OpenOffice.org 2.0 Released 525
Da Massive writes "The official release of OpenOffice.org 2.0 has been pushed to the download servers, as of Thursday the 20th." From the article: "OpenDocument is an XML file format for saving office documents such as spreadsheets, memos, charts, and presentations. It was approved as an OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) standard at the beginning of this year. OpenDocument, set as a default in OpenOffice, is cited by proponents as a way of fighting vendor lock-in associated with proprietary formats. Already, it is the required office format for internal archives of the US State of Massachusetts." You can download, or read past coverage including a preview or a comparison with MS Office. Update: 10/20 17:22 GMT by Z : Made date reference more topical.
It's on time! (Score:5, Funny)
you eeeeediot moderators (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's on time! (Score:5, Informative)
the stable 2.0 release will come before any recently purchased cartons of milk expire in your refrigerator.
Re:It's on time! (Score:5, Funny)
Excellent!!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
Going to download and install it tonight - WOOT!
Re:Excellent!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Excellent!!!! (Score:3, Informative)
If they've revamped charting in Calc, I'll be very very pleased.
Re:Excellent!!!! (Score:3, Informative)
As a college student in many labs, this lack of advanced graphing features is amazingly annoying- trendlines can't be extended, custom scatterplots are impossible. Hell, gnumeric does a FAR better job with graphing. Quite annoying in the end...
Re:Excellent!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Excellent!!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Gnumeric does a better job than any other spreadsheet I have ever used.
Calc is a nice basic spreadsheet. Excel is a better basic spreadsheet, but if you want to use something with *real* capabilities that does not sacrifice ease-of-use for basic work, use Gnumeri
Re:professional quality OSS charting (Score:3, Interesting)
Excel is a really shitty platform for data analysis for anything more complex than sophmore-level undergrad labs. At the least, using a dedicated analysis and charting tool or set of tools is like a breath of fresh air after dealing with Excel's cramped, business-oriented data toolset.
You're assuming everyone uses Excel for serio
Re:professional quality OSS charting (Score:3, Insightful)
User friendliness, thats a laug
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Excellent!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Please note that I blame the latter on the 'developers' who built the processes, not the software. I haven't been using Access much, but from what I have seen, it seems to be a good tool in the hands of someone who knows what he's doing. So the clients are rather switching from a 'have the secretary click together the logic' approach to an 'hire real developers for real-world stuff' approach.
(I've seen many *really* mindboggingly slow things, however, but this might as well result from bad practices, stupid code or any combination of the two.)
The bottom line is, among our clients are many global players and none of those would touch any solution with a ten foot pole if they include Access anywhere. Most have well-engineered in-house software, we are just helping them in adding web accessible interfaces. It always strikes me as funny that they have great in-house developers but need external help with web applications.
So, now we're as OT as we could be, but I wanted to add another perspective. And yes, I am aware that my experience probably isn't very representative.
Access is the answer. (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, another answer is to impose a locked-down environment where very little is programmable and worker initiative is viewed with suspicion. I've experienced that too, in the form of mainframe- and Unix-centric environments. This MS-hater will h
Re:Excellent!!!! (Score:4, Informative)
http://ftp.iasi.roedu.net/mirrors/openoffice.org/
couple of mirrors
They promised... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They promised... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They promised... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:They promised... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They promised... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They promised... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They promised... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They promised... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:They promised... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They promised... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:They promised... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They promised... (Score:5, Funny)
10th? (Score:4, Funny)
Ehh (Score:3, Insightful)
Can't help but wonder what kind of press release MSFT will put out today.
Re:Ehh (Score:5, Insightful)
Argh... All these problems stemming from different systems. We non-US people always forget that the American year has 30 months (sometimes 31) and 12 days in a month.
In other news:
Rest of world still waiting for America to adopt the metric system
Sure, mod me a trolling flamebait, you humourless twat.
Re:Ehh (Score:3, Funny)
You're just jealous because we have more months than you do and they're all the same length.
Re:Ehh (Score:3, Insightful)
Real geeks follow the SQL standard in all dates. That is 2005-10-20 to you
America uses backwards date formats... (Score:3, Funny)
(Just like I keep wondering why everyone's going on about the 9th of November...)
Yeah, the rest of the world has it right... smallest units to largest units. It's more consistent that way.
