OpenOffice.org Team Releases Version 1.0

DenialS writes: "Congratulations to the OpenOffice.org team! Version 1.0 of the open office suite has been released. I'm downloading it now; I've had good luck with the previous stable builds. Release notes haven't been posted yet, so I can't say what the major differences are between 1.0 and the previous stable build, 641d, but I'm looking forware to finding out!"

I showed my windozw friends...

I showed my windozw friends open office (they all use MS office) and they where well impressed, so much so that one of them is using it on doze now. Congrats to the OpenOffice team!

Re:I showed my windozw friends...

Many of the hackers that developed this program were paid. First in its proprietary phase as StarOffice originally developed by Star AG. Sun Microsystems took over the company - they gave the office suite away free (as in beer not as in freedom) to bug M$ while still using only their paid programmers to develop it. Sun took the decision to release it as a free (free as in freedom) open source project a year or two ago.

There are I believe paid Sun hackers still working as the core team of the project and there are also Boeing (as in big things with wings) hackers whose programming time for the project has been donated by the company. There are I believe a large number of volunteer hackers working on the project but they are all gaining marketable skills, CV entries and maybe just having fun. Everyone gains (including Sun in its object of reducing M$ control on the desktop). As an oo user I would like to thank all who contributed to its development.

Re:Great news

I was just about to make fun of you for taking 18 months tweaking spreadsheets when there's a new Office around, when I read your [1]. *gulp* You use MS Office for "high-accuracy nuclear bomb simulations"? Take your time!

I hope you are careful

You are aware that Excel is notorious for innaccurate calculations right? Some of the functions using the built in math libraries return answers that are wrong. And if you use VB scripting, which uses different libraries, the problem gets compounded to answers that are really wrong. See bugnet [bugnet.com] for some examples. If you insist on using Excel, use a third party (and adequately tested) math library with it for serious precision math.

Re:Is there any way to access Old ms Office files

In what way does it not?

Note he said he "looked at" OO - that's exactly what he did, he looked at it, saw the price and thought, nah, that can't be good.

Good Stuff

I routinely use this. Often I will have someone ask me if I have a copy of Office I can load on their system. I'll give them this instead.

It avoids the piracy issue, promotes open source, and avoids another Microsoft Tax.

Winners all around

Just need to go through the application and set the defaults from Metric to English, changed the default fonts to arial and times roman instead of the default Thorndale, etc. just for document compatibility. Also set the document save default to MS , since most folks will get caught by surprise otherwise first time they try to share a doc.

Re:Good Stuff

Here is a good question:

Is there a converter/plugin for Word (latest versions also) that goes the other way?? ie, Save em in the nice xml star/openoffice format, and when folks say they can't open em, post em the filter.

Subvert the dominant paradigm and all that guff.

Re:Good Stuff

I'm sure if you ask Microsoft nicely, they'll include it in their next SP for Office.

Or...maybe not.

Re:Good Stuff

Is there a converter/plugin for Word (latest versions also) that goes the other way?? ie, Save em in the nice xml star/openoffice format, and when folks say they can't open em, post em the filter.

Too young to remember the word processor wars? When WordPerfect was king [1], WP had import routines that would read other word processors' formats exactly, but export routines that would only write to, say, MS-Word format with 90% accuracy. At that time MS-Word had export routines that would write to WP format exactly.

Fast forward 5 years. MS-Word has dethroned the King and reigns as Usurper. Now Word will only write to WP format with 90% accuracy, while suddenly WP can write to MS-Word format 100%.

And if you think about it, that is the only way it can work in a competitive environment, particularly with publicly-held companies. There is negative incentive for the leader to be able to write to the challengers' formats.

Now, we could talk about an entirely open standard for document formatting... Oops, we already have SGML and TeX. Oh well...

sPh

[1]This argument extends back to PFS:Write and Electric Pencil as well of course.

