Apache OpenOffice 4.0 released [LWN.net]

The Apache OpenOffice 4.0 release is now available. "OpenOffice 4.0 features a new, more modern user interface, improvements to Microsoft Office interoperability, enhanced graphics support and many other improvements." See the release notes for lots of details.

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Name

Posted Jul 23, 2013 14:50 UTC (Tue) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] (8 responses)

So it's no longer necessary to call it 'OpenOffice.org' for trademark reasons?

Name

Posted Jul 23, 2013 15:23 UTC (Tue) by moltonel (subscriber, #45207) [Link]

The AOO folks may cling to the title of "Original OO.o", but that has always been a pedantic and largely irrelevant distinction. In practice, both AOO and LO are forks in equal measure of the now-defunct OO.o. In my view, there never was a good reason to call Apache's work "OO.o".

Name

Posted Jul 23, 2013 15:42 UTC (Tue) by rcweir (guest, #48888) [Link] (3 responses)

Versions prior to 3.4.0 are properly called "OpenOffice.org". Apache still gets download requests for these, since the older versions cover some legacy platforms and architectures still in use, like Solaris and PowerPC.

But 3.4.0 and beyond, these are called "Apache OpenOffice". That's the name and Apache claims a trademark on that name.

One way to think of this is that the ".org" referred to the community. It was an product (OpenOffice) as well as an independent community (".org"). But now the community has moved to Apache and joined with the large existing open source community there. As part of that we now conform to the the Apache naming scheme. We had a vote over a year ago to decide between Apache OpenOffice and Apache OpenOffice.org. The former won.

My personal opinion: the ".org" to me sounded too much like a 2002-era meme, when adding a ".com" to a pickle company would cause its stock to go up 10-fold overnight. Looking at search-directed traffic to the website it was clear that few users typed the full name either.

Name

Posted Jul 23, 2013 19:11 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Don't forget that there was a reason the name was not Open Office. That name was (still is?) oned by someone else.

Cheers,
Wol

Name

Posted Jul 23, 2013 19:25 UTC (Tue) by servilio-ap (guest, #56287) [Link] (1 responses)

One way to think of this is that the ".org" referred to the community. It was an product (OpenOffice) as well as an independent community (".org"). But now the community has moved to Apache and joined with the large existing open source community there.

*Only* part of the community moved to Apache, the other moved out of OOo to form LibreOffice in 2010. You know better.

Name

Posted Jul 23, 2013 20:03 UTC (Tue) by dakas (guest, #88146) [Link]

That rcweir turns every single LibreOffice announcement into a bitch fest (I have to admit that I'm reading the comments for those announcements mainly for the opportunity of shaking my head in disbelief) does not mean that there is an obligation to return the favor.

It's funnier if it's an already established routine with well-known actors. Would you dream of redoing "Who's on first?"?

Name

Posted Jul 25, 2013 5:14 UTC (Thu) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link] (2 responses)

Something as generic as "Open Office" can't be trademarked to the point where it can't be included in a name.

That "OpenOffice.org" was acceptable is the same logic that makes "Apache OpenOffice" acceptable.

Name

Posted Jul 25, 2013 12:15 UTC (Thu) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (1 responses)

Surely it can. Only it was already trademarked by someone else (in Benelux). A company called Open Office Automatisering.

Here's a nice story linked from the Wikipedia article: http://www.zdnet.com/orange-launches-open-office-3039289058/

Name

Posted Jul 26, 2013 4:04 UTC (Fri) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

You missed "to the point where it can't be included in a name." The fact that "OpenOffice.org" includes the term "Open Office" is a pretty obvious data point.

Apache OpenOffice 4.0 released

Posted Jul 23, 2013 15:09 UTC (Tue) by ssam (guest, #46587) [Link] (5 responses)

It would be nice to see a comparison of the new features in AOO 4.0 compared to those in LO 3.5, 3.6 and 4.0. I am guessing the sidebar is the main unique feature of AOO.

Apache OpenOffice 4.0 released

Posted Jul 23, 2013 15:29 UTC (Tue) by moltonel (subscriber, #45207) [Link] (4 responses)

Yes, those release notes are really well done, and it would be nice to add one or two LO columns to the compatibility comparison. That's the kind of comparison that is hard to see in an unbiased form, though.

OTOH, the risk is to neglect the differences that aren't screenshot-comparable but that are arguably more important.