This is also why, in Europe, the complete date and time would be given by (as an example):
56:32:11 20/10/2005 (ss:mm:hh dd/mm/yyyy)
(This is, of course, the current time in the Eastern US daylight time zone)
Re:America uses backwards date formats... (Score:5, Insightful)
ISO 8601 [wikipedia.org] is more consistent (to me at least, biggest to smallest). It also seems that it would be easier to sort.
why is this under Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:why is this under Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
"What will happen to all our Word documents, and spreadsheets, oh! oh! and what about PowerPoint?"
Say it with me together now: OpenOffice!
Yes, MSOffice compatibility has become a nearly ubiquitous feature by now, but not too many offices switch from Windows to use Joe. So the strength it has given to the Linux community as an alternative to 'get everyday tasks done' can't be stated enough. Hence, this appears in the Linux section of Slashdot.
This public service annoucement was brought to you by penguins, and a OSS/Linux advocate.
Re:why is this under Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)
Speaking of milk... (Score:5, Informative)
Bittorrent / P2P download links (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bittorrent / P2P download links (Score:3, Interesting)
If you use Azureus could you post the Magnet URI address for the dht: network? The Torrent site is overloaded. At least I could join the swarm without having to connect to the tracker.
thanks!
Re:Bittorrent / P2P download links (Score:4, Informative)
MS Office will catch up (Score:5, Funny)
Re:More seriously, I'll check it out (Score:3, Informative)
OSX (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:OSX (Score:4, Informative)
Re:OSX (Score:3, Informative)
get it from here: http://ooofr.org/telechargement/macosx/2.0/ [ooofr.org]
its english
Re:OSX (Score:3, Informative)
W
Torrent Links (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Torrent Links (Score:5, Funny)
You've got to just love P2P for things like this. My country mirror is already doing a good impression of a three legged dog but the torrent has more seeds than a farmer at harvest time.
Re:Torrent Links (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Torrent Links (Score:3, Informative)
Yes and no. I was thinking specifically about harvesting corn where you collect the seed. As such harvest time is when you have the most seed even though you are going to grind most of it to make flour. If you were thinking about carrots or some other such crop where you rarely let them go to seed then yes you are correct you would have no seeds at harvest time.
In my defence however I offer these two bits of evidence. Firstly, most (western) people consider harvest time to be when the corn is collected si
So... (Score:3, Funny)
Mac OS X (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Mac OS X (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Mac OS X (Score:4, Informative)
Congratulations Open Office folks!!! (Score:3, Informative)
Real work just got easier today. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Real work just got easier today. (Score:4, Funny)
Grrrr (Score:5, Funny)
I don't believe it! I only downloaded and installed RC3 4 hours ago. Grrrr.
Re:Grrrr (Score:5, Informative)
They just updated the version number thoughout and made sure beta was mentioned nowhere anymore. Once they were sure no (major) bugs were found in the latest beta they could push it as a final version.
Just keep your RC3, it's the same as 2.0 final.
Must not be for real (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Must not be for real (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Must not be for real (Score:3, Informative)
Office Key... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Office Key... (Score:3, Informative)
It's reasonably safe to assume that he needs to occasionally modify or create a new document. Most people do.
I also wouldn't count on Microsoft's own reader opening older
It's in RPMs (Score:3)
Fantastic (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fantastic (Score:4, Insightful)
Looks like they didn't solve the Java problem (Score:5, Informative)
I have the distinct feeling I'll be losing some Karma for saying this but I'm REALLY disappointed that they didn't solve the Java issue.
According to the System Requirements [openoffice.org] page it still requires the Sun JVM.
Last I heard (admittedly sometime last year) they had found a likely solution in the ability to compile the Java stuff into binary for each platorm, I guess that didn't pan out.
I've said it before but I really don't see the advantage of having an OSS product if you are still dependent on a definitively non-open product. Ofr course I know it's completely different sice Sun isn't evil like Microsoft is.
Re:Looks like they didn't solve the Java problem (Score:4, Informative)
Red Hat is getting OOo to play with the GNU compiler for java (gcj). They shipped OOo using gcj with Fedora Core 4, and according to the blog [linux.ie] of the guy working on it, it seems OOo 2.0 will follow as well.
Re:Java problem? Not. (Score:5, Informative)
Note: System Requirements say:
The minimum JDK/JRE version required to use OpenOffice.org features that require java(emphasis mine)
So, java is *not* required to use ooo. You get extra features if you happen to have it installed, that's all.
Linux AMD64 port pleeeeease! (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone know of any AMD64 v2 binary packages until that time? (Binary - I feel dirty saying that word.)
