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OpenOffice.org 3.0 released
The OpenOffice.org Community is today announcing the general availability of OpenOffice.org Version 3. Right from the opening screen, OpenOffice.org 3 has a fresh new look, with a new start screen, new splash screen, new icons, and a host of usability improvements. The Writer word processor has a cool new slider control for zooming, allows multi-page display while editing, has powerful new multilingual support, and boasts improved notes capabilities. As well as conventional office documents, Writer can now edit wiki documents for the web. The Calc spreadsheet has been given another increase in capacity - now up to 1024 columns per sheet. It also has a powerful new equation solver, and a great new collaboration feature for multiple users. Draw can now cope with poster-size graphics (up to 3sq metres), and Impress supports multiple monitors for presentations. Chart now produces much more clean looking graphics by default, and has a range of additional features requested by power users. The popular built-in PDF export facility has been further enhanced with PDF/A support and a range of new user-selectable options. OpenOffice.org 3 is now also available for the first time as a full Mac OS X application, bringing the power of the world's leading open-source office suite to a whole new group of users. And it's even easier than ever to persuade MS-Office users to upgrade to OpenOffice.org, with new support for MS-Access 2007 'accdb' files, improved support for VBA macros, and a new ability to read MS-Office Open XML files (Microsoft Office 2007 and Office 2008 documents) OpenOffice.org's support for extensions is really coming of age with OpenOffice.org 3. A rapidly expanding number of additional features are available from different developers to add great features such as an Impress presenter console, support for business analytics, PDF import, and a whole new way of supporting additional languages. Tell your friends that 2008 is 'The Year of 3'; - the year we released OpenOffice.org 3; the year we make OpenOffice.org available on all 3 major computing platforms (MS-Windows, GNU/Linux, and Mac OS X); and the year to realise the 3 key benefits of OpenOffice.org: it's great software; it's easy to use; and it's free. Links Official Press Release: http://www.prweb.com/releases/OOo/3/prweb1459364.htm Download: http://download.openoffice.org Guide to new features: http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.0 Technical release notes: http://development.openoffice.org/releases/3.0.0.html Availability of localised versions and ports: http://download.openoffice.org/other.html 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)
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released Posted Oct 13, 2008 7:46 UTC (Mon) by vivo (subscriber, #48315) [Link]
"Draw can now cope with poster-size graphics (up to 3sq metres)" ...
isn't it 3x3 meters => 9sq meters ?
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released Posted Oct 13, 2008 14:21 UTC (Mon) by dr_lha (guest, #86) [Link]
Posters aren't typically 3m x 3m.
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released Posted Oct 13, 2008 20:53 UTC (Mon) by efexis (guest, #26355) [Link]
Yes, although I have seen it taught that square metres and metres squared are in fact the same thing, they blatently aren't for values other than zero or one (3 sq metres would be 3 x (1x1m) or 3x1m, and as you say, 3x3m would be 9x(1x1m) or 9 sq metres).
Units Posted Oct 13, 2008 22:39 UTC (Mon) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link]
Standard unit analysis:
(3 meters) * (3 meters)
= (3 * 3) * (meters * meters)
= 9 * (meters^2)
Units continued Posted Oct 13, 2008 22:50 UTC (Mon) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link]
Working backwards from the original example:
3 square meters = 3 * (1 meter * 1 meter) = 3 * (meter^2) = 3 "meters squared"
The suggestion that you are supposed to square the coefficient is deeply mistaken. The square in "meters squared" refers to the unit *itself*.
Units continued Posted Oct 16, 2008 6:19 UTC (Thu) by sbakira (subscriber, #5571) [Link]
This is plain non sense.
Multiply a meter value by a meter value and you get square meters.
This indeed has a relation with the operation you did.
I remember back in school having to deal with kg^2.s^2/m^-3.
Look at the MKSA system and the expression of the common units in international units (Ohm for example).
Anyway, you are right for the mix of the units and the values, but making operations values with units change the nature of the object you manipulated. Think of it like an attribute of the value (like in a class).
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released Posted Oct 13, 2008 9:06 UTC (Mon) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link]
> The Calc spreadsheet has been given another increase in capacity -
> now up to 1024 columns per sheet.
Why on earth did they have an arbitrary limit in the first place?
(Gnumeric seems to allow only 256 columns, which has hit me when I've tried to read in data generated by a script.)
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released Posted Oct 13, 2008 9:15 UTC (Mon) by jreiser (subscriber, #11027) [Link] Why on earth did they have an arbitrary limit in the first place? There are step functions (and/or steep slopes) in costs for complexity, space, and execution time. Nearly all spreadsheets are "small", and most of those users don't want to pay the costs (space, time, time-to-market, maintenance, ...) for "unlimited" capacity.
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released Posted Oct 13, 2008 9:41 UTC (Mon) by cine (subscriber, #5597) [Link]
Not really. The whole worksheet is virtualized anyway, only the cells that actually is written something in exists in memory.
I would be good for them to have to think of it as unbounded, so they can get rid of the last few bugs that trivially allows you to crash your scalc, just because it tries to e.g. paint all the cells.
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released Posted Oct 13, 2008 21:36 UTC (Mon) by efexis (guest, #26355) [Link] only the cells that actually is written something in exists in memoryYes but they have to be addressed. A value of 0-1023 requires 10bits to address, and it's position can quickly and simply be resolved in just a few bytes of code. "Unlimited" requires scalable values, which means loops, conditional jumps, using memory rather than registers, everwhere the value is used (so a function the finds the left or rightmost cell of two or more cells becomes a lot more complex). Libraries like gmp do make doing this easier, but it's still nowhere as quick as a bit fixed width field where number of bits <= register size. Alex
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released Posted Oct 13, 2008 23:17 UTC (Mon) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]
That problem was solved long ago. Pre-written code exists to use the machine values until you overflow and then trap the processor exception and special case from there on out.
Even if that wasn't true, the cost of doing slightly more math to figure out what memory to pull in is trivial compared to the slowness of pulling it in. The only downside is consuming more memory in the addressing.
The ONLY downside? Ha! Posted Oct 14, 2008 3:48 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] The REAL downside is neither speed nor complexity. The REAL downside is the need to rewrite millions of already existing code which is designed to use fixed width numbers. I presume 256=>1024 was just a change in #define plus some testing, "unlimited" will be HUGE undertaking...
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released Posted Oct 14, 2008 4:40 UTC (Tue) by efexis (guest, #26355) [Link] "Pre-written code exists to use the machine values until you overflow and then trap the processor exception and special case from there on out"Yep, that's the conditional loop bit... you loop loading/comparing each byte/word at a time, until the condition (overflow) hits and says to stop. There might be prewritten code (like the gmp library I mentioned) but it's still orders of magnitude slower than what it would be for a fixed bit width. which can be aligned to fit many into cachelines etc. This wouldn't just need to be resolved for loading cells in, but all reference pointers (think loop variables that iterate through cells updating them) would need to be as this too. Quite how much noticable difference this makes on a modern processor though... couldn't say without some profiling info.
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released Posted Oct 13, 2008 9:44 UTC (Mon) by PO8 (guest, #41661) [Link]
I'm having a hard time imagining a (sane) data representation for spreadsheets that has these unfortunate properties. It would be great if you could elaborate a bit on oocalc's internal data structures.
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released Posted Oct 13, 2008 9:56 UTC (Mon) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link]
> Nearly all spreadsheets are "small", and most of those users don't
> want to pay the costs for "unlimited" capacity.
If they have a fixed-size array in there somewhere, then those users with "small" spreadsheets are now paying for ~1000 columns that they're not using. If they're using anything more complex than a fixed-size array - and I imagine that they are - then they're already paying those costs. So I don't think this is a space/time/complexity thing.
My guess is that they are trying to save some bits somewhere by packing row and column number, plus some other bits, into a word. (I have a vague recollection that Excell has a 64k row limit because it uses a 16-bit row number somewhere.)
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released Posted Oct 13, 2008 9:58 UTC (Mon) by dkite (guest, #4577) [Link]
Nonsense.
Spreadsheets are a class of application that drive users to the limits of
If it is only good for small stuff, serious users don't/can't use it.
They use Excel.
Derek
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released Posted Oct 14, 2008 3:57 UTC (Tue) by nowster (subscriber, #67) [Link]
> They use Excel.
Would that be Excel 2003 with a 256 column limit? (Excel 2007 is said to have a 16384 column limit. This larger limit is irrelevant if you wish to share spreadsheets with someone who has the older version of Excel, assuming the file format hasn't changed between versions.)
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released Posted Oct 14, 2008 3:57 UTC (Tue) by forthy (guest, #1525) [Link] They also still have the 65536 row limit, which Excel 2007 has raised to 1M rows (and certainly also not taken away completely). This is my grief about OO.o: Too much design mistakes taken from Microsoft.
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released Posted Oct 13, 2008 9:43 UTC (Mon) by cine (subscriber, #5597) [Link]
I'm personally going to wait for 3.0.1, since doing slideshows is currently rather broken, with it being impossible to insert slides in the middle of a slideshow.
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released Posted Oct 13, 2008 9:46 UTC (Mon) by PO8 (guest, #41661) [Link]
Aieee. I ran into this bug doing a presentation with the final rc the other day, and thought it was just me. Thanks much for the note!
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released Posted Oct 13, 2008 11:17 UTC (Mon) by sebas (subscriber, #51660) [Link]
I would have hoped for some interface enhancements. The options dialog is overloaded, you always need RGB values if you insert colors (which you do in a strange place in the first place), it's all but obvious how to create for example slide templates, most dialogs are cluttered and not even resizable. In general, I find the user interface very clunky, just not up to modern standards anymore. I get the impression that OOo has an interface which you have to "learn", and where logical thinking doesn't get you very far.
It would be good if some of those UI issues would be tackled. I'm at the point where I'm trying to keep away from using OpenOffice.org whereever I can, since when I'm using it, I often end up frustrated and with half-baked solutions (WYSIWSG layout instead of semantics + styles for example).
I'm quite concerned actually about the future of office apps on Linux, OpenOffice doesn't seem to have a bright future from what I can tell, yet KOffice is not ready to bridge this gap.
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released Posted Oct 13, 2008 11:59 UTC (Mon) by alspnost (subscriber, #2763) [Link] Yes, you've reminded me how critically dependent I am on OpenOffice. I've used nothing else for 6+ years, and it has served me well on the whole. But if it started falling behind or losing developer interest (which is already happening, according to Michael Meeks), it would be a very Bad Thing(TM).Let's hope that the appropriate combination of wide-open community control, and a few resources from Sun, can re-invigorate OpenOffice and speed up its development course. Oh, and its startup time :-)
Sun needs to get better servers Posted Oct 13, 2008 12:15 UTC (Mon) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link]
and they should upgrade the software too ;)
( The slowness of that site is pathetic. )
Happy Thoughts! Posted Oct 15, 2008 2:23 UTC (Wed) by grantingram (subscriber, #18390) [Link] The comments on this thread seem to be awash with negativity about the program. I know it is not perfect (I use it everyday) but it has got a lot better recently! A release of any free software with improvements is to be welcomed, even more so when it is such an enormous and complex program. So I'll offer my congratulations and thanks to the OpenOffice.org people - and wish them the best of luck for the future.
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released Posted Oct 15, 2008 13:25 UTC (Wed) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link]
Make it boot in 5 seconds, and you would not need the splash screen :>
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released Posted Oct 16, 2008 2:58 UTC (Thu) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
Agreed: less is more. By the way, it looks like the start up time has been improved.
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