Apache OpenOffice 4.0 released

Posted Jul 23, 2013 15:33 UTC (Tue) by ssam (guest, #46587) [Link] (3 responses)

I wonder if those test documents are available somewhere.

Compatibility Test Documents

Posted Jul 23, 2013 19:04 UTC (Tue) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link] (1 responses)

At least one of the LibreOffice hackers keeps a record of small test documents showing compatibility improvements in LibreOffice 3.6, 4.0, 4.1:
http://vmiklos.hu/blog/lo-ooxml-improvements.html
http://vmiklos.hu/blog/lo-41-ooxml-improvements.html
It would be nice to see more, maybe something LibreOffice, Abiword, Calligra, etc. can work on together?

Compatibility Test Documents

Posted Jul 23, 2013 19:46 UTC (Tue) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

We've got a huge set of test docs publicly available at http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/tests/calligratests/, as well as a set of documents we test rendering regressions against: http://www.valdyas.org/~boud/documents.tar.

Test documents ...

Posted Jul 23, 2013 21:27 UTC (Tue) by mmeeks (subscriber, #56090) [Link]

We have rather a number of regression test documents, so eg.

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/tree/sw/qa/e...
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/tree/sw/qa/e...

etc. they have matching code to validate that they import correctly, and we're always interested in new unit tests, sadly they're minimal documents & hence not very photogenic. There are a number of other test docs around the code - though we keep our CVE regression tests crypted to avoid various issues so they are not easy to use. I look forward to your write-up.

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 24, 2013 17:08 UTC (Wed) by bobdog1 (guest, #92071) [Link] (28 responses)

Apache claims it's more "interoperable" with OOXML. This is the sort of claim that is technically true but gives readers the wrong impression: it doesn't *write* OOXML at all. LO does that.

So what this claim means is "we don't read OOXML files as hideously badly as we used to, though still not as well as LO does. And we can't write them so you can't just use AOO at work, you'd still have to use LO."

It's unfortunate that most of the tech press has swallowed such a claim whole from a press release. You can make up anything for a press release and get the computer press to run it.

Linux users do not appreciate how terrible AOO is to use - because for years Linux users were really running the Go-OO fork of OOO, which has written OOXML for years, and all those changes went to LO. OOO basic never had them and AOO never got them.

tl;dr AOO doesn't write OOXML, can't slot into your actual office work, LO can.

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 25, 2013 0:49 UTC (Thu) by rcweir (guest, #48888) [Link] (27 responses)

Here what I do. Maybe this approach has not occurred to you before, but I'll put it out for anyone who cares about open standards and open formats.

When I receive a document in OOXML format I load it, make my changes and save it back into a free format like ODF. Remember, Microsoft Office since Office 2007 supports ODF. The more recent versions support it quite well. I *do not* encourage the use of OOXML or other closed formats.

If they are using an older version of Microsoft Office, say Office 2003, then they are not producing OOXML at all. So that is not an issue. But if you want to be absolutely safe, just save as a DOC/XLS/PPT binary format, which is widely compatible with all versions of Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, KOffice, WordPerfect, etc.

It is a little bit disturbing to hear LO fanboys touting the virtues of writing OOXML files, as if this is a good thing. It isn't. Interoperability should be the goal, not promoting Microsoft's file format.

That's my personal opinion on this.

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 25, 2013 2:22 UTC (Thu) by ThinkRob (guest, #64513) [Link] (19 responses)

> It is a little bit disturbing to hear LO fanboys touting the virtues of writing OOXML files, as if this is a good thing. It isn't. Interoperability should be the goal, not promoting Microsoft's file format.

It might disturb you, but I don't think anyone's saying it's a superior option to a free format.

Look, most of us understand the virtues of open and free formats. We'd love to live in a world where Free was the norm for all data in all industries.

Sadly, we don't.

I don't know what your position is at your job, but not everybody has the liberty of converting every document that crosses their desk. For some of us it's a relief just to be able to use LibreOffice, and if we were to constantly send back revisions to others' documents in a different "weird" format we'd likely piss off some of our co-workers. The last thing you want is for people to think of a Free office suite user as "that guy who keeps sending stuff in that wacko format"... right?

So yeah, we don't promote Microsoft's format. But in the world in which we live, Microsoft Office is *the* major player in the office world. And if we want LibreOffice or OpenOffice or whatever to gain traction in said office world, one of the best ways to do that is to ensure that it "plays well with others". That means reading and yes, writing closed formats, since that's what transforms the Free office suites from "geek toy" to "thing that people can actually use for their job."

