Novell hacker Jan Holesovsky has announced a build of OpenOffice.org that has both KDE and GNOME support. When launched within KDE, KDE support is activated, similarly when launched within GNOME, GNOME support is activated. Jan’s next project will be to plan for OOo 2.0.
OpenOffice.org 1.1.3 Released with KDE/GNOME Support
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This is great news! Awesome work, just what a lot of people were waiting for
.
This version has only limited GNOME support, eg it will always show KDE crystal icons according to dot.kde.org comments.
Yeah, that kinda sucks… but full gnome support will be along very shortly.
In the mean time, I’m using GNOME Crystal icons… and the crystal-blucurve control theme….glider window dec.
This build of OOorg should fit nicely w/ that…
> but full gnome support will be along very shortly.
From my understanding you can get it today with an own ooo-build.
Fedora as a lot of patch to OOo to add full Gnome support (and even the new gtk file-selector).
The build is very nice and integrate well in the Gnome desktop.
But iirc Fedora is missing KDE integration (at least the file dialog) – in opposite to NLD 9 and SUSE 9.2 which have.
And when talking about the new gtk file-selector, GIMP 2.0 on SUSE 9.2 uses it. GIMP 2.0 on Fedora Core 3 is unpatched. So Fedora is really bad concerning integration.
“”GIMP 2.0 on Fedora Core 3 is unpatched. So Fedora is really bad concerning integration”
dude. thats not true.
I don’t know if this public release has it, but the OOO that comes with NLD 9.0 and SLP 9.2 is version 1.1.3, and it can open word perfect documents too, thanks to (I think) Novell. For me, working in an operation that recently gave up Word Perfect for Word, this is very useful, as we have a schwack of legacy WPD files lying around. OOO 1.1.3 can’t save in WPD format, but that’s no big deal because we’ve standardized on DOC for future work.
Novell’s the best.
Actually, Fedora Core 3 has a package called openoffice.org-kde that adds kde integration to their openoffice. And I’m not talking about a third-party package (that has been available since Fedora Core 2).
I don’t know if this public release has it, but the OOO that comes with NLD 9.0 and SLP 9.2 is version 1.1.3, and it can open word perfect documents too, thanks to (I think) Novell.
Yes. Novell as a company had a lot of Wordperfect and Lotus files lying around that they needed to be able to work with. They’ve done quite a good job with it.
I’m really impressed with Open Office – not just on Linux now, but on Windows as well. You look at the word processor and spreadsheet applications now in particular and use them, and you realise that you simply don’t need Office, Word and Excel anymore. It’s reached a critical mass in terms of features and the reliability of those features, and it starts a bit faster than it used to as well
. Version 2 and onwards is going to be very interesting.
Jan’s done a great job with the KDE integration of Open Office, and the version of 1.1.2 I was using when I last tried was very usable without any problems.
I agree OOo is coming along nicely, but when in comes to business use, there is one important feature where it lags behind MS Office: Handling of revisions (changes) and annotations (comments or notes). These are used extensively by many businesses where documents have to be reviewed by multiple people or departments. OOo does have both revisions and notes, but the implementation of them, especially notes, is very poor, making it necessary to continue to use MS Office. I’m hoping for much better support soon as I believe it’s one of the last remaining obstacles to OOo Writer becoming on par with MS Word.
OpenOffice.org, like most other GUI wordprocessors has followed the inefficient system
that was made popular by Apple/Microsoft. To edit a document, one must select
the text, move to a menu, serach the menu for the corect item, open the dialogue
box, complete the form in the dialogue box and click “okay” before the change is
applied. Each different aspect to be edited requries a different menu item in a
different dialogue box. This is extremely inefficient. Icons and keyboard
shortcuts have sped up this process somewhat, but the effectiveness of these is
limited.
Lotus Wordpro had a far superior alternative. All of the editing options were
contained in a single, floating palette dialogue box which could be always
present, even when the user was inputting text. All changes occurred to teh
selected text in real time, so there was no need to click “okay” an d close
dialogue boxes before changes occurred. It was far easier to experiment with
the layout.
Each set of items to be edited was grouped in a logical set under a tab. A user
simply had to click between the four or five tabs to choose font and paragraph
editing, margins and borders, tabs and bullets, miscellaneous and tags.
At the top of the dialogue box was a drop down that could be used to sleect
different sets of tabbed pages. As well as text, these were page properties,
graphic properties and headers and footers. As well as selecting them from this
dropdown list, clicking on a graphic or the header area of the page meant that
the floating palette dialogue box would change to default to these options.
This method of editing text eliminated the need for users to hunt through
menues, deal with multiple dialogue boxes and click “okay” before seeing live
updates.
Yeah, Word Pro was really revolucionary in that area.
does this mean OO.org will respect the menu bar on top KDE setting
OpenOffice Ximian (full gnome integration and kde integration since august) has been available for years: http://ooo.ximian.com/
Hi,
Anyone knows if localization is provided with this version?. I have installed just today and I can not figure out how to set gui language into spanish.
Thanks in advance
Pablo
until I started trying to use it. I’m using VectorLinux, a slackware based system, and running KDE3.3.0.
The two problems were:
1) As with Fedora systems, the File Open dialog doesn’t work. What’s more, this version doesn’t open files from Konqueror either. So basically, this version lets you save your work, but not ever edit it again.
2) The second issue was that after it started once and was closed, it wouldn’t start again.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m very excited about the potential. The crystal icons make the UI much more clear and with the QT widget set it also starts more quickly (less than 10 sec on a 1.8 GHz system compared to nearly 20 sec for OOo1.1.2). Also, this version is nearly 15 MB smaller than the latest preview release of OOo2.0 – AND it starts (well, once at least). I have been unable to even get any of the newly packaged OOo m680 versions to actually run since they moved to the RPM packaging scheme.
