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?"
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Re:Forbidden (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Forbidden (Score:5, Funny)
ContentHelmNoodle?! WTF?
The next thing we'll be serving our pages with ParkingBrakeTurboAubergines.
The Squeeze (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe they should have just eaten a lot of prunes.
Re:Forbidden (Score:5, Funny)
NO ! It's a miracle ! (Score:5, Funny)
Despite your atheist propaganda, you cannot deny that we whitnessing a miragulous miracle of HIs widsom and glory in full extend.
HIs noodle appendages haveth thouched the server and thus it displays his words to enlighten the unbelievers.
Behold the word: "ContentHelmNoodle"
In this time of unrest and crisis his tells us to trust in his tomatoe sauce and that we will be protected by his mercy and meatballs.
Great (Score:2, Interesting)
/. ed already.
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:Pre-Slashdotted (Score:5, Funny)
As always, KDE leads the way (Score:5, Funny)
Look, it's simple: 3.0 is not really 3.0, but it should be considered 3.0-developer-alpha-gold. The next release will be 3.2-beta-silver-GTi, followed quickly by 3.1.1.0-gold-gold-always-believe-in-your-soul, which may (or may not) be ready for end users. Provided no show-stopper bugs are found in that (& if they are they'll just be re-classified as "WORKSFORME" and the submitter flamed), the final 3.0.1.45 version will be released to end users (apart from those in Arizona and Ohio. They have to wait for 3.1.5)
This is so obvious you'd have to be an idiot not to understand it! Duh!
Johnny Walker (Score:5, Funny)
They should just kill the minor versioning altogether and move to a "red label"/"black label" system.
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Always bet on black?
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]
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As of April 2008, OpenOffice.org does NOT NEED any NEW mirrors from regions that already have a strong download network. We currently ONLY search for new mirrors in areas where the number of download sites is quite low. As of now, this is especially true for Africa or India.
No, they don't need any mirrors... I'm rather surprised by the OOXML support; does OpenOffice now support it, even before MS does?
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Now that OOXML has an implementation. Could we hope that the Microsoft implementation will be compatible ? :D)
But my biggest question is how do they have managed to implement all these "do it like Wordperfect 0.9 alpha developper release" ? (Yes I know I am little bit sarcastic here
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]
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filehippo.com is also a good bet.
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A link? Simply do:
eix-sync && emerge -autv openoffice
Do you still live in the stone age or what? ;)
Great ... err ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Or it will be once the openoffice.org sysadmin fixes their server. Major egg on the face there.
Anyway, this release has one feature that I've been longing after for years now: proper support for marginal comments.
While OO.o has long been capable of opening documents with comments in them, the user interface for reading those comments sucked HARD. The presence of a note was indicated by a tiny, light yellow rectangle at the end of the sentence. Easy to miss. And then if you wanted to actually read the comment, you had to hover your mouse over it to trigger a small yellow pop-up box containing the comment text (which would be cut off if it was a long comment). Basically, actually READING a commented document in OO.o was not practical.
This new version is much, much better. I tried it out using one of the copies that hit the mirrors before the official release, and it's soooo much better. Comments now actually show up in the margins, they've got little lines connecting them to the section of the document they apply to, and they're color coded by author. Hallelujah! Now I can finally quit depending on Word for grading student papers.
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You don't have permission to access /servlets/ContentHelmNoodle on this server.
Hmmm. Egg, Noodle. Add some bacon cubes and some HP Original Brown sauce and I'll convert.
Anybody in the know care to elaborate what a contentHelmNoodle is? Just curious... I love the names developers give things sometimes.
Yeah, yeah, I know - It's off topic, but kinda interesting.
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So as a newbie to this free software; open software paradigm:
- Can I use OpenOffice to create "Word formatted resumes" and forward them to potential employers? Or is this like when I used GEOSwrite, and nobody could read the file, except another Commodore 64 user?
Re:Great ... err ... (Score:5, Informative)
Btw, unless word is specifically requested, pdf resume's look a lot nicer.
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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.
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.
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You can't get reliable and consistent documents from Word...if I print a document to a printer, that same document will look different when sent to another printer. It's damn near impossible for me to do a simple page replacement in a report without finding out who/where the original was printed because the pagination never matches.
Stick to PDF if you're trying to impress a potential employer.
