Weekly Edition
Return to the Development page
| |||||||||||||||||||
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released
The OpenOffice.org Community is pleased to announce the general availability of OpenOffice.org 3.1, a significant upgrade to the world's leading open-source office productivity suite. Since OpenOffice.org 3.0 was launched last October, over 60 million downloads have been recorded from the OpenOffice.org website alone. Released in more than 90 languages and available as a free download on all major computing platforms, OpenOffice.org 3.1 looks set to break these records. Thanks to all community members who have helped make this release possible. Users of previous versions of OpenOffice.org were asked to vote for their 'most desired' new features, and this wish list helped shape the new release. The new release also includes a feedback mechanism where users can opt-in to supply feedback automatically to the developers about how they use OpenOffice.org. The biggest single change (half a million lines of code!) and the most visible is the major revamp of OpenOffice.org on-screen graphics. Techies call it anti-aliasing - users just appreciate how much crisper graphics are on screen. The improved look extends to other subtle changes, such as: how images display when they are being dragged, how selections of text are highlighted, and even adding the ability to overline text. New core features include: Writer (word processing) * Improvements to comments: reply feature now supports 'conversations' * Further grammar checker integration * Outline levels within paragraphs for complex documents Calc (spreadsheet) * Hot hints for formulae, with new and improved formulae available * Improved sorting * More performance bottlenecks removed * The zoom slider added to the status bar * Rename sheets with a double-click Chart (graphics engine) * Flexible positioning of axes for scientific and educational users * Flexible handling of "missing" data points Impress (presentation) * Font size buttons Base (database) * SQL syntax highlighting * Easier deployment of macro applications Internationalization and Localization * Improved support for bidirectional scripts * New locale support Behind the scenes, OpenOffice.org also now has a more capable file locking mechanism, enabling users to share files safely in a multi-user, multi-platform environment. The guide to new features is available here: http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.1/index.html Download OpenOffice.org 3.1 here: http://download.openoffice.org/ Read our Press Release: http://www.prweb.com/releases/OOo/31/prweb2388264.htm --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: announce-unsubscribe@openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: announce-help@openoffice.org (Log in to post comments)
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released Posted May 7, 2009 15:40 UTC (Thu) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]
Well, the Windows and 32-bit .deb is out anyway... 64-bit .deb and OS X, no dice.
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released Posted May 7, 2009 20:09 UTC (Thu) by liljencrantz (subscriber, #28458) [Link]
I remember when people thought a source tarball counted as a release.
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released Posted May 7, 2009 20:39 UTC (Thu) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]
Oh, I wish I could build from source. But building this beast is beyond the capacity of my machine in the time I have available.
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released Posted May 7, 2009 23:22 UTC (Thu) by dlang (subscriber, #313) [Link]
have you tried compiling openoffice?
even gentoo ships binaries by default.
it makes what compiling Android (at least as described in this week's article) seem straightforward, simple and fast
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released Posted May 8, 2009 6:59 UTC (Fri) by ppedroni (subscriber, #6592) [Link]
> have you tried compiling openoffice?
I routinely do. Not impossible, just long: more than two hours (maybe
> even gentoo ships binaries by default.
Not really. They have both binaries and source: the choice is, as usually,
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released Posted May 8, 2009 9:49 UTC (Fri) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]
Bah. I remember leaving the machine running overnight to compile a new kernel...
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released Posted May 8, 2009 6:53 UTC (Fri) by qg6te2 (guest, #52587) [Link] The amount of bugs in OO.org Impress is... amazing. If the purpose was to make an office package as frustrating to use as MS Office, it's a job well done. Perhaps the time and effort put into anti-aliased graphics would have been better spent on debugging.
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released Posted May 8, 2009 13:05 UTC (Fri) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
That could be said of at least every second feature added to any given piece of software. The only people who don't understand it are the developers and the marketing people (speaking as a developer...)
