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OpenOffice.org 2.2 releasedOpenOffice.org 2.2 releasedPosted Mar 29, 2007 14:59 UTC (Thu) by tomsi (subscriber, #2306)In reply to: OpenOffice.org 2.2 released by mbottrell Parent article: OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
Because you have more money than brains ? ;)
Personally I have replaced OpenOffice with the MS alternative, but are forced to use it at work. I find that every time there is a new version of MS office, it gets more annoying, trying to guess what I want to do next - and always fails...
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OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 29, 2007 17:14 UTC (Thu) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link] Here is an OpenOffice failure story for you :-(
At my recommendation we tried transitioning to OO.o at work. My colleagues and management were moderately enthusiastic about it initially. Our products are mainly Linux based, so it is only logical. Plus, we are a small company, so everybody is still open to this kind of experimentation.
(The main sw development is under Linux, so developers were already using OO.o, but the rest of the company wasn't)
However things did not go perfectly - unfortunately OO.o is still not 100% compatible with MSOffice, so for practical purposes we needed to doublecheck documents with MFOffice before sending them out of the company. Which can quickly get extremely annoying.
Plus, people had questions about how to do this and that under OO.o, and I couldn't help them, because even though I use the office tools casually, I am by no means expert in MSOffice or OO.o :-( Finally, OO.o does look somewhat uglier and less polished than MSOffice.
Gradually, since everybody already had a licensed copy of MSOffice, they stopped using OpenOffice altogether ... What is worse, now they view an attempt to force using Open Office as some form of unjust punishment. Purchasing CrossOver office for the developers is being discussed. I hate to admit it - but if CrossOver office works well, it will be more convenient than forcing the whole company to use OpenOffice :-(
A typical comment I hear these days is "if you like OpenOffice so much, you can use it - I will continue using MSOffice for now".
The truth is, there is no compelling reason - except cost (which in this case didn't matter since MSOffice had already been purchased for everybody) - to switch to OpenOffice.
I have been trying to push the PDF export as a key feature, but it isn't enough. Most people don't need to generate PDFs.
So, frankly I don't expect us to attempt another switch any time soon.
At least personally I don't have MSOffice on any of my machines - at work or at home. My wife is also happily using OpenOffice ...
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 29, 2007 17:49 UTC (Thu) by jjamieson (guest, #44383) [Link] Just wait until you sit them in front of Office 2007..
If they think OO is difficult to use, they'll never like Office 2007 - and if they do, then they could have easily used OO without problems and were too lazy to learn something new.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 29, 2007 17:57 UTC (Thu) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link] AFAIK, there is no reason to upgrade to Office 2007 and there are no plans to. (Or Vista :-)
The fundamental problem was not that OpenOffice is that hard to use. It was that it wasn't 100% compatible - you must keep a copy of MSOffice anyway.
Lets face it - MSOffice is not _that_ bad. Refusing to use it on ideological grounds is not everybody's cup of tea.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 30, 2007 14:16 UTC (Fri) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] Let's rephrase what you wrote:
AFAIK, there is no reason to upgrade to OO.o 2.2 and there are no plans to. (Or Linux :-)
The fundamental problem was not that MS-Office 2007 is that hard to use. It was that it wasn't 100% compatible - you must keep a copy of the original MSOffice anyway.
Lets face it - MSOffice is not _that_ bad. Refusing to use it on ideological grounds is not everybody's cup of tea.
the microsoft upgrade treadmill Posted Mar 30, 2007 21:21 UTC (Fri) by undefined (guest, #40876) [Link] don't ever plan to upgrade? that's what i thought.
i have a laptop that runs windows 2000. (every other computer in the house runs linux, even with open source video drivers, and when i personally used the laptop it ran debian, but since giving it to the wife she doesn't have time to wrestle with linux's laptop hardware support. she needs windows anyways for a financial application.)
windows 2000 will be functionally adequate for that laptop until the hardware dies. it allows her to use firefox, thunderbird, openoffice, and psi (see, i have a migration plan in place ;-). it perfectly supports the laptop's hardware and i haven't met a hardware vendor yet that doesn't support windows 2000 (as everybody supports xp and the driver models are very similar).
but i'm about to begrudgingly convert the laptop to xp (or retire it from active service as its underwhelming performance is starting to become very noticable). why? end-of-life software support. regular updates have already ended (and i didn't appreciate the time it took recently to understand and manually update the timezone database for DST) and security updates are going to stop shortly.
the story for applications isn't much different. no need for hardware support, but you instead have interoperability concerns (plug-ins, data exchange formats, etc). and security updates are still, unfortunately, needed at the application level.