You -- and the developers of numerous other office suites -- understand this. After all, as you pointed out:

> But if you want to be absolutely safe, just save as a DOC/XLS/PPT binary format, which is widely compatible with all versions of Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, KOffice, WordPerfect, etc.

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 25, 2013 2:34 UTC (Thu) by rcweir (guest, #48888) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm sorry that my prior response was too long to easily read and understand. I'll be shorter this time. Read OOXML and save in Microsoft binary format. This ensures your document can be read nearly everywhere.

Remember, LibreOffice writing OOXML is no less a "conversion" than when it writes DOC. Anything other than the native ODF is done at some loss. But I've seen many cases where writing to DOC comes out better, better fidelity, than DOCX.

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 25, 2013 6:14 UTC (Thu) by bobdog1 (guest, #92071) [Link]

> But I've seen many cases where writing to DOC comes out better, better fidelity, than DOCX.

In AOO or LO? And can you cite examples that people reading your comment could verify?

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 25, 2013 10:38 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link] (16 responses)

>I don't know what your position is at your job, but not everybody has the liberty of converting every document that crosses their desk. For some of us it's a relief just to be able to use LibreOffice, and if we were to constantly send back revisions to others' documents in a different "weird" format we'd likely piss off some of our co-workers. The last thing you want is for people to think of a Free office suite user as "that guy who keeps sending stuff in that wacko format"... right?

His point was that versions of MS Office which can read OOXML can *also* read ODF. Either way there is a conversion step, whether in saving to OOXML from LO or in loading ODF in Word, so in both cases if you need to be absolutely certain how it will render in Word, the only way to know is to open it in Word. Thus, there's no obvious benefit in being able to save in OOXML vs ODF.

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 25, 2013 14:52 UTC (Thu) by ThinkRob (guest, #64513) [Link] (14 responses)

> Thus, there's no obvious benefit in being able to save in OOXML vs ODF.

There is if that's the format that your co-workers and clients have standardized on.

That was my point: not everyone has a job where we get to pick whatever format we want whenever we want. Being able to inter-operate in these cases means that LibreOffice (et al.) can be used in more cases in place of MSO.

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 25, 2013 15:57 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link] (6 responses)

>> Thus, there's no obvious benefit in being able to save in OOXML vs ODF.

> There is if that's the format that your co-workers and clients have standardized on.

Then you'll have to enlighten me - what is the benefit, given that you don't seem to disagree that all of the software that works with OOXML works equally well with ODF?

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 26, 2013 11:07 UTC (Fri) by bobdog1 (guest, #92071) [Link]

I speak from doing this stuff in an office. They want the format they expect and "oh your Word also reads ODF, sort of" does not cut it in practice.

The problem is that users will put up with any rubbish from the thing they're used to, but be RIDICULOUSLY fussy with anything they're not used to.

So if you want to introduce non-MS-Office as a cuckoo, you need to fit in really well and that makes this an important point on which LO delivers and AOO makes excuses.

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 26, 2013 11:47 UTC (Fri) by spaetz (guest, #32870) [Link] (4 responses)

> Then you'll have to enlighten me - what is the benefit, given that you don't seem to disagree that all of the software that works with OOXML works equally well with ODF?

The only problem is, it does not. If I try to open .odf files with my Winword 2010 that I am forced to use at work, I get a "File is corrupt and can´t be read" message box on each and every file I saved with my LibreOffice 3.6. I have then the option to "recover" the document and it will come out fine. However, this is a step I cannot expect the administration of my organization to cope with on all documents they get. And unfortunately forms templates to be filled in are only available in .docx format. I know that THIS is the real crux, but again, somewhat out of my control.

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 26, 2013 20:01 UTC (Fri) by branden (guest, #7029) [Link]

Sounds like:

"File is corrupt and can't be read"

is the new:

"Non-fatal error detected: Error number [varied]. Please contact Windows 3.1 beta support. Press enter to exit or C to continue."

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 29, 2013 11:07 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link] (2 responses)

>The only problem is, it does not. If I try to open .odf files with my Winword 2010 that I am forced to use at work, I get a "File is corrupt and can´t be read" message box on each and every file I saved with my LibreOffice 3.6. I have then the option to "recover" the document and it will come out fine

Oh joy. We (very very) occasionally get an ODF and so far I'm not sure anyone except me has even noticed because Word has always been happy to work with it natively, but you're right - I've just tried it with LO 3.5, and I'm getting the same message.

