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Apache OpenOffice 4.0 Released With Major New Features

Posted by timothy on from the so-many-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-good dept.

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.

10 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. Play Nice by fermion · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    --
    "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
    1. Re:Play Nice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You need something like Outlook

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

  2. Re:Merge Already! Libre/Open by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

  3. Re:German code comments by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  4. And LibreOffice is already merging improvements by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:And LibreOffice is already merging improvements by luciano.moretti · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

  5. Sidebar! by whoever57 · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    --
    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
  6. Re:PC is not a tablet by SJHillman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re:They seem to be doing a fine job. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  8. Re:IBM Open Source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!