Bunch of links

download [openoffice.org]

Screen shots [openoffice.org]

List of changes [openoffice.org]

Marketing flyer [openoffice.org]

From Q&A section:
Q. Is OpenOffice.org 1.0 100% Microsoft Office file compatible?
A. As Microsoft rarely publish their file specifications, no-one can answer that question. However, there are plenty of users who regularly edit and exchange documents, spreadsheets, etc with Microsoft Office users without any problems. Indeed, some users claim they've seen bigger compatibility problems moving between versions of Microsoft's own products.

Q. I've just saved a file from Microsoft Office in OpenOffice.org format, and it's much smaller - yet it hasn't lost anything?
A. Good, isn't it?

Q. Has this suite got that annoying paperclip?
A. No. Never has, never will. No. No!


Testimonials [openoffice.org]

Timeline [openoffice.org]

Credits [openoffice.org]

Re:Bunch of links

Here is a question. What is the difference between the sover and the installer besides 50 meg?

As far as I can see as an OOo outsider, the solver is the object files (+ source?) so that if you're hacking on one specific part of OOo, you can compile, link and test without having to recompile the whole suite overnight.

If all you want to do is play with the "finished product", just grab the installer.

--

Mirrors

here [dmoz.org]

and

here [sunsite.dk]

Here's some characters to get past the filter. And some more. And some more.

Mac OS X

Now the only thing missing to the office suit domination is the Mac release.
I can't wait to see it.
I use Mac/Win/Linux machines and a real cross platform office suite would be a great improvement!

Re:Mac OS X

Since apparently the porting process was halted by a deficiency in the Apple version of gcc 2.95, this may take quite a while yet.

I tried compiling gcc 3.0.4 the other day, and it doesn't. All in all, a large amount of patience is appropriate for Mac platforms.

DAMN! Never submitted...

I never got around to submitting my Terminal Server bug...

Log in on Terminal Server, and let the 'quickstart' come up (the butterfly by the clock).
Log in ANOTHER Session (with the first one still up), and you will not be able to start OpenOffice in that session. Every OO componant you start will appear in the first session. Not being very useful if you left a session open at work, and are logging in at home.

But hey, it's free, and it works!! So I'll just kill the first session, because I'm administrator. :) (but that should be verified because end-users wouldn't be able to do anything about it.)

List of mirrors

See this list of mirrors. It's the google cache of the original list of mirrors. I'm downloading from the Dutch mirror at the moment.
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:VznF ah_clJsC: whiteboard.openoffice.org/mirrors/+&hl=en

OSX ????

I looked and connot find OSX support,

With all the new Apples shipping on OSX wouldnt this be a great product for them ?

Every person I know that is/has bougth a iMac G4 whatever has also purchased MSOffice X.

It cant be that hard to port, can it ???

It's good

This is my impressions of 1.0 so far:

It renders my old MS Word 2000 files correctly, even with some pretty advanced tables and stuff. I'd say the import filters are certainly good enough for 95% of all users out there.

Load time (measured with clock in hand): 5 seconds (without the program preload and that tray stuff), on my Thunderbird 800Mhz, 256MB machine. It still wants a lot of memory, but otherwise it's in a completely different class than the old Star Offices, performance wise.

It's free, it's good, it has a quality spell checker, what more could I possibly want? :) (Actually an Access replacement would be nice...)

GNOME 2.0, KDE 3.0, Mozilla 1.0, Open Office 1.0 (or SO 6.0), it's all coming together nicely IMO. And you can't beat the price.

Re:It's good

Check out mdb tools on sourceforge.

They are reading both access 97 and access 2000 mdb files successfully.

http://mdbtools.sourceforge.net/

Re:basic scripting

Yes, but does it fully support VBA Macro Viruses?

If not, it doesn't truly replicate the "Microsoft Experience."

(Note to moderators: Laugh, it's funny!)

Dude, OpenOffice Is Smooth (An Impress Review)

Please note, it is first thing here in the central part of the US and my brain doesn't normally work as well. So, read at your own risk...

