powerpoint 2007 templates (*.potx, *.potm).
Encryption support for "Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP" :
This new feature make saving password protected Microsoft Word document possible with Microsoft Office standard RC4 algorithm.
Keyboard shortcut configuration dialog now supports "ALT" modifier:
supports ALT modifierBefore OpenOffice.org 3.2, the dialog for configuring keyboard shortcuts never allowed to use the ALT-key. Now ALT as well as SHIFT-ALT, CTRL-ALT and SHIFT-CTRL-ALT modifiers can be used in the dialog.
Impress and Draw now support comments:
To support collaboration, it is now possible to add comments to a presentation or drawing
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I evaluated 3.1 for use in my company for a department of about 100 people (would have saved $20,000 per year in licensing). The main problem was not speed but compatibility!
Please concentrate on fixing the problems with fonts/formatting!
I evaluated 3.1 for use in my company for a department of about 100 people (would have saved $20,000 per year in licensing). The main problem was not speed but compatibility!
It is as compatible as different versions of MS Office... You are only totally compatible when everyone is running the same version of the same program.
The problem is, Office tends to be 'compatible enough', certainly to the point where most people don't think twice about which version a .doc is created in when they open it.
OpenOffice has yet to reach that threshold.
OpenOffice, like Word and everything else I can think of, gets
one fundamental thing wrong in the user interface design.
Documents are 8 1/2" wide x 11" tall with say 6.5" x 9" tall
useable writing area.
Screens are not very tall, but quite wide these days, on average.
Therefore, all (yes, ALL!) of the available vertical space in the application
window should be devoted to displaying the document.
There is plenty of room for controls to the side, or perhaps sliding down
from the top on demand. A one-line control bar at the top might be
justified for inherently horizontal things like font and style names, but
that's it.
As it is, we are editing our documents through the letter slot in the door.
Maybe that will be version 4.0
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Actually, Microsoft Office isn't all that compatible with Microsoft Office, when you are talking about different versions. In my 6-7 years running Linux at work, I used OpenOffice exclusively to write and edit documents, and to create and modify spreadsheets. I never had a problem exchanging documents with others. Of course, I was careful to save documents in the Microsoft Word "DOC" format, and spreadsheets in the Microsoft Excel "XLS" format.
It's true that sometimes Word will fail to render a document properly. But it's not the fault of OpenOffice - sometimes, Microsoft Word fails to properly display other Microsoft Word files. An example I wrote about a few months ago:
I think it just goes to show: if you have a document that absolutely must preserve formatting, send it as a PDF.
This is not my experience in the least. In my day-to-day, I have far more documents created in OO.o that end up looking mangled in all versions of Word than ones that come out looking right. And it's also a rare occurance when a .doc sent to me displays properly in OO.o, and I'm certain many are made in 2003 and some in 2007.
For example, I recently had to make a .doc format resume for a job application, and it was completely mangled on the other end even though it looked fine in OO.o. The only thing this had was some alignment changes, headers, and paragraph text. After getting the job, I had to coordinate with background check people, movers and the like, which included sending lots of word documents, some including forms, back and forth. The forms didn't work at all (they showed up mangled, I couldn't click them even though the fields were visible), and the layout of the non-form-encrusted documents were usually mangled.
In fact, I can't recall a single instance where a somewhat complicated word document (one that contains more than just text of various sizes in standard paragraphs) displayed correctly in Open Office when it was created with Word or displayed correctly in any version of Word when it was created with Open Office.
It's not 100% compatible like Office.
For home use the compatibility is good enough but in business EVERYTHING has to look just right and consistent. When we evaluated it we found that:
1. We would have to recreate a 2nd set of templates for OpenOffice. We're talking 100s of templates that need to be duplicated and then maintained.
2. Most of our old documents (we're talking TBs worth) had at least minor formatting issues. Like something as small as the logo moved 5mm to the left. Which in the business world is a big deal. It's impossible to fix them all.
3. Even if we did fix them when they're opened in Word again there's a high chance that a new formatting issue would be introduced. So you can't reliably collaborate with people using MS Office (that means other employees in the company, clients, partners, etc!)
The only way it would have worked for us is if we invested in recreating templates, given up on old documents and kept that department working in isolation.
Every couple of years we put together a team of a dozen volunteers and test it again. OpenOffice has been getting better and it's just a matter of time before it's good enough.
I just save all my OO.o documents as 'Office XP' docs & spreadsheets. ZERO problems with formatting so far when my buddy (using the latest and greatest MS Office) opens them. And I use some strangeassed templates, too...
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Indeed, that is why, whatever package I am using, I always save as a PDF file in order to send to people. Sending files in a non-portable format is stupid. The most ridiculous thing I get is from work where other departments advertising meetings and Christmas events email out Publisher files.
I wrote my resume in Word 97. I needed to update it recently and found that it did not look correct at all in Office 2008. I was forced to use open office. After saving it as Office XP in open office it opened in Office 2008 just fine.
Aha! A data point!
(Just two more of these and I can form a DATA TRIANGLE!)
Dear Sir,
this might be relevant to your interests.
Yours truly,
Anon