OpenOffice.org 2.0.3 has been released. It contains performance improvements, improved compatibility with Microsoft Office formats, support for Intel MAcs, and much more. Release notes, download page.
OpenOffice.org 2.0.3 has been released. It contains performance improvements, improved compatibility with Microsoft Office formats, support for Intel MAcs, and much more. Release notes, download page.
… OpenOffice copies Microsoft Office 2007’s new menus? Bets?
What makes you think they will?
Because OpenOffice has gone out of its way to copy Office’s menus in the past.
I’m seriously sick of wasting mod points fixing other people’s abuses. It’s absolutely true. I was using the Windows version of Excel in school and thought it was totally messed up. Then I went home and tried OpenOffice Calc, and lo, there was exactly the same messed up interface. I know they do it for a reason, but they do it, and saying so shouldn’t be modded down. It’s beyond coincidence. Office X’s version of Excel was completely different, and it’s from the same company, so variety is certainly possible. It doesn’t mean the OpenOffice project doesn’t have a good or even superior product or original or even revolutionary ideas, but it’s undeniable that among their design goals is to be a drop-in, feature for feature replacement of MS Office, and once you start playing catch-up, it gets increasingly difficult to do much else.
I’ve made this point before, but here it goes again: consumers and especially businesses are only interested in migrating to open software/standards if they offer feature parity with their current technology. OpenOffice doesn’t support Excel VB macros in Calc? Gotta have it. Writer menus are different than Word and might require 3-hour training sessions? Gotta have it. OpenOffice provides a technically superior accessibility framework that isn’t compatible with 3rd-party tools painstakingly developed with little cooperation from MS? Derail the adoption of open ISO-standard formats in governments.
I wish OpenOffice weren’t the only viable answer to the free software office suite. After all, KOffice is in some ways light-years ahead of OpenOffice already and has the infrastructure to support a community development effort that is impossible to foster on Sun’s behemouth. Unfortunately, the lack of filters to import from MS formats is a showstopper for me and most other users… and the otherwise compelling frame-oriented document model would turn the 3-hour training sessions into 3-day seminars.
Well, since most people are trainned on MS Office you really need a UI like it. Getting people to switch to OO.o is hard enough never mind a totally different UI.
Eh, who cares? If they are worth anything than I hope they do.
<edit>
As a matter of fact, looking one article up, they may even release a product with them before Microsoft.
Edited 2006-06-29 22:59
As a matter of fact, looking one article up, they may even release a product with them before Microsoft.
And if they do, I predict F/OSS fanboys rave over the innovation shown by the F/OSS scene and calling Microsoft copycats. Business as usual in other words.
Has this happened with OO.org 2.0 copying present MSo interface?
I mostly heard comlains about it…
I’ve been using OO for a long time, before that Star Office (when it was free). It’s a great product. I’ll always use it.
/2cents
Looking through the change list it mentions alot of tewaks to the osx implementation
does this mean it now behaves more like a native app under osx? or is neooffice still the only option if you want OO that looks and feels like it belongs under osx?
Hopefully it doesn’t look like crap now with the font integration. Accessing it under it’s own icon would be nice too! (not X11 icon like now)
Interestingly, I saw that Apple donated a few 20″ intel (I think) Imacs to the OOo cause, which surprised me, as I got the impression from the terrible X11 implementation that they were indifferent at best to the project.
Can’t wait to see if it does look better, but I’ll have to wait to edit-down some DV footage first, it’s taken up most of the HD.
I use it at work, but I can’t wait to see OpenOffice.org with tabs such as in Firefox, but to browser between documents at a click.
oeh auch it must be the worst idea ever, you can already click between documents on the taskbar, tabs in an office suite is stupid since you need to be able to put documents/sheets next to each other on the screen, in KDE there’s this one app (Kate) that has kind of something like tabs, and I hate it cause you can’t look at two documents you’re working on at the same time. Tabs in a browser do make sence, in a messenger too, but in an office suite no thank you.
I cannot believe that there is not one Mac programmer out there who wouldn’t try to do bug fixes on OpenOffice. I don’t believe that there is not one programmer in the entire free world who would consider working on a native Mac build of OpenOffice.