I wonder if it's a different version of the ODF format, or some other change to LO, or some change to MS Office.

I'm not sure I can even *find* an older ODF document now to try, I see them so rarely.

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 29, 2013 16:49 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't think there is anything really wrong with the files, I think this is just the Microsoft way to scare people about using competing software. It wouldn't be the first time.

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 29, 2013 17:24 UTC (Mon) by rcweir (guest, #48888) [Link]

For what it's worth: ODF files saved by AOO 4.0 load without error in Word 2013. So it sounds like there is a LO-specific issue here.

In general I think the trap that users fall into (and it is embarrassing when engineers do as well) is thinking that file formats are the key to interoperability. They are not. They are merely encoding in a persistent form what your application thinks the document is. 90%+ of the interop issues between applications have zero to do with encoding issues and everything to do with modeling differences. And unfortunately those are the hardest to change.

In all of the apps today, the limiting factor that must be overcome to improve interop is the document model, not the encoding. Anyone who is selling you OOXML as a solution to your problems does not understand the problem.

Think of it this way: after we had the HTML standard, we still had years to go of interop work among browsers, with heavy pushing by the Web Standards Project and others to get vendors to agree on the interpretation. And that was just a single standard (or family of standards). Except for the short lived attempt by Microsoft (and Novell) to push Silverlight/Mono, HTML, and especially HTML5 won out.

So imagine if we had not done that hard interop work, but instead had pushed multiple standards, where would we have ended up? Yup. That's where we are with document formats. Not surprisingly it is again the Novell/Suse/Attachmate guys who were pushing OOXML against the existing open standards. When the rest of the FOSS world was lined up against OOXML they were on the stage with Ecma and Microsoft promoting it.

In any case I hope most readers are smart enough to see through the Microsoft/Suse interop FUD, which focuses on interop and IP protection:

https://www.moreinterop.com/

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 25, 2013 16:01 UTC (Thu) by rcweir (guest, #48888) [Link] (6 responses)

That is begging the question:

Person A) We *must* save in OOXML format

Person B) Why, if it has no additional interop benefit over saving in DOC format?

Persona A) Because we standardized on OOXML format.

Obviously "standardized on" is just restating your original premise in different words.

So once again, why use OOXML? If this is just a pointy headed boss thing then I doubt I can help you much. Companies that standardize on OOXML without a good interoperability reason for it are unlikely to be the kind of companies that roll out open source office suites.

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 26, 2013 16:53 UTC (Fri) by Karellen (subscriber, #67644) [Link] (3 responses)

Yeah, because Microsoft shops who have already standardised on OOXML for their own reasons, *never* want to enter into contracts with other businesses (who happen to use FLOSS) and especially never ever want to insist on OOXML as the document-interchange-format of choice.

Of course, if you're a FLOSS-using company, I'm sure you can take the hit of them passing you over to work with one of your competitors that won't give them grief over that. ("What do you mean, they're saying *Word Documents* are a sticking point? What else are they going to be pains in the ass about? No, go with that other bidder instead.") Wow. It must be nice, being able to turn down clients like that.

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 26, 2013 20:11 UTC (Fri) by rcweir (guest, #48888) [Link] (2 responses)

So you are imaging that there are companies that has zero flexibility in what file format they use -- they absolutely must use the least interoperable format out there. But they have the great flexibility in choice of applications, including the purchase a minor open source productivity suite that few have heard of? That is an unusual set of circumstances. I wouldn't say it can never happen. But it doesn't sound like the kind of market segment that would make a good business. All the same, good luck with that.

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 26, 2013 20:29 UTC (Fri) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

Just because a company has PHBs doesn't mean the IT department is run by Mordac and the HR department by Catbert.

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 27, 2013 16:37 UTC (Sat) by Karellen (subscriber, #67644) [Link]

No, the large companies with no flexibility in file format have no flexibility in choice of application software either.

Rather, it is the small companies who wish to do business with these behemoths, the small companies who *internally* have complete freedom of file formats and software, nevertheless have to jump through hoops and march to the large companies' tune in order to do (very lucrative) business with them.

That is why a small FLOSS company would need office software capable of writing OOXML, and why writing in ODF or legacy MS Office formats is not acceptable in some cases. Because they are not an island, and cannot control the requirements of other organisations they might otherwise with to work with.