Until recently, I had been running Win2k on my Toshiba laptop due to a need for good presentation software (heck, when you work for the US Air Force, it is either Powerpoint or you don't do your job...). Well, the need to do some web/sql development pushed me to put Source Mage Linux [sourcemage.org] on the ol' workhorse. Needless to say, I needed some presenation software.

Enter OpenOffice. I had looked at Koffice, but I didn't want to run a full blown desktop environment (currently, I am running X 4.2 with E) and the dependencies to get Koffice up were huge. I had read about OpenOffice and was pretty pumped that would be the solution. I had no idea.

As I said above, Powerpoint was my main concern, but to a lesser extent, Excel since I import a lot of spreadsheet activity into my presentation. So, I get OpenOffice installed and I pull out my last ppt file from a recent meeting and go to work. First thing I noticed is that it takes OpenOffice a while to start. I am not quite sure what to contribute this to, as my system is a Celery 650 with 192 meg of ram. Once it has been loaded, though, it appears to be cached since it starts very fast there after. Next, it loaded my Powerpoint file, something from Powerpoint 2000. It takes a little while, something that doesn't really surprise me since I have quite a few Excel tables imbedded in the show. After about 25 seconds, it is up.

The first thing I notice about the presentation is that it looks great! In presentation mode, the slides are clear and the text is even anti-aliased. Doing a side by side comparison with my XP machine, I was actually more impressed by the Impress display. Great job there. Next, I went to one of the many Excel objects and double clicked it. Boom, it loaded the Calc object in the presentation and I was able to edit the spreadsheet like Powerpoint/Excel. Too damn impressive.

What else do I like.... hmmmmm:

• I like the fact that what ever OpenOffice app you are in, you can open up any document. Very cool
• My Word documents look as good in OpenOffice. Very nice.
• The desktop thing is gone. Thank God...
• I am sure there is more, but I have just started playing...

If you can, go and help out these people. It is good stuff...

Get yer mirrors right here

Courtesy of good ol' Google [google.com]:

Sunsite.dk HTTP, Denmark [sunsite.dk] -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
Qkaka HTTP, China P.R. [qkaka.com] -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
Utwente HTTP/FTP, Netherlands [utwente.nl] -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
Planet Mirror HTTP, Australia [planetmirror.com] -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
VLSM HTTP/FTP, Indonesia [vlsm.org] -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
E4A HTTP, Italy [e4a.it] -
English and italian binaries.
Edumail HTTP, Belgium [edumail.be] -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
Giganet HTTP, Hungary [giganet.hu] -
Mirror with sources, binaries.
GD TU Wien HTTP/FTP, Austria [tuwien.ac.at] -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
Stud FHT-Esslingen FTP, Germany [fht-esslingen.de] -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
3Way FTP, Hong Kong, China P.R. [3way.com.hk] -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
RWTH-Aachen FTP, Germany [rwth-aachen.de] -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files (german, french, english).
PWR Wroc FTP, Poland [pwr.wroc.pl] -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
Sunsite Cnlab-Switch FTP, Switzerland [cnlab-switch.ch] -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files (german, french, english).
CHG FTP, Russia [ftp.chg.ru] -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
Mirror AC HTTP, United Kingdom [mirror.ac.uk] -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
Unam FTP, Mexico [mirrors.unam.mx] -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files.
Stardiv FTP, Germany [stardiv.de] -
Complete mirror with sources, binaries and contrib files (german, french, english).

Thanks OpenOffice team!

Brainstorm for OpenOffice

I had a brainstorm this morning about OpenOffice. I'd be interested to hear what /.er's think.

The problem:: One of the big complaints about moving to OSS is that people insist that they need to be able to exchange MS Word documents with other people around the country. Now, I hate sending or receiving Word docs when typing the text in the email would work just as well, but some people seem to only communicate by sending Word docs as attachments. Of course, OpenOffice can read from and write to Word format, but natively it writes to its own open format, and its a hassle to constantly save-as just to send a document as an attachment.