Is Sun is working to prevent OpenOffice from being available on the Mac? Can’t provide programmers, fine, but let other people work on OpenOffice in official channels in Openoffice.org.
In the past there were people claiming that there was some missing piece of functionality that will come with OpenOffice 2.0. Well, 2.0 is here!
I know there are people willing to work on Open Office for the Mac. Look at NeoOffice. Do you not agree that it’s time to start on a native build of OpenOffice. So if people are willing to work in it, why are they discouraged from doing so? Is it Sun’s influence. Didn’t Sun and Microsoft reach some legal settlement last year? Perhaps there is an unwritten agreement.
Dear Apple Employees, don’t you think it’s time to get off of Microsoft’s teat? Steve can’t pay you for working on OpenOffice, he can’t even ask you, but it you did volunteer a few hours, your job would be much safer if you didn’t have to do business with Microsoft!
If you are a programmer, who would be willing to help, if others would help, then please post a note after this. Prove to the OpenOffice.org people that there are people willing to help, as long as there is a native version, like there is a native version for Windows.
“I cannot believe that there is not one Mac programmer out there who wouldn’t try to do bug fixes on OpenOffice. I don’t believe that there is not one programmer in the entire free world who would consider working on a native Mac build of OpenOffice.”
There’s tons. Ever looked at the OO source? Yeah – you need to be an uber-god-programmer to even digest enough of it to do SIMPLE changes.
“Is Sun is working to prevent OpenOffice from being available on the Mac? Can’t provide programmers, fine, but let other people work on OpenOffice in official channels in Openoffice.org.”
Sun is doing no such thing. Other people can work on it – at least, they *MAY* work on it, *CAN* is up in the air, possibly for the programmers with IQs above 400 it’s easy!
“I know there are people willing to work on Open Office for the Mac. Look at NeoOffice. Do you not agree that it’s time to start on a native build of OpenOffice. So if people are willing to work in it, why are they discouraged from doing so? Is it Sun’s influence. Didn’t Sun and Microsoft reach some legal settlement last year? Perhaps there is an unwritten agreement.”
Sure, there are plenty of people. They can all work on it. I doubt any of them have figured out what the heck is going on yet, though.
That’s why OO is almost entirely maintained by Sun. Nobody is discouraging anybody, I don’t know why you keep repeating that like it’s a fact.
“Dear Apple Employees, don’t you think it’s time to get off of Microsoft’s teat? Steve can’t pay you for working on OpenOffice, he can’t even ask you, but it you did volunteer a few hours, your job would be much safer if you didn’t have to do business with Microsoft!”
Uh, I was an Apple employee way back, and I certainly wasn’t on MS’s teat. Steve can pay for people to work on OO, Steven can ask – employee of Apple or not. To work on OO will require volunteering MUCH more than a *few* hours – maybe a few thousand hours to accomplish anything of any noticible magnitude. I have no idea what you’re talking about anymore, really.
“If you are a programmer, who would be willing to help, if others would help, then please post a note after this. Prove to the OpenOffice.org people that there are people willing to help, as long as there is a native version, like there is a native version for Windows.”
Why? OO/Sun/Apple people will just read your post, scratch their head, and wonder what the heck you’re talking about. There are tons of people who want to help, tons of people attempting to learn the codebase, and tons of people contributing minute changes. Only Sun has the broad understanding of the codebase *RIGHT NOW* to do the major work – this may or may not change in the future, depending on people’s desire. If Sun does a *good enough* job for most people, you probably won’t see many non-Sun contributors.
In summary: WHAT??!!??
“Only Sun has the broad understanding of the codebase *RIGHT NOW* to do the major work”
What, do you work for Sun? What an arrogent statement overstating Sun’s importanance as a steering committee. It was just as arrogent as requiring OpenOffice to require a full copy of Java, Sun’s baby, but to what benefit? How is the user better off having been required to install a full copy of Java? What is OpenOffice doing to make way for a native Mac implientation, not an X11 port, but a really attempt at making OpenOffice available for the Mac.
A small number of people converted NeoOffice, just think what other could do, if you let them. What is the harm in letting people report bugs, and letting others fix them?!