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 29, 2013 0:09 UTC (Mon) by ThinkRob (guest, #64513) [Link] (1 responses)

> So once again, why use OOXML? If this is just a pointy headed boss thing then I doubt I can help you much. Companies that standardize on OOXML without a good interoperability reason for it are unlikely to be the kind of companies that roll out open source office suites.

You're missing a small but important intersection of that Venn diagram:

Organizations that standardized on Microsoft Office formats for some things but allow some users choice in what software they use provided that they can still do their jobs.

It is this subset of users for whom improved OOXML support is a major plus, as it enables them to use a Free alternative while still doing their job.

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 29, 2013 0:13 UTC (Mon) by ThinkRob (guest, #64513) [Link]

(Replying to myself, yes, but for further clarification:)

In such organizations the "whatever software you want, provided it can do the job" policy is usually official but unsupported. At least where I work, developers can run whatever OS, office suite, editor, etc. they want, provided that it doesn't hinder their ability to get their work done. So yes, we can "use whatever we want", but that freedom ends if we start relying on our IT support staff to support non-standard stuff.

Also understood is that a great way to end the policy would be to demand that everyone else switch formats so as to allow you to use your chosen piece of software.

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 26, 2013 19:36 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

I wonder if saving in format X from office suite A, open in suite B, save as format Y, open in suite A, repeatedly ever converges. That'd be an interesting test case (using ODF and OOXML as the formats and AOO, LibreOffice, and MSOffice as the suites).

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 25, 2013 6:05 UTC (Thu) by bobdog1 (guest, #92071) [Link] (2 responses)

I use it in an actual office to interact with MSO users. LO is up to the task, AOO just is not.

Real offices run on MS-OOXML these days. Saying "why don't you save in this other old format and see if your coworkers don't choke on it" is an excuse for your lacking functionality.

In LO, the DOC, DOCX and RTF filters are all part of the same module, because they're basically the same format serialized different ways. So why can't AOO do that? Because like it says in Wikipedia, AOO is a moribund project - even its sponsor IBM cannot be bothered putting enough programmers on to achieve obviously wanted functionality.

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 25, 2013 10:59 UTC (Thu) by rcweir (guest, #48888) [Link] (1 responses)

You obviously feel strongly about the need for OOXML saving. For example, I've seen you copy & paste the same criticism about AOO 4.0 as comments on at least 5 other articles covering the release of AOO 4.0. I'll save you the effort of having to post multiple separate times by responding to only one of your recent comments here on Lwn.net. Being repetitive is not the same as being persuasive. So why not privilege readers here on Lwn.net with your reasoned comments, rather than just the same tired LO talking points?

Please explain exactly why writing a DOC file is inadequate. As you say, the code is essential part of the same module, so it serializes the same document content with the same features. By default, on Windows, the file extension is hidden to the user. So they cannot easily tell whether they have a DOC or a DOCX file. To them it is merely a Microsoft Word document. And you must acknowledge that more programs understand DOC format (and understand it well) than understand DOCX. So DOC is more interoperable, and works with all versions of MS Office. DOCX does not. You claim that this is a serious interoperability issue. Please explain. From where I sit, saving as a DOCX file introduces the interoperability issue. Saving as DOC file doesn't.

So please tell us exactly how the user suffers specific interoperability problems if they are sent a file that 1) has the same content as the original, 2) is readable by their editor with no extra effort, 3) is indistinguishable to them from a DOCX file since the file extension is hidden from them on Windows, and 4) Can be read by more other programs?

Saying that DOC is "old" isn't really an argument. What is the actual interoperability problem with saving as DOC?

As for adding more OOXML support, if this became something that many users asking for we'd just take the LO code written for the OSBA and merge that in. The OSBA contract required it to be provided under the Apache License, as you know. It is a matter of priorities. Personally, I think improvements in OOXML reading support (and improvements in DOC reading/writing support, of which we made many in AOO 4.0) give the most bang for the buck.

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 25, 2013 11:03 UTC (Thu) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

Last time I looked, Windows XP SP3 visibly distinguishes between "Microsoft Word 97-2003 Document" and "Microsoft Word Document".

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 25, 2013 6:12 UTC (Thu) by bobdog1 (guest, #92071) [Link] (3 responses)

And yes, it would be excellent if the world ran on ODF instead of OOXML. Unfortunately it doesn't.