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PDF (Score:5, Insightful)
Send your resume as PDF. As long as even different Word versions can't open other Word files correctly there is no hope formatting will be preserved.
And if 'they' insist on Word files, you wouldn't want to work there anyway, as they are clearly deluded and stupid beyond measure.
Not kidding either, actually.
Re:PDF (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong. It means they are used to paying more than they should for things. Sounds like a great environment for negotiating a starting salary in.
Re:PDF (Score:5, Insightful)
If you only look for money, instead of quality of life...
Re:PDF (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes...
Using word also forces you to use windows (yes i am aware there is a very different and not fully compatible mac version)... So it takes away your freedom to choose your operating platform...
It also makes it much harder to write standalone scripts to parse the documents, and if you want to use macros (which require the entire runtime bloat of word running) you only have one language you can use, which is going to be deprecated soon (and the mac version has its own incompatible language for macros).
I can be far more productive in my job with a linux workstation and files in open easily manipulated formats.
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I think you have it wrong. Since the spend too much for software, they save by offering lower salaries. Look elsewhere.
Re:PDF (Score:5, Insightful)
As for not wanting to work for a company that insists on MS docs... well. That really only speaks to how HR works. I work for a staffing company that mainly supplies employees for IBM. I'm a tester in IBM's superlab. I get to play with big iron servers: stuff like quad 6-core machines (yeah, 24 cores in a rackmount system). I use linux for my workstation with no problems. I come in and leave when I wish (we report our time via a webapp) and as long as my work is done and I'm here when I say I'm here management has no problems.
Don't be so quick to judge a company.
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Are IBM bringing out the equivalent version of Star Office soon? - Just wondering....
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Can you spot the flaw in the reasoning? (Score:3, Funny)
Dude, Symphony might suck giant donkey balls, or make users so happy they crap rainbows, but either way, since you haven't even tried it, of course your opinion is "relatively worthless" -- I'd even go so far as to say "completely worthless". Sheesh. At least try it out before slagging it.
(And no, I don't care about Symphony one way or the other -- so
Re:Can you spot the flaw in the reasoning? (Score:4, Informative)
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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.
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Also, OpenOffice will create smaller and nicer Word-files than Word.
Not always the case under 2.x, don't know about 3.0. The trick is to keep the formatting simple if you're going to export to Word.
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You can use OpenOffice.org to forward documents in [i]PDF[/i] to potential employers. Any potential (IT related) employer that insists on MS Word format for resumes isn't worth the bother.
However, if you do want to bother, OpenOffice.org can open and save MS Word Document formats since at least MS Word 6.0 (the first version I ever used, and I still have files from that time).
And, if that doesn't satisfy you, OOo can also open a variety of other "legacy proprietary file formats" 1 [wikipedia.org].
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Don't use word to save word docs unless you can verify they look normal in the same version and configuration of word used by whoever you send the files to...
Version makes a big difference, as to arbitrary configuration options such as your default printer.
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Or is this like when I used GEOSwrite, and nobody could read the file, except another Commodore 64 user?
Peter Griffin, is that you??
OO.o makes great .doc resumes! (Score:5, Funny)
I make my resume in OO.o and save it to .ODF.
I then take screenshots of it (or print to postscript), then paste the cropped screenshots into OO.o and save that result as a .DOC file.
And hey, it keeps formatting exactly as you want it! :)
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You'd be surprised, windows is about the only os that doesn't have a pdf viewer by default these days.
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Multiple views on a document is a big win for me, I've been cursing its absence in OO.o. I hope you can turn the marginal comments off -- I work a lot away from base, using a lightweight laptop, and those margins take up too much screen real-estate on a small screen.
PDF (Score:5, Interesting)
The only thing of any interest, then, is the PDF import/editing/export. Ironic, considering that the ad's on /. for this article seemed to consist mostly of Adobe Acrobat ads...
But if it really *can* import any PDF, allow basic editing and export, that could really be a boon. Other apps that allow that are either incredibly expensive, horrible to use or just too out-of-date. Does it support "encrypted" PDF's if you have the passwords, etc.? Does it allow image/text editing/extraction from a PDF? If so, then this update would be worth it for that alone.
The rest is just eye candy and basic bug fixes (e.g. >256 columns in Calc).
Re:PDF (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:PDF (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:PDF (Score:5, Insightful)
The things that pays for the bandwidth, servers, and salaries of those that run Slashdot.