If these folks can get the file chooser to work and apply this installation to OOo2.0, I’ll be quite happy.
It’s (for the GNOME part) the same. The difference is source<->binary build.
No. It only emulates and integrates KDE. It’s not a native KDE application.
“Anyone knows if localization is provided with this version?. ”
no not yet. it will surely follow in a short period
Are some of you saying that there are RPMs of this release available for Fedora Core 3? According to Up2Date it’s not. If I’m not mistaken, you are referring to an entirely different thing: a hacked together patch that’s been available for a long time, but has nothing to do with this new OO release.
Does anyone know of a link to a packaged RPM for SuSE Linux Professional 9.1 and 9.2 users?
Correction: Meant packaged RPM for all SuSE Linux users. SLP 9.2 already comes with OpenOffice 1.1.3.
There have been debian packages for this for a while in the Experimental repository.
“I agree OOo is coming along nicely, but when in comes to business use, there is one important feature where it lags behind MS Office: Handling of revisions (changes) and annotations (comments or notes).”
This is so true!!! And the saddest part is, there is no substantial changes in that respect planned for 2.0.
So no, V2.0 won’t be a break-through…
Will there be any speed improvments after KDE support?
performance are not so bad with Ximian OpenOffice. Currently I’m using release 1.3.6 (patches for vanilla OO 1.1.3) and first startup time is ~13s, then ~5s. With OO 1.1.0 this times were just a dream.
and my system is 3 years old: athlon xp 1800+, 512mb ram, via kt266a motherboard, hd maxtor d740x, xfce4.2rc1/gnome2.8
On a fresh reboot OOo takes 8 seconds to open, I find that easily bearable.
I hope that the Gnome support means that OpenOffice gets Gnome style printing dialogues. Insufficient printing options (I often want two pages printed on one sheet of paper) are the only annoyance for me in the Linux version of OpenOffice. The Windows version is well integrated and it uses Windows printing dialogues.
Check the link. It’s provided by redhat.
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/3/i…
I stand corrected concerning KDE integration (btw the same error happens with the FC3 OOo-kde package which the dot story mentions). But you can’t prove me wrong with me Gimp 2.0 example.
These are used extensively by many businesses where documents have to be reviewed by multiple people or departments.
No, they’re not used by many businesses at all and I find it amusing that people rummage around for reasons as to why not to use OO. Many simply just shove their documents into a revision control system if they’re thinking about it, and no one in any business thinks that this is a much needed feature. Get out and see how MS Office is actually used.
I’m hoping for much better support soon as I believe it’s one of the last remaining obstacles to OOo Writer becoming on par with MS Word.
Everything is a last remaining obstacle to some people. Revision control is not one them, even if OO’s is quite adequate.
The Mirrors seem a little busy with this new update. I’ve posted it on my site as well, I’ll leave it there for a few days till the mirrors return to normal.
http://thelinuxbox.org/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1101560332&a…
> The Mirrors seem a little busy with this new update
Rubbish. The mirrors (of KDE, not OOo) can handle much bigger KDE releases fine.
Seriously, I’ve followed Open Office for a Looong time and I’d love to use it full time but I’m also realistic, OOo offers not even half of what MSOffice is delivering right now. I’ve also checked a bunch of other office suites to see what might be comptetitive, like 602 Software, GoBe Productive etc etc etc
One thing where OOo is not just awful, it’s pathetic is the Presentation software (impress). It’s chart support stinks (at best) and same here, Roadmap is clueless of what features should be put in there… STuff like using double Y-axis on Barcharts, or just compare Options on MSO and OOo and you’ll be astonished at how many features Ooo Lacks.
KOffice is equally bad on this point.
I don’t see any big future for OOo unless some critical features are added..
“I don’t see any big future for OOo unless some critical features are added..”
what ranting you have done is pretty vague. if you want improvements suggest them specifically. if you have bugs report them specifically. otherwise it is useless.
if you want something done report it to openoffice bugs database. what you are doing here is waste of time and pointless
>Rubbish. The mirrors (of KDE, not OOo) can handle much bigger KDE releases fine.
The locoal mirrors for me range from as little as 3 hours, all the way up to 79 hours. Since my site isn’t as busy, it only takes about 30 minutes. I was simply trying to be helpful, and did not want to upset anyone.
The common ignorant Open Source answer… “Go report it in where it matters” yadi yadi yadi….
There website doesn’t make sense to me, I even tried to find a reasonable place to push in features that would be good to see, but I haven’t seen it anywhere… Besides, if that would take me 4 hours today and reasonably more than 4 hours later on, the price of buying MSOffice would be paid already due to using my expensive hours better.
If OOo wanna make it, don’t ask me for help, start delivering intelligent stuff instead.
It seems to me that you’ve got enough time to whine here…
Totally agree! Hope Novell invest some money in the project and make it better. The current OOo stink!
No, they’re not used by many businesses at all and I find it amusing that people rummage around for reasons as to why not to use OO. Many simply just shove their documents into a revision control system if they’re thinking about it, and no one in any business thinks that this is a much needed feature. Get out and see how MS Office is actually used.
I think you misunderstood the feature being described. It is not version control like CVS. The feature being referred to is the ability for multiple people to make changes to a document, each in a different color and attach notes too. That way everyone involved can see in one single document, the proposed changes made by each person.
Personally, I have never worked anywhere that this was NOT used.