Submitted by After three years of development, OOo 3.0 is finally here with a bunch of new features and enhancements. Linux Format looks at the changes and rates the suite’s overall performance, and you can try it yourself by downloading a copy from here.
After three years of development, OOo 3.0 is finally here with a bunch of new features and enhancements. Linux Format looks at the changes and rates the suite’s overall performance, and you can try it yourself by downloading a copy from here.
Now that the new features are complete is the OpenOffice team planning on making and changes to the User Interface?
the UI in OO isn’t the easiest to use by any means. I don’t think they should make it look like Office 2007 as that’s pretty confusing itself, but if they could get it up on par with how Office 2003 is it would make it a lot easier to get Joe Six Pack to use it.
Open office UI is a clone of MS Office in 90% of use
People like what is familiar…
How do you want the UI to behave differently? You said NOT like MS office 2007?
Its often easy to say ‘I want the the UI to be improved’ but how SPECIFICALLY do you want it changed? Have you submitted this request to OOo? If you dont tell them, you cant expect them to make the change
How do you want the UI to behave differently? You said NOT like MS office 2007?
Like for example to add new colors or gradients to the available selections, you have to close the selection dialog and goto Format->Area…Colors, Add. Sure, it’s easy enough to do, but for the first several weeks I thought that OpenOffice didn’t allow custom colors or gradients.
And I remember my boss had a weird habit of starting formulas on spreadsheets with the + sign instead of the = sign. It worked in MS Office, but not in OOo, and he would put his fist through the screen when it didn’t work.
Oh well, live and learn.
i think majority of people have not migrated to ms office 2007…
Maybe not majority but a lot more than I would’ve had expected.
People are now buying the Home and Student edition with new computers at Best Buy and I can’t blame them.
For $150 they get their office software needs taken care of.
and you think people can throw money everywhere like that…? wake up
I hope they let us turn off the stupid context sensitive toolbars now.
The toolbars pop up and move the whole page down and it jumps.
It’s really stupid.
And no, you can’t fix that with custom toolbars.
And the blurry fonts if you enable bytecode rendering on Linux, was also a major blunder.
Those two basically made using Oo very unpleasant.
Been using the beta, now its time to install the real thing
OOo is now (to me) a suitable replacement for microsoft office
I say this for 2 reasons
1) I can now happily recommend it to non IT friends over office 2007 KNOWING they will find it easier to use
2) My boss has now let us choose what we use
(although due to an exchange server, migration away from office isnt anywhere near 100% yet and wont be anytime soon for emails)
Does anyone know how it complies with VisualBasic? I use OpenOffice.org all the time, but people who write VisualBasic macros in their Excel worksheets end up sending me things I can’t use. Sometimes I can’t use it even on the Macintosh version of Microsoft Office.
I use ‘simple’ vb macros and it has worked fine with them. I’m not an accountant/banker (although few are this week than last :-p)so cannot speak on heavily complex systems. For my needs, it works without issue
http://go-oo.org/ is supposed to have better VB compatibility. Never tried it myself.
If you find that the OpenOffice.org is down, get the release at a mirror site. E.g.:
http://ftp-stud.hs-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/ftp.openoffice.org/stab…
Thanks for the mirror.
I noticed that the entire OpenOffice site seems to be down. They must’ve been pretty underprepared for the onslaught of downloads.
It would be nice to have a ribbon interface option (but keep a classic interface option too).
I disagree.
ooo must continue its own line instead of follow the MSOffice steps… IMHO, I do not consider the ribbon interface useful or better than a well conceived system of classical menus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_(computing)#Patent_controversy
Microsoft won’t let OpenOffice use the ribbon interface concept without a legal fight.
Simply not worth it from OpenOffice point of view, I would have thought.
Still to slow to start, still to memory hungry.
Edited 2008-10-13 13:37 UTC
Not here. It took 5 seconds for the initial start (to get to the registration screens, etc., and 1 second thereafter. Much faster even than 2.4.1.
I’m running Vector Linux 5.9 on a Mobile AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3300+ (32 bit OS) with 1GB RAM. I used the SlackBuild version for Slackware 12.1.