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released Posted May 8, 2009 14:10 UTC (Fri) by engla (guest, #47454) [Link]
This software package needs "a Firefox" to break down the application into pieces and make it useful for normal people.
After that, it needs "a WebKit" to reimplement its feature and make it mean, lean and hackable, standards-compliant and usable.
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released Posted May 8, 2009 19:12 UTC (Fri) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link]
A webkit for office apps? Working on that...
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released Posted May 8, 2009 14:20 UTC (Fri) by jmayer (subscriber, #595) [Link]
> The biggest single change (half a million lines of code!) and the most
> visible is the major revamp of OpenOffice.org on-screen graphics. > Techies call it anti-aliasing
Can anyone please explain how a single feature rework can be 500,000
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released Posted May 8, 2009 16:27 UTC (Fri) by thyrsus (subscriber, #21004) [Link]
I'm a little worried at that size, myself. As a very casual user of OpenOffice, the only deficiency I've experienced in the last couple years is that it takes a long time to start up - the first time; once it's in memory, it's fine. Since 90% of the point is displaying text, it sounds like there's going to be an new mandatory megabyte or so to page in. We'll see.
My real worries about OpenOffice are outside the control of the OpenOffice authors. I'd like to see the anti-trust judge fine Microsoft $50 billion for that obscenity of a standards proposal on their new format, and another $50 billion for deliberately using an incompatible ODF implementation.
Just enough to remind Microsoft what "abuse of monopoly" means. Not that it would ever happen.
I'm not comforted by the seemingly slow adoption of the new Microsoft formats; it takes a long time for companies to switch, but switch they do: I'm starting to see the dread ...x formats at work in just the last couple months.
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released Posted May 8, 2009 17:11 UTC (Fri) by jordanb (subscriber, #45668) [Link]
Maybe they swapped out one 500,000 line rendering library for a new one?
Or it's typical Java code, where 40% of it is auto-generated using wizards and another 40% is cut-and-paste with minor changes each time.
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released Posted May 8, 2009 17:57 UTC (Fri) by khc (guest, #45209) [Link]
I don't know how this misconception started, but openoffice is _not_ written in Java, except for some optional components.
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released Posted May 13, 2009 13:46 UTC (Wed) by Darkmere (subscriber, #53695) [Link]
Most likely it came from the two factors of "Sun has been near the source" and "why the feck does the build require tcsh and java to even function?".
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released Posted May 8, 2009 17:19 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
One single thorougly unexciting feature which they'd already have had for
free if they used *anything* approximating a standard toolkit.
This part of the release notes read as 'hey! we reinvent every wheel in a
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released Posted May 11, 2009 18:58 UTC (Mon) by Sho (subscriber, #8956) [Link]
Dimily remembering a blog post on the anti-aliasing work from a couple of months ago, iirc a lot of the internal calculation work in the applications wasn't done with sufficient precision to allow for a more modern representation involving anti-aliasing, so they had to modernize/improve lots of internals beyond just the drawing code itself.
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released Posted May 8, 2009 17:00 UTC (Fri) by mbaldessari (subscriber, #36769) [Link]
One of my main wishes regarding the future of OO.org is a reduction of code lines in order to replace OO-only libraries and code, with more used libraries (vcl->qt|gtk, dmake->cmake, etc.). It would be easier to hack on it and maybe get some more traction from community developers.
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released Posted May 8, 2009 17:53 UTC (Fri) by bangert (subscriber, #28342) [Link]
well, start coding then...
www.koffice.org
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released Posted May 8, 2009 23:17 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Koffice is no replacement and not even close. There simply is no replacement for Openoffice.org for many people.
OpenOffice.org 3.1 released Posted May 9, 2009 3:06 UTC (Sat) by Kit (guest, #55925) [Link]
That sounds rather familiar... Moving OpenOffice up to the first sentence, and adding Microsoft Office to the second... interesting! But on a serious note, just because KOffice isn't there *yet* doesn't mean it can't get there (especially if it had similar backing to that of OpenOffice!).
|
|||||||||||||||||||