An Early Look at OpenOffice.org 3.0 369
ahziem writes "With the final release 167 days away and an alpha version available, it's time to look at OpenOffice.org 3.0's new features: view multiple pages in Writer, notes in the margin, Microsoft Office 2007 file format support, Solver in Calc, new visual theme in Calc, native tables in Impress, more columns in Calc, error bars in charts, performance improvements, real native Aqua Mac support, and more."
Aqua? (Score:0, Insightful)
still need an outlook replacement (Score:4, Insightful)
Openoffice.org needs a more friendly website (Score:1, Insightful)
OO 3.0 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Crap, is documentation out of date? (Score:3, Insightful)
But seriously, it should be one of the goals of the project to ensure that such books are not really need. The GUI should be intuitive where possible and on-line help should be thorough where it is required.
Hopefully... (Score:4, Insightful)
It'd be nice if they'd copy MS Office 2004 [wikimedia.org] for OS X or Lotus Symphony [wikimedia.org] rather than continue on with a bad copy of MS Office 2003. Notice the side bar? Floating on OS X (I prefer floating, btw), part of the window in Lotus Symphony. For me, at least, that is significantly more helpful than toolbars/menus or that irritating "ribbon".
It's also be awesome if Writer supported tabs and split editor [coconut-pa...ftware.com] like Eclipse. Those two features are one of the main reason I do everything I possibly can in Eclipse.
For the scientists: ERROR BARS (Score:5, Insightful)
Kudos to the development team for implementing these changes, and allowing me to further propagate open source software within the academic community.
Re:Crap, is documentation out of date? (Score:0, Insightful)
Any statements in the documentation that start out "Don't" or marked "Warning" or "Notice" are always present because of flaws -- the right approach is to fix the software (and remove the statement from the documentation).
Re:I'm sure it's just me (Score:2, Insightful)
X error bars (Score:2, Insightful)
Makes it less attractive in a scientific environment (like undergraduate report writing).
Still no mention of an outliner mode (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe I missed it - there was no mention in the articles listed.
Wait - the first article linked to this page:
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/buglist.cgi?Submit+query=Submit+query&issue_type=DEFECT&issue_type=ENHANCEMENT&issue_type=FEATURE&issue_type=PATCH&resolution=FIXED&target_milestone=OOo+3.0&email1=&emailtype1=exact&emailassigned_to1=1&email2=&emailtype2=exact&emailreporter2=1&issueidtype=include&issue_id=&changedin=&votes=0&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=&chfieldvalue=&short_desc=&short_desc_type=allwords&long_desc=&long_desc_type=allwords&issue_file_loc=&issue_file_loc_type=fulltext&status_whiteboard=&status_whiteboard_type=fulltext&keywords=&keywords_type=anytokens&field0-0-0=noop&type0-0-0=noop&value0-0-0=&cmdtype=doit&order=Reuse+same+sort+as+last+time [openoffice.org]
which mentioned an outline mode. Maybe it's coming after all?
Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough (Score:5, Insightful)
But some of us prefer Linux to Windows or MacOS, and many others have problems with Office 07. For us, this is big and exciting news.
I understand that as long as it works for you, you don't give a damn about anyone else, but if that's the case, please choose not to care a little further, and refrain from posting.
Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging (Score:3, Insightful)
Me, I'd much rather they put their heads to making OO run faster with less memory. It's truly pathetic that MS Office 2k3 runs faster under vmware+xp than OO does natively in linux.
Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging (Score:3, Insightful)
And by that, I assume you mean, at least MS is out there needlessly changing the interfaces for applications we've gotten used to over the past, oh, 20 years, such that they deviate from UI paradigms we've become intimately familiar with. Yes, thank goodness for that. God bless MS.
Re:Office 2007 ... still good enough (Score:3, Insightful)
So I'm not sure what you seem upset about. That you couldn't incite some kind of flameage over this?
Me I use OpenOffice.org on Windows and Linux because I have a lot more considerations that are important to me and I value freedom over immediate utility. Your post implies that this is not the case for you. And as I said, should that change - it will be there for you. With no cost to download and install beyond a bit of bandwidth and a very small amount of time, try it out if you are really curious.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
So it's not that I don't like iWork (I love it actually), it's that I want my data in open format and it looks like odf is a good choice(?).
Re:Hopefully... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging (Score:1, Insightful)
Hybrid PDFs: fully editable PDFs with embedded OO (Score:4, Insightful)
This will be really useful in that you can avoid having to distribute some files in "exported
Re:Crap, is documentation out of date? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's apply that to other products in the real world. How about a table saw: that's covered with warning stickers and the instruction manual is full of safety notices. These are all flaws, and we'll change the saw's design to remove them one by one. At the end of the process, we'll have a flawless and user friendly cutting tool: a plastic butter knife.
No thanks, I'll take my powerful but "dangerous" software over dumbed down pablum.
Re:Major flaw in the build-process (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Still, no re-write of the crappy calc charts (Score:3, Insightful)
My short wishlist for Calc:
As you say, better charts. Make the damn things editable!
A better solver. One that doesn't wander off and get stuck in places that aren't even locally optimal on smooth 3-input optimization problems.
Fourier transforms. Excel has it, and they're not that hard to code up, and if you need them there's really no substitute. I need them.
There are others, mostly interface and performance related, but really if you give me those I'll be happy...
Re:Major flaw in the build-process (Score:1, Insightful)
Bundled libraries are just wrong, period. Get over it.
Re:New Feature (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great news but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good, but the interface is still lagging (Score:3, Insightful)
If you stop hating Vista and the management, you realize that Microsoft Office is the flagship MS product, and is the reason they exist as a software company.
(All my comments come from experience of migrating a college faculty with ~200 users to Office 2007/Vista over the past year. The 2007 migration is going much better than the Vista migration, btw...)
Re:Stability (Score:3, Insightful)
While my Wife and I have no issues with tables, maybe it's just not intuitive for you. It happens all the time. Maybe shelling out the dough for an MSOffice license is what you should do rather than complain about something you got for free?
Writers need AUTOSAVE (Score:4, Insightful)
Writers want this. Computers can't be trusted. There are a few times when power supplies fail or computers crash. You don't want to rewrite an important few paragraphs.
This is great feature which writers would warm to and the word would spread. Microsoft doesn't have it.
I don't know who to ask at the OO website.
Re:I'm sure it's just me (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure. Tons of people do. XCode, Visual Studio, and Eclipse all support it.
Version control, as is done with code, should be done on a content management server in an office environment.
That's a huge pain in the ass. To view edits with comments, you'd need to download both Word files, open them both up while also keeping the CMS open, and flip back and forth between each window. Using Word's built-in functionality, it's all in one single document on one screen. (And yes, you can view revisions side-by-side if you want.)
Doing it in the doc itself leads to a mess,
It does the way OpenOffice does it, it screws up pagination. Word does it just fine.
and if you need to share with 3rd parties, disclosure of things you likely didn't want to disclose.
That's a valid point, but you just have to be careful when you save it.