Submitted by OpenOffice.org 2.3 has been released. “Available for download now, OpenOffice.org 2.3 incorporates an extensive array of new features and enhancements to all its core components, and protects users from newly discovered security vulnerabilities. It is a major release and all users should download it.”
Let’s give OpenOffice the support it deserves! Yes, it may not be the prettiest app you used (but now it has a new tango-based icon set), and it may not be feature complete (although it’s getting better with every release), but it’s Open Source and it sure as hell beats anything that I have to pay $499 for… 😉
“not be the prettiest app you used (but now it has a new tango-based icon set), and it may not be feature complete”
I would happily have you justify that feature complete, because I suspect you can’t. If anything its the reverse.
It does many things better than Microsoft Office for example styles; built in pdf; good html formatting.
…and it is *very* pretty. The second I saw it on GNU I loved it. I love it on windows too. I love it when I see it bundled on machines.
I love an application that can be released early and with no fanfare, and continues to churn out new code.
Edited 2007-09-18 21:40
“I would happily have you justify that feature complete, because I suspect you can’t. If anything its the reverse. ”
My father has become a recent convert to OpenOffice, I don’t know if I would call him a power user (if for no other reason, I hate the phrase), however his tasks as a tutor would involve things along the lines of the following.
1) Producing reasonably complicated spreadsheets including both graphing and formulae.
2) Within the document writer, producing math formulae for exams and course work.
3) General DB work, forms, etc.
The only two area’s that my father feels that OO falls behind MSOffice is
1) Within the spreadsheet, data representation in the form of graphing. He finds the UI within office FAR easier to work with. He knows features work as when he saves it in office open it in calc, and the info is represented, however he can do it within office.
2) the equation editor in writer is not as user friendly as within office.
Other then that, he has no real qualms.
> He finds the UI within office FAR easier to work with.
MSOffice or OpenOffice? Stupid naming
> He finds the UI within office FAR easier to work with.
MSOffice or OpenOffice? Stupid naming
Darn it! one slipped through, I had to go back and reclarify my post a couple of times, grrr arg!
Last time I checked the Data Pilot thingy was entirely useless. And the formulas lacked some important functions.
But the thing that bugs me the most is the inability to select and drag a single cell around without selecting a range first.
The page that the link above points to is close to useless for most non-developers. Here’s a slightly better page (copied from FSDaily): http://vntutor.blogspot.com/2007/09/open-office-23-released-today.h…
I agree…it’s not perfect…but I have been using it exclusively since version 1.1 and it works fine for me…and they come out with improvements, bug fixes and maybe even a new “face” in the future…you can’t beat the price and it’s fun watching the development and working the development builds on my test machine in both Linux and Windows…previewing what’s to come.
And..it’s cross platform and uses a standard format…exports to pdf easily…does my spreadsheets just fine…seems to be getting marginally quicker with every release…it’s free…(did I mention that?)….my wife uses it exclusively now (Ph.D candidate) and is happy with it…my kids don’t know what MS office is (which is fine with me)….
Shall I go on? I know….”SHUT UP ALREADY!!”
OK
”Shall I go on? I know….”SHUT UP ALREADY!!” ”
I may continue. 🙂
We have used OpenOffice at work (version 1.4 and 1.5 due to hardware limits) in an interoperable way (needed because one of the computers was a “Windows” box). Worked very good. For the version 1 of OpenOffice, standard german orthography dictionary and hyphenation were still available, this was one of the reasons the documents produced were of high quality. Typesetting and font rendering were excellent. Integrated PDF export was the nonplusultra (initially needed for printing up to the point a postscript capable printer got installed).
Allthough I prefer LaTeX for everything written using the computer, OpenOffice is a joy to use. I started using its “older brother”, Star Office since version 4.0, and I am very happy with OpenOffice 2.x today. Hey, you can even read the content of an OpenOffice file without having OpenOffice installed! And the files keep staying small.
Furthermore, I can install it on customers’ computers without needing pirated copies of MICROS~1 products. This makes it easy to share documents because of a standardized and open file format.
OO.org font handling is far from perfect. OFT fonts are available for years now, in 2002 someone filled feature enhancement that would allow Openoffice to handle OTF, after 5 yrs this is still pending.
There are two types of Open Font format:
OTF (PS1) and OTT (TT). While linux system can cope with both (far from perfect though but still possible) Openoffice refuses to see/use OTF (PS1). For anyone using more than simple editing, this is a serious drawback.
Also font rendering is hit or miss. Most users does not have any problems because they use coreTTF (MS), Bitstream Vera or dejavu.
It is interesting that Kword, much simpler than Openoffice Writer handles fonts much better (but it is missing other formatting options available in OO.org)
It gets better on every new version.
A lot of thanks to Sun and all developers that work on it.
