OpenOffice.org 3.0 Is Officially Here 284
SNate writes "After a grinding three-year development cycle, the OpenOffice.org team has finally squeezed out a new release. New features include support for the controversial Microsoft OOXML file format, multi-page views in Writer, and PDF import via an extension. Linux Format has an overview of the new release, asking the question: is it really worth the 3.0 label?"
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Forbidden (Score:5, Informative)
Google Cache of Mirror List (Score:5, Informative)
http://74.125.113.104/search?q=cache:chsA7FTyP3wJ:distribution.openoffice.org/mirrors/+mirrors+openoffice&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us [74.125.113.104]
Re:Google Cache of Mirror List (Score:4, Informative)
RSS feed of torrents for all platforms:
http://borft.student.utwente.nl/~mike/oo/bt.rss [utwente.nl]
Pre-Slashdotted (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, it was down before Slashdot posted the story. I tried to access it a couple of hours ago, and it was down then. (Albeit without the ContentHelmNoodle error.)
Check your local friendly mirror. ;-)
Re:Great ... err ... (Score:5, Informative)
Btw, unless word is specifically requested, pdf resume's look a lot nicer.
Re:Great ... err ... (Score:4, Informative)
I think GeoWrite existed for Apple-II as well.
Anyway, yes, you can export them to a Word-compatible format, and since OpenOffice is using a standard file format, MS Word should be able to read it as well. Also, OpenOffice will create smaller and nicer Word-files than Word.
Re:OOXML (Score:5, Informative)
The Linux Format article says it can import docx, pptx etc., which means they are Microsoft Office 2007 XML files, and not OOXML, the Published Standard.
Flawed summary.
Re:Best feature for me? (Score:2, Informative)
even though I have licences for 4 different versions of MS Office I can now only read the documents people send me, by using a free program
This might be more down to your own lack of knowledge [microsoft.com] than any failing of Microsoft.
Re:PDF (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, it can really import PDF's
tested this out on the RC's (haven't tested the final release yet) and it worked OK
not great, but OK
there seemed to be no problem at all loading a simple PDF'd document or spreadsheet
importing took a little longer than I'd have hoped, but I got a fully editable document, formatting intact
just for kicks, I loaded the PDF of my motherboard manual into OO.o just to see
and while I did get editable text, it did not do particularly well on complex formatting
in particular, changes in page orientation & dimensions threw it, resulting in some pages being malformed
Just from briefly playing around with it, I've found the following:
- Importing a PDF'd spreadsheet gets you a tabulated word processing document, with spreadsheet rows & columns made up of drawing lines and text in textboxes
- sometimes (haven't been able to narrow down what causes it) random spaces are inserted into words
"Some text" may become "Som e te xt"
- Borders around objects (textboxes, shapes) are sometimes inconsistent
- no support for transparent PNG's (alpha channel turns to solid black)
Torrent link (Score:3, Informative)
Openoffice.org has been KO'd. Here's where you can snag a torrent file though:
http://borft.student.utwente.nl/~adrian/bt.php [utwente.nl]
Startup time seems fixed (Score:4, Informative)
On a stock Dell low-end Dimension C521 running Vista Business, Open Office Writer loads in 9 seconds the first time, and in 1 second thereafter. Not really an issue anymore. Most of my apps take 5-10 seconds to start on this box.
Re:Still Has The 6.5-Year-Old Lethal Bug? (Score:2, Informative)
Sometimes OO treats a number as a string
Um, when? In OOo 2.x, when you input a string like "'1" into a cell or "a1", it's clearly a string (shows a character in the cell other than a number) and it will treat it as 0. Even if you hit F2 to edit the cell and replace it with just a '1' it will automatically convert that cell value to a number.
IMHO, this is superior to the behavior in Excel 200x, for instance, where it will let you put in "'1", which will enter a string value of "1" as a string, and then ends up treating the result as a number! Oh, sure, it gives you that little 'warning sign' that says that the cell is a string, not a number, but treating a string as a number like that is just ... wrong.
Re:Great ... err ... (Score:5, Informative)
Can you explain how PDf resume's look a lot nicer? It's going to look the same as a printed copy which will look the same as the copy in the word processor you are printing it from.
If the word processor is Microsoft Word, that depends on whether the recipient has a) the same Word version and language (and therefore the same platform) b) the same printer model and c) the necessary fonts.
Re:Still Has The 6.5-Year-Old Lethal Bug? (Score:2, Informative)
Ah, ok, found it in Google's cache. This must be you:
And any idiot spreadsheet designer who's putting a string value into a formula designed to take a number is doing it wrong. Just because Excel silently accepts the string and then turns it into a number value -- it's like I said in my above post ^^^^, Excel is treating a string as a number. That's more wrong than treating the string as a 0 value.
Re:OOXML (Score:4, Informative)
The Linux Format article says it can import docx, pptx etc., which means they are Microsoft Office 2007 XML files, and not OOXML, the Published Standard.
Office 2007 OOXML files *are* a published standard -- the published standard in question being ECMA 376.
If what you actually meant was "...not OOXML, the Published ISO Standard", then say what you mean. But your original comment could be understood as saying that the spec Office 2007 uses is unpublished, wihch is obviously wrong.
(Not to mention that even saying that is ambiguous -- does "The ISO standard" refer to ISO 29500/Transitional or ISO 29500/Strict? The former is practically identical to ECMA 376, with the exception of minor tag semantic cleanup; whereas the latter is significantly different).
Re:Can you spot the flaw in the reasoning? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Forbidden (Score:3, Informative)
Re:PDF (Score:1, Informative)
Sorry, yet I have to disagree.
There's one feature that I had been waiting for ever...
When you zoom out in more than two pages, Writer would just keep ONE column of pages, and make them smaller.
As opposed, Microsoft's Word would zoom out, and re-organize the pages to fit on-screen (two pages side-by-side, then three, four, etc.)
This was really... well, there was just a better way (Word's).
The new Open Office 3.0 has this feature.
Aside from that, and the >256 columns... the icons are prettier.
[[Seriously; thanks to everyone that works on Open Office. Thanks!]]
Bouncer - Mirror Selection Still Up (Score:1, Informative)
The official site which chooses which mirror to redirect you to is still up. You can use the form here to be redirected to a mirror for the version you'd like to download:
http://openoffice.bouncer.osuosl.org/download-form.php
Ooo as an essential file recovery tool for MSO (Score:2, Informative)
Ooo is often VERY good at importing MS files, sometimes it's better at it than than MS apps, because the Ooo guys know that their code has to respond elegantly to unexpected departures from the strict file specs due to undocumented MS wrinkles. So if you use MSWord, you should probably have a copy of Ooo installed too, for emergency file-recovery purposes: if you ever get a corrupted Word file that Word refuses to read, there's a fair chance that Ooo will still be able to import it (and resave it in a format that Word can read).