Submitted by “Following our policy strategy to publish releases on a regular basis, OpenOffice.org 2.3.1 is available for download now. Although it is primarily a maintenance release, we recommend users to install the release due to a security fix. Full details of the changes may be found in the Release Notes associated with the release.”
I mean this is oooold. OO.o 3.1 has been out for some days after all
OO.o 3.1? I wonder where you saw that, here it is December 2007, what’s the date today on your end?
Haha… LOL yeah, you’re right. I forgot the major version.
Should’ve said 2.3.1
– but it is still old 
He’s using the TARDIS plug-in.
Yeah. Don’t know what day 2.3.1 was actually released, but I downloaded it almost two weeks ago. Installed it on a new basic build computer and it seems to work great.
One suggestion for them though. A friend was looking for a freeware alternative to Microsoft Publisher. I checked out Open Office and was suprised it didn’t include a comparable application. Guess I never had a reason before to notice the omission…
One suggestion for them though. A friend was looking for a freeware alternative to Microsoft Publisher. I checked out Open Office and was suprised it didn’t include a comparable application. Guess I never had a reason before to notice the omission…
Clearly your friend should learn to code raw HTML and JSP in vi. A Microsoft Publisher clone is not needed! </sarcasm!>
at a minimum a publisher filter would be good. I have long since left the Microsoft world behind, but I have a ton of pub files.
I have had some people send me .pub files and I use this service to be able to read and view the files. I hope it helps you out.
https://www.pdfonline.com/convert_pdf.asp
I’ve used Scribus (www.scribus.net) to do some ‘Publisher’ type activities. Nothing too heavy, but it worked for me. I haven’t tried installing it on Windows, but the webpage indicates that it’s possible.
Anyhow, depending on his needs, it may be suitable (if he hasn’t found another program yet).
Scribus works fine on Windows, and is easy to install. I’m using it heavily for professional DTP, though primarily on Linux
I’ll do anything to stay away from MS-word, I have tried OO.o, koffice and Scribus.
Scribus is great for small projects. But the magical project size is around 30 pages with loads of graphics. After that Scribus get sluggish and prone to crashes. Same problem on both XP and linux. Not fun if you are on a deadline.
I’ll pay loads, hell I’ll even sell my own body if it would get me an easy to use document-publisher-thingie.
I’ve used Scribus (www.scribus.net) to do some ‘Publisher’ type activities…
That’s exactly what I did. Never heard of Scribus before, but I tested it on my own computer before passing it along and it appears to be a solid program.
Is there a need for a Publisher clone? Impress is a PowerPoint clone, isn’t it enough? After all PowerPoint and Publisher are similar applications.
Is there a need for a Publisher clone? Impress is a PowerPoint clone, isn’t it enough? After all PowerPoint and Publisher are similar applications.
There may some overlap in funtions, but their primary uses are completely different. Powerpoint is for creating multi-media presentations to be viewed on a computer screen; Publisher does page layout and design for printed materials.
“Is there a need for a Publisher clone? Impress is a PowerPoint clone, isn’t it enough? After all PowerPoint and Publisher are similar applications.”
Well, there are some DTP apps out there already, such as Scribus as was mentioned earlier. As far as Publisher and Power Point being similar apps…they are totally different. Publisher is for DTP. Power Point is for presentations. Different markets and capabilities, and far from being similar with the exception of sharing the MS Office interface.
Is there a need for a Publisher clone? Impress is a PowerPoint clone, isn’t it enough? After all PowerPoint and Publisher are similar applications.
I think that OpenOffice.Draw is more comparable to Publisher. Textboxes, vector graphics, etc.
Publisher and PowerPoint are supposed to be different applications for different purposes. But you wouldn’t believe how many people use PowerPoint as a DTP.
In the free software world, available for Windows, the primary option for desktop publishing would be Scribus, as has already been mentioned.
http://www.scribus.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribus
In the near future, KWord 2.0 (part of KOffice) will likely be available for Windows. KWord has a “page-oriented” mode that is suitable for simple desktop publishing.
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/3715536
That might do the trick for your friend, if Scribus is overkill or otherwise not suitable. I think KWord should become available for Windows sometime in the new year.
Edited 2007-12-18 23:52
Let me know when the Incremental Updater is done – tired of downloading 43242 GB every time a point release is made!!
I’m with you on that one. Just be happy, that you only have to download the binaries. Imagine compiling it
As a gentoo user I did compile OpenOffice 2.3.1 a few days back, took approximately 4 hours 40 mins on a UP Athlon64 3500+ and consumed around about 4 GB of temporary disk space.
The resulting binary package (as a bzip2 archive) is approximately ~115MB.
