Sneak Preview of New OpenOffice 3.2 377
omlx writes 'The last developer milestone (DEV300m60) of OpenOffice.org has been released. The next version of OpenOffice.org 3.2 has more than 42 features and 167 enhancements . The final version is expected to be available at the end of November 2009. Many companies have contributed to this version, like RedHat, RedFlag and IBM, making OpenOffice more stable and useful. I couldn't stop myself from seeing new features and enjoying them. So I downloaded the DEV300m60 version. After playing with it for many days I could say that OpenOffice developers have done very good work in it. Well done!"
Re:Faster... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, honestly, this is the #1 thing that has kept me from using OpenOffice day-to-day. The first thing I did when I opened this article was to have my browser search for the word "faster".
Coloured tabs in Calc? (Score:3, Interesting)
And does it render the same as Excel/Word yet?
Until these and other niggling incompatibilities are resolved, my wife will still be nagging me to install Office in Wine...
Tom...
Calculating with text (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the "fixes [openoffice.org]" is that it will convert text cells to numbers in formulae if it can. This is one of the major differences from Excel that led Microsoft to move all their formulae into a different namespace, in order to prevent users from seeing behavioural inconsistencies across products. That's the way they put it, The Internet described it as deliberately breaking interoperability. I'm agnostic on that distinction, but OOo is now in line with just about every other spreadsheet in existence including Excel, Gnumeric, and Google Docs in this respect. It will be interesting to see what happens to the msoxl namespace when this comes out. I don't know if 3.2 will convert the msoxl namespace formuale to the default namespace when it opens an Excel ODF file.
Why no online version of OpenOffice? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's interesting to see how many companies are putting work into this product considering the gradual rise of online based office suites like Google Docs.
In early 2008 I went through some personal events that caused me to suddenly lose access to my primary desktop. When a co-worker introduced me to Google Docs, I immediately liked the idea of having all my important documents be stored somewhere that I could access from any Internet enabled device. Since then I've also come to appreciate the ease of collaborations using Google Docs. I've had whole discussions about requirements documents that went on completely through Google Docs - the client would type in some basic concept of what they'd wanted, I'd reformat it to more formal requirements while they watched, they'd edit, I'd start working and add in notes or questions as they came along, they'd add in replies... It's been absolutely fantastic for streamlining off-site development processes.
And now I hear Google is planning on capitalizing further on that aspect with the upcoming Google Wave [google.com]... And Microsoft is planning to release an online version of Office 2010 [cnn.com]... And I'm yet to hear of similar plans from the OpenOffice scene.
Which makes me sad. I've been an OpenOffice user for most of the last decade... Started using it when it was still StarOffice, before Sun bought and open sourced it. I'd hate to see it fall by the wayside.
Vote for the bugs that drive you nuts (Score:3, Interesting)
Here are some of my pet peeves:
Need Comment/UnComment button in Macro Editor
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=87296 [openoffice.org]
Generated HTML changes default spacing
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=14600 [openoffice.org]
Outline View (aka MS Word)
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3959 [openoffice.org]
(Vote for mine and I'll vote for yours if I can!)
Re:Vote for the bugs that drive you nuts (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe the issue with Outline View (haven't checked recently) is that OOo needs a series rewrite in how in handles page layout and various views. From what I understand, this has been a known issue for YEARS but no one has stepped up to the plate. If this has changed, I'd love to be corrected.
There is also a big issue where Calc doesn't correctly read/handle external references in Excel. This is a killer, must-have feature. If you can't reference a cell in another spreadsheet, then you can't be taken seriously in an enterprise environment, or hope of replacing Excel. The feature was supposedly in 3.0, but didn't actually work. Then it was supposedly in 3.1, but didn't actually work. I'm looking forward to testing to see if it actually works in 3.2.
Re:Word processing programs all have wrong UI desi (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a good point, and I've always wondered the same thing. The weird thing is that Word *used* to let you do this-- you could move all the toolbars, and even the menu bar, to the side of the screen. (Of course, in practice this did more harm than good as users would accidentally drag the menu bar all over the place, then lose it, then call support...)
I wonder if Microsoft has considered a "vertical mode" for the ribbon. Seems to me that it would work just as well laid out vertically as horizontally.
Re:Faster... (Score:5, Interesting)
I just save all my OO.o documents as 'Office XP' docs & spreadsheets. ZERO problems with formatting so far when my buddy (using the latest and greatest MS Office) opens them. And I use some strangeassed templates, too...
PDF always preserving formatting? (Score:2, Interesting)
I think it just goes to show: if you have a document that absolutely must preserve formatting, send it as a PDF.
