Apache OpenOffice 4.0 Released With Major New Features

An anonymous reader writes "Still the most popular open source office suite, Apache OpenOffice 4 has been released, with many new enhancements and a new sidebar, based on IBM Symphony's implementation but with many improvements. The code still has comments in German but as long as real new features keep coming and can be shared with other office suites no one is complaining." The sidebar mentioned brings frequently used controls down and beside the actual area of a word-processing doc, say, which makes some sense given how wide many displays have become. This release comes with some major improvements to graphics handling, too; anti-aliasing makes for smoother bitmaps. In conjunction with this release, SourceForge (also under the Slashdot Media umbrella) has announced the launch of an extensions collection for OO. Extensions mean that Open Office can gain capabilities from outside contributors, rather than being wrapped up in large, all-or-nothing updates. You can download the latest version of Apache OpenOffice here.

Comments

German code comments

[mwvdlee]

I'm a Dutchman, my native language is dutch, and I use english for all comments because using my native language seems to screw with the industry-standard english terminology in programming.
Anybody here who comments his/her code in his native language? How do you deal with the jargon and what are the benefits of using your native language, apart from being able to type TL;DR-size comments with ease?

Re:German code comments

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I'm a Dutchman, my native language is dutch, and I use english for all comments because using my native language seems to screw with the industry-standard english terminology in programming.

It also makes your programs faster. This is one of the reasons why OpenOffice is so slow - source. It's inexcusable that they haven't translated the comments yet.

Re:German code comments

[slartibartfastatp]

My team code (variables, class and method names) and comment in portuguese. I found that not many programmers down here really know english, so our first attempts with english commentary yielded crappy, useless, unreadable comments. Even comments in our native language sometimes can be confusing, so I think that adding a extra layer of noise wouldn't do it.

Re:German code comments

[Archangel Michael]

You have never experienced OpenOffice until you have used it in the original Klingon!

Re:German code comments

[Zontar The Mindless]

Because the original codebase comes from StarOffice, which was developed by a German company (StarDivision).

Play Nice

[fermion]

Before we all start cat fighting, remember that 12 years ago Sun gave us a office application that competed well with MS. I have used it for all that time, and have been able to what I most of what I need to much better and reliably then with MS Office. I supplement it with Apple stuff and lately with Google Docs, which is not as good.

Yes a few years ago some who did not like OO.org structure created an alternative which some prefer, and there is an issue with Oracle buying OO.org, but now Apache has it.

So before we start modded up the MS shills who want to promote the OO.org versus Libreoffice battle, remember that OSS is about choice, and MS is about the destruction of choice.

Thanks to all the people who have put work into OO.org. It is very appreciated. I have downloaded the new version and will look at it as I need it.

Re:Play Nice

[Sique]

Actually, the story is somewhat longer and started with Star Division, a Hamburg (Germany) based company, who offered a wordprocessor in the 1980ies for 150 DM in Germany, when the comparable Microsoft Word was about 800 DM or more. StarWriter was build into a whole office suite until 1995, when it got renamed in StarOffice. In 1999, Sun Microsystems bought Star Division, and in 2002 opened the code and created OpenOffice. Completed with some non-open licensed parts (like an RDBMS; if I remember correctly, StarOffice was using ADABAS from Software AG, later the derivate SAP DB), OpenOffice was sold as StarOffice by Sun Microsoft until 2010.

Re:Play Nice

[Anonymous Coward]

You need something like Outlook

Nonsense. Nobody ever needed Outlook. And nothing good ever came from Outlook.

Re:Play Nice

[ScottCooperDotNet]

You need something like Outlook

Nonsense. Nobody ever needed Outlook. And nothing good ever came from Outlook.

It freed us from Lotus Notes.

Re:Merge Already! Libre/Open

[kthreadd]

Because they use different licenses. OpenOffice uses the Apache license, LibreOffice mostly GPL. Merging them is not feasible since either of them would have to give up something they don't want to in return.

Re:Merge Already! Libre/Open

[Anonymous Coward]

They are merging! LibreOffice imports all useful bits. They even keep a running commentary on any commits that are still going into apache office saying which are useful, which are not useful or which libreoffice commits fix something in a more elegant way: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/log/?h=aoo/trunk&showmsg=1

And LibreOffice is already merging improvements

[Anonymous Coward]

LibreOffice 4.1 is out later this week and they already imported all the bug fixes from Apache Office. According to https://www.libreoffice.org/download/4-1-new-features-and-fixes/ they picked up at least these improvements:
"A very large number of bugs have been fixed at an estimate of around 3000 bugs, of which 400 came from authors with apache.org mail addresses."
and
"Sidebar (Apache OpenOffice/IBM Symphony) with resizeable layout (LibreOffice team)"

I wonder when apache office will merge fully with LibreOffice.

Re:And LibreOffice is already merging improvements

[luciano.moretti]

It won't. At this point the codebases have incompatible licensing. LibreOffice can continue to pull in code from OpenOffice, but OpenOffice cannot pull back in code from LibreOffice.

