A quick look at what next major version of this popular open source office suite offers to end users.
A first look at OpenOffice.org 2.0
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
i’m waiting for OpenOffice 2.0 final to come out before i finally make the jump from msOffice/CrossOver and finally be MS free.
Can’t wait to test drive it…downloading as writing this.
One this that looks missing is improved MS-Access compatability, or at least read. I’ve tried some methods availble already, but to no avail. Can’t wait to try again. This is really the only issue that prevent me from switching to Linux 100%. Massive amount of mdb files that I can’t acces in Linux (which do not justify SQL export/imprort – long story.)
You Go OOo!!
In this new release, they’ve switched over to the Java Media Framework for multimedia, and embedding movies in Impress presentations works under Linux now. Only a few formats are supported, and there are no means to control the playback yet, but it is a nice start.
Installing JMF is a pain, but I finally got it working on both RH8 and FC2. For me, movie support is the major hole in OOo, so it is nice to see this is being addressed.
Reading the article it sounds very impressive what they’ve done for this release. But could it be better for Open Office to increment with more versions in between major updates? So 2.1 would have this new important feature, and 2.2 the next. That way, perhaps people waiting for that one feature will make the move sooner.
:.-( shedding a tear for the further distancing of OS X inclusion. The X11 port never got past 1.1.2, and NeoOffice is 1.1.x based. I wish I could partake in the beta festivities. Enjoy!
embedding java into OOo is actually a bad thing: some distros have to ship it without multimedia and database components.
Don’t bother switching, moving from a Mansion in the Hamptons (MS Office), to a card board box on the street in the Bronx (OO.org), seems like a really naive move.
What is the real justification to move from compatibility to total incompatibility. No matter what you have read, OO.org compatibility with MS Office is still lousy. Microsoft has been supporting the same file formats for Office since Office 97 to 2003, Office 97 runs just fine on XP, so I don’t see the real reason for migrating from MS Office.
Which is better, staroffice 8 or openoffice 2??? And why?
I agree completely that it is a bad idea. But, I give a lot of talks using Impress, and currently I need to switch out to a terminal window on my laptop and use mplayer to show my movies (which are a critical part of my presentation). This feature, although less than optimal, is really needed.
although, Fedora Core 4 is trying to make a free JRE based off of gcj and they claim to have Openoffice.org compiling with gcj now too. Not sure how this affects JMF though, since that is not under an open-source license.
This is great news! Everyone, download this nice piece of software and help developers squash bugs before it goes final. It’s time to take on M$’s Office Suite! 😉
It’s nice to see that they’ve ditched that silly address bar thing and adopted a toolbar layout like the “alternative” (ie: the vast majority of) office suites. It’s not a web browser, it’s a word processor.
Might be worth checking out again. How is the startup time?
What is the real justification to move from compatibility to total incompatibility
Um…the fact that the box is WAY cheaper than the mansion maybe? You do know that more people live in boxes in the world than mansions right? For a large percentage of people OO.org is good enough FOR FREE.
Thats the reason. Now when my family gets a new computer at Best Buy (against my wishes), and they bug me to steal MS Office for them I will say “I’m taking the high ground on this one. Either pay more for MS Office than you paid for you new computer, or learn to use OO.org.”
I mean, if you already have Office than by all means keeep using what you like. But saying that OO.org2 has lousy compatibility is a lie. In my experiance, it is more compatible that Office 96 was with Office 97!
Freedom is my key reason for moving to OpenOffice. OpenOffice isn’t exactly a cardboard box, if you use it the way it was intended. It’s not a 100% MS Office clone, so you must learn how the product works. Same goes for any application, including MS Office itself. You have to learn how it works, or it too will feel like the cardboard box you speak of.
Let me elaborate on freedom. MS Office 97 may run on XP, it is not supported by its maker on this sytem. You’re supposed to run Office XP on Windows XP. Microsoft is pushing tirelessly for people to upgrade their Office (and Windows) versions in tandem because the licensing is their main revenue stream.
With OpenOffice I’m free to use whatever version I want, knowing that the newer ones will always be backwards compatible. Something I have seen Microsoft’s product fail at miserably in the past. I have MS Access databases that work properly in Access ’97 SR1, yet they don’t work in any other version either before or after it. You can blame it on the developer of the Access app, but that’s just ridiculous. Microsoft should not make this situation possible in the first place, it’s their own product for crying out loud!
Another part of freedom is the fact that MY data isn’t trapped inside Microsoft’s undocumentend and proprietary file formats. I can investigate exactly what goes into a .sxw-file if I feel the need. I can also extract my information from those files whenver I feel the need. This is much more difficult in MS Word. There are plenty of cases where companies and governments have been put in deeply embarrassing positions because of some .doc they published online. It turns out MS Word saves more to your file than you know at face value. Early versions would sometimes even dump parts of your computer’s RAM to a saved .doc. I’m happy this doesn’t happen anymore, but there’s still lots of metadata that most people aren’t even aware of. At least in OpenOffice I can decompress the .sxw and have a look at whatever is in the XML before I publish it to the world.
One last reason why I like OpenOffice is its platform independence. I don’t like Windows, period. The reasons why are irrelevant at this point. I use OSX and Linux, both of which run OpenOffice. I can perfectly well exchange documents between Linux, Windows and OSX using OpenOffice. Not so with MS. I could buy MS Office for Mac, but not for Linux and I won’t run it in emulation using Wine since that breaks MS Office’s EULA.