so, you'll eventually have to migrate away from office 2007, it's just a matter of when and to what.
rant: if you are going to choose proprietary software, choose a proprietary operating system, but not applications. people don't use a desktop computer because of the os, but because of the applications. actually, i don't even use my computer because of the specific applications, but because of their functionality. i can email with sylpheed, thunderbird, evolution, or squirrelmail. i can browse with iceweasel, iceape, firefox, seamonkey, or ie. i can write and run python, c++, or java on multiple platforms. my wife has even said she could go back to using pen & paper for the budget if necessary, and it would probably be less frustrating (all budget software sucks). nearly all of those applications are cross-platform (linux, windows, solaris, freebsd), so my options for an os are nearly limitless. but when somebody tells me they are tied to a proprietary application on a proprietary os, they might as well tell me all their money is in the stock market and they hope it defies history and never crashes again (see "diversification").
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 31, 2007 2:22 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link] you will upgrade to office 2007 shortly after some company that you MUST do business with upgrades to it and starts sending you documents in a format that you can't read
or when one of the businesses you work with upgrades and then complains becouse the document that you sent them in the old format doesn't look right when they read or print it with the new version
Office 2007 requirement Posted Apr 6, 2007 8:00 UTC (Fri) by ldo (subscriber, #40946) [Link] Seems unlikely. Anybody upgrading to Office 2007 would be in the minority, and they would bear the brunt of complaints about interoperability with everybody else. The only reason people would put up with this is because of compelling new features in the upgrade, but it doesn't seem like such features are there. Therefore I think that the idea that Office 2007 is an inevitable part of the future, is overblown.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 29, 2007 18:01 UTC (Thu) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link] No compelling reason to switch to Open Office? I gotta disagree. Open Office runs natively on Linux, Microsoft Office does not.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 29, 2007 18:09 UTC (Thu) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link] Sigh. Yeah, perhaps in dream land everybody in the company uses Linux on their desktops. As I explained, in the real world they couldn't even switch to using OpenOffice under Windows. Forcing them to use Linux would be an immediate win for sure...
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 29, 2007 18:33 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Yeah, perhaps in dream land everybody in the company uses Linux on their desktops.I must work in dream land then, because everybody here uses Linux on their desktops.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 29, 2007 19:08 UTC (Thu) by chaneau (guest, #6674) [Link] Ditto, we use it here since what was I think the build 638 i.e. well before the 1.0 release and frankly we never looked back.
Besides yesterday I got one of those calls from a friend who's MSOffice document was corrupted (67 pages with photos) and what saves it's day, you guess it OpenOffice.org so let them talk of compatibility, I think i know better ;-)
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 29, 2007 19:39 UTC (Thu) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link] Since you didn't actually explain why your company - especially administration, marketing and sales - is using Linux, I find your comment not terribly informative or helpful.
Is it for cost reasons ? Support ? Which Linux distribution ? What hardware ? How do you deal with peripherals like printers and scanners ? Do you use CrossOver office ? Has anybody estimated the effect of lost productivity when non-engineers had to be re-trained to use Gnome/KDE and OpenOffice ? How did the company reach this decision ?
Unless you are really living in dreamland, I bet these questions have really interesting answers. I can use them in my further attempts to push free software in my company.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 29, 2007 22:06 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Since you didn't actually explain why your company - especially administration, marketing and sales - is using Linux, I find your comment not terribly informative or helpful. OK, let me explain. We are a very small company -- 10 people in all. We have 5 techical people, 4 sales people and one administrator. Our products are software applications that run on UNIX/Linux. For business purposes, the only applications we really need are: An office suite, a Web browser, an e-mail program, a customer-relationship-management tool and an accounting tool. These needs are admirably filled by OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird (or Evolution, according to taste), SugarCRM and Ledger-SMB. We even run our phone system on Linux using Asterisk, and have it integrated into our CRM app and our trouble-ticketing system (RT). Using OpenVPN, our road-warriors can have their extensions ring through anywhere in the world. Basically, we have built up a fantastic software stack that integrates our business processes, development processes and support processes seamlessly, and everything uses free software, so our annual software licensing budget is $0.00. I hope that explains why we use Linux everywhere.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 29, 2007 22:09 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Well if you want to get people to migrate you mentioned one of the big problems was that you couldn't answer people's questions about stuff.
Of course that means if you want to do the migration then just learn how to use the software first.
Then just make it aviable to everybody, and updated. It's getting better as time goes by.
The time will come when you'll have to do major upgrades and buy new machines and such and then people will have to find justifications for the cost of upgrading MS Office and hopefully at that point they just won't have any real justifications.