For it to have started that quickly:
You had to have almost everything already in disk cache. Perhaps you had loaded it earlier?
Perhaps Slackware includes the open office quick starter preload program?
Or possibly your Slackware doesn’t include Java support, in which case you cannot use macros.
On my Fedora 9, Athlon XP 2000 with 512 MB RAM and a pair of RAID-0 15k SCSI drives it takes 15 seconds from cold start.
Not really. Just disable Java and it will load twice as fast.
Afaik, java is not launched immediately in OO.org. except if you run the database module or if you have a java realted plugin.
also, if you install the Java 6 update 10 release candidate, it (java) starts up very very fast.
Care to share -numbers- (as opposed to spreading FUD?)
*Cold* start, 2 x Xeon E5335, 8GB, 3 x 320GB in RAID5, Fedora 9/x86_64.
$ time oowriter
real 0m4.652s
user 0m0.157s
sys 0m0.146s
– Gilboa
I love the Office 2007 UI. I don’t know why people hate on it so much because I like the Ribbon interface. I can understand why people don’t like it but to me it is an improvement over the old UI.
I like it to, it’s so much easier to work than the old menu driven interface. The reason why people hate is simple – Microsoft made it. If OO.org would present similar approach to interface before MS than everybody would praise it and comment how innovative and cool it is.
It is not so much that Microsoft made it is the problem, but rather that without fail Microsoft try to use things like this to eliminate competitors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_(computing)#Patent_controversy
If Microsoft were to listen to their own argument that they used in the copyright lawsuit between Apple Inc. (formerly Apple Computer, Inc.) and Microsoft Corporation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corp…
… and apply that same reasoning now to the concept of the ribbon interface, and hence just simply allow anyone who wanted to freely use the concept, then there would be no problem with the ribbon interface.
The ribbon UI looks great but after the good look, I do not find it quite usable for several reasons:
1. The people used to know the old menu and the functionality it provided. When Office 2007 was released, everybody had to learn where everything was relocated.
2. The excuse: “everything is contextual and organizated by functionality” is due to the bad organization in the pre-2007 Office menu… the menus should contain everything organizated by functionality too!
3. All applications have File | Edit | View options and everybody knows where their things are and what’s their functionality. I do not see why removing such very standard menus to other places.
4. They also replace the hot keys to new ones! That’s unforgiven!!
Edited 2008-10-13 16:36 UTC
All those reasons boil down to “I don’t like it cause its different”.
In all honesty, that is a valid response. If you take the time to gain a level of competence with things one way, of course you will not be as comfortable with something designed completely differently. The question that comes next is is there enough benefit to the different way to make it worth learning? I have yet to meet a single person who has taken the time to learn 2k7 that does not absolutely love it. Im not the biggest office user personally, but I really hope MS extends the ribbon ui to their other products that have an insanely complex toolbar/menu system (like studio).
Well if you’re taking opinions you can count me as one of the few who hate the ribbon UI, at least as it’s currently implemented. They could have done better by simplifying the menu structure rather than doing a complete overhall, but that’s just my opinion of course. What most people love is what I actually hate, the context-sensitive nature of it. I don’t like when my options move around on me, I guess I just find it more annoying than helpful.
I like to test it.
The need definitly bigger servers, I can’t load the website, seems a lot of people like to test it =)
I’ve been using OpenOffice (draw) for the last month or so together with a plugin to enable the ability to edit PDF files, this allows me to
* create my own pdf’s within openoffice
* edit them later
for FREE !
and it works really really well
more details about it here _(for Windows) > http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=510
and here (for linux) http://www.linux-noob.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3594
I’ve had no problems with the beta release at all so i’m very confident the final release will be fantastic,
well done to the OO team !
Edited 2008-10-13 14:33 UTC
I’d like to use OpenOffice. Unfortunately, documents I get look different in Office and OpenOffice. I suppose documents I write in OpenOffice will look different if opened with Office.
I’m not in the mood for gambling with my grades
That’s what pdf export is for. Unless you are working on something collaborativly, there is no real reason to send office files. Export to pdf and you can be sure everything looks they way you want it.