So in short I’m more than happy to trade a little bit of perceived ease of use so that I can get complete freedom and control over my own data. Last I heard Microsoft is going for a patent on their XML schema’s in Office for no other reason than to prevent easy interoperability with other (open) products. That’s not what I call fair competition.
Then again if MS Office does the job for you, by all means please keep using it. Just don’t call others naive just because the reasons I stated above are not important enough for you to justify a move.
..that incompatible Access version was Access 2000 SR 1, sorry.
AFAIK, Star office suits better to some corporate companies because Sun provides service, migration and maintenance at a much lower cost then MS Office. i do not know of a company gives same degree of services for OOo.
And it has some extra enhancements over OO (such as spell checking capability for more languages). but other then thhat, they share the same core code base and very similar.
And it is good to see that OO is more java friendly with the inclusion of HSQLDB.
No, I don’t mean passing around my resume in OpenOffice.org (OASIS) format.
I am getting a few contracts that specifically mention they want people with experience in OASIS format — just like other contracts are looking for people with knowledge of C, Java, or standards such as SEI CMM or SDLC.
By reading the review I couldn’t understand the main thing that interests me: is the stylist still in a separate window, or has it been moved to a panel (a-la MSOffice)? Thanks.
What I want out of OO.org2 is a better looking Windows client. The last version looks horrible on a Windows machine, way worse than it does on my Gnome box…..
Not that this cuts out features or nothing….but some people are fickle.
What is the real justification to move from compatibility to total incompatibility.
Very good point. MSOffice is totally incapable of opening OpenOffice documents, so I’m going to stick with OOo! Hah!
I have to use MSO at work, but use OOo at home, and while MSO may be more feature rich, OOo is nearly so brain dead in it’s stupidity. I fight all the time with MSO, but OOo let’s me just work.
What is the real justification to move from compatibility to total incompatibility. No matter what you have read, OO.org compatibility with MS Office is still lousy. Microsoft has been supporting the same file formats for Office since Office 97 to 2003, Office 97 runs just fine on XP, so I don’t see the real reason for migrating from MS Office.
I’m sorry, but despite the fact that files created using different versions of MS Office will have the same file extension, the actual file formats have changed drastically throughout its history. This is a bit better with MS Office 2000 to 2003, but previously, new version of the file format were not backwards compatible. Many a time I’ve save a .doc, only to have it unreadable at the computer I send it to.
Having MS Office 97 installed on a computer would probably not allow you to read most modern .doc files.
Open Office.org is a great piece of software that is quite superior to pre-2000 MS Office releases and does the job more than adequately. Not as good as the newest from MS, but you get more bang for your buck.
What I want out of OO.org2 is a better looking Windows client. The last version looks horrible on a Windows machine, way worse than it does on my Gnome box…..
This feature in the main features list about 3/4 of the way down;
http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/2.0/index.html
The 2.0 (and current pre-releases) use native widgets under Gnome and Windows XP (previous versions of Windows do not have theme integration).
At work my copy of MSOffice started crashing on load all the time. I needed some way to read docs because my job depends on it. I couldn’t wait for IT to fix it because it would leave me twidling by thumbs while I waited (it has been about 1 1/2 months since it broke, our IT department had 6 of a 7 man team quit so they are way behond right now). I needed something, I had tried OO.o 1.1 in the past and hated it so I figured I would try a build of 2.0.
So after using 2.0 (some type of beta) for about 1 1/2 months I have to say I am impressed. The interface has gone from crap in 1.1 to useable. The features are good enough that I have not noticed anything missing yet. And best of all it has opened 100% of all the .doc, .xls, and .ppt files I have received. These are not simple files either, I deal with many clients who do all sorts of crazy things and it has all worked.
Based on my experiences this is the first OO.o release that is good enough to be used. To me it is a major milestone. The beta that I have been using is good enough for my work that I do not care if IT ever gets around to fixing my office install. That says a lot coming from someone that spends as much time using office sowtware as I do.
Anyone know when final open office 2 will be released.
Finally after all this time – filters for WordPerfect.
But STILL no port to OSX.
Sigh . . .
I’ve been using OpenOffice.ort 2.0 development versions for months. It’s awesome. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for an alternative.
>The 2.0 (and current pre-releases) use native widgets under
>Gnome and Windows XP
KDE too =)
I’m frustrated, that Sun chosed to imitate MS Office Look & Feel. I was very pleased with the former originality of StarSoft’s Star Office and latter Open Office. Why Autopilots changed to Wizards ? Where disappeared handy left sidebar ? Why UI resembles MSO so much, while providing inconsistend and too vibrant icons etc. ? Before this, Star Office evoked feeling, that this software was original and designed from the scratch, not by copying Vole’s design. OO.o was the last alternative to Vole’s way of thinking, but it is not anymore 🙁 I’ll be probably stuck with 1.1.4 for some time 8-(
Of course, I found some neat things in 2.0, but I lost my confidence to use it – why to use the clone of MSO, when I can buy MSO either ?
I use OpenOffice.org daily, including the 2.0 pre-release. I rarely use MS Office.
The changes in OOo make it easier to use. If that means it looks too much like MS Office, I don’t care. By itself, OOo is getting better…MS Office or not.