For other applications like Firefox and Thunderbird it's already pretty easy, they are both superior to IE and Outlook by a wide margin, provided your not stuck with a IE-only intranet or exchange server you have to deal with.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 29, 2007 23:14 UTC (Thu) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
I hope you are not serious :-) I have exactly zero, strike that, negative interest in learning in detail how to master OpenOffice, not to mentiion MSOffice. I already know how to use them enough for my casual needs, but development is what I do, not office work. I could never, for example, explain to people how to migrate their VisualBasic macros to OpenOffice. I hear it is a task that is far from trivial. I would gladly teach people how to use GCC, though. I mean, I love free software and all, but it is not my primary mission in life to help other people discover it with the expense of my job. Let's be realistic here. If moving to OO.o requires the sacrifice of a Linux engineer, who has to become an office application expert, so he can then help and constantly support the other users, it simply ain't gonna happen. And sadly, it didn't. OTOH, when OO.o gets close to 100% compatibility, I am sure we will be able to switch without much hassle. It is already pretty close.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 30, 2007 6:44 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] _Somebody_ has to know how it works. Be realistic about what your saying here.
It's just about the same thing as going (on a much reduced scale for MS Office to OO.org conversion) to some Windows-only programming shop, ripping out all their Windows servers and Visual basic and replacing it all with Eclipse or Vim or whatever you prefer and walking away.
That's absolutely batshit insane and it would never work.
Generally how this works is that if your going to introduce new applications or desktops into a workplace that you have at least one guy present that knows enough about it that they can perform what duties that application needs to be used for.
Then that one person sets up a training date, maybe a evening or two, were you take the more tech-savy people from a few different departments are trained in how to use it.
Then you send them back and put those people in charge of answering questions on how to deal with that. And if any more advanced questions pop up then you (or whoever) can figure out how to deal with them.
And, seriously, how many folks in your place need help with VB scripts in OO.org?
Also you buy documentation, books, whatever for the application and make sure that people know were to find them.
I've worked in a community college were I had to help out with tech support for a few months. I'd have to wander around and help students (and teachers) out. We'd had to deal with migrating from OS 9 to OS X for a lot of people. Had to deal with going from quark express to indesign. Going from Mac-based desktops for 2d design to show people some about Windows so they can use the 3d workstations. STuff like that.
The biggest problems we faced on a regular basis was that the Windows file servers performed so poorly that the IT people had to keep changing stuff around in a effort to improve performance. And that would cause changes in how the people using the Macs found their network shares and such.
It's quite a bit different in acorporate environment, but I expect the fundamentals are the same.
OO.org tries to keep very closely with MS Office so it's not _that_ different, but I know it's differnet enough to cause some little problems.
So in summary.
I figure that for a small and medium sized business that isn't terribly well integrated into Windows structure (as in they aren't depending on AD + Office + Exchange + etc etc for business workflow) to migrate successfully to OO.org.
It'd take somebody's weekend, and then a evening's worth of overtime for a half a dozen people for the training session.
Now I bet you can get buy with much less, but this approach I feel will provide a much higher likelihood of success.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 30, 2007 6:49 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Oh, and a lot of that is psychological. Its setting up a more formal proccess so people are more mentially prepared for chantges.
Also having paticular workmates 'put in charge', means they will make extra effort to make sure that they know what is going on. Ideally you pick people that take pride in having a slightly higher amount of authority. That sort of personality. It's a small thing, but it probably helps.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 30, 2007 16:32 UTC (Fri) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link] You are right, of course. I agree with everything you said.
The problem is that in our case there is nobody who knows OO.o really well. The people who are using it - developers like me - are not really experts.
For us there is no pressing business or usability need to switch to OO.o at this time, and nobody is really excited about investing time to learn in detail how to use an office product (be it free or not). I foolishly thought that we can just transition without any real effort. Of course it didn't work. Significant real effort will be needed. The trick is to find good justification for it, and so far I am unable to.
I am currently considering another experiment - using Ubuntu desktop with CrossOver office. Not company wide, of course. Hopefully the user can feel comfortable enough with his familiar apps, so that Linux itself will not be so scary. Then, in a while, it will be a small step to transition to OpenOffice.