Collecting bug reports on a build that OpenOffice.org refuses to support might not accomplish the goal of getting the bugs fixed, but it would help get the structures in place to allow them to be reported.
You don’t know until you tried, and you haven’t done that. You can’t grab what-if, ands, and but’s out of the ether and tell me it’s the truth.
Prove me wrong, but you can’t do that unless there is a real attempt at making OpenOffice Mac native.
Edited 2006-06-30 02:32
Your post came off as if you thought there was some vast conspiracy that Sun was heading up to make it impossible to port to Macs.
In reality, anyone can modify the code (if they can figure out what it does). AFAIK, there is actually a small team already working on porting it to native OSX, which would mean your post was completely wrong – Sun isn’t blocking a port, they are actively helping it along. Just slowly.
No, I don’t work for Sun. I’m not paid to endorse them either. I own my own business, I happen to use some of Sun’s software (and possibly hw in the future) but that’s about it.
My point is there is already a “little progress” and people are doing what they can. There is no conspiracy by Sun to prevent people from improving on OO. Anybody can get the code, and do what they will with it. It just takes a LOT of time to learn a codebase like that one, and that’s why *you* don’t see huge changes by outside-of-Sun people. That doesn’t mean it’s not going on – it is – people are actively hacking away at the code – it’s just small changes you probably won’t notice.
Could you please refrain from stating things factually when they are not true? I’d also appreciate it if you didn’t attempt a defense of “if you support them you must be one of them” type logic – because it simply makes no sense. Much like your original post.
I do not see your championing Sun as being unbiased.
The Mac X11 port isn’t even on the same page as the others, this is unexcusable!
How can you say that it is getting the same treatment as the others, if it isn’t even in the same list as the others?
I use OpenOffice on both Windows and Linux, why does the Mac version have to be so orphened?
Edited 2006-06-30 02:39
I’m not championing Sun. OpenOffice is free/opensource. ANYBODY can work on it. What does this have to do with Sun? Your first posts states you understand Sun has limited resources, and they allocate them where it is best. Solaris and Windows are OF COURSE their primary concern, because that covers the majority of users. If you want to get mad at somebody that OO is behind on mac, get mad at yourself – you’re not doing any coding to make it better, are you? Nobody is stopping you – the source is there for you to work on.
I never said the OSX port is getting “the same treatment as the others” <– stop putting words into my mouth. You’re really starting to be offensive. I said the source is there, available to anybody. I’m a mac user too, but I have no need for OO on mac, so I don’t do any code work on it. Obviously you have some dire need for it – so why don’t you improve it?
Stop blaming others for their lack of effort in a port YOU want. There are already people working on a native OO port for OSX, go gripe to them about the FREE work they are doing and see what they tell you about it.
I’m going to stop this conversation here, you’re simply griping about the lack of a port YOU want, yet you are doing NOTHING to make it occur. Either start coding, start paying some people to code, or stop whining. It’s an opensource project, people do it in their free time/unpaid. If you’re not going to contribute, then you have no right to make negative comments about the company that did 95% of the work to even make the program. They spent many thousands of hours to write the software, many more thousands of hours to port it to various platforms, and while you might not like the current state of one of the ports – you aren’t paying for it either, are you? So either pony up your time, your effort, or your money – or give it a rest.
One final comment, do not put words in my mouth which I have never said. Do not INVENT so called “facts”. You’re not going to gain a lot of respect doing that, especially when you are attacking people who have nothing to do with your problems. I’m not championing anybody, I’m simply stating the truth. This is true of ALL OSS software. Are you going to bitch and moan because Apple didn’t port Logic to Windows/Linux? Are you going to gripe because Adobe didn’t port Photoshop to Linux? These are PAID software applications. Are you seriously going to gripe because a FREE application isn’t ported to your platform of choice the way you want it? That’s the equivilant of complaining that nobody ported AdiumX to Windows. It’s a free project, they spend their resources and time where they want – and they don’t owe you a THING. Either contribute, or bite your tongue.
I’m done, bye.
Yes, anyone can work on OpenOffice for the Mac, you just need to do it away from OpenOffice.org.