I have to agree. On my development station running Windows 2000, I can use the OpenBase program to import and use Access files. The linux version currently lacks that and I wish it would have that function. When it does, I can finally get rid of Access and Windows once and for all.
What is the real justification to move from compatibility to total incompatibility. No matter what you have read, OO.org compatibility with MS Office is still lousy. Microsoft has been supporting the same file formats for Office since Office 97 to 2003, Office 97 runs just fine on XP, so I don’t see the real reason for migrating from MS Office.
Not so for the office I work in. We have thousands of documents that were created in Word 2000 and Word 97. We recently had Word 2003 install on all of the desktops. Now, every single Word document prints out differently than before. Every single one has to be manually reformatted.
Nice file compatibility in Microsoft Office with ITSELF!
I’m also wondering if anybody knows when version 2.0 will be released? Truly awesome btw!
April or May, so I’ve read.
The roadmap is right on their website:
http://development.openoffice.org/releases/OpenOffice_org_2_x.html
April/May for OOo 2.0
2.0.1 in Q3
What is the real justification to move from compatibility to total incompatibility. No matter what you have read, OO.org compatibility with MS Office is still lousy. Microsoft has been supporting the same file formats for Office since Office 97 to 2003, Office 97 runs just fine on XP, so I don’t see the real reason for migrating from MS Office.
If everybody in the office uses OOo there will be no compatibility problems. True, you may have some old documents but if they don’t render favorably in OOo some could be saved as pdf or you could keep one or two PCs running MS-Office. A small office would still save a lot on lowered licence fees. It would also be less risk that employees are tempted to use MS-Office for communication otuside the company that could be a potential security risk. Then you have the benefit of a well documented and standardized file format. This makes it a lot easier to extract information from ordinary documents into varios infomation systems.
So that we are aware, this is not the first look at OOo. Here is a review to the real first look.
First look: OpenOffice.org version 2.0 beta
Tuesday March 01, 2005 (02:00 PM GMT)
http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/02/25/209222.shtml?tid=93…
looks like it will miss the next releases of Ubuntu and SUSE.
looks like it will miss the next releases of Ubuntu and SUSE.
Actually, even though (Ubuntu) Hoary won’t have OO.org2 officially supported, it already has a beta version in the Universe. I use it, works great!
“Fedora Core 4 is trying to make a free JRE based off of gcj and they claim to have Openoffice.org compiling with gcj now too.”
Is this true or did you just make this up? I’m not questioning you, but it just sounds too good to be true.
I really wonder about the licensing issues regarding OO.o. Unless Red Hat includes proprietary Java stuff into Fedora (which we know they won’t), OO.o will be crippled. This goes true most (not all) other Linux distros, but not Sun’s.
Wait a minute, it wouldn’t apply to Solaris either.
Hmmm, using an open source killer app to leverage increasing market share for your proprietary product, and locking out the competition. I wonder if this is Sun’s strategy.
I hope an open source, unencumbered implementation of Java is workable soon.
Open Office has practically been standing still since it went open source. IT seems to be handled as a toy project rather than something serious.
It still lacks design, and Impress is about the lousiest presentation software on the market. I DO hope this will change, but nothing has happened for so long I’m doubting something will ever happen with Impress at all.
My hopes go to EI Office to put up a real fight on the Office suite software, but haven’t heard news about them for a while…
What good is it if it doesn’t have a Publisher or an Outlook replacement? OO 1.1 was just as bloated as Office- without two programs.
It is happening. Read the fedora-devel-list, as the RH person doing the work frequently posts there. See for example:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2004-November/msg0…
the developer has a Blog too:
http://blogs.linux.ie/caolan/index.php
No matter what you have read, OO.org compatibility with MS Office is still lousy. Microsoft has been supporting the same file formats for Office since Office 97 to 2003, Office 97 runs just fine on XP, so I don’t see the real reason for migrating from MS Office.
Actually, after trying the OOo 2 beta, I must say I’m really impressed with the new MS Office import filters. All the MS Word documents I threw at it, including those with lots of pictures and funky layout, came out looking identical. There has really been a lot of improvement since the last version.
As for different MS Office version, documents written in Word97 will open in WordXP, but sometimes there are glitches in page layout with documents that have lots of images. And AFAIK Word still lacks a built-in export to PDF function, which we’d find very useful.
OOo 2.0 looks like it’s going to be a much improved office suite. You should give it a try instead of dismissing it off-hand.
I expect some surprise from SUSE. They are not new to putting features and apps in their OS which are still in beta. For instance 9.0 supported DVD burning in K3b before it was officially implemented. In any case I have already OOo 2.0 in my SUSE system.
I have written elsewhere that 2005 is the year when linux becomes a truly mature OS.
How many times in the past we read that Linux missed a good office suite? Now we have it.
Personally, I don’t like OOo very much. I’ve had some problems with it, like crashes, bad handling of imported (pasted) html and stuff like that. There were also other numerous minor problems. Overall, it was doing allright though, and the reasons for my dislike lay elsewhere.
I acknowledge that it’s free and as a MSO replacement it’s OK, to say the least. The open format is the most important thing, no matter how stupidly it is devised (I think that xml is not appropriate in the case when it’s meant to be bundled with multiple files and then zipped by default). But I dislike having a clunky, non-free vm dependency on my system. I also dislike (despite understanding the arguments for it) the UI made to resemble MSO. And it runs so slow, it’s unbearable (and I’m not just talking about startup).