The motivation for Linux is obvious - security. Plus, most Windows users I know are more or less annoyed with the Windows desktop - e.g. how you can't do anything for several minutes after the desktop has been displayed. I show them how KDE is fully usable once it finishes loading and see the envy in their eyes :-)
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 29, 2007 22:12 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Now some specific answers: Is it for cost reasons? You bet. Support? A non-issue. Our tech people are very competent. Which Linux distribution? Techies: Debian. Non-Techies: Ubuntu. One curmudgeonly holdout: Slackware. What hardware? White-box Intel PCs with one AMD-64 box and one SPARC box running Solaris (for our Solaris builds.) How do you deal with peripherals like printers and scanners? Umm... we plug them in. And then we use them. Do you use CrossOver office? Nope. Has anybody estimated the effect of lost productivity when non-engineers had to be re-trained to use Gnome/KDE and OpenOffice? Not formally. We sat our new hires down and said "press this button to start your e-mail program, press this one to start your Web browser, and this one to start your word-processor. Oh, and forget about drive letters; everything is under /home/foo". And that was the extent of the training. How did the company reach this decision? I'd always used Linux even as a one-person consulting shop. I never even considered the possibility of switching to Windows as our company grew.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 29, 2007 22:53 UTC (Thu) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link] Thanks for the detailed replies. I am very happy that it is working great for you - I am being completely honest here. I hope more and more businesses take this road. I hope our business does too, eventually :-)
I still have strong reservations, though. Perhaps if the company is running Linux from the get go, as apparently yours is, with a very high ratio of engineers to "regular" employees, and new people just merge in one by one, it is much easier. However switching from Windows to Linux is different, because the shortcomings of Linux on the desktop become immediately visible by comparison.
For example, I am a little surprised about just being able to plug printers and scanners in - this is simply not true for the devices and the OSes I am using - the latter being Sarge and Edgy Eft. I don't want to make generalizations about _all printers_. However the latest printer I had to get working under Linux doesn't quite have the same options and convenience in CUPS as in Windows, is a little slower under Linux (god knows why), etc.
Same with a scanner, which in Windows comes bundled with an OCR application, which works surprisingly well. Better than the apps in Debian and Ubuntu, anyway.
The list of devices and problems can go on. Flash programmers, tools that go with them, embedded compilers, CAD applications, etc.
Each of these problems individually can be solved with some creativity. Either by finding Linux-compatible replacement, or by using Wine, Qemu, etc. Often the solution is not perfect. However when you take all the problems combined, it becomes an unsurmountable task. It often doesn't make business sense to waste time and money on solving it, when
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 30, 2007 1:31 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Printers and scanners have never been a problem. We have three printers (an HP LaserJet, an HP all-in-one fax/scanner/printer and a Samsung printer) and they all just worked out of the box. Naturally, it's easier to start running Linux than to switch from Windows --- it's called Vendor Lock-In. We switched from a proprietary PBX to Asterisk only after our irritation with the proprietary PBX drove us to the breaking point. My guess is that Windows lock-in is far more powerful than PBX lock-in, so there's much more difficulty in changing. But that's OK. I see our use of Linux as a competitive advantage, and if our competitors are stuck running Windows... :-) I hear your complaints about the "little" problems that add up and are easier to solve. The best way around those is to avoid the problems in the first place -- make sure you buy Linux-compatible hardware and choose Linux-friendly vendors. And the "cheap" solution of switching to Windows will have many other costs in the long run.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 30, 2007 1:43 UTC (Fri) by beoba (guest, #16942) [Link] CUPS: http://localhost:631
I've found that, consider that I've never had to manually install drivers for my printer (just select it off a list), I'd argue that things are easier in Linux, I just click a couple relevant links and select my printer from a pulldown list and it works. However, I had to know the above address before I could do that..
There will always be specialized tools for which there is no Linux equivalent. Are those something that we should concentrate on, or should we instead aim for the common things that are useful to the non-specialists? If we get those mainstream areas down pat, I don't see why the specialized tools wouldn't end up migrating of their own accord.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 30, 2007 13:29 UTC (Fri) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link] Read ESR's article about CUPS, then read it again.Then try to set up a printer that is not in your CUPS lists. Like, old parallel-port printer that is not detectable by IEEE1284. Then run system-config-printer if you are using redhat-derived distro, and wonder why cups-web frontend on port 631 and system-config-printer both offer each own different list of manufacturers and models. Then change some checkboxes through cups-web and wonder how well it discards your manual changes you have made to cups.conf before. Then announce your printer to the network by IPP or Zeroconf. Then set up access control. Could you get accounts info somewhere from LDAP or so ?
Printing is still an abomination. Even under Windows not everything is smooth enough, not saying about Unix/Linux. GUI and Web frontends to Unix printer administration only make the problem worse.