I’m also a Gentoo user, on a (acronym time!) 1.2 GHz G4 PPC CPU and compiling OOo takes about 14, 15 hours. I have to compile it, because there are no official binaries. I don’t complain, though, they don’t release new versions of OOo often and it’s nice to have some heating in this cold weather.
Yeah, I know the feeling. I have a machine akin to that (1.5 GHz 32-bit AMD (Sempron 1800+)). Takes between 10 and 14 hours to compile OpenOffice.org
I think they release too often, but then… once a year is too often for me with packages in that size :p
Nice to see other gentoo users in here
They release OOo updates more often than I actually use it, so I decided to stick with the binary packages.
That, and the fact that I don’t even have those 3GB for the temp files :/
Is it only 3 GB? I thought it was 4 now. I remember when you could do it on 2 GB. Those were the days :p
3 or 4GB, doesn’t matter… I have 2,5 at most
(distfiles removed and portage tmp files cleaned).
That’s like, well.. no space at all
I have 240 GB and I’m watching my usage in order to preserve space
– however, a simplified partition strategy has given me 20 GB extra… that ought to last a couple of weeks :p
As a Gentoo user, I did compile OpenOffice 2.3.1 a few days ago. It took 3 hours, 42 minutes on a Core 2 Duo, consumed about 3.5gb of disk space, and failed due to some archaic USE flag set on some obscure depedency.
After consulting the forums, adjusting my make file, and running “emerge -e openoffice”, my computer is through 562/824 packages and chugging along nicely.
Mockery aside, I did switch to the binary install of Open Office and firefox about a year ago, as neither would compile without “parential guidance” on x86_64. Atleast not back then.
Oh, I’ve just noticed OOo is 2.3.1 now. It must came with regular updates for Debian some day… No extra downloading, just a routine.
There is something wrong with it. I installed the upgrade on my work computer, and as soon as I logged off and logged back on, it refused to open any of my spreadsheets, documents or power points. I spent the better part of a day trying with no luck to open any MS Office documents. I finally uninstalled OO 2.3.1 and reinstalled 2.3, and everything is fine again.
NeoOffice works fine for me. No need to compile, integrates well with osx. Incremental patch updates.
brilliant
A little bit off-topic, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how well-featured IBM’s Lotus Symphony beta suite is. I run Windows XP (gasp! shock! horror!) and while I love that OO.o offers a full, free, office suite — I mostly just use the word processor. And downloading a full OpenOffice package every time they released an update was a bit of a pain.
Not to mention it ran somewhat slowly, due to needing Java installed for certain features. I tried AbiWord, but it just didn’t ‘feel’ all that complete, despite being a nice package in and of itself.
And hey – Lotus is actually OO.o compatible!
And hey – Lotus is actually OO.o compatible!
One would hope so considering Lotus is OO. It just has a different skin.
I use OpenOffice and I have never had any complaints, I am glad they due updates and every time the software gets better and better.
Maybe it’s something wrong in my installation (CentOS 5, x64, OO installed from the http://www.openoffice.org‘s RPMs) but Impress is a full disaster.
I’m not talking about MS Office compatibility, I’m talking about a plain new presentation. During the slide show, the effects on the slide transition or in the slide sometimes appears sometimes not. Some elements that you added (by example a colored rectangle) are not shown during the slideshow, same situation with elements with transparency.
As much as Writer and Calc do the work correctly, Impress is suffering from problems that should not be still present in a 2.3.X version.
I’d like to know if someone else is experiencing the same behavior with Impress.
PS: The only, but seriously, the only reason for I have a VMPlayer image of Windows is to run MS Office, and particularly to prepare my presentations in Powerpoint.
“Maybe it’s something wrong in my installation (CentOS 5, x64, OO installed from the http://www.openoffice.org‘s RPMs) but Impress is a full disaster.”
No offense, but CentOS is not a modern “desktop” OS. It is great for the server, and actually awesome (is what I use) for the server. It uses an old kernel and old packages. It is designed for server use, not really desktop use. I have not seen the problems on a distro using a current kernel that is designed for desktop use.
shh, don’t say to all users of RHEL 5/CentOS,
http://devresources.linux-foundation.org/dev/dtl/survey2007/SurveyS…
they are going to discover that they have a distribution not suited for the desktop. And don’t say that also for all those users that decided to stay with Win XP because the same reasons of stability. Someone forgot that CentOS is mainly the recompiled version of the RHEL, and the last time I checked RHEL 5 has been designed also for the desktop.