Of course if several people are collaborating on the same document then it’s important that they’re all using the same version of the same software, but this is true no matter what program you are talking about.
If it’s a course about learning to use MS Office then of course you should be using MS Office. If it’s a course where the layout of your final piece of work is critical to your grade, you should be using proper layout software. Other than that I can’t think why OpenOffice should affect your grade.
“Send me an (editable) file that looks right when opened with Office 2003” is the only real requirement…
Usability glitches or startup times are secondary to me. As I said, 100% compatibility is the only *must have* for OpenOffice.
It’s an MS world, gotta live with it somehow.
Edited 2008-10-13 15:54 UTC
You said that using OO.o would be “gambling with your grades”:
That’s spreading “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt” in my book. And when confronted you quickly changed the subject.
If it is that critical that the document look *exactly* as you want it, you should be using a format like PDF. MS Office documents don’t print out or view exactly the same even between different versions of MS Office. Why gamble on your grades by using it?
Edited 2008-10-13 16:15 UTC
I think you might have forgotten what it’s like to be in school. If the instructor wants a doc file, you do not send a pdf. If something like spacing, margins, or anything else is off they’re probably not going to cut you slack for using openoffice or accept that different word processors are going to produce different results. Especially when you’re the only one in class who seems to have trouble with it. Now, I ‘was’ able to do all my papers in openoffice. But I can see why someone might be nervous about it.
I know exactly what you feel. In some situations, having 90% compatibility is almost just as bad as having 0% compatibility. IMHO, one has to live with the fact that sometimes you just can’t use the tools you prefer. If you try to make do with bad compatibility you end up hating the not-quite-compatible FOSS application, when it may be a great tool on its own if you remove the strict format compatibility requirement. It’s a good thing to raise awareness about alternatives, but you have to keep your marks and then your job.
I most appreciate OO’s compatibility with MS Office when importing documents, but AFAIK, completely seamless interaction between the two office suites is just not possible at the moment.
It would of course be possible if Microsoft would implement OpenDocument 1.2 correctly and fully, or if they would publish full and correct specifications of their trade secret legacy binary formats.
Since Microsoft do neither of those things, and since OpenOffice offers you far, far better compatibility than Office 2007 does, you are of course better off (from the compatibility viewpoint) using OpenOffice and not Microsoft Office.
Yep I got bit by that one, funny thing is I was using Office 2003 at the time and they were using Office XP (no I didn’t *want* to use 2003 but that was what they had on some of the systems at the time). Different versions of office don’t always treat their own files the same, so that’s an issue bigger than simply Openoffice’s word compatibility. And don’t even get me started on opening Office 2000-created files in 2007, that can be worse than OO in some cases, much worse. Same for office on the PC vs on the Mac, it can be a nightmare.
The thing is, even with a so-called standard document format, people have different ideas of what some of the features mean and how they behave. So I’m not sure we’ll ever have 100% compatibility across office suites even with the same file formats. And then there’s those that ignore the standard or deliberately use it differently to “add features.”
Perhaps things have changed. When I was in school we used a lot of dtf files and content was more important than file format.
“Perhaps things have changed. When I was in school we used a lot of dtf files and content was more important than file format.”
Things have changed for school. Unfortunately they have also changed on the outside. When applying for a job, 95% of all companies/agencies want your resume emailed to them in MS Word Format. Sending them a PDF file is as good as never getting called for an interview. Ridiculous yes, however it is reality, at least here in the US. So in reality these day, sadly, format is more important than content to business.
Why on earth would it be a problem to send your resume to a prospective employer as a MS Word Format document created by OpenOffice?
However annoying it might be, this is NOT a reason to use Microsoft Office over OpenOffice.
In fact, if you use Office 2007, and your prospective employer uses an older version of Office, then you are very likely to have a better result if you prepare your resume with OpenOffice than if you had prepared it using Office 2007 and saved it in “compatibility mode”.
OpenOffce offers better compatibility that Office 2007 does.
This is actually an argument to use OpenOffice, not Microsoft Office 2007.