I like the concept of one tool for one job. An office suite just can’t cope with it.
So it’s just not for a user like me. Take it to the company office but personally I don’t want to deal with it at all.
If I need to write a text document, I use a text file. I use
as a paragraph delimiter, perhaps a shift of 2 chars for text and no shift for headings, I keep it wrapped at 78 chars and it works perfectly.
If I need more complex stuff, I use (X)HTML, or if I have no other choice, LaTeX. But that’s getting off-topic and too long anyways 😉
What is the real justification to move from compatibility to total incompatibility. No matter what you have read, OO.org compatibility with MS Office is still lousy.
I’m afraid it isn’t although some people would like you to think that. I’ve opened just about every kind of MS Office document one would ever come across in your average company.
The recent releases of OpenOffice.org have been impressive. Kudos to the development team. I can’t wait for the ximian version for GNOME. For the first time ever, OpenOffice.org 2.0 looks better than the hideousness Microsoft Office 2003 has become.
I have written elsewhere that 2005 is the year when linux becomes a truly mature OS.
How many times in the past we read that Linux missed a good office suite? Now we have it.
The previous version was of OOo a good office suit too.
The problem was that it had no MS-Access and MS-Outlook replacements. This is still not fully fixed as OOo 2.0 can’t open and save as MS-Access database files.
It is also still missing is a replacement for Outlook. One would think that this not important as there are Evolution and Kontact that could be used as replacements. However, to be relevant for the development of the Linux desktop OOo does not only have to be the best thing around on Linux, it need to make it on windows as well. This makes the lack of outlook a problem.
In fact the lack of good cross platform calendering client software is probably the greatest hurdles to the Linux desktop not that the existing parts of OOo isn’t good enough.
> In this new release, they’ve switched over to the Java Media Framework for multimedia, and embedding movies in Impress presentations works under Linux now.
There are people working on movie support in OOo with Helix Player (open sourced version of Real Player):
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=41419
Basically, it’s a bridge between Helix component architecture and OOo’s UNO component architecture. See, COM is sometimes useful. Also in my opinion Helix is better than JMF by far.
But saying that OO.org2 has lousy compatibility is a lie.
That depends on how you define “lousy”. If I’m working with other people’s MS Office documents then anything less than 100% compatibility is totally unacceptable. I can’t afford to give people messed up documents, they aren’t going to accept any excuses I make about file formats.
I haven’t tried OO.org 2, but version 1.1.4 for Windows doesn’t have a level of compatibility I find acceptable, not even when dealing with everyday Word documents. I was emailed some fairly simple questionnaires in Word 2000 format. Simply opening and re-saving them in OO.org messed up the layout of tables and embedded images. It would have taken a significant amount of work to fix all the problems that OO.org introduced. Opening Powerpoint presentations in OO.org seemed even more problematic, I tried several Powerpoint presentations and they all lost data.
From my limited experience of OO.org it didn’t seem unpleasant to use, but I can’t risk compatibility problems. The money I’d save from not having to buy Office isn’t worth the risk of looking totally incompetent to the people I work with.
Thanks, hadn’t seen that. I went ahead and voted for it.
in these big bloated office suites GoBe productive was always more than enough software for me for office type stuff,but then agian i’m not an office worker,but this thing runs like a dog on everything I have,.even worse than Star officemseems like an endless wait ti initalize then the splash screen,then the tip thing ,ho hum,my vote goes for abiword
seguso wrote:
> By reading the review I couldn’t understand the main thing
> that interests me: is the stylist still in a separate
> window, or has it been moved to a panel (a-la MSOffice)?
I don’t know how it’s in OOo 2, but in previous versions of OOo windows such as the stylist are easily dockable by Ctrl-dragging. I have the stylist and the navigator docked on the right side of the page, above each other. You can also choose whether the dock should be floating or pinned (by clicking on the pin).
What is the real justification to move from compatibility to total incompatibility. No matter what you have read, OO.org compatibility with MS Office is still lousy. Microsoft has been supporting the same file formats for Office since Office 97 to 2003, Office 97 runs just fine on XP, so I don’t see the real reason for migrating from MS Office.
Bzzzt! Wrong. Office has *horrible* .doc compatibility between versions. Newer versions all have the “Save as <version X>” option to save in an old .doc format. These filters don’t always work, though.
Install Office XP on a computer. Create a document with tables, images, and various paragraph formats. Save that document in Word XP format, in Word 2000 format, and in Word 97 format.
Install Office 2000 on a second computer. Try to open those three documents on this computer. The one in Office 97 format will open, won’t look right, though. The one in Office 2000 format will open, and may look right. The one in Office XP format will not open.
Install Office 97 on a third comptuer. Try to open those three documents on this computer. Neither the Office XP nor the Office 2000 formatted documents will open. The Office 97 formatted document might open, but it won’t look right.
Compare that to how WordPerfect works. Try the exact same experiment using WordPerfect 2002, 2000, and 8. You’ll notice that the Save As dialogue only has 1 option for file format, and it include versions 7-12. All versions of WordPerfect since version 7 use the same file format. And yet they still manage to add new features to each new version of the office suite. That’s compatibility, forward, and back. As in, you can create a document using WordPerfect 12, and still open it using WordPerfect 7, without using any horrible “save in version 7 format” crap like you do with Office.