As such, LibreOffice will likely continue to have major releases a week after OpenOffice, where all the good stuff from OpenOffice will get pulled in, but none of the good stuff from LibreOffice will be ported to OpenOffice.

Re:And LibreOffice is already merging improvements

[Palestrina]

Actually, this is not quite true. There are a good number of contributors who are happy to work with both projects. They don't care about the license bullshit. They contribute equally to both projects. So there is a fair amount of code making it back into AOO from LibreOffice.

Also, some supports of free office software, like the Open Source Business Alliance (OSBA) which sponsored much of the OOXML improvements in LibreOffice, have put a clause in their contracts that requires the code produced to be made under the Apache License, even when the code is targeted to LibreOffice. So AOO will have access to that work as well.

Of course, these are just small improvements to an overall climate of inefficiency. And the inefficiency goes in both directions. To the extent LO does not contribute patches upstream they are creating a deferred merge expense that will increase over time, each time they try to merge features down from AOO.

Sidebar!

[whoever57]

Finally, somthing that makes sense on 16x9 monitors, instead of the idiotic idea of taking up vertical space in a "ribbon"

Re:PC is not a tablet

[SJHillman]

Given that it's damn near impossible to find a 4:3 monitor larger than 17" and very hard to find even 16:10, it makes more sense to put in sidebars to use the abundant horizontal space rather than the vertical. Of course, once you get to around 24" monitors, it starts to become much more commonplace to have two apps side-by-side, in which case the argument goes back to having toolbars on the top and bottom.

Or we could, you know, have both as options.

Re:They seem to be doing a fine job.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is garbage. 5% of contributions to LO 4.1 came from apache.

Claiming everything came from apache is an IBM marketing lie and they've been called out on it.

Sidebar the differentiator - really?

[JImbob0i0]

Well since they laud the new sidebar so much for better use of widescreen monitors they should love the fact that LibreOffice will have it within a few days...

4.1 is due in a matter of days which has an improved sidebar that's resizeable and not just a static part of the screen.

I really question what the point of AOO is at this juncture given that LO is clearly the more active project and has two years of code clean up and development over AOO due to the way Oracle let it stagnate for so long.

If you want to try 4.1 now it is on the pre-releases page and it's the final RC there ... ie the same that will be released as final GA in a few days.

Re:Sidebar the differentiator - really?

[Dawn Keyhotie]

"No one, absolutely no one, is complaining about you using [AOO source]."

And yet here you are, trolling on Slashdot, badmouthing LO and its supporters at every turn.

LO gives credit where credit is due, on their site and in their documentation, and I have yet to see any LO contributor or TDF member badmouth AOO in any public forum.

And AOO is not "upstream" of LO. LO is an independent project and makes its own decisions regarding the incorporation of contributions from other projects. It is a true fork of the original source code, and does not simply repackage whatever AOO ships.

You did good work with the OOXML standardization coverage a few years ago, but these LO/AOO diatribes are doing a disservice to your reputation.

Re:PC is not a tablet

[just_a_monkey]

Or we could, you know, have both as options.

That's crazy talk.

Re:Merge Already! Libre/Open

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing like one-way leeching to keep a project going. Seems silly to split because of lack of activity from Oracle and then devolve into leeching changes from Apache.

Re:They seem to be doing a fine job.

[Palestrina]

Comment? Yes. Of the various approaches to argument, the strongest one is to take your opponent's most valid point, the key of their argument, and then to logically rebut it. On the other hand, one of the weakest arguments is the ad hominem attack, declining to engage logic entirely and instead trying to win by bravado and superficial slight of hand. I dismantled your argument, by showing the flaws in how you calculated and interpreted your "5%" claim. You responded (no not responded, but dodged entirely) with an ad hominem attack. I assume if you had a stronger argument to make you would have done so.

Re:IBM Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't let bullshit like that stand.

IBM specifically dedicates a group of developers to every project they open source, as far as I can tell.

For OpenOffice, this is even mentioned in the Wikipedia article:

The developer pool for the Apache project was seeded by IBM employees, who continue to do the majority of the development.

And yes, I checked the references. The statement is correct.

You are an asshole, for lying like that. BOOO!

Re:Merge Already! Libre/Open

[evilviper]

They are merging! LibreOffice imports all useful bits.

Is that the same way Linux and FreeBSD are "merging"?

And yet Linux doesn't yet have a modern file system...

ZFS works great on FreeBSD. HAMMER from DragonFly BSD is damn good as well. BTRFS still sucks, YEARS after it SHOULD HAVE been stable.

Having a license that supposedly allows you to suck the marrow out of the upstream project doesn't really solve your problems for you, and you can certainly still fall behind.

If the LibreOffice guys were smart, they'd be contributing as many of their changes as possible to the upstream project, so they won't have to do extra maintenance, and more people would benefit from them. Of course, if those LO guys were smart, they would have picked a slightly less horrific and painful NAME for their project...