Your comment seems to be saying "the world is wrong, you want a wrong thing, so we're not going to add this obvious INTEROPERABILITY feature". This is not an adequate response when your competition already does the job!

It comes across as an excuse: you know IBM hasn't put enough coders on the job to do the obvious competitive thing.

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 25, 2013 10:47 UTC (Thu) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (1 responses)

Enough, already?

If AOO really is moribund, the above amounts to beating a dead horse. If it's not, then the above amounts to kicking it when it's down. Either way, people are working hard to improve their corner of the Free Software world, and they don't deserve beating. Isn't there any proprietary software to criticize?

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 26, 2013 9:47 UTC (Fri) by sdalley (subscriber, #18550) [Link]

Well said!

MSO "interoperability"

Posted Jul 25, 2013 22:31 UTC (Thu) by jensend (guest, #1385) [Link]

For once I'm agreeing with rcweir.

OOXML write support is OK to put on a features checklist. The XML formats have some advantages over the binary ones (e.g. average file size). And there are a few newer MS Office features (most of them fairly obscure) that are only supported with the XML file formats.

But IIRC neither LO nor AOO do a great job of dealing with the OOXML-only features anyways. Unless there are significant document features which LO's OOXML write capabilities allow it to preserve but which would be lost or degraded on DOC etc export, there's no real interoperability advantage.

Someday there may be such an advantage. But at this stage it doesn't really make sense to attack AOO for its lack of OOXML write, and it's definitely absurd to imply, simply because they lack OOXML write, that the AOO folks are being *dishonest* when they advertise improved interoperability.

I have little patience when I see AOO folks picking apart LO's announcements of progress looking for some silly way to be critical and dismissive. Such behavior is no better going the other direction.

Apache OpenOffice 4.0 released

Posted Jul 25, 2013 12:43 UTC (Thu) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link] (1 responses)

http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2013/07/25/libreoffice...

Was the timing intentional?

Apache OpenOffice 4.0 released

Posted Jul 25, 2013 17:02 UTC (Thu) by shmget (guest, #58347) [Link]

LibreOffice release date are planned way in advance...
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleasePlan

in fact it has been in the wiki since Dec,12 2012. iow 7 months ago

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/index.php?title=Relea...

Apache OpenOffice 4.0 released

Posted Jul 27, 2013 8:32 UTC (Sat) by maxiaojun (guest, #91482) [Link] (4 responses)

What, someone says an average Windows user cannot tell DOC and DOCX?

What a blatant lie. Haven't you seen [Compatibility Mode] in the title bar?

Apache OpenOffice 4.0 released

Posted Jul 27, 2013 9:03 UTC (Sat) by maxiaojun (guest, #91482) [Link]

BTW. Maybe there isn't a notable app out there that accepts OOXML only. But it should be trivial to create one, for example, one can use Open XML SDK for JavaScript [1] .

1. https://openxmlsdkjs.codeplex.com/

Apache OpenOffice 4.0 released

Posted Jul 29, 2013 11:13 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link] (2 responses)

>What, someone says an average Windows user cannot tell DOC and DOCX?

> What a blatant lie. Haven't you seen [Compatibility Mode] in the title bar?

The average user would never notice details like that. I know it sounds like I'm being flippant and demeaning, but it's *true*. This is why notifications involve big flashing colours in the taskbar, which most people *still* don't see.

But regardless, for whatever reason, MS Word 2010 shows [Compatibility Mode] in the title bar even when opening a .docx created in LO (3.5 at least) - I just checked.

Apache OpenOffice 4.0 released

Posted Jul 29, 2013 13:42 UTC (Mon) by maxiaojun (guest, #91482) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't know how much evidence you can provide for your claim about average user.

Anyway, shouldn't any users' choice between DOC and DOCX be respected, no matter how savvy they are? Should AOO prodigies have more say in this selection?

As of LibreOffice, which ".docx" have you selected, "Microsoft Word 2007/2010 XML" or "Office Open XML Text"?

Apache OpenOffice 4.0 released

Posted Jul 29, 2013 17:43 UTC (Mon) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

> I don't know how much evidence you can provide for your claim about average user.

Given the research about how many users don't even really notice security notices and the like anymore, it wouldn't be a far stretch to say they don't notice window titles (though alt+tab shows it more prominently, so there's a chance it's noticed because of that). An interesting experiment would be to push "[Malicious Content]" in the titlebar and see how many notice it.