Sorry for the sarcasm and I don’t take offense, it’s just a matter of what do you think should be the main characteristics of your every-day tools. If your definition of modern is edgy, then it’s true, CentOS and RHEL will never be a “modern” OS, just the most stable distribution out there, but who wants a rock solid desktop? because the trend imposed by MS/Apple, nobody wants that anymore for their OS.
If this trend would jump to other niches, people would have die longtime ago. Just imagine an very fancy acquisition card that for being “edgy” the guys skipped all the required testing and that card is being used in a CT scanner. Since the guys of CT scanner also want a “edgy” scanner, then again not enough testing and people would have lethal radiation doses because the card have an error of precision.
For me a desktop OS (and not only the server OS) starts with stable environment, it’s not because I’m not running critical servers apps that I don’t want a stable environment also for my desktop.
Anyways, CentOS 5 is not that old (kernel 2.6.18-53.1.4), and there is no a single statement from OpenOffice.org that indicates that you need the most edgy installation. It’s not like the latest version of Gimp that clearly states that it requires an updated version of Gnome.
The problem with OO Impress is that an application having such different behavior in function of the version of kernel/XOrg/whatever is more difficult to be deployed in a heterogeneous environment. This means that my presentation prepared under Ubuntu 7.10 have some chances of not being properly presented under SuSE , RHEL, or whatever.
And for being honest, I have Ubuntu 7.10 on my laptop (being an Linux user from many years now), and besides the eye-candy effects, the big difference between my CentOS desktop and Ubuntu is that the former has been rebooted only when a new version of kernel appears. with Ubuntu, specially when installing new software, there is the occasional freezing or bad behavior of some apps (The ubuntu forums is full of histories like this). The main reason of having Ubuntu in my laptop is that precisely Ubuntu is my experimental territory for the latest apps, but I would never recommend it (yet) for an enterprise installation.
If you feel comfortable with the risks of the edgy installations, be my guest, just try to understand that the spectrum of the desktop users is by far much broader than users wanting the latest version of everything.
I absolutely agree with the majority of your reply. Some people do use CentOS as a desktop, and RHEL 5 as well. Like I said there was no offense meant, and I am glad none was taken. I don’t use Ubuntu for that reason you mentioned, as it does not seem as stable to me. I use openSUSE for standard desktop usage.
Stability is important for me as well, and I would not use an environment that is not stable, but then I find Windows to be quite stable as well.
As for the spectrum of desktop users, I also agree with that as well. I don’t necessarily care about an “edgy” installation, I do care that my hardware is going to work. I have some hardware that does not work with 2.6.18 kernels, only with the later kernels, so for me is not a matter of being edgy, but rather being able to use everything I have.
I too had some problems with transitions in Impress not working and then I realized I needed to turn Compiz off. Then my problems all went away.
OpenOffice.org looked promising with the early 2.x version but now it’s getting worse.
Fonts are all blurred because they screwed up with freetype.
And context sensitive toolbars are a disaster.
I can’t remember what software feature has ever made me more abset, to the point of near madness, than the toolbars that cause the whole page to jump when a toolbar hides or appears.
I have documents with tables and every time a poiter is in or out of a table the whole page jumps.
It’s crazy.
And they say it’s by design and will not fix.
And will not give users the option to turn the feature off.
I now call OpenOffice.org the jumping-jack office.
If they don’t fix it for next point release I’m going to make a video of it and post it on Youtube.
Edited 2007-12-19 14:49
I can’t remember what software feature has ever made me more abset, to the point of near madness, than the toolbars that cause the whole page to jump when a toolbar hides or appears.
I have documents with tables and every time a poiter is in or out of a table the whole page jumps.
It’s crazy.
And they say it’s by design and will not fix.
And will not give users the option to turn the feature off.
I now call OpenOffice.org the jumping-jack office.
I have absolutely no need for an office suite whatsoever so I haven’t tried OO.o either in like a year…but if there really is such a “feature” as you describe then I only have one word to say: OMG O_o Just imagine someone who just wants try alternatives to MS Office..and finds his documents jumping up and down..Will that person use OO.o for more than an hour before throwing it in trash? I hardly doubt that. But well, I’d like to see this with my own eyes to verify this cos this really does sound too strange to believe by hearsay only. Alas, I don’t have any office documents to try with..
He is right it because when you move the cursor from the table to normal text the “table toolbar” disappears. This makes OOo move the page up to fill the space. You are meant to be able to alter this using view->toolbars->table but this does not work in my OO 2.3
The only alternative I have is to move the toolbar to the bottom of the screen.
This default behavior is stupid. I have never seen another word processor do that. Actually I don’t remember older versions of OOo doing this. Kword doesn’t do this. It is not a productivity feature it should be removed.
Jumps?
When my cursor is in a table a new floating dock appears but I never noticed anything “jumping” about.