After three years of development, OOo 3.0 is finally here with a bunch of new features and enhancements. Linux Format looks at the changes and rates the suite's overall performance, and you can try it yourself by downloading a copy from here.
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Member since:2006-09-27
I know exactly what you feel. In some situations, having 90% compatibility is almost just as bad as having 0% compatibility. IMHO, one has to live with the fact that sometimes you just can't use the tools you prefer. If you try to make do with bad compatibility you end up hating the not-quite-compatible FOSS application, when it may be a great tool on its own if you remove the strict format compatibility requirement. It's a good thing to raise awareness about alternatives, but you have to keep your marks and then your job.
I most appreciate OO's compatibility with MS Office when importing documents, but AFAIK, completely seamless interaction between the two office suites is just not possible at the moment.
Member since:2007-02-17
It would of course be possible if Microsoft would implement OpenDocument 1.2 correctly and fully, or if they would publish full and correct specifications of their trade secret legacy binary formats.
Since Microsoft do neither of those things, and since OpenOffice offers you far, far better compatibility than Office 2007 does, you are of course better off (from the compatibility viewpoint) using OpenOffice and not Microsoft Office.
Member since:2008-07-15
Yep I got bit by that one, funny thing is I was using Office 2003 at the time and they were using Office XP (no I didn't *want* to use 2003 but that was what they had on some of the systems at the time). Different versions of office don't always treat their own files the same, so that's an issue bigger than simply Openoffice's word compatibility. And don't even get me started on opening Office 2000-created files in 2007, that can be worse than OO in some cases, much worse. Same for office on the PC vs on the Mac, it can be a nightmare.
The thing is, even with a so-called standard document format, people have different ideas of what some of the features mean and how they behave. So I'm not sure we'll ever have 100% compatibility across office suites even with the same file formats. And then there's those that ignore the standard or deliberately use it differently to "add features."
Member since:2005-07-24
Member since:2005-12-02
"Perhaps things have changed. When I was in school we used a lot of dtf files and content was more important than file format."
Things have changed for school. Unfortunately they have also changed on the outside. When applying for a job, 95% of all companies/agencies want your resume emailed to them in MS Word Format. Sending them a PDF file is as good as never getting called for an interview. Ridiculous yes, however it is reality, at least here in the US. So in reality these day, sadly, format is more important than content to business.
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces."But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Member since:
2007-12-08
I think you might have forgotten what it's like to be in school. If the instructor wants a doc file, you do not send a pdf. If something like spacing, margins, or anything else is off they're probably not going to cut you slack for using openoffice or accept that different word processors are going to produce different results. Especially when you're the only one in class who seems to have trouble with it. Now, I 'was' able to do all my papers in openoffice. But I can see why someone might be nervous about it.