Solution: develop a mail server module that uses OpenOffice. When a mail going out of the network has an OpenOffice word processing document attached, the module automatically creates a version of the document converted to MS Word and adds it as an attachment. Conversely, mail coming into the network automatically converts Word->OpenOffice adds the attachments. By default, documents sent internally in the network (for some flexible definition of "internally") are not converted. A nice added touch would be to allow users to have their own settings on when conversions should be done. They could set users or entire domains who don't get conversions, choose to have documents substituted instead of added, etc.

Thanks!

Along with all the talk of mirrors, performace, bugs, etc., we all need to make sure and thank the following people:

- StarDivision, for creating StarOffice in the first place.
- Sun Microsystems, for buying StarDivision and opening the StarOffice source code.
- Everyone who worked on the development of OpenOffice, coders, testers, web admins, and so on.
- All the government, business, and educational facilities out there who continue to mirror the files for us all to download!

These people have done a great job providing the open source community with one of the best apps out there. No matter how much we bitch, moan, and flame, remember that we only care because we love what you do so damned much!

Configuration tips: margins

For some odd reason, in earlier versions we never really had full control over our default margins. One thing that may help a bit is .../spadmin. This will allow you to change your default paper. For some reason it is set to A4 instead of US Letter. I don't live in the US, but still. In the previous stable version, you can now finally have equal margins all the way around.

I don't know what version 1.0 is like. I hope that what I said helps you guys.

How much contribution from outside?

In less than two years, the OpenOffice.org community has grown to more than 10,000 volunteers,

I would be really interested to know more about this. If anyone from OpenOffice can comment I'd love to hear you.

How many external contributors actually make significant contributions? How many people (that don't work for Sun) are paid by their employers to contribute to this project? What proportion of new code (or documentation or whatever) comes from non-Sun people?

I personally believe that Open Source represents a much superior development model to the way Microsoft uses, but I would like to hear how effective it is on this project.

Describing OpenOffice

The Open Source community needs to be more aware of the power of the subtle use of language. Simple words can be a very effictive tool in changing the mindsets of Joe Public. Marketeers do it all the time.

When talking about OpenOffice with Joe Public, be sure to use appropriate descriptive words.

"I see you're still using traditional software on your computer, Bob. Don't you know that stuff is susceptible to Microsoft Outlook viruses? Have you tried Openoffice? It's free! It's free because it is developed using a leading-edge development method that's superior to the old-fashioned way that Microsoft develops software. Microsoft software is expensive because the conventional methods they use to create it are inefficient. That's why there are so many Microsoft viruses around. There aren't any OpenOffice viruses. Why don't you give it a try?"

It's *still* missing two things

It's still missing an email-program and a calendar.

Granted, when compared to Outlook, it's only missing one thing, but still ...

Okay - so I don't need to have those two functions embedded into the office program, but I would rather not be without them, and I'm somewhat sure, that the rest of my office wouldn't either.

Here's what I need:
1) A calendar function comparable to Outlook, preferably one that isn't dependant on a specific platform (ie. Windows, Linux, Mac OS et al). This means the ability to include/invite other people in/to meetings and to view other peoples calendars.

2) An email function comparable to Outlook, again, preferably one that isn't dependant on a specific platform. Support for multiple accounts and Usenet would be a boon.

No, the programs don't have to be free, neither as in beer or speech, they just need to work, be cheaper than Office and safer with regards to vira etc.

Preferably the two/three mentioned programs/functions should be integrated into one program.

Suggestions are more than welcome :-)

Re:Slashdotted already. Mirrors anyone?

A working mirror - well, *still* working: planetmirror [planetmirror.com]

Re:Slashdotted already. Mirrors anyone?

google directory of mirrors [google.com]. theres defianatly some that work there.