LWN: Comments on "OpenOffice.org 2.4 released"

OpenOffice.org 2.4 released

higuita — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 23:00:19 +0000

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

5 seconds? You are sooo lucky!

khim — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 08:56:45 +0000

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).

Hiligaynon support?

coriordan — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 19:00:57 +0000

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.

OpenOffice.org 2.4 released

Kluge — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:19:55 +0000

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.

Hiligaynon support?

krp — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 15:46:22 +0000

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

OpenOffice.org 2.4 released

csawtell — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 11:16:00 +0000

Scribus or Kpresenter

JRE seems mandatory??

JoeBuck — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:59:57 +0000

But if also have a company agenda to push Java everywhere ...

Positivity

Max.Hyre — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:43:01 +0000

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.)

Positivity

jkowing — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:54:44 +0000

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.

OpenOffice.org 2.4 released

beoba — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:54:23 +0000

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.

Hiligaynon support?

MKesper — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:38:32 +0000

Sorry, my spanish isn't as good as it used to be! ;)

Hiligaynon support?

coriordan — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 09:40:44 +0000

Waw, nami, may Hiligaynon na gali.  Hi-tech na!

Masadya ako :-)

Positivity

graydon — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 03:50:06 +0000

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.

OpenOffice.org 2.4 released

allesfresser — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:29:40 +0000

Sorry, that was meant to be "2.2.3", not "2.3".

Presentations - Using HTML w/JavaScript

vmole — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:17:30 +0000

Even cooler, there's an ReST to S5 converter, so you can write restructured text and generate an S5 slideshow from it. See this page. The converter is now part of Python docutils.

Positivity

wrh2 — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:15:21 +0000

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.

OpenOffice.org 2.4 released

allesfresser — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 19:59:50 +0000

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.

No OpenType?

nim-nim — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 19:14:52 +0000

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)

Funny product review

pr1268 — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:57:42 +0000

LOL - your "product review" of NeoOffice is classic!

OpenOffice.org 2.4 released

cpeterso — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:34:34 +0000

That's why I keep trying OpenOffice's Mac releases... because I *do* use NeoOffice. :(

OpenOffice.org 2.4 released

beoba — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:29:13 +0000

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.

Presentations - Using HTML w/JavaScript

Per_Bothner — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:26:39 +0000

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

cpeterso — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:17:57 +0000

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

jordip — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:50:17 +0000


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.

JRE seems mandatory??

elanthis — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:07:50 +0000

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??

renox — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:03:18 +0000

>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??

paragw — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:31:11 +0000

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...

No OpenType?

vladimir — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:06:22 +0000

> 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??

proski — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:47:51 +0000

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??

tetromino — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:08:36 +0000

A significant portion of OOo is written in Java. Most of the import/export filters, for
example.

JRE seems mandatory??

pr1268 — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:47:10 +0000

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??

paragw — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:31:03 +0000

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.

OpenOffice.org 2.4 released

sumek — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:54:05 +0000

OpenType support is planned for 3.0

No OpenType?

vladimir — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:49:08 +0000

I didn't see any mention of OpenType support ... unfortunately.