I would really like to white list Slashdot but every time I have tried they put up some stupid animated banner.
Really is too bad since I would bet the ads on Slashdot are for things I may be interested in.
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(Also, it's 'ads' and PDFs -- plural form, and not possessive form or a conjunction.)
Indeed, poor word usage and grammar in a posting about an office suite is ironic.
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)
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But if it really *can* import any PDF, allow basic editing and export, that could really be a boon. Other apps that allow that are either incredibly expensive, horrible to use or just too out-of-date. Does it support "encrypted" PDF's if you have the passwords, etc.? Does it allow image/text editing/extraction from a PDF? If so, then this update would be worth it for that alone.
It imports into Draw. Short edits to text and filling in forms is simple. If you're wanting to make extensive changes to the form
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It lets you save password protected pdf files... not tried opening one..
You need the plugin for pdf editing, i don't think it's part of the default install, but it really should be. Editing works quite well too, providing the pdf files were properly created in the first place (ie they arent just bitmap dumps as created by some very half assed pdf writing tools)
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That's not what people want. I get asked endlessly by differnet people in different places for a program which can take in a hundred-page PDF and, for example, change just one word, correct one spelling mistake, etc. Most of the time it's nigh-on impossible to do in a non-technical way when PDF is really no worse a format than a Word document or a Powerpoint presentation. The only real product that can do it reliably is Adobe Acrobat itself, which is prohibitively expensive for such small changes.
All I w
Its useful to update version numbers... (Score:3, Interesting)
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Yes, for instance the subversion project increments the major version number to indicate a break in backwards compatibility.
Get the new Subversion 2.0! it breaks stuff.
Obviously they never had the guts to actually do so :)
OOXML (Score:2, Insightful)
How could they possibly implement OOXML support in OpenOffice? We've been hearing over and over how the OOXML spec is so convoluted and ill-specified that it is impossible for anyone but Microsoft to implement!
Re:OOXML (Score:5, Insightful)
"How could they possibly implement OOXML support in OpenOffice? We've been hearing over and over how the OOXML spec is so convoluted and ill-specified that it is impossible for anyone but Microsoft to implement!"
I know you're a troll, but I'll bite back...
This may be be the first actual OOXML IMPLEMENTATION in a release version of ANY office suite... ;-)
Re:OOXML (Score:4, Insightful)
People say that it's a bogus standard because no one but Microsoft can really ever claim to have 100% compatibility.
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People say that it's a bogus standard because no one but Microsoft can really ever claim to have 100% compatibility.
The W3C's been churning out bogus standards for years then :P
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The W3C's been churning out bogus standards for years then :P
Those standards are implementable (and where they aren't, they get fixed.) It's just a matter of man-hours.
You can't implement stuff like "Space like Word 6" because it doesn't describe what Word 6 does. Man-hours don't help.
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: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).
I'll wait a few days for fixes (Score:5, Funny)
In a few days 3.01, 3.02 and 3.03 will be coming out, so I'll wait for those fixes to come out before I put down my hard-earned money
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I know that your money go 'POOOF' with the financial crisis. But is $0 too much for you that you must ask for a budget line, having the autorisation of the financial authority before contracting a negotiation with an http/ftp server to buy the product ?
Re:I'll wait a few days for fixes (Score:5, Funny)
You jest, but $0 here, $0 there might start to add up. Sure it's not much money to some, but unlike many other computer users I already spent $0 on my operating system, $0 on my DVR software, and $0 on nearly every application I run. Now OOo is asking for yet another $0 just to run their little "Office suite".
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Ok, I must admit that could add in the end :D
Re:I'll wait a few days for fixes (Score:5, Funny)
You're the reason the economy is tanking! You must consume and spend lots of money! All this irresponsible zero expenditures are the cause of all our woes! Oh I'm sure the overspending by Congress plays a small role, but you are just plain EVIL!!!
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Yeah, funny, all that jazz. But there's more than an element of truth to your jesting. The reality is that if we ever actually tried to get out of debt, it would destroy our economy [google.com] and not for the reasons that seem obvious.
Nowadays, most money exists only because of debt, and the nature of debt is such that you can never pay it all off because of interest. Watch the video link above...