Hope the pace of improvements extent now that IBM is getting into the boat too.
Again, may thanks.
I had a look at the IBM article about a ‘free office suite’ and apparently they’re going to dedicate 50 full time programmers to OpenOffice.org as well. So we have Novell, Sun and IBM all contributing full time developers to creating an awesome office suite for the masses.
I’ve installed OpenOffice.org on Solaris x86 (Nevada B73), and it is lightening fast; loads in a couple of seconds, very snappy; very reliable, not a single crash yet. I love it, every release of OpenOffice.org I look forward to rather than regret as with the case of Microsoft Office.
I am looking forward to the native MacOS support. It will be interesting to see OOo when it starts following the OSX HIG.
And hopefully they will soon do something about the commenting system. I think this is one of the greatest weaknesses of OOo.
Edited 2007-09-18 22:18
Agreed, i know there is NeoOffice but i am waiting for a native Mac OSX OOo. Plus with Microsoft stalling with Office 2008 for the mac lets hope the native version arrives sooner rather than later.
What a great era to be living in, in regards to computers. We the users are really benefitting from all this competition, we seem to have gone full circle. When computers first hit the mainstream in the 80’s we had loads of different developers, the 90’s gave us only one choice and massive vendor lock in. The 00’s have brought back loads of developers and loads of applications.
OpenOffice.org 2.3 introduces many new and cool features. For example, the Chart module rewritten.
However, the OOo team could “market” their office suite better. Each time a new OpenOffice releases comes out, an announcement page should describe the new features to the users. This web page should be easily understandable and contain screenshots of the new features.
The current release page looks like that:
http://development.openoffice.org/releases/2.3.0.html
That’s sad, because this newly released version (2.3) is the most impressive release either. It fixes a great number of longstanding bugs and adds many features.
Finally! Life is now complete!
I’ll calm down now, really.
Anybody know what version of OpenOffice Suse 10.3 and Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon will ship with?
Gutsy alphas are currently shipping an rc of 2.3
that is a very good sign that 2.3 final will be in gutsy.
http://packages.ubuntu.com/cgi-bin/search_packages.pl?keywords=open…
I just installed it on ubuntu feisty from the .debs on the OO.org site, (remember to install the desktop integration .deb in the desktop integration folder of the unpacked OO.org tarball, or you’ll get no menu entries) and its noticeably snappier than the old version.
The speed was always what i hated most about OO.org, but it really seems to have improved massively with this release.
Nice work, OO.org team!
…but it gets even better with IBM committing 35 full time developers to the suite, and putting their corporate strength behind it (or their fork of it, but what the hell, it is still free
)
I’m really thankful for OOo, don’t get me wrong, however…
As a former Lotus WordPro user, there’s one thing annoying the hell out of me: user interaction isn’t live. You open a property dialogue and won’t see the effect of your settings until you press OK. Which closes the properties window and you have to navigate up and down to get back to the properties. Wash , rinse, repeat…
That’s one thing WordPro did right many years ago.
I haven’t found a hint of work in that direction, so I suppose I’ll have to live with that anachronism for some years to come…
[Ah… download finished, time to install 2.3]
There was a talk about new fetures here at OpenOffice.org conference in Barcelona. The video should be published soon on http://ooocon.kiberpipa.org/
A facelift is definately needed one of the feature I like about Lotus Symphony is the tabbed interface, I hope we see it in OpenOffice sooner than later.
I haven’t had the chance to try the new version yet, but I can’t help but notice that the download file size has increased by 25MB since 2.1. Are there really 25MB worth of new features, of has the program become even more bloated?
Bloated in comparison to what?
What, I wonder, is the download file size of MS Office 2007?
… oh, wait.
Bloated in comparison to what?
Well, bloated in comparison to older versions.
2.3 = 117 MB
2.1 = 94 MB
1.1.1 = 64 MB
1.0.2 = 50 MB
That’s not bloat. When I last used MS Office before I left windows 5 years ago, MSOffice was over 400MB.
Of course MS Office was on CD while OpenOffice.org is a download but they can’t keep adding features without increasing the size of the final package.
Also OpenOffice.org isn’t some small free program. It’s a big open source project that hopes to mature greatly with time. While it is still at version 2.3.0, there’s good plan for this promising project in the future.
Before any discussion rages about bloat, memory; feature; install size. esp in response to a comment of random data.
I’ve been thinking that if on todays modern hardware. and by modern I mean 5 years old like say mine. Although most have modest requirements, an application like an Office suite is bound to have consume memory. I think its unfortunate that even a application of really a quite modest size of 132Mb cannot fit on a system with an OS. I think the problem is with the OS.
Fortunately there are alternatives, to both Office and OS that allow for small memory footprint machines, and with open standards like ODF interoperability is trivial.