Re:Linux AMD64 port pleeeeease! (Score:3, Funny)
Dunno. Maybe because you keep putting them together?
Creating ods is darn trivial (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Creating ods is darn trivial (Score:3, Informative)
Not on a non-MS-Windows server, you can't.
Re:Creating ods is darn trivial (Score:3, Informative)
populated ods document based on a template I created with open office. One hell of alot easier than trying to automate ms office and my program is kept small and simple.
Detailed Comparison of OO Writer and MS Word (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Detailed Comparison of OO Writer and MS Word (Score:3, Funny)
That expression would have been more appropriate if, you know, you had done anything at all other than plug your own article.
Anybody downloading with Bittorrent READ! (Score:5, Informative)
Post the Azureus Magnet URI to Slashdot by doing the following
Go to "My Torrents"
Right click on your torrent and choose "Copy Magnet URI to clipboard"
Please paste this in your post.
This will allow people to join the swarm without having to get the tracker file which is TOTALLY swamped at the moment.
thanks!
missing it's installer for linux (Score:4, Interesting)
now those of us that do not run a popular rpm based distro are forced to fight our way into installing it.
they had a great graphical/text installer that worked very well even had provisions for network based install and they dumped it.
worst move they could have made. I really hope that someone digs out the old installer and makes it work with 2.0 so we can get back to advancing linux software instead of stepping backwards by getting rid of the installer.
osx version (Score:3, Insightful)
OpenOffice (Win32) download sites without P2P... (Score:3, Informative)
MS Office vs. OOo (Score:4, Interesting)
My benchmark for office suite comparisons is MS Office 97. I have used all of the subsequent versions of MS Office at work, but I always install Office 97 on my own machines. The reason for this is that, aside from functionality mostly aimed at group collaboration, there have been no significant changes in Word or Excel in the last eight years, so why bother upgrading?
Well, there has been one significant change -- the same functionality requires vastly more resources in later versions of Office. Office 97 runs comfortably on an old 120MHz Pentium I laptop with 32 megs of RAM that I like to haul around when I'd rather not risk losing my more recent and expensive desktop replacement laptop. Office 2003 or XP? Forget it.
As near as I can tell, OpenOffice has reached feature-parity with MS Office for single-user purposes; I can't speak to its collaboration features. There are some aspects of its interface that I don't much like, but I suspect that's mostly a matter of familiarity. But it is a giant, shrieking, slow resource hog, and I wouldn't use it on anything other than a fairly recent machine. It is, moreover, slower than Office 2003.
Now, as I noted at the start of the post, someone will inevitably -- and generally without much tact -- argue that some theoretical user population, like corporate office users, will have the latest machines and not be bothered by this. That might even be true in some cases, though my experience has been that most companies don't upgrade machines unless they absolutely have to. But that's the point to some extent: why should anyone have to perform a hardware upgrade to get the same level of functionality that was available back in 1997? Word processors and spreadsheets are mature application categories; shouldn't they become more efficient as time goes by?
Make no mistake about it, I am not a Microsoft partisan. I am as enthusiastic about the promise of FOSS as I was a decade ago. I am thrilled that OpenOffice exists. But I am deeply disappointed that in so many cases -- and OpenOffice is but one of many -- free software is just as bloated as its commercial counterparts. It may be that in the corporate environment, the cost of hardware upgrades is a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of endless Microsoft software licenses. (In fact, I'm pretty sure it is true.) But for the private individual, that's often not the case.
Re:MS Office vs. OOo (Score:3, Informative)
KOffice requires all of KDE to be loaded-up, which will eat more resources than OOo. If you already run a full KDE install, then you aren't loading all of it up just for KOffice, and it's tolerable. However, the same is true for OOo.
If you already have a GTK-based desktop environment loaded, OOo start-up time, and resources dedicated just to it, isn't so bad.