I am also not going to gain a lot of respect for pointing out that OpenOffice.org is handling the OSX version of OpenOffice in a way that discourages development.
Ummm, you’re downloading the software for FREE! Sun does not make a Mac copy of StarOffice, so they have little incentive to make a really good, aqua implementation of OOo on the Mac.
However, the fact that for a while, OOo would not even build on an OS X computer, and now it is running under X11 shows that progess IS being made. If you don’t like the speed of that progress, here are some ideas.
1) Pay Sun to improve it yourself
2) Pay someone else to improve it youself
3) Download NeoOffice and use that
4) Buy MS Office and shut up
Sun would make little to no money making a native OS X OpenOffice.org, considering OS X is both a niche operating system AND they have to compete with Microsoft (only one of those is true on Linux), and last I checked Sun isn’t doing so well financially, so get over it and quit whining.
I am talkig about native OSX versions, not a X11 port. OSX is the official GUI/Operating system of the Mac.
I appreciate the effort that went into NeoOffice, although I see that effort as a evolutionary dead-end, and perhaps that time is better spent leading up to a native version.
I am not whining, I am just calling it like I see it. I realize that the truth is not always a popular thing to point out.
“Niche operating system”? so, why is Solaris grouped as an offical version, and the MacOSX version in a “Port?”
Go to the download page; look for your self. Either you must believe that there is more computers running Solaris, or Sun is not treating the OSX version the same as the others.
There will never be a truly native version of Openoffice.org on OS X (as in using Cocoa/Carbon widgets). OO.o uses VCL as its toolkit, similar to how Firefox uses XUL as its toolkit. Therefore, it is not native on any of the OSes. The best it can do is to emulate native widgets as closely as possible (through the use of theme APIs). Thus, NeoOffice’s approach is actually the right approach to the problem.
I think the bigger thing is this; Apple has iWork, so why the heck do they need OpenOffice.org? not only would it require major TLC to get it using Quartz rather than X11, it’ll also need a major interface make over to give it the same Mac user experience which end users expect from their applications rather than it being a quick transplant from one OS to another.
All iWork requires is a spreadsheet, and right now, I’d say that Apple is looking at either purchasing an existing ‘home accountaning package’ or they’ll make their own spreadsheet, and chock it to the brim with some templates and wizards to make home finance tracking easier. For databased, there is filemaker, and considering that databases are hardly the realms of the average end user (given that the most basic of tasks, like CD databased can be done in a spreadsheet), it’ll be just a matter of time before this rumoured “Numbers” is merged into iWork, and maybe with the improved Mail, there will be little reason to need to purchase Microsoft Office or require OpenOffice.org to be ported.
Have they improved the stability of Base? I tried using it this weekend and the constant crashing combined with bugs and long start-up time. Tables would disappear only to reappear when I restarted the program. I would have tables refusing to allow me to enter more data, I would have naming conflicts from phantom tables or fields which didn’t exist. This is on top of annoying GUI issues. This was for a measly 12 table database each with a single primary key and no more than 6 fields each (most had 3). The final insult was that after I had struggled with this beast I couldn’t save it to any useful format like Access s I could actually do some work on this or a dump of the SQL statements needs to generate the tables and what little data it had. Frankly, until it improves (I’m not betting on 2.1: I’m thinking 3.0) it is useless.
(On Dapper Drake Kubuntu)
Great news! Using OO for a long time (Writer/Calc/Drawing). I use it at home and work, and never had problems with it (not considering some macros written for excel). Hope, it will run faster.
I wonder why they chose HSQLDB over SQLite. I didnt care before but having used SQLite, I really do wonder why.
I believe they wanted something java based and thought it was “good enough”.
Could anybody find a proper download page for the Mactel version? Probably just a matter of time.
Neo Office (the Mac OSX Aqua take on OpenOffice) is about to release a 2.0.x version of Mac Intel machines.
Their previous stuff has been good and felt very much part of the AQUA scene.
Don’t grumble about the dark – donate to those who make the candles!
.metalinks (http://www.metalinker.org) are available from http://metalink.packages.ro/
Charts in Calc with several thousend rows are still terribly slow
Excel has no problem with them what so ever, and OO will just hang on them for minutes when scaling. That is totally not workable.
