Open Office Plans To Party Like It's Version 3.0 396
penguin_dance writes "The Register reports that 'OpenOffice.org is throwing a launch party in Paris on 13 October' to celebrate eight years, and hopefully announce the release of version 3.0. Some notes: [OpenOffice.org 3.0] will support the OpenDocument Format 1.2 standard, and be able to open files created by MS Office 2007 and Office 2008 for Mac OS X." As maj_id10t notes, though the OO.o site does not yet carry an announcement, "Lifehacker has posted an entry stating the final release of OpenOffice 3.0 is available for download via their distribution mirrors."
Openoffice? no thanks. (Score:3, Insightful)
There is such a huge difference in features and usability that there is no way that OpenOffice would gain any ground over Microsoft, in my opinion.
OpenOffice was an absolute torture. I had originally expected that after moving to OpenOffice, I would be able to convince everyone else in my office to make a move as well (eventually).
I guess that takes care of that.
I would like to see a feature list. (Score:4, Insightful)
OO.org works pretty well me but I am not really a big user.
I would love to see a feature list.
Also I would really like to see Base fleshed out. Or at least better documented.
I have tired to play with it but it just makes me nuts.
Re:Always felt a bit clunky to me oh and a questio (Score:5, Insightful)
Like any other piece of software, there are things you feel like you couldn't live without and things you have to get used to. I remember it felt clunky when I first started using it, but that went away very quickly. Some things are more elegant than in MSOffice, some less. I've been using v3.0 for a while now (beta and fc releases), and I like it quite a bit. One of the big clunkinesses, the graphical depiction of comments/notes, is now very nice. There are still some screen rendering oddities that don't get in my way but do contribute to the impression of clunkiness. On the whole, I imagine it's still clunkier than its commercial counterpart, but the gap is narrowing. However, I rarely edit documents that are more than a few hundred pages long, and I know many of OO's critics say that its shortcomings are especially obvious if you work on long documents. So I can't comment on that.
How has MSOffice come along in the same time? Is pdf writing integrated now? Do files still bloat to ridiculous sizes on repeated editing?
Re:Openoffice? no thanks. (Score:4, Insightful)
I largely agree, but every couple of months I check it out again. It's made tremendous strides since that abomination that was StarOffice.
To draw an analogy -- I remember using early versions of the Mozilla suite. It was hideous. Now I can't imagine a web without Firefox.
Give it time. This *is* a major version release, after all. Might be worthy of another go-around.
Re:3.0? (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm tired of Mac users saying open source programs look ugly. Instead of whining why not open up photoshop and design something better?
You're obviously some kind of designer since you use a Mac so why not make a mock up and get someone to make it into an interface?
Re:Openoffice? no thanks. (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, i just popped open OO.org to verfy your claims. here's what i found:
unless you're just trolling, you might make a more convincing case if you actually listed specific complaints instead of, oh i dunno, pulling things out of your ass? honestly, there are a lot of things to get used to when switching from MS Office to OO.org (i spent most of my life using MS Office), and that transition can be pretty frustrating. but don't blame your own inability to adapt (or to even try to adapt) on the software.
neither MS Office, nor OO.org are perfect. personally, i've had problems with both of them. but so far i haven't heard a single legitimate complaint leveled against OO.org. so i have to conclude that these groundless criticisms are just knee-jerk reactions to having to adapt to a new office suite application.
the only problem i've had to OO.org is trying to make PDF documents with complex layouts using tables with varying column/row spans. but i've had the exact same problem in Word. all WYSIWYG editors have quirks like these, and i can't say that one is better than the other.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
party like it's 2-0-0-8 (a.i.g style) (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm sure they invited all those open source contributors, right?
Re:3.0? (Score:1, Insightful)
interface diversity is much less like the borg than the interface consistency of os x, is it not?
Re:Font Embedding in PDFs (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at issue 43029.
Notice that it is classified as a feature request rather than a bug and its target milestone is only 3.2, despite being first created more than three years ago, having over 200 votes, and numerous comments on this issue and its various duplicates showing how it's a complete showstopper for using most professional grade fonts with PDF export.
This bug has become the standard counter-example in on-line discussions to all the OSS advocacy that claims many eyes make all bugs shallow, products will naturally develop according to users' needs because people can contribute their own patches, etc.
Re:3.0? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then, as a pretty sharp Unix programmer, why don't you make a better looking interface? I think his point still holds water.
Re:3.0? (Score:4, Insightful)
Know what I enjoy when I'm using a piece of productivity software like OpenOffice? Getting my work done so I can go do something else.
The computer is a tool. Especially when using something like office productivity software. I don't sit around pondering the color scheme of my screw drivers, or whether or not my wrenches "go with" my hammer. Likewise, I don't spend time contemplating the visual attractiveness of OpenOffice. It lets me get my work done, that's good enough as far as I'm concerned.
Re:3.0? (Score:3, Insightful)
And if you want something native, Apple has iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote)
Meh. I use Keynote as my main presentation software, but I am thinking of switching back to PPT. It is very easy to use, and looks great, but when you're going to a conference, you end up exporting to PPT anyway, and then you have to edit that PPT in Powerpoint to fix all the things that didn't make the jump. It's wonderful if you're sure that your laptop is going to work perfectly.