Of course, for local/personal desktop case, all warts are more-less licked up and masked. But that's not enterprise scenario.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 30, 2007 15:23 UTC (Fri) by ajross (subscriber, #4563) [Link] That article was written several years ago, and things have improved rapidly since. Last month, I dropped a Xerox 6120 on my network (a printer not available in the configuration lists for my Ubuntu Breezy server) fired up the GUI and defined it using a custom PPD file with no trouble whatsoever.
Now, that's a "personal" printer with a network (er, "enterprise") interface, so I don't know how your hedging applies here. Is that proof that there are no remaining problems in CUPS? Of course not. But it is evidence that perhaps your argument isn't as absolute as you might have thought. Honestly, it sounds mostly like meaningless FUD to me. Do you have any specific bugs to report?
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 30, 2007 19:03 UTC (Fri) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link] Nice example. This printer might even dispense its PPD by http or IPP, or Windows drivers to Windows clients by SMB, as it is pretty much a server host by itself. Today it is not difficult to stuff an entire OS in it. And so, CUPS on your desktop is merely a client relaying jobs by IPP or JetDirect/9100 to the remote host. Not a hard task even for CUPS.
What I was trying to mean, is mostly related to locally-connected printers (LPT/COM/USB) which are then shared by CUPS itself. It is much, much more creative and enterprising area for poor self-admins trying to make this work.
Btw, are you getting the full DPI from your printer ? The same as from under Windows ? What about color management and other features usually offered fully only on Windows driver ? Is PPD enough to describe all bells&whistles and provide the user with convenient access to them ?
I hope you would agree that there are printers without Ethernet port, and there are distributions other than Ubuntu, and there are existing businesses built on plain dot-matrix printers connected to plain DOS boxes and printing in the blank forms without any Postscript. Trying to migrate these to Unix, we get so many components in the printing path that it is not easy to make them do what we want without some deep research.
Those who learned traditional lpd/printap printing system, would note that CUPS tries to mask the textual&commandline nature of the whole configuration process, and that only makes things worse.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Apr 2, 2007 10:33 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] Those who learned traditional lpd/printap printing system, would note that CUPS tries to mask the textual&commandline nature of the whole configuration process, and that only makes things worse. CUPS comes with perfectly reasonable command-line administration utilities, including one to set up new printers from scratch, given only a PPD file and where it is connected. Anselm
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Apr 11, 2007 0:33 UTC (Wed) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link] In the past, I configured BSD lpr, System V lp, AIX's lp variant, and lpr-ng.
CUPS is easy to configure, compared to the old systems. It has much better command-line tools than any of these other systems; it's configuration files are easier to read and to change, and that "textual interface" is not hidden at all; it's well documented.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Apr 17, 2007 18:33 UTC (Tue) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link] Then why CUPS introduction starts from "open http://localhost:631 in your browser" ? Why RedHat-derived distros still offer "system-config-printer" tool ? Both these interfaces are worse than unusable (except for simplest and most straightforward cases). CUPS docs should start from CLI-tools overview and always give CLI equivalent for every action done in "convenient" WEB/GUI. Else there would be no end of Eric Raymond-likes with their articles of you know what content.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 29, 2007 23:42 UTC (Thu) by job (subscriber, #670) [Link] I never really understood what the big problem about printers and scanners were. I mean, UNIX has been around for a very long time, and even in Linux it's pretty well documented what hardware is supported. Bascially with a printer, anything goes as long as it's Postscript. With a scanner, check out the SANE compatibility list. I've never had any problems with those in Linux and other unices and I've used them extensively for many years. Now video cards and monitors, there's where the problems were! Not to mention cheap NE2k clones. Even today Xorg sometimes misbehaves, but generally hardware support is almost a non issue today.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 30, 2007 8:33 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] The problem with printers is the vast variety of consumer-grade stuff that's not PostScript.
Even the stuff that's reasonably compatible is problematic sometimes. e.g. I just got a Samsung ML-2250. I picked it *specifically* because it used PCL so would work under Linux, but it seems that it uses PCL6 or something that GS doesn't fully support yet (you can't get full 1200dpi resolution but are stuck at 600dpi). Samsung actually ship CUPS filters that allege to support this, but they're enormous binary-only lumps that are *excellent* at segfaulting. (pxlmono works fine, but you're restricted to 600dpi, again...)
And this is a printer with relatively *good* Linux support.
(I wonder if there are docs for the 1200dpi stuff so I can add support to GS: I haven't spent the time but that's my own damn fault.)
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 30, 2007 9:56 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] HP supports open source drivers for Linux for their cheaper crap.
The HPIJ and all that stuff. I had a all-in-one printer for a long time that worked pretty well in Linux. Scanner/printing combo.
