Office Archive

Massachusetts' plan to standardize desktop applications on OpenDocument, an open standard not supported by Microsoft Office, essentially comes down to a matter of control, according Stephen O'Grady. O'Grady has been following the story closely and explains that as a sovereign entity, Massachusetts feels the need to be in complete control of its desktop technology, rather than relying on a single company for its office productivity needs.

One of the features some users overlook in OpenOffice.org is its built-in programming language, OpenOffice.org Basic. Why would you want a programming language built into your word processor? It's there to help you to automate tasks. It won't make the tea for you, but it will help you to carry out many repetitive jobs with a minimum of effort.

"Today, I want to take you on a journey. A journey that starts back into the cold recesses of the mid-1980s, back into the days of EGA and serial port mice and the MS-DOS Executive. Microsoft Word 1.0 for Windows shipped in 1989 after a long development cycle and was designed to run on Windows 386. There's not much more to the program than what you see here, but it gives you an idea of how far Word's come."

Tim Bray, the director of Web technologies at Sun, said at the OpenOffice.org conference in Slovenia late last week that the file format developed by standards body OASIS has the potential to transform the world as much as the World Wide Web did.

"Today's another exciting day as we move closer to Beta 1. We are just wrapping up the MVP summit here in Redmond and we've finally announced another piece of functionality I've wanted to talk about for a long time now. This afternoon Steven Sinofsky announced to our MVPs that we will build in native support for the PDF format in Office 12."

OOoCon 2005 started today in Koper, Slovenia. Anyone interested to take a part in it are welcome to join us. Everyone else are invited to OpenPages live coverage with constantly updated gallery, video and audio archive and links to live video stream from the main hall (scheduled for tomorrow). In related news, it seems that that OOo 2.0.0rc1 is close to being released.

"Microsoft has tried to radically change the design philosophy behind its office suites from 2003 to office 12. The difference between the interface of Office 12 and Office 11 (2003) is nothing short of staggering. The attempt has been to enhance the user’s ability to actually get to the function he wants to use quickly and without getting lost in the labyrinth of toolbars and menus." You can find info on beta testing Office 12 here. In related news, the slides from the PDC presentations are now available for download.

"I would go so far as to say that a feature complete, high performing and integrated OpenOffice.org is key to the success of the Linux desktop. This importance is key, and I get concerned when I hear that there is a lack of hands. So, what can we all do? How can we help? How can we make OpenOffice.org into the office suite that is not only capable, but has a strong vitality?"

Screenshots of Office 12 have been published. You'll be amazed (for better or worse, your call). "As you can see, Microsoft is trying to do away with the 'legacy' menu bar. In newer Vista builds the menu bar is turned off by default (although it can be reactivated temporarily by pressing alt). In Office 12, the menus have been replaced with tab-like buttons. The only 'legacy' menu item that remains is the file menu, but it has completely been redesigned. The file menu now looks like the Windows XP start menu and can be customized as well." You can find more information and shots on Microsoft's website.

"It was the most radical computer dream of the hacker era. Ted Nelson's Xanadu project was supposed to be the universal, democratic hypertext library that would help human life evolve into an entirely new form. Instead, it sucked Nelson and his intrepid band of true believers into what became the longest-running vaporware project in the history of computing - a 30-year saga of rabid prototyping and heart-slashing despair. The amazing epic tragedy." Please note that this is an older article, from 1995, and that it is 27 pages long.

On 2nd September 2005 Sun announced the retirement of the Sun Industry Standard Source License. As a consequence, no future Sun open-source project will use the SISSL. Projects currently using the SISSL under a dual-license scheme, such as OpenOffice.org, are dropping the SISSL and thus simplifying their license scheme as soon as the development cycle allows. Effectie with the announcement that Sun is retiring the SISSL, OpenOffice.org will in the future only be licensed under the LGPL (.pdf). A FAQ is also available.

Vim, or vi improved, is an open source text editor for multiple platforms. This article gives an overview of vim's latest improvements over vi. New features include multiple windows, syntax highlighting, multiple levels of undo, and color themes. All of these improvements are made possible by the use of vim plugins.

OpenOffice.org receives most of the attention among FOSS office suites, but users shouldn't forget that free software includes at least two other word processors: AbiWord, and KWord, part of the KOffice suite. From their inception, both have been playing catch-up with OpenOffice.org's Writer. But now, after several years of development, AbiWord and KWord are both reaching early maturity. How do Writer, AbiWord, and KWord compare?

OpenOffice.org instructor Solveig Haugland explains why the upcoming OpenOffice 2.0 is set to make her job a whole lot easier. She says, "As an OpenOffice.org and StarOffice trainer, I teach a lot of one-day classes on the core software features. As I introduce the program and then word processor (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc) and presentation maker (Impress), I teach students how to deal with the oddities of each application before we get into the primary lessons. My first half hour of each section is gone."