GNOME Office, I'm sorry to say, is like putting Wordpad, Paint, and Calc together, and calling it "Wind
OpenOffice on OpenBSD (Score:4, Informative)
Here are instructions to run it on OpenBSD: http://www.00f.net/php/show-article.php/openoffic
Re:Solution to MS Office + OpenDocument (Score:3, Informative)
On the other hand OpenDocu
Re:Solution to MS Office + OpenDocument (Score:3, Interesting)
FWIW, CutePDF [cutepdf.com] (which is basically a Windows printing subsystem wrapper for Ghostscript) produces PDFs with text that can be selected and copied/pasted. Size, style, and font information get preserved for common fonts so you can paste text into a word
PDF is actually less dynamic (Score:5, Informative)
PDF is actually less dynamic. A PostScript file is actually a computer program that, when executed in a PostScript interpreter, winds up executing instructions to draw marks on a rendering surface. You can't, in principle, know what a PostScript file will end up looking like, until you run the program to its per-page completion. If the PostScript winds up looping forever or takes up too much memory, either a user or the printer has to be smart enough to cancel the job and report an error.
People have done crazy things with PostScript in this way, actually. I've seen PostScript print files that print out digits of Pi, using the printer's CPU engine to calculate the digits!
PDF, on the other hand, is basically a flash-frozen listing of those rendering instructions. That's why a PDF file can be edited with the appropriate Adobe software.. it just goes in and changes the rendering instructions.
Back in the day, when Adobe introduced PDF, the big excitement was that PDF's font support was fancy enough so that if your printer didn't have a font that the PDF specified, the PDF reader could just tweak the size and shape of a standard font in order to make the spacing and visual quality come out looking right, anyway, without having to stuff a bunch of full spline definitions for fonts into the PDF file. This fit into the goal of allowing PDF files to be efficiently compressed.
So, PDF is good stuff! PostScript is the dynamic one, though.
Re:Solution to MS Office + OpenDocument (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Solution to MS Office + OpenDocument (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Solution to MS Office + OpenDocument (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand, an import / export filter for MS Word to Open Document would be very useful. I assume that such a thing is quite possible, but how far along anyone is with producing such a thing (as open source), I have no idea.
Re:Solution to MS Office + OpenDocument (Score:3, Interesting)
The Microsoft Word import filter for OpenOffice is really good. It's significantly better than if you try to use a word document from the current version of Word in the last version.
Re:Solution to MS Office + OpenDocument (Score:5, Informative)
AbiWord --to=doc foo.odt
AbiWord --to=odt foo.doc
Re:Solution to MS Office + OpenDocument (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Solution to MS Office + OpenDocument (Score:5, Informative)
Simply put, the reason is this:
Printers take layout-oriented information (e.g. 'this character goes at this precise position, a line is drawn from here to here, start a new page for everything from this point on', etc.) and print it to a page.
PDF takes similar layout-oriented information and displays it on screen, and gives you an option to print.
OpenDocument, like most other word processor formats, uses structural information (e.g. 'these words are grouped into a paragraph, this paragraph has a box around it, these paragraphs should be on the same page as each other'), not layout information.
Re:Solution to MS Office + OpenDocument (Score:4, Insightful)
But clearly, supporting an extra set of filters is far too difficult. Clearly Microsoft customers don't want this. Clearly the unencumbered Open Document format is anti-competitive and unconstitutional. And clearly the only people that care are freaks and hippies.
The bottom line is that Microsoft can't compete with better products, so it is trying to bully the market with file format control.
Re:Looks Great! (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, more and more people are slowly switching over to OO or an equivilant, in large part because they are free versus MS's insane pricing of MS office. The trick is getting people to make the leap to try it out. But once they do they usually go "Hey, this works pretty good, and you
Re:Looks Great! (Score:3, Interesting)
Compatibility or
Because it's not my money
People in large corporations don't care. If they install OOo, they save a bunch of money from the corporate budget, that doesn't affect them. On the other hand, if it all goes horribly wrong, the finger points at them.
For small businesses, they want to deal with everyone else, who uses Word.
Personally, I'd love to hear good ideas to get people switching. I'll be sending clients PDFs and anyone who wants to sell to me is going to ha
Re:Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it does't run under OSX. It runs, poorly (meaning, without access to system fonts because it's an xwindows app, not an OSX app) on PPC Macs but not as released (you have to dig up the right copy) and it's not integrated with the OS in terms of style which annoys a lot of OSX users (which is one of the claims for OO 2.) It doesn't annoy me, I can deal with whatever interface, but the fact that it can't access the system's fonts is a stone killer problem.
I'm a little worried about the decision to use Java for the DB, too, but I may be buying trouble that doesn't exist. I'm just going by the various interplatform/interapplication incompatibilities that I see on web pages because the wrong Java is installed (eg, flickr works on firefox but not on omniweb, etc.)
Too bad they didn't write it in python. Make java look like the c-descended nightmare it is. ;-)