For the most part I'd stay far away from anything that isn't either Epson or HP as far as cheap printers go.
http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/Database/...
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 31, 2007 14:07 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Agreed; the only reason I went for this Samsung was because I spotted itcheap (and you can't really beat fifty quid for a mono laser! A lot of consumer-grade inkjets cost more than that...)
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 30, 2007 18:00 UTC (Fri) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link] I just hate bl**dy Postscript!
I've had postscript printers that crashed, and once it started your only fix was to throw the document away and start again ...
I don't know why, but I cannot get an A4 pdf document to print cleanly on to an A4 sheet of paper - it either lines up the document edge with the printer PRINTABLE edge (so the document is offset slightly to the bottom right), or "shrinks the document to fit" so the A4 image fits inside the A4 printable margins and is not quite the size it's supposed to be ... etc etc.
Give me PCL or some other simple printer language where "what you send is what you get", not something completely different ...
Oh - and I think they've fixed it now (it was a very old SuSE) - but why when I told CUPS *NOT* to auto-discover printers, did it think doing a network scan was a good idea?!?! SuSE support got a right earful over that!
lpd may be basic, but it's simple, and it works.
Cheers,
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 31, 2007 14:09 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] lpd and LPRng also support filters that can be arbitrary programs ratherthan having to conform to a rather odd API.
On my todo list (not near the top) is implementing command wrappers for
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Apr 2, 2007 6:56 UTC (Mon) by MortFurd (guest, #9389) [Link] And I LOVE bloody postscript. My experiences with printing seem absolutely opposite yours. I find that pdf files print more consistently using postscript, and psotscript is much easier to manipulate when something goes wrong.
We have a database system that generates mailing labels from an enormous database. The vendor provided templates only worked properly if you were using a particular brand and model printer. The program provides the labels as a pdf file. The vendor took over a year to fix the problem, in the mean time I've got users ripping out their (and my) hair over labels that print so wrong as to be unusable.
Solution:
I was a manual setup for each user that needed to print labels, but that's better than no labels.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Apr 11, 2007 0:40 UTC (Wed) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link] Your problem sounds more like Acroread and less like Postscript.
Acroread's default configuration is to scale a page, down to fit into margins, just as you describe. But at least it remembers when one changes that configuration. In addition, it defaults to Letter page format (and one can not change this default, at least I don't know how), the page format has to be changed at every 1st print of a program run; without that the page is positioned wrongly.
Postscript and CUPS does none of this scaling. If you use Acroread, look at your print configuration.
Samsung Printer Driver Posted Apr 5, 2007 18:38 UTC (Thu) by Felix.Braun (subscriber, #3032) [Link] Have you tried SpliX? It supports 1200x1200dpi on my ML2010. The website says it has not yet been tested on your printer, so I'm sure the authors would be interested in your feedback
Samsung Printer Driver Posted Apr 5, 2007 19:31 UTC (Thu) by kamil (subscriber, #3802) [Link] 1200dpi on ML2010 with splix? Last I tried, it resulted in a horizontally stretched output, so that only half of a page was printed.
Anyway, thanks for the link, looks like I'm running an old beta version -- time to upgrade...
Samsung Printer Driver Posted Apr 21, 2007 23:26 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] I'd not heard of it. I'll give it a spin. Thanks!
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 29, 2007 21:53 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] AT my work I use a Linux desktop (thank god), but other people don't.
I use OO.org on Linux, my boss uses OO.org on Windows, and his boss uses OO.org on Windows and he is a Excell freak (as in uses it for _everything_ and has godlike powers over it).
At work we have to update a big database by state and we always had paper trail to log what has happenned with this and that. They wanted to move to spreadsheets to contain the logging information, but I dislike spreadsheets entirely.
So instead I used OO.org 2.x's new database features to make a new hsql database, with a couple tables and rows and such. Then I built a couple little forms for making data entry applications, a couple example queries for making reports and my boss like it quite a bit.
Simple little thing. The biggest problem is that documentation is _literally_ non-existant. I had to look up microsoft access documentation to figure this or that point out.
But it's coming along.
To have the same functionality with MS Office would require a purchase of the top of the line 300-500 dollar version, which just isn't going to happen at my work.
I would of prefered to use some other database frontend application, but stuff from koffice or gnome office doesn't work on Windows, so my bosses wouldn't be able to copy it over to their machines to play around with it.
So OO.org was the only realistic choice.
I think that in lots of places it is now a actual viable alternative for MS Office.
Not everywere, but most places you can probably start introducing it.
Once place I heard of already had MS Office on every machine, but wanted to hopefully migrate away from that. What they did was simply install OO.org to all their Windows machines, and changed the default from MS Office to OO.org for file associations and locations in the menus. The people that cared most went out of their way to use MS OFfice, but they were the vast minority.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 30, 2007 22:55 UTC (Fri) by Los__D (subscriber, #15263) [Link] WHAT? You made the OO.org Database WORK?
I happily use OO.org for a lot of stuff, but I've had nothing but trouble with the database part, couldn't change order of rows, it crashed if I looked at it the wrong way, and opening forms was asking for a lockup (Not that I used them for anything, just wanted to experiment at bit)...
Oh well, I wanted to use it for designing a MySQL database, so I used the MySQL backend, maybe it really was the binding that harikiri'ed, not the OO.org database itself... Gonna take a look at it again, now that I know it can actually be a successful venture, thx! :D
Dennis
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 31, 2007 2:49 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Ya..
The OO.org 1.x base stuff was complete shit. I tried to get that to work after a Access class I took to see how it compared. I struggled for a couple days with the unix-odbc connectors and different versions of this or that and when I finally when I got it to work.. it didn't work that well.
Utter shit.
(I took the access class by mistake. It was 'database fundamentals', which apparently means 'Learn how to use a propriatory database front end for a psuedo sql database that you will learn nothing about'. I didn't drop out because I figured 'what the hell, people say Access is hot shit so I'll learn it')
The OO.org 2.x base stuff is completely new. It has it's own SQL database now, HSQL as well as a native Mysql driver and ODBC support.
I couldn't get it to work well with GCJ java stuff though. It'd mostly work, but it wasn't reliable and random stuff would fail. (namely the forms wizard).
I had to use Sun java to get it to work well.
Probably the best approach is use the native built-in database support before trying out mysql support.
I found this as a nice way to get my head wrapped around it:
Now Access is crap. It realy is. Documentation is very poor and it's non-intuitive and difficult to use.
OO.org base is worse, although this has mostly to do with (lack of) documentation. But it works and that is what counts.
The reason I used it is because it runs on Windows, otherwise I think that there are probably better database front ends.
I actually recommend learning OO.org or some details of MS office to learn what sort of thing regular users have to put up with and get used to. It's a eye openner.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 31, 2007 6:37 UTC (Sat) by Los__D (subscriber, #15263) [Link] It was 2.0 (Edgy's reporting it as 2.0.4, though that could have changed), but it was probably the gcj version at the time.
Thanks for the links, I'll take a look! :)
Dennis
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 29, 2007 22:45 UTC (Thu) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link] I use Linux on my desktop system at work.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 29, 2007 23:36 UTC (Thu) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link] Why send out documents in MS Office format?
If formatting is critical, we nearly always use PDF. If it's not, RTF (or plain text, eg email) is good enough.
For spreadsheets and the like -- I've rarely seen them actually need the calculation capabilities, they're usually just used as an easy way to send tabular data (a mini database, kind of) around, and oocalc and excel interchange "good enough" there.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 30, 2007 0:50 UTC (Fri) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link] People want to be able to edit the documents, so PDF is out and RTF lacks the formating capabilities.
Plus, it is not only the matter of documents which you generate. 100% of the documents which we receive from outside are .DOC. Sometimes we have to edit them and send them back. It can't be done reliably with OpenOffice, yet.
If you have to use MSWord just once (and you are running Windows anyway), you might as well use it all the time.
I tend to agree that spreadsheets are less of a problem, at least for us.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 30, 2007 2:39 UTC (Fri) by tcwan (guest, #42830) [Link] The biggest compatibility issue between OpenOffice and MS Word is still the formatting. A document prepared in one won't print properly on the other. Granted PDFs are fine for 'view-only' documents, but not everyone sends PDFs, and 'work-in-progress' documents need to be in .doc format to be useful in a mixed environment.
Unfortunately I don't know how that can be solved. The problems as I see it (from a layman's perspective):
1. Font metrics compatibility (if you don't really care about using EXACTLY the same font)
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 30, 2007 2:42 UTC (Fri) by tcwan (guest, #42830) [Link] To add to this, for technical documents, I'm learning to move slowly towards LyX (LaTex GUI frontend). Saves a lot of hair pulling when MS Word auto-reformats the hierarchical paragraph numbering incorrectly for the umpteenth time.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 30, 2007 5:33 UTC (Fri) by Ed_L. (guest, #24287) [Link] I tried LyX once, but it seemed clunky on my home hardware and the learning curve waaaaaay too steep. So I just stuck with latex-mode in Emacs :-) YMMV.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Apr 5, 2007 13:20 UTC (Thu) by danielpf (subscriber, #4723) [Link] Kile provides a facilitated graphical introduction to LaTeX, with online help and highlighting editor, plus fast instant previewing through kdvi or xdvi.
The drawback of LyX is to introduce yet another set of particular macros, and doesn't encourage improving your knowledge of LaTeX. In contrast Kile guides you how to use plain LaTeX mode, and with time you learn how to use directly LaTeX. When being used to LaTeX you have then a chance to switch to a more powerful editor like emacs if needed to, because your past .tex files produced with Kile remain compatible with plain LaTeX.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Apr 6, 2007 21:30 UTC (Fri) by alstrup (subscriber, #24272) [Link] The latest versions of LyX provide a "View source" option which will show you the LaTeX for a given paragraph, thus making it easier to learn LaTeX if you wish.
LyX also integrates with a bunch of other external tools, so if you need to include diagrams, pictures, chess boards, music, EDA, or whatever, LyX is your friend because it handles all necessary invocations of programs, conversions of formats, generating previews, and what not. In the unlikely scenario that LyX does not support some strange format and tool, it's simple to add a new template, and there you go.
LyX 1.5.0, which is in beta right now, is also Unicode enabled.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Apr 11, 2007 0:46 UTC (Wed) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link] Yes, and it's not neeed to announce kerning as a "new and exciting feature" like in this Open Office announcement.
Well, we have that in TeX since 1978. (And yes, I used TeX when it was still written in SAIL Pascal and not this new-fangled WEB language that Don used for the rewrite in '82. We changed our own Pascal compiler to be able to compile TeX.)
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Mar 30, 2007 8:04 UTC (Fri) by tomsi (subscriber, #2306) [Link] This is a real concern - having to interact with outside companies.
There are several solution to this (not necessarily realistic ones).
1. Be hardline ;) If you are the source of the document, use OOo formats - after all the program is free. If the other company is the source just send raw text of the changes and let them do the formatting.
2. Use some other software that suited to the task. Latex/Lyx, DocBook, other.
3. Work with companies that use OOo.
4. Just use MS Word when necessary.
There are one reason I don't like using word. I don't trust it. Early versions were OK featurewise, but was very buggy. Now it does many things behind my back that it is just annoying. And it is still with the odd bugs. Word has screwed up so many documents for me which cost so much extra work that it just doesn't make sense to use it for serious work.
PDF Export Posted Mar 30, 2007 12:26 UTC (Fri) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] My girlfriend was just telling me yesterday that the version of Word sheuses at work (Word 2007, they just switched from WordPerfect recently) does PDF export.... except that it adds an extra 1" margin to the PDF.
I wonder if the MS developers that added the PDF feature had been using
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Apr 5, 2007 18:47 UTC (Thu) by Felix.Braun (subscriber, #3032) [Link] The problem is in fact that the MS-Office formats are so much of a standard. If the accepted benchmark for switching over to OOo is 100% MS-Compatibility then I'm quite sure that people will have similar experiences to yours.
What I find frustrating is that people see nothing special in sending around binary blobs of data in a proprietary format, requiring me to jump through endless hoops to be able to diplay them properly, whereas they are unwilling to install software available for free that uses an openly documented format.
Somebody should write a ODF-plugin so that MS-Users are able to participate in open communication. Surely a "please resend as odt" should be acceptable to most people...
OpenOffice.org 2.2 released Posted Apr 10, 2007 1:39 UTC (Tue) by roelofs (subscriber, #2599) [Link] However things did not go perfectly - unfortunately OO.o is still not 100% compatible with MSOffice, so for practical purposes we needed to doublecheck documents with MFOffice before sending them out of the company. Which can quickly get extremely annoying.I had similar issues a couple years back (1.0 days) while working on a two-person presentation--I'd be curious to see if things have improved since then. While the spreadsheet and word-processor components were reasonably interchangeable (albeit somewhat ugly from a rendering perspective, and you had to have all of the fonts available, not just "near equivalents" like X11's bitmapped Helvetica), the slide-presentation tool had serious issues in just about all respects. Even something as basic as auto-word-wrap failed (in both directions!), and mixing boxes and lines (and/or partially transparent overlays) with text was a near disaster. Even worse, PowerPoint embedded images often showed up in OOo as 100% black boxes, but not all of them did--others (maybe even 60-70% of them?) worked just fine. All in all, it was an exercise in frustration even for me, and I was highly motivated to make it work. Fortunately, I haven't needed to do many presentations since then... Greg
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