OpenOffice is moving in that direction with the OASIS document format. It’s not quite there yet, though.
Microsoft products have *horrible* compatibility with other versions of the same products.
That depends on how you define “lousy”. If I’m working with other people’s MS Office documents then anything less than 100% compatibility is totally unacceptable. I can’t afford to give people messed up documents, they aren’t going to accept any excuses I make about file formats.
With that definition of “lousy” you would find MS-Office almost as problematic. Old MS documents doesn’t always open correctly in newer versions of the same program. In fact I sometimes have had better results with even the old incompatible OOo, and I use OOo as a rescue for MS documents that for some mysterious reason won’t open in the program that created them. This is lousy indeed, considering the program comes from the same company.
So, if you want your 100% compatibility you will need to have different computers with different versions of MS word installed. I suppose it could be worth it if you are depending on 100% likeness in layout but most business don’t care if a dot is moved 2 pixels to the left will be quite OK.
With that definition of “lousy” you would find MS-Office almost as problematic. Old MS documents doesn’t always open correctly in newer versions of the same program.
I’m sure there are some situations where that occurs, but it’s not something I’ve ever encountered. I’ve upgraded to Office XP at home yet still use Office 2000 at work. I constantly deal with complex Word documents, spreadsheets and presentations saved in Office 97 and 2K formats. I’ve never noticed any problem when opening them in Office XP.
I suppose it could be worth it if you are depending on 100% likeness in layout but most business don’t care if a dot is moved 2 pixels to the left will be quite OK.
I was exaggerating a little when I said that 100% compatibility is essential. If incompatibility between OO.org and Office was limited to minor layout glitches (like dots being a few pixels out) then it wouldn’t be a problem.
But OO.org 1.1.4 has totally mangled some of the documents I’ve tried with it. The layout of some questionnaires was changed dramatically, text and images overlapped in a number of locations. To restore a professional looking layout and render all the text readable, numerous images would have had to be manually repositioned. Opening those documents in different versions of Word didn’t change the layout noticeably.
”
I was exaggerating a little when I said that 100% compatibility is essential. If incompatibility between OO.org and Office was limited to minor layout glitches (like dots being a few pixels out) then it wouldn’t be a problem. ”
thats much more realistic. openoffice.org 2.0 fullfills this criteria. go ahead and try it when its ready or even the beta now
Again with the nappy assed freetype font kerning… Hard to make a program look good when the underlying engine cannot even manage to space the letter i or capitols consistantly/cleanly.
Downloading the beta to see if it’s still saddled with that like 1.x was or if they finally switched to the OS native font rendering. If they have then it’s not OOO’s fault… if they haven’t – yet another release that is too ugly to use… What good is WYSIWYG that A> doesn’t WYSIWYG and B> looks like {censored}
OOO ve rsion 2.0 bet a (1.97) s till uses fre etype for fon t ren dering… Ev en unde r Wind ows…
What a joke.
“Hard to make a program look good when the underlying engine cannot even manage to space the letter i or capitols consistantly/cleanly”
Are you joking, or just overly dramatic? I really can’t see a significant problem with the fonts. Saying it’s “too ugly to use” seems bizzarely extreme. I just typed as sentence in both OO.o, and MS Word, and they both look pretty good. You must puke every time you see an LED screen. That’s pretty high maintenance to me. Anyone else think it’s “too ugly to use?”
Actually, for me, MS Word printouts are too ugly to read. Seriously, if you ever read something technical (i.e. lots of equations), done in MS Word, it is painful. The line and character spacings are all screwed up. Never tried OOo Writer for this, since everything I do is in LaTeX, which is simply beautiful. It would be nice if word processors could produce output that looks as nice as LaTeX, but they seem so far away still.
Anyone else think it’s “too ugly to use?”
I can’t be bothered trying it. The thing is still the king of slowness even after all the optimizations they have done. It is super slow. Just compare the memory consumption when OOo is launched and MS Office is launched or any other fast loading office suite. It’s a joke. No offense to anyone but here the open source community should admit the thing is SLOW instead of flaming me and offending me because I am giving it a negative comment.
Why use helix, the half-proprietary program (yes it’s free, most codecs are not, my plain helix can play only gifs and wavs).
I heard it can use xine lib, but then why not embed xine lib itself? It is easy, highly useable and present in many najor distros.
And if they want *really* solution that will *just work, ever*, they should use gstreamer. It is already somewhat mature, highly used and support a lot of codecs, which are free.
Are you saying that the app itself is slow, or only that it’s slow to load? There is a fast-loader applet that lets you open it up almost as fast as MS Office (it uses the same thing as MS Office, i.e. preloading components when starting up a session).
If you’re talking about the actual application, I can’t say that I’ve seen much difference, however you should consider that beta apps are sometimes a bit slower than final release.