“Why on earth would it be a problem to send your resume to a prospective employer as a MS Word Format document created by OpenOffice?
However annoying it might be, this is NOT a reason to use Microsoft Office over OpenOffice.”
The only reason would be that formatting is handled differently. I never said to use one over the other, I use both. Depends on what is being asked for and what the requirements are. The fact is, depending on the formatting choices you make in OO.o, the document, although saved in .doc format, will look totally different when opened in MS Office.
“In fact, if you use Office 2007, and your prospective employer uses an older version of Office, then you are very likely to have a better result if you prepare your resume with OpenOffice than if you had prepared it using Office 2007 and saved it in “compatibility mode”.”
I have not found this to be true. I imagine if you carefully formatted a document in OO.o, then yes, that would work.
I am not the enemy here, just pointing out my observations. I have pushed OO.o at my employment, however it has yet to go anywhere. Sales and Marketing teams have a huge say in the tools that are used. I got them to try OO.o, and it actually worked better in some respects. Where it failed them was in presentations and designing newsletters and such. Is this the right tool for that? Maybe not..but yet it is what is in use in most companies. If it were up to me, I would deploy OO.o. Unfortunately, it is not, as IT folks get very little say in what software is run on the end user desktops like it or not.
By IT folk, I assume you mean field staff? Since applications support tend to be part of any IT staff and this group, or desktop support, are the group that evaluates and tests perspective applications and make recommendations to the IT decision makers who then budget the costs for the budget year they want to make the purchase. Seems to be that it is IT all the way.
“By IT folk, I assume you mean field staff? Since applications support tend to be part of any IT staff and this group, or desktop support, are the group that evaluates and tests perspective applications and make recommendations to the IT decision makers who then budget the costs for the budget year they want to make the purchase. Seems to be that it is IT all the way.”
Well, in the last 12 years the companies I have worked for it is all one in the same. Though they have been small companies with only about 500 employees or so. In those places there were 2 of us sysadmins, who did all the helpdesk as well as software and application support in addition to maintaining the servers. The “IT decision makers” consist of the CEO and the Sales/Marketing group. I would say 75% of the time we are just told to support what they want, no matter what other tools are out there, and regardless of the IT staff recommendations based on the actual need. In large companies it may work as you suggest, where I have been there is no “field staff”, as all the responsibilities belong to 2 people.
wow… you have been very under staffed.
I work for a nearly 10,000+ worker strong health care system consisting of 4 hospitals and dozens of clinics and labs and school outreach programs spread over an entire metropolitan county, so, I can see how our situations are different
still… CEO and marketing should not be making software decisions.
“wow… you have been very under staffed.
I work for a nearly 10,000+ worker strong health care system consisting of 4 hospitals and dozens of clinics and labs and school outreach programs spread over an entire metropolitan county, so, I can see how our situations are different
still… CEO and marketing should not be making software decisions.”
I can see the difference as well
I agree with that, as it should be IT that is trusted to make the right informed decision on which software should be used, based on the needs of the company.
IT should have input in the process and their concerns should be take seriously, but they shouldn’t make the decision on their own. The people who have to use the software and who will be affected by the decisions must be allowed to have the final say. I’ve worked as a sysadmin for many years and I’ve learned that consulting with users always beats dictating to users in the long run. I don’t care how good a sysadmin or IT manager you think you are, if you haven’t done a job you cannot know all the needs and requirements or that job.
“I don’t care how good a sysadmin or IT manager you think you are, if you haven’t done a job you cannot know all the needs and requirements or that job.”
Absolutely. Needs of the company encompasses the needs of the users. Meaning the users tell you what they need, and you need to make sure to provide that functionality.
I think the best approach is the one that our company takes. The internal customer states a need, and we go out and find the best solutions from the mess that is out there. We then evaluate and test the ones we deem acceptable to make sure they work with our systems, and then we present the findings to the internal customer for them to evaluate which is best for their use.
They trust that we will find the best options for them, but we do not make the final choice.
To get back to the original issue, He was complaining about how IT is forced to support the whims of the CEO and marketing no matter what their whim may mean for the internal IT infrastructure. This is unacