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OpenOffice.org 2.4 released
The OpenOffice.org Community is pleased to announce the release of OpenOffice.org 2.4, the latest version of the leading open source office productivity suite. OpenOffice.org 2.4 includes new features, enhancements, and bug fixes to all its core components. OpenOffice.org 2.4 is available for immediate download from http://download.openoffice.org. New features: Users will appreciate changes such as usability improvements in printing, and further enhancements to PDF handling (OpenOffice.org creates PDF files 'out of the box' to ISO standard). The default font is now DejaVu, which supports more languages/localisations than the previous BitStream Vera -part of a raft of localisation improvements covering languages from Hiligaynon to Quechua. Mac OS X users will appreciate the use of the native Quicktime player and spell-checker. Writer, OpenOffice.org's word processor, now has easier selection of the language for spellchecking; users can set options for printing hidden and place holder text and for following hyperlinks; text selection and 'find and replace' have been improved; and 'power users' will appreciate new extra keyboard shortcuts for paragraph styles. Regular users of Calc, OpenOffice.org's spreadsheet, will appreciate the streamlining of data and formulae entry. Other new features include a 'smart move and copy' for blocks of cells; the ability to transform data into columns; and improvements to printing, data filtering, and the Data Pilot. Usability improvements have been made to Draw, the drawing and diagramming module, and Impress, OpenOffice.org's application for creating presentations. Both applications have enhanced PDF export capabilities. In addition, Impress now has a new range of thrilling 3D transition effects supported through an extension. The Chart module, used throughout OpenOffice.org, continues to evolve rapidly. Novice users benefit from more intelligent default choices from the graphics engine; advanced users have more options allowing them to fine tune a chart exactly the way they want it. OpenOffice.org's database application, Base, now supports MS-Access 2007 (accdb files on MS-Windows), and has enhanced capabilities for MySQL, Oracle/jdbc, and native (HSQL) databases. The Query Designer is also improved. OpenOffice.org 2.4 is the eleventh release in the 2.x series (launched in October 2005) and demonstrates the Community's commitment to continuous and regular improvement of its software. The next major release - 3.0 - is planned for the autumn/fall this year. If you would like to help us, please visit http://contributing.openoffice.org. The OpenOffice.org Community --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: announce-unsubscribe@openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: announce-help@openoffice.org (Log in to post comments)
No OpenType? Posted Mar 27, 2008 13:49 UTC (Thu) by vladimir (guest, #14172) [Link] I didn't see any mention of OpenType support ... unfortunately.
No OpenType? Posted Mar 27, 2008 19:14 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] Please add your voice/votes there: http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=16032 http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=43029 http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=78749 (I know, *3* separate issues on different aspects of the same thing, sigh)
OpenOffice.org 2.4 released Posted Mar 27, 2008 13:54 UTC (Thu) by sumek (guest, #48034) [Link] OpenType support is planned for 3.0
No OpenType? Posted Mar 27, 2008 16:06 UTC (Thu) by vladimir (guest, #14172) [Link] > OpenType support is planned for 3.0 Yes, I know. <sigh> The problem comes when I have to share files with the rest of the world that (still) uses Microsoft Word which does support OpenType (and has for quite a while). The other thing that irritates me is that OpenOffice doesn't use FreeType2, which also supports OpenType. I have heard it postulated that *.doc format is the standard interchange format for OpenOffice Writer/Microsoft Word. And if, in fact, the majority of users of OpenOffice Writer do so in a mixed environment, then I think that complete & seamless compatibility with Microsoft Word should be the #1 requirement. Of course, that's a tall order, but even now I cannot go from *.odt to *.doc without major formatting errors. These incompatibilities makes it really hard for me to evangelize OpenOffice as a replacement for Microsoft Office.
JRE seems mandatory?? Posted Mar 27, 2008 14:31 UTC (Thu) by paragw (subscriber, #45306) [Link] I cannot seem to download the Windows version without JRE. So I get to burn the bandwidth if I have the JRE already or if I don't want it. This sucks.
JRE seems mandatory?? Posted Mar 27, 2008 14:47 UTC (Thu) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] And here's a burning question I've never been able to figure out... Exactly why is a JRE needed for OOo? What's the added functional benefit? Thanks!
JRE seems mandatory?? Posted Mar 27, 2008 15:08 UTC (Thu) by tetromino (subscriber, #33846) [Link] A significant portion of OOo is written in Java. Most of the import/export filters, for example.
JRE seems mandatory?? Posted Mar 27, 2008 15:47 UTC (Thu) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] But why isn't it compiled to the native code by default? It's not like the filters are meant to be copied to other platforms.
JRE seems mandatory?? Posted Mar 27, 2008 17:03 UTC (Thu) by renox (subscriber, #23785) [Link] >But why isn't it compiled to the native code by default? It's not like the filters are meant to be copied to other platforms. Perhaps a performance issue? Compiled Java isn't necessarily faster than a JVM, probably because much more manpower has been invested in the JVM than in a 'normal ahead-of-time' compiler. Plus from a marketing point of view, I doubt that Sun would like this..
JRE seems mandatory?? Posted Mar 27, 2008 17:07 UTC (Thu) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] You still need the JRE even if compiled to "native" code. Just like C needs libc, C++ needs libstdc++, and so on, Java needs many of the components of the JRE even when compiled. It needs the bytecode interpreter even since there are cases where you cannot compile code natively, or when you want to load a plugin that is distributed only as bytecode, and so on.
JRE seems mandatory?? Posted Mar 27, 2008 16:31 UTC (Thu) by paragw (subscriber, #45306) [Link] Can't think of any added benefit - already most OO.o code is C++ and adding a bit of Java just to be portable doesn't seem like a lot of benefit when you have added a whole another dependency of the JVM. But I am sure this has been discussed before...
JRE seems mandatory?? Posted Mar 28, 2008 20:59 UTC (Fri) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] But if also have a company agenda to push Java everywhere ...
OpenOffice.org 2.4 released Posted Mar 27, 2008 17:50 UTC (Thu) by jordip (guest, #47356) [Link] No comments on improvements of presenter, the only tool I use of the whole suit. If someone knows a replacement for presenter that does not involve learning LaTeX, please share it.
Presentations - Using HTML w/JavaScript Posted Mar 27, 2008 18:26 UTC (Thu) by Per_Bothner (subscriber, #7375) [Link] I use a hacked-up version of S5, with some custom improvements. The idea is you write the a single HTML file, using <div> elements to divide it into slides. Then some magic JavaScript and CSS adds navigation, auto-resizing, and various other goodies.Here is an example. Use space, PgDn or Right arrow to move to the next slide. Move the mouse to the lower right for a pop-up navigation list. Use your browser's "Page Source" to see the HTML source. The advantage is that you don't need any special tools - it will run on any JavaScript-enabled browser. If your laptop is stolen or can't connect to the projector, borrow a laptop, and plug in a USB stick with your presentation. Or have them browse to your web-site. And when you're done, publishing on the Web is trivial, and much nicer than a large PDF file. The downside is you have to either be fluent in HTML, or use an HTML editor that can create the needed <div> elements and boiler-plate. Plus there is no built-in support for fancy transitions - you have to code it all yourself. The changes I made include nice stable URLs for individual slides, plus some other (IMO) improvements. They are available here.
OpenOffice.org 2.4 released Posted Mar 29, 2008 11:16 UTC (Sat) by csawtell (subscriber, #986) [Link] Scribus or Kpresenter
OpenOffice.org 2.4 released Posted Apr 2, 2008 23:00 UTC (Wed) by higuita (guest, #32245) [Link] I recomend the MagicPoint, you plain write your presentation in any text editor with very simple and intuitive tags for formating and "play" the presentation in a viewer or html
OpenOffice.org 2.4 released Posted Mar 27, 2008 18:17 UTC (Thu) by cpeterso (guest, #305) [Link] Does this version actually work on Mac OS X? Every Mac release I've ever tested simply crashes on startup.
OpenOffice.org 2.4 released Posted Mar 27, 2008 18:29 UTC (Thu) by beoba (guest, #16942) [Link] There's NeoOffice, but it's so bad you'll end up wishing that it had just crashed and saved you the trouble of trying to use it.
OpenOffice.org 2.4 released Posted Mar 27, 2008 18:34 UTC (Thu) by cpeterso (guest, #305) [Link] That's why I keep trying OpenOffice's Mac releases... because I *do* use NeoOffice. :(
Funny product review Posted Mar 27, 2008 18:57 UTC (Thu) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] LOL - your "product review" of NeoOffice is classic!
OpenOffice.org 2.4 released Posted Mar 27, 2008 19:59 UTC (Thu) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] Just to provide a balanced perspective, I use NeoOffice 2.2 (and now 2.3) (mostly Writer and Calc, with some Draw) every day, and have no problems with it, and neither do the users that I support, beyond normal user-support issues that you'd expect from any application. This is on a G4 (PPC) Mac Mini, a G4 iBook, a Core 2 Duo iMac, and a Santa Rosa MacBook, depending on where I am, and which user I'm supporting, at any given moment. I also have OOo on a Windows XP machine that I have to use from time to time, so I do have that for comparison. And NeoOffice doesn't compare badly IMHO. In fact it does some things rather better than OOo, including OpenType support (thanks to the use of ATSUI, Apple's font libraries). I use fonts like Warnock Pro all the time with NeoOffice, and it publishes them to PDF very nicely, subsetting, normal ligatures and all. So I think perhaps your character assassination of NeoOffice is, perhaps, somewhat premature and unwarranted. I've also tried the developer builds of OOo/Aqua, and they were surprisingly usable for a bleeding-edge alpha. I wouldn't quite use them for something I really cared about yet, but they seemed to be coming along nicely.
OpenOffice.org 2.4 released Posted Mar 27, 2008 20:29 UTC (Thu) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] Sorry, that was meant to be "2.2.3", not "2.3".
OpenOffice.org 2.4 released Posted Mar 28, 2008 17:54 UTC (Fri) by beoba (guest, #16942) [Link] I've used it on a 1.33ghz Powerbook, it freezes for about 5 seconds any time that the file is saved to disk. This includes the periodic automatic saves. I get periodic draw artifacts within the window, but this at least hides the godawful font spacing problems that it has when the window is clear.
5 seconds? You are sooo lucky! Posted Mar 31, 2008 8:56 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] I have a spreadsheet with 30'000 URL's and some numbers attached to them. When OpenOffice.org decides to autosave this beast it freezes for 30-40 seconds! Not matter what I use: Windows or Linux (I don't have Mac) it's VERY annoying. You can say it's pretty big file, but still - it's just 500Kb .ods! Autosave is big problem for such files: without autosave you risk losing your work and with autosave you are losing significant productive time (30-40seconds every 15 minutes or so - that's 15min per day).
OpenOffice.org 2.4 released Posted Mar 30, 2008 14:19 UTC (Sun) by Kluge (guest, #2881) [Link] I've been using OOo v2.3.1 on a new Mac running Leopard. Startup is slow (as is performance generally, compared to MS Office) and always gives an error message. For no apparent reason, it starts up a bash prompt. And the X11 interface is relatively clunky and ugly. But it does work. Then I recently downloaded OOo_2.4.0RC3_MacOSXIntel_install.dmg (I think from http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/OtherDownload....) and it works great. Startup is faster, look-n-feel is better. Unlike the official release of 2.4.0, which behaves just like 2.3.1. I suspect that the RC3 I have is a native (non-X11) build, although the official native snapshot build DEV300_m2 works very poorly for me. In short, I recommend going to http://ooopackages.good-day.net/pub/OpenOffice.org/MacOSX/ and downloading the latest RC. For whatever reason, my experience with these builds has been much better than with the offical releases.
Positivity Posted Mar 27, 2008 20:15 UTC (Thu) by wrh2 (subscriber, #4254) [Link] Since most of the posted comments thus far have primarily pointed out shortcomings in OO.org, I just wanted to add a note to say that I'm really happy with the software. After installing it for the first time I was impressed that all of the major features I was used to in MS Office were still available, that my MS Office documents opened and displayed without serious issues, and that the usability compared favorably with Office (similar menus, etc). Along with Firefox, OO.org is one of the few software packages that I'm willing to install on my parent's computer without having to worry about frequent calls from them asking for help. There is always room for improvement in any software, and others have listed their wishlists already (+1 for better performance!) but overall it's an impressive piece of software, and one that I'm very glad exists. Many thanks to the developers, who might not always hear from those who appreciate their work.
Positivity Posted Mar 28, 2008 3:50 UTC (Fri) by graydon (subscriber, #5009) [Link] Likewise! I had not expected to find myself fond of an office package, but it's actually turned out to be a program I use at least in some capacity every few days, and it is generally essential when I do. Not just for viewing content from others either; particularly the drawing and presentation modules are quite good for when I need to cook up clean diagrams or explanations of technical material. It takes less time and produces much better-looking output (esp. the PDFs) than what I can crank out with any alternatives. It's an exemplary piece of free sw. Congratulations and kudos to the team.
Positivity Posted Mar 28, 2008 17:54 UTC (Fri) by jkowing (subscriber, #5172) [Link] I too totally agree with these sentiments! Thank goodness for the OO developers! It is a life-saver package for those of us using Linux in the office place and I also enjoy using it at home. Just the task of getting OO to work so well with Microsoft Office formats must be quite daunting and a never-ending job and I am amazed at how successful they have been.
Positivity Posted Mar 28, 2008 20:43 UTC (Fri) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link] Hear, hear!I set up OOo on my daughter's home XP system, and she uses it exclusively to exchange documents, and hand in assignments to classmates and teachers, (almost?) all of whom use MSW. And she evangelizes them to switch! (And this has less than nothing to do with her father's Free Software fixation.)
Hiligaynon support? Posted Mar 28, 2008 9:40 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] Waw, nami, may Hiligaynon na gali. Hi-tech na! Masadya ako :-)
Hiligaynon support? Posted Mar 28, 2008 17:38 UTC (Fri) by MKesper (guest, #38539) [Link] Sorry, my spanish isn't as good as it used to be! ;)
Hiligaynon support? Posted Mar 29, 2008 15:46 UTC (Sat) by krp (guest, #4866) [Link] Hiligaynon appears to be some sort of Polynesian dialect according to wikipedia...Spanish might not help much. 8-P http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiligaynon_language
Hiligaynon support? Posted Mar 30, 2008 19:00 UTC (Sun) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] A lot of my friends are from that part of the Philippines, so I've been learning the language - but having only one small dictionary, progress is slow. A lot of Spanish words entered the language during the 300 years of Spanish occupation (governed from Mexico). It's pretty clear which words are native, which are from Spanish, and which are from English, so the language tells the history of the region. Basic words about the weather, plants, animals, body parts, emotions are usually of native origin. Words about religion, politics, cutlery, and some items of clothing are from Spanish. Words about very modern things like computers and the Internet are from English. So you can see during which period in the society's history they acquired each technology/concept.
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