BUT
Pages is useless. No, I don't really mean that... It has a lot of nice features. I love the layout of the way it handles comments and changes for collaborative document creation. I like its styles sidebar (unlike the tiny little shitty "Inspector" in Word). It has a very nice, non-obtrusive-but-powerful UI (as one would expect, from Apple). But it just plain can't do tables for shit. This, actually, is also why I didn't use OO.o on Windows, and why I couldn't switch to Linux when I got off Windows. Nothing does tables with the power and flexibility of Word.
And Numbers? Seriously, now. It's a toy. And, worse still, it follows that evil design philosophy that says spreadsheets are a way to make pretty tables. They aren't. They're calculating and information manipulation machines. When I'm in Excel, there's no mistaking the fact that I'm working with information. I only engage the formatting tools to keep information straight. They should never be fronted.
Finally, however, what prevents iWork from being a viable alternative to MS Office is the same thing that stymies OO.o: It isn't MS Office. It just plain makes no sense to use these products in any context where someone else might need to work on them. Unless you ran a company and could set the standard, neither are a real option. I get away with using Keynote, but that's it.
Both iWork and OO.o have some really compelling features that I miss in MS Office, but ultimately, MS Office runs the world. And I, at least, am forced to live in the world.
YMMV.
Re:It was just too slow for me. (Score:4, Insightful)
I am very grateful that Sun released OpenOffice, having a FOSS way to interact with
Re:3.0? (Score:3, Insightful)
You must be a project manager.
Re:RC4 is the final version? (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps they're using the classical definition of "release candidate" (this is a candidate for being tagged as the release) instead of the newer usage equating to "late beta".
Sounds like the PDF import plugin is still beta regardless.
Re:3.0? (Score:4, Insightful)
When you live within an office suite for nine hours out of twenty-four, six days out of seven, you should find a new job.
Re:3.0? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing does tables with the power and flexibility of Word....worse still, it follows that evil design philosophy that says spreadsheets are a way to make pretty tables.
I'm confused -- your complaint is that the word processor won't let you build pretty tables, but also that the spreadsheet does?
It just plain makes no sense to use these products in any context where someone else might need to work on them.
If you can, it absolutely makes sense.
There was a time when there were some competing products, and they had some compelling features, but it just plain made no sense to use anything other than Internet Explorer.
Firefox changed all that. And the Web is a lot more interoperable because of it.
That said:
YMMV.
Indeed. In fact, some people are still tied to IE -- even just an IETab in Firefox -- because of that one last website that won't work.
Re:Openoffice? no thanks. (Score:3, Insightful)
Same with hardware. That's why Dvorak keyboards are worse then QWERTY ones. Despite the fact they're not, you know, actually worse but are in fact better.
Re:3.0? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's true that the world runs MS Office, however that's the corporate world. Small companies rarely have the need to export their internal documents to the outside world. So, OO.o is fine in that case.
Re:3.0? (Score:5, Insightful)
Either way, the outcome is the same: They actively drive users away, in FOSS's case back into the comforting arms of Microsoft. It creates a rift between reality and the developer's perception of reality, which results in the project not moving towards progress but orthogonally to it, or worse away.
And here enlies the problem with the "write a patch" types: I gaurantee you I can find an aspect of your computer you aren't an expert at, and you'd be pissed at me if I threw it in your face when you asked for help. Your accountant doesn't tell you to fix your own damn tax problem, the mechanic doesn't derisively laugh because you don't know how to re-gap your own spark plugs, and as a user of FOSS I'd prefer not being snidely mocked just because I don't dedicate hours a day learning your little corner of it. For all the egalitarianism of FOSS, there is still fundamentally a business relationship between the programmers and the users. Until we learn that and put a lid on the "write your own patch" people, it will never equal proprietary software except for a handful of diamonds in the rough.
Why so thorny? Because I've been a recipient of that attitude a few times. And not even my hardcore nerd's reverse tact filter could stop it from getting under my skin.
Screwdriver color schemes (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't sit around pondering the color scheme of my screw drivers
Unless you want to be able to find the right screwdriver in your set. In that case, you might want to label the handles like Craftsman does for its precision screwdrivers: one color for standard, one for Torx, and one for Phillips. Feel free to draw your own analogies to being able to find things in a GUI.
Re:3.0? (Score:5, Insightful)
While I agree that the grandparent is engaged in some first-rate asshattery, I'd just like to make one comment. You say:
Your accountant doesn't tell you to fix your own damn tax problem, the mechanic doesn't derisively laugh because you don't know how to re-gap your own spark plugs
The difference here is that you are paying your accountant and your mechanic for their expertise. Most of the people who receive comments along the lines of 'write a patch' have not contributed anything. On the Free Software project I co-run, we have a designer on the core team. He provides a lot of really high-quality artwork and some good UI ideas. If he comes to me with a feature request, then it goes quite high on my TODO list. Why? Because he's contributed to the project in ways that I am incapable of replacing with my own effort. I recently refactored a big chunk of my code to make it more reusable for someone else. Why? Because at the same time as asking me to, he sent me a diff fixing a few of my bugs.
Free Software is about cooperation. I only benefit from sharing my improvements if other people do as well. We both benefit from not having to reproduce the other's work, and so can get on with things we want to do much faster. If you want something done, then you have to convince me that it's in my interest to do it for you, usually by offering something in return. Whether this is code, artwork, documentation, or money is up to you. If you don't offer anything then the reply will be 'patches welcome' which means either offer me something of value in exchange for my time, or offer someone else something and get them to send me the patch.