I am talking about start-up times. Otherwise once loaded, it’s ok. I have tried the fast-loader applet, my opinion to it is: “it’s Ok” but not as I would like it too. What I have noticed is this. MS Office loads particular files when they need to be loaded. Like, excel.exe and winword.exe are actual programs. OOo however, the WHOLE thing is loaded in memory and then when we select an icon, say “OpenOffice.oef Writer” only the drawing on the screen is changed to show a word processor instead of spreadsheet. Seems like, when OOo is loading on start-up, it’s loading “everything”, all its resources so that’s why when we select OOo writer, (once loaded) it is so fast because the staff has been loaded before like it or not, needed or not. I don’t know whether you know what I mean. It’s like, it’s loading unnecessary stuff. Like when you launch OOo Writer, it will also load the libraries needed for spreadsheet, presentation etc so that later on when we select a spreadsheet, it appears immidiately and because of this, that’s why it takes so much time for it to load. Correct me if I am wrong. Anyway if this is the case then it’s a bad programming concept in my opinion.
This preloading thing of MSO is highly overestimated. Have you ever tried starting MSO in Crossover Office (wine)? It starts faster than the native OOo. Maybe MS has tricks to secretly preload MSO in Linux, too?
You can’t deny that MSO is terribly fast, even without preloading. Having to use a preloader for OOo to get the same startup time as MSO in Crossover Office is pathetic.
And as for the “native” GTK+ UI. It’s not native _AT ALL_. In fact, it looks even WAY more inconsistent than it used to. Many widgets just don’t match the real GTK+ widgets. Things like the scrollbar buttons, tabs are drawn in a very strange way. The new UI looks anything but polished. The old “win95” look was much better. This too is pathetic.
> (Why use Helix, Helix sucks, proprietary, GStreamer rocks, etc.)
First, Helix is fully open source project. Saying otherwise is simply wrong. It has corporate origin, yes, but so is OpenOffice.org.
Regarding GStreamer comment: are you volunteering? Great!
Get a load of this:
http://battletech.hopto.org/images/Freetype_vs_Win.jpg
I don’t know what a diffic or ult are, but I guess we are spacin’ g.
Try doing serious text editing with that for a while and you quickly tell anything that relies on freetype to go @#$% itself.
Forgot to mention that’s WinXP, Large Fonts (120dpi) with cleartype enabled at max contrast. I run large fonts because I hate jaggies so I’m at 1600×1200.
deathshadow, you can blame software patents for that.
There’s an option that can be enabled in Freetype (have to be recompiled) to make the spacing look good, but it’s off by default in many distributions (as in distributions of the compiled library, not a Linux distribution) because of those silly patents.
But you’re very right, it looks terrible this way.
You’re right, MS Office Apps load much faster than OOo. It takes a blink of a sec on my PC with 1Gig Mem to load either Excel or Word. Calc and writer take abaout 6 sec for the hourglass to desapear. Other than that i find OOo an awsome application.
MS-Office just costs too much for home usge. 300 bucks for a student version ….. this is defenatly too much. MS does not even offer a trial version and forces you to activate it after having spend your hard earned bucks.
I just wanted to mention that using freetype 2.1.9-r1 and xorg 6.8.2 with the microsoft TTF’s I no longer have any real issues with spacing- and I double checked- the bytecode interpreter is not turned on…
I remebr those wierd spaing issues a while back-but I haven’t had these problems in a while now- In order to test this I opened up ximian-oo 1.1.4 and typed the exact same sentence with the exact same font and font size which was used in the png you posted- spacing is just fine here….
I just tried the identical sentence that you put in your screenshot on OpenOffice 2 and OpenOffice 1.1.4. I wrote a little macro and had the sentence repeat in every font available to OpenOffice.
Not one appear with any spacing abnomailities like your screenshot shows.
And, I did it on Linux.
I will take my experience with OpenOffice (both Linux and Windows versions) over my experience of Microsoft Office intermittantly crashing and incompatibility with it’s own file format.
seeing that the average home user doesn’t use 90% of MS-Office’s features, it’s a great alternative to piracy, or shelling out a wad of cash for the latest MS offering when you don’t have to.
i’ve been using it in some form or fashion since before OO.org, when Sun originally bought StarOffice and was offering that as a free download. For my regular word processing and spreadsheet duties, the only complaint i have is the initial load time ( which is cut down in 2.0 beta, as far as i can see).
We seem to forget that right now, it’s MS’s party; as far as i know, OO has to approximate the closed source MS format.. So perhaps it’s not for the business users who need every iota of compatibility. fine. .buy MS office.. but OO can suffice, i do not see why it can’t be recommended, because apart from the Office compatibility, it’s a great product
the more users it gets, the higher the level of awareness, and perhaps in the future, it may become a dominant player in the industry. (pipe dream, perhaps.. but remember the standard office apps USED to be Lotus 123,dBase & WordPerfect)
I’ve tried the beta with some of the client files we deal with at my work (Pre-Press/Graphic Design), Writer has been very good with Word compatability and Power Point seems fine too. Only thing I found missing was the ability to print multi slide handout pages. Maybe I need to investigate it a little further. I use OO at home on Linux (beta version of OO version2) and I like it. Saving as PDF or .doc works fine and have had no issues opening these files on MS Windows, Office, and Acrobat viewer.
Still more that could be done but I would like them to get the printing/layout side of things upto professional standards unlike MS Office and keep the main programs SIMPLE…..
Thanks for the link…
http://battletech.hopto.org/images/Freetype_vs_Win.jpg
…as a test, I typed in the exact same text, set the font to Arial (10pt, normal; not bold/italic/…) and it looks fine for me. Changing the alignment from flush left to right/center/justified makes no difference.