Well, better luck next release I guess..
after reading this:
http://www.arcon5.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=325
I wont be trying any new Microsoft product, to many bugs around
If you have bug phobia then I suggest you stop using any non Microsoft product too. There are bugs in them you know. Bugs everywhere.
Well, a new OpenOffice version can only be a good thing – improvements and bugfixes are always good, right?
Unfortunatly, one MAJOR thing where OO 2 is very lacking is localization: many may not know it, but it DOES keep a reasonable ammount of otherwise OO users out of the game – I personally know a situation where it would be used (probaly by the first time) by hundreds of students, if it was available in our language;
Speaking for my language, Portuguese, the last version dates back to 2004 – 1.1.3, and the localized homepage (http://pt.openoffice.org) doesn’t seem to be updated for about a year.
Yes, that might be a problem. AFAIK the localization projects are usually completely in the hands of local communities. That’s the beauty (and sometimes “beauty”) of free software….
You must be using some strange OS, it’s available both in portugese and brazilian portugese:
ftp://ooopackages.good-day.net/pub/OpenOffice.org/FreeBSD/2.0.3RC5…
-rw-r–r– 1 ftp ftp 116486733 Jun 10 17:21 OOo_2.0.3rc5_FreeBSD61Intel_install_pt-BR.tbz
-rw-r–r– 1 ftp ftp 115672789 Jun 10 17:43 OOo_2.0.3rc5_FreeBSD61Intel_install_pt.tbz
ftp://ooopackages.good-day.net/pub/OpenOffice.org/MacOSX/2.0.3rc7/
-rw-r–r– 1 ftp ftp 143566944 Jun 29 20:45 OOo_2.0.3rc7_MacOSXIntel_pt-BR.dmg
-rw-r–r– 1 ftp ftp 142613204 Jun 29 20:46 OOo_2.0.3rc7_MacOSXIntel_pt.dmg
-rw-r–r– 1 ftp ftp 145635059 Jun 30 10:38 OOo_2.0.3rc7_MacOSXPPC_pt-BR.dmg
-rw-r–r– 1 ftp ftp 144632480 Jun 30 10:39 OOo_2.0.3rc7_MacOSXPPC_pt.dmg
“You must be using some strange OS, it’s available both in portugese and brazilian portugese:”
Actually, see:
ftp://ooopackages.good-day.net/pub/OpenOffice.org/Windows/
and
ftp://ooopackages.good-day.net/pub/OpenOffice.org/Linux/
seems funny to me (in a not so good way) that only FreeBSD/MaxOSX have localized packages for most languages.
seems funny to me (in a not so good way) that only FreeBSD/MaxOSX have localized packages for most languages.
That’s because Windows/Linux/Solaris builds aren’t distributed from that ftp server, and don’t ask me where to find them, ’cause I couldn’t care less about those OSs…
But if you use a free open-source OS like FreeBSD, you can always build the latest version in your preferred language yourself from the ports tree, without having to wait for someone elses pre-built packages.
😉
Why oh why do they insist on packaging each release as a slew of RPMs? Not everyone runs Red Hat, don’t they know this?
Sure is a hassle to wait for a distro specific package to be build, or manually convert each RPM.
What ever happened to their generic installer UI?
Why oh why do they insist on packaging each release as a slew of RPMs? Not everyone runs Red Hat, don’t they know this?
RPM isn’t Red Hat specific, and it is the LSB-standard package format for third-party packages.
Sure is a hassle to wait for a distro specific package to be build, or manually convert each RPM.
I guess it depends on your distro’s package format, but alien should be able to convert them all at once. Can’t get much easier than that, short of being packaged in your native format of course.
//Why oh why do they insist on packaging each release as a slew of RPMs? Not everyone runs Red Hat, don’t they know this? //
This is pure “Windows think”. It is generally far better with Linux to get applications from your distribution’s repository than getting it from the one originating website. Getting it ffrom the repository will nearly always result in better integration with the rest of your distribution.
//Sure is a hassle to wait for a distro specific package to be build//
Not really.
For most distributions it took just one day.
Edited 2006-07-01 08:20