An Early Look At New Features In OpenOffice.org 3.1 260
ahziem writes "With the final release two months away and an alpha version available, it's time to look at OpenOffice.org 3.1's new features: eye candy, better charts, replying to notes in the margin, overlining, macros in Base, RTL improvements for Arabic and Hebrew, and (believe it or not) better sorting. Download and report any bugs you find."
Can't wait for Beta. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The only feature I want... (Score:1, Informative)
Maybe they all already know what he's talking about? I haven't used OO itself in quite a while, but I do periodically try NeoOffice, which is OO adapted for Macs. I have consistently found it to be the slowest and most unstable program on my system. It's simply not usable.
Re:Oh come on! (Score:3, Informative)
Even if you don't run linux, there are various windows-based options [wikipedia.org]
Overlining (Score:5, Informative)
Here's an enormous sigh of relief. As a statistics professor, my #1 gripe with Open Office has been my inability to easily create an x-overbar (sample mean) character. That alone has been the reason I've had to keep booting up a copy of MS Office to edit student handouts.
Re:Good enough (Score:3, Informative)
I've seen several cases where OO.o could open files that MS Word or Excel wouldn't.
Also, the ability to compare and merge two spreadsheets has been a lifesaver once when two people made changes to an important complicated spreadsheet.
These days I use OO.o as the default and only open with MS Office when I have to (very rarely.) Oh, and I just relegated Outlook to a VirtualBox VM. I think that spare XP license will run in VirtualBox on any host. WGA accepted it without a hitch. Next step: Move the domain-enabled office PC into a VirtualBox jail as a disk image. I wanted a bigger disk anyway but reinstalling Windows and everything? Ouch.
Re:Needs Table of Authorities Functionality (Score:5, Informative)
http://cmchoatelaw.wordpress.com/2008/10/29/table-of-authorities-and-openoffice-how-to/ [wordpress.com]
while not as "simple" as word, word isn't really that simple either, and the majority of the additional effort here is an initial setup that doesn't have to be repeated, at least if one makes the effort to script it. The hardest part then is tagging which one has to do in word as well. basically, I think this is solvable without major programming skill, just some macro programming.
Re:The only feature I want... (Score:5, Informative)
Go-OO is the slowest of all based on these benchmarks [oooninja.com] from the same site as in the OP.
One thing to keep in mind is that Go-OO is the Novell version of OpenOffice.org and what with the patent threat due to their Microsoft agreement [softwarefreedom.org] (best explanation of this threat is here [youtube.com]) you should be careful not to tie yourself to one particular office suite through proprietary formats. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) the ODF format is like HTML and you can reference and include proprietary files in it.
Base as Access Competitor? (Score:2, Informative)
Macros in Base
OpenOffice.org Base gets a huge boost now that OpenOffice.org 3.1 allows macros in .odb files. Furthermore, Base macros can be bound to events. Helping it compete with Microsoft Access, Base developers will save time and enjoy new possibilities such as creating navigation forms (called switchboards in Access).
SQL syntax highlighting
SQL is a first-class citizen in Base. In OpenOffice.org 3.1 the SQL editor highlights SQL syntax, which is helpful for finding typos such as a missed quotation mark.
Good thing that there are finally macros in .odb files - and shocks me that before, there hadn't been?! Well, last time I played with Base was some time ago, and I was appalled at the features (or lack thereof), being a former Access developer. TFA makes me want to play with the new version, see if it is at least possible to create simple applications with it.
I still have one major problem with OOo (Score:1, Informative)
Here at work, we all ditched MS Office in favor for OOo. But I still got one major concern with OOo where I still have to ressort with MS Office or better, Excel to work it out.
I have a few Excel spreadsheets that are saved as html. Excel can open them just fine and everything looks, OOo opens them but the (simple) layout is all messed up!
Those html spreadshits are generated by an application automaticaly. Renaming them to xls doesnt do the trick either.
So here is something I am waiting for years for OOo to solve, but still nothing!
Re:Oh come on! (Score:5, Informative)
Dude, you need Update Notifier [longfocus.com], it wraps all those updates into a nice and tiny button, with a sensible reboot-at-MY-convenience option.
Re:I still have one major problem with OOo (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Good enough (Score:1, Informative)
Or...
You might as well save your Impress presentation in ODF and carry the ODF plugin for MSOffice in an USB stick. That way, you just install the support for ODF and you'll be up and running to view the presentation.
Disable updates if you want (Score:4, Informative)
You can disable all that. Go to Tools -> Settings... -> Update
(Actual names may vary, I'm using Firefox in Spanish language)
There uncheck the three boxes under "Automatically search for updates..."
Then you'll have to click on Help -> Search for updates every time you want to update, but at least thou shalt not be nagged at (yes, I do understand you prefer to have Firefox update itself automatically and naglessly, but in the meantime...).
Re:Good enough (Score:3, Informative)
On the topic of corruption, I've used OO.o to rescue a friend's document that was corrupted. It was a research project write up, he saved it in only one place. He learnt a valuable lesson in backing up (with the half hour of ohshitohshitohshit) without any long term harm.
But yes, my production environment is a mix of Office 2003 and Office 2007, and I run Office 2008. Compatibility problems are rife, especially with equations.
Re:Good enough (Score:5, Informative)
I totally love the presentation mode in Impress where you have your slides on projector and slides thumbs (so you can see the next slide coming) along with notes on your laptop screen. And it shows you the time you spent presenting -- priceless during university seminars. Didn't know it was there, now I can't live without it. Don't care if PowerPoint has similar features -- it has to run on my Linux first.
Re:Oh come on! (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, I hope Windows 7 or 8 comes with a package manager like Ubuntu does.
Where can I email Microsoft to implement this?
I know that you were going for Funny, but MS does have an Idea Submit service. Request it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/outreach/ideas/ideaSubmit.mspx [microsoft.com]
Re:Oh come on! (Score:3, Informative)
And don't even get me started on the PITA it is to try out a Firefox beta or nightly on Ubuntu...
Re:But, but, but.... (Score:2, Informative)
It's too big, confusingly laid out...where the hell has the old 'Tools/Options' disappeared to ?
Dude.... I can understand your confusion, but it's likely because the ribbon makes more sense than the previous menu structure, not less.
Application related functions (settings, open/save, print, export, and so on) are under the Office button.
Document related functions exist on the ribbon itself, which is separated into different tabs based on the function you desire, often with live previews, and more descriptive pictures.
It takes a couple days to re-learn where everything is based on muscle memory, but I found that the ribbon layout actually improved my workflow. That is, of course, after I took the time to understand why the changes were made, instead of just bitching about fact itself.