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I'd like to moderate you "+2 Insightful+Funny" :)
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Best feature for me? (Score:4, Insightful)
That alone for me is worth the upgrade for me, as I can now see two full size A4 pages on my monitor at home whilst typing. Thanks guys! that was a major annoyance with me.
OOXML *is* controversial and I expect a flame war - but they have read-only and I suspect it is a justified inclusion simply to keep abreast of current MS Office and help encourage adoption. I predict MS will be coming out with lots of new versions of this format, so lets see them keep pace....
Re:Best feature for me? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah OOXML support - So now 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..... don't you just love Microsoft ....
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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.
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Which is why Microsoft has that free addon for MS office 2000+ that allows you to read and write MSOOXML. And no, I really do hate Microsoft.
Re:Best feature for me? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hell, .docx can't be opened by half of a typical office staff now, even sans OOo (you know, where the execs and wannabes thereof rush out and get/requisition MS Office 2k7, but the rest of the office gets by on Office 2k3? Yep - I know there's patches for it, but apparently MSFT hadn't bothered to push it via Windows Update... I think they're kinda torn between wanting to sell 2k7 licenses and trying to push the format.)
Even now, any document that you want to send outside of the company or for others' use, you send in "Office 97-2003" (plain ol' .doc) just to make sure the recipient has at least some hope of reading the thing... I just do PDF; makes it easier all around.
To be honest, read-only of the .docx format is all that OOo actually needs. Then if you get a file ending in .docx, you send back the changes in PDF, then watch as the recipient gets all red-faced and demands to know why you did that (evil grin).
Methinks it'll come to a head sooner or later.
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Yep - I know there's patches for it, but apparently MSFT hadn't bothered to push it via Windows Update... I think they're kinda torn between wanting to sell 2k7 licenses and trying to push the format.)
Actually Office 2003 will give you an explanation prompt and the URL to download the format convertors from when you try to open an Office 2007 document.
Hardly Impressive (Score:2, Funny)
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Writer (Score:2, Interesting)
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Depends on the dates of their next releases, I would think. Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) might have a fighting chance to have it included in its release at the end of October, there are already testing previews (ppa's). But then, 8.10 is an in-between release that does not promise maximum correctness, so they can afford to take some risks.
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]
Still Has The 6.5-Year-Old Lethal Bug? (Score:4, Interesting)
I registered a bug with OO 6.5 years ago [openoffice.org], still unfixed, that causes spreadsheets to give utterly wrong results in even the simplest calculations. Sometimes OO treats a number as a string, and assigns it a value of "0" in calculations, e.g., 1+1 could equal 0 or 1.
Either OO should throw an error "can't treat a string as a number" or it should guess the number of the string is a valid number. But a major undetectable error like this is murderous, as has been testified to by the folks reporting the same bug after I did.
(Note the OO bug tracker seems to be having problems at this moment, so the link doesn't work.)
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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! O
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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 str
OOXML (Score:5, Funny)
OpenOffice.org: "It's fully compliant and supports Microsoft OOXML file format."
Microsoft: "AHAAAAHH!! That's not possible. Uh, ... I mean ... uh, ..." (Psst, hey, did we miss something? How'd they do that?)
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It's because you haven't configured your memory settings in OOo correctly otherwise it'd load almost instantly.
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Sounds like the default settings suck.
Its a fucking word processor - you shouldn't have to nergle your snerds correctly to get it working.
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You're right, OOo should release two versions, one for old computers and one for newer computers.
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Or possibly it should configure its own damn settings, and not try to do something retarded when theres memory pressure...
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.
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I've been using the betas of 3.0 on my Mac for a while now. I invariably have switched back to NeoOffice. I will still likely stay away from the official build, because there are too many things still broken, most notably fonts.
I tend to use a number of large OpenType font families, such as Warnock or Minion. For whatever reason, OOo 3.0 has serious trouble with them. It gets the styles mixed up constantly. Regular comes out as Italic. NeoOffice just plain works and does not have these issues. (Yes, I filed
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There is no reason not to have both installed—they don't step on each other's toes. A great reason to have OOo installed alongside MS Office is to be able to work with OpenDocument file formats.
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I think considering he does this thing we professionals like to call "work" for a type of entity we refer to as a "company" that his time is probably too valuable to be able to try out a clone of office to see if it works ok for a long term use.
Not wanting to say your time is worthless, and you are a penniless hippy or anything...