Hmm, I just had a PDF yesterday that looked different (=wrong) in KDE's okular than it looked in PDF XChange (Windows version). When I printed it from PDF XChange, some of the text underlines were so thick on the printout that they covered the text. Finally, I printed from Adobe's Reader to get the expected result ...
Re:Faster... (Score:3, Interesting)
I wasn't talking anything about Firefox startup times - in fact, I haven't noticed much of an issue with them myself.
And when did you hear users saying that Firefox UI is not reponsive? It's just as reponsive as any other desktop app. When the chrome jit gets enabled by default it will be the same as running native code. So no, sorry, XUL is not a problem and there's nothing that "must be done" with it. In fact, it's a nice and very useful advantage for the mozilla project.
This is my personal experience and many people seem to share it too. Firefox UI *does* respond, but it's sluggish. In comparison everything with the UI in Opera happens *right away*. You open a new tab and it opens right away. You open the sidemenu and opens right away. Both of these operations don't really like that freeze the application with Firefox, but its still sluggish. It just doesn't feel the same, and that counts A LOT with user experience.
Re:Compatibility is still the biggest problem (Score:4, Interesting)
But yes, as a student, OO.org has some major compatibility issues, especially in formatting of doc files or in some powerpoint files. Fortunately I have yet to get a complaint from a teacher receiving a PDF from me.
Re:Compatibility is still the biggest problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh yes, sadly, I can only say that I have the same experience as the parent poster. Most Word documents sent to me render with minor issues in OO. Image alignment might be off, occasional problems with paragraph indentation, etc. Usually I can live with that. Documents with tables that are at least somewhat complex though (nested tables, numbered lists within tables, etc.) usually come out really screwed. Documents I create in OO and save in .doc format get mangled way too often, that happens most of the time for documents that go beyond simple formatting.
I'm a happy Ubuntu user, I like having open-source alternatives and all that. But several months ago, I finally gave up on OpenOffice and am now using Wine to run MS Office (by the way, kudos to Wine devs, Office runs really smoothly). Ultimately, OpenOffice wasn't just being an inconvenience with its compatibility issues, it made some people I send documents to think that my emails are unreliable because my documents would often be "damaged" (those are non-tech people that I guess haven't even heard of OO). I am willing to tolerate minor inconveniences to support open-source software, but when its use makes me unreliable in the eyes of others, it's time to consider other options.
Re:Word processing programs all have wrong UI desi (Score:5, Interesting)
Dear Sir,
this might be relevant to your interests [openoffice.org].
Yours truly,
Anon
Word is standard for resumes like it or not (Score:4, Interesting)
You should always send your reumes as pdf files unless they specifically ask for it in another format.
Sadly this is exactly backwards from what you should do if you want to get hired. As a techie I agree that this is what should happen but I've worked closely with lots of HR managers and recruiters and I can confidently say it is a BAD idea to default your resume to PDF. Your resume is likely to get 30-40 seconds consideration at most. The standard format nearly every HR department works with is MS Word. Too many of them don't even know what a PDF is - depressing as that sounds. If they can't or won't open it they won't read it. Some can read PDFs but virtually all of them can read Word. Sending a PDF formatted resume is unlikely to help you and it is very likely to hurt you. The proper thing to do is use Word (.doc NOT .docx) unless they specifically say they accept PDF.
I've also tried using OpenOffice to send Word formatted resumes. Generally works if the formatting is simple but not reliably enough I'd trust it for a resume. It is not at all uncommon for the resume formatting to get messed up. Even small formatting errors look REALLY bad on a resume. Guess who looks bad if this happens? Not Microsoft. The person doing the hiring is far more likely to assume you are an idiot and toss your resume in the figurative rubbish bin. Depressing but that's the way it is.
Re:Calculating with text (Score:3, Interesting)
Indeed this bug in OO was used as an excuse by Microsoft to make their ODF output be incompatible. Their argument was basically "since these two different ODF programs treat this sample document differently, we are allowed to write a completely different third implementation". This bogus argument was wrapped in a disgusting and somewhat horrifying amount of obfuscated technobabble by obviously intelligent but amoral individuals at Microsoft (you can find several repeated links to this posted by astroturfers right here on Slashdot).
Truly I used to think that Microsoft was just somewhat incompetent and rushed so that their programmers tended to reinvent things without finding out there was a standard already. But this deliberate outright lying, with enough wording to make a pointed-headed boss think it is some complex technical argument, convinced me that there really are evil people there. Scary indeed.