(On a US Letter sized page, the text appears on 2 lines for me. The sentence splits between the words ‘difficult’ and ‘to’. Looking at the toolbar, the right/left margins seem to be the same as the ones you use.)
Maybe this bug has been fixed in the versions I’m using, or you don’t have Arial installed?
(Note: If the font isn’t installed, the program(s) reading the file may have to fudge the differences using another font and forced kerning. That would be my guess for the reason you’re encountering problems.)
Here’s what I’m using;
* System Fedora Core 2 (current according to Synaptic)
* OpenOffice.org 1.9.79
* Installed font pack: msfonts-1.2.1 (from 2002)
* Freetype 2.1.7
seeing that the average home user doesn’t use 90% of MS-Office’s features, it’s a great alternative to piracy, or shelling out a wad of cash for the latest MS offering when you don’t have to.
I would guess that the average office user uses even less, as they normally use layotprograms like Indesign or Framemaker if something more complex is to be produced.
We seem to forget that right now, it’s MS’s party; as far as i know, OO has to approximate the closed source MS format.. So perhaps it’s not for the business users who need every iota of compatibility. fine. .buy MS office.. but OO can suffice, i do not see why it can’t be recommended, because apart from the Office compatibility, it’s a great product
the more users it gets, the higher the level of awareness, and perhaps in the future, it may become a dominant player in the industry. (pipe dream, perhaps.. but remember the standard office apps USED to be Lotus 123,dBase & WordPerfect)
It allready have about 10% marketshare (if you include StarOffice), the new document format is approved to use
for official documents in the EU, Meaning government officials are supposed to be able to open a document sent to them in the new OASIS file format. This will increase the marketshare and user awareness even further. So the MS party may have an end or at least they will run out of Champagne very soon
Have you ever tried starting MSO in Crossover Office (wine)? It starts faster than the native OOo.
Uh, no. I tried it just now. It takes approximately the same time for both of them to load, without using the preloader for OOo. Using the preloader, OOo loads faster than MS Office.
The new UI looks anything but polished. The old “win95” look was much better.
I disagree. I think the new UI is better than the old one – though personally I’ll wait until the KDE integration is done.
The screenshot you showed displays some strange kerning problems. It’s on Windows, right? Then it might be a problem with the Windows version of freetype, as my whole Linux desktop uses freetype and doesn’t have this kind of problem. In fact, at 1600×1200, fonts look much nicer on my Linux system than they do on my Windows desktop at work, and this has been the case since Mandrake 9.2.
http://archie.homelinux.net:8080/screenshot2.html
http://archie.homelinux.net:8080/images/user/kde_shot1.jpg
http://archie.homelinux.net:8080/images/user/kde_shot3.jpg
(There’s some JPEG compression on these images, but they’re still clear enough to gauge the font quality. Of course, looking at them at resolutions lower than 1600×1200 will make the fonts look huge!)
Funny that, the ‘kerning errors’ in the image you gave are exactly the same size as a space. It’s almost as if someone has just inserted/deleted spaces in the text. I’ll say that again, it’s almost as if some one has ins er ted/deletedsp aces int he text. I don’t think I have ever seen such even and regular kerning errors. Remar kable.
I’ve thought the draw program has freaking rocked from the beginning. It is great for general diagrams. I am also stoked to hear that they will have a db application tool. Sorry to hear, though that it is Java based and doesn’t use MySQL…oh, well – at least it is not Access!
“I can’t be bothered trying it.”
So how do even know its so slow? What are you basing your opinion on?
OO.org on windows with the quickstart loads very quickly on even moderate PC hardware. On modern hardware ie >1.0GHz with quickload only a total MS zealot could find fault with how fast it loads. Every try launching Photoshop on even fast PC? Does that ridiculous slowess to launch take away from the app?
If your going to use how fast it launches as the sole factor for how good an app is then there must be a ton of widely used apps you can’t use. If the three seconds it takes to launch OO.org over the two seconds it takes MS Office to launch is the only reason why you think OO.org is so flawed then your just looking for things to complain about and weren’t interested in an MS Office alternative in the first place.
For diehard MS Office users who utilize 99% of what MS Office offers there are legitimate faults to find with OO.org, launch time isn’t one of them.
So how do even know its so slow? What are you basing your opinion on?
Because I’ve tried it for 5 minutes.
Let us see if Microsoft will dare continue using patents and closed file formats for lock-in, once governments demand use of the open document format.
For this to come to pass I think it would be helpful, if MS Office would be enabled to save it’s documents in the open document format. Are there any “MS Office Macro Gurus” out there willing to write a macro which can act as an open document export / import filter?
I mean this seriously, the more the playing field is leveled, the more competition will take place and I personally do not fear that OpenOffice.org would be able to loose in such a competitive environment.
don’t get it working with xfce4.2 only, no gnome-libs installed.
is there a howto anywhere how to enable it? can’t find anything in the options/preferences menu.
thank you!!
I would point out the screenshot in the article itself has the same kerning issues, although not as extreme as my example (which is likely it choking on the 120dpi “Large font” setting).
Look at the part “omnis divisia” and compare the two “IS” pairings. In the first one the i runs into the s, in the second it does not. Look at the word apellantur… That screams kerning errors… another good example is in the word “Commeant” where it looks like ea is one letter, nt is another and there’s a space between them… That is supposed to be one word, ja? Not as extreme as my example, but typical of what I’ve seen out of OOo.
Even “A nun, e moos” screenshots, which are some of the nicest I’ve seen from linux, have a pixel or two offset here and there, although it’s not as extreme or widespread (the liberal use of fixed-width fonts in some area’s helps that). I do find it funny that the file that is selected in KDE_Shot3 actually has the kerning error on the last i in the filename.
A great test of it is the word difficult. Type it into OOo in Arial (10pica if OS set for largefonts, 12 pica if not… lowercase, do not allow it to auto-correct to upper-case first letter) then go to the beginning of the line and watch the “IC” pairing. Watch the letter i jump around about 4 pixels and the c jump back and forth two pixels in relation to the i… oddly, the u after remains a fixed distance from the start of the word… What this does is worst case look like there’s a space inserted between the c and u with the “FIC” looking like one letter, best case it looks normal, and it entirely seems to hinge on the number of spaces before the word. Curiously when it does render that section correctly (usually the line with five spaces before it) it screws up the “DI” pair at the start of the word!
Forgot to say “Now insert spaces before the word, and watch the IC pairing”
I didn’t suspect spaces, though I can’t reproduce what you see in either case.
For reference, I’m the AC that posted these system specs (above);
* System Fedora Core 2 (current according to Synaptic)
* OpenOffice.org 1.9.79
* Installed font pack: msfonts-1.2.1 (from 2002)
* Freetype 2.1.7
With this combo, and using Arial 6 through 16 point fonts, with different justification settings (L, R, C, full Justification), it just looks right…no problems. Even with different and mixed case.
I’m not saying you don’t see it. I don’t, though. What are your settings?
I don’t see that at all. You seem to need to go through an awful lot to want prove an insignificant problem, just to be able to call it tremendously ugly. I’m not saying it is not a problem, and IF it is one, I would agree that it should be fixed. Either way, I think you’re being WAY too dramatic about it.
If you are going to say, “MY GOD that’s ugly” about something that seems pretty hard to notice, I don’t think I’m going to care what you say next time, no matter how “ugly” it may be.
I do find it funny that the file that is selected in KDE_Shot3 actually has the kerning error on the last i in the filename.
Yeah. That’s a pretty old screenshot, though. Here’s a couple of more recent ones. I’ve saved them as PNGs and they’re a bit heavier, but they’re better quality.
(Again, seeing these on resolutions smaller than 1600×1200 will result in very large fonts.)
http://archie.homelinux.net:8080/images/user/kde_shot5.png
http://archie.homelinux.net:8080/images/user/kde_shot6.png
(warning: 2624×1200 desktop, 1.6 MB image)
This is totally off-topic, but I just realized the KDE save file dialog can use the fish:/ kio_slave, which means you can take a snapshot of your desktop and save it directly on the web server machine if it has an ssh server running (and you have the password, of course). You can even set it as a bookmark!
http://archie.homelinux.net:8080/images/user/fish_kioslave.png
Great primer review. I am absolutely floored by power, beauty and polish of the beta. I am going to buy the macro book and migrate to this package. I downloaded the sample chapters from the reference and am surprised how comparable StarBasic is to VBA.
How on Earth can Microsoft maintain an advantage if OO is this good and getting better. No sane person will be able to justify using anything other than OO in my view. And hey, I love C# and you couldn’t even begin to tell my why java, and anything else for that matter is better. So I am not an enthusisast with a bias here.
The OO2.0 will definitely rock.. Since i mostly work on Microsoft excel. The First impression with OO 2.0 is that the spreadsheet rows in calc module have been extended from 32000 rows to 65,536 same as MS Excel. That is a good addition for people working with Excel.
hdd spave usage, memory usage…etc. that is very important. mso 2003 is hdd hungry i think imho but mem efficient from what i have experienced.
The OO2.0 will definitely rock.. Since i mostly work on Microsoft excel. The First impression with OO 2.0 is that the spreadsheet rows in calc module have been extended from 32000 rows to 65,536 same as MS Excel. That is a good addition for people working with Excel.
if they use that many rows, then they probably should use something other than excel. The old in OOolimit was a nice reminder of that;-)
I think you never worked with excel especially while downloading data from SAP R/3(Old version4.5). Then you must have known why so many rows are required.
My opinion ain’t worth two bits, but my Open Office wish list contains just three items:
1) Make it faster
2) Make it faster
3) Make it faster
To these I’d add, “Make it faster.”
Improve the charting. They were meant to be introducing a completely new charting system for 2.0 but clearly this has been put on the back burner. It is impossible for me to use openoffice without this improvement. Back to excel for me…
looks like I gotta uninstall some stuff off of my hdd before I install this thing cause i am out of space. thats why i was asking you guys from experience as to the metrics of this application.
Five main reasons:
1) It’s incredibly slow.
2) It’s supposed compatability with MS is horrible – Unusable almost.
3) It’s incredibly slow.
4) It’s incredibly slow.
5) It’s incredibly slow.
One has to wonder what’s the point of spending almost a year redoing the whole code with betas, if at the end it still crawls at redrawing simple PNG’s – Dear lord…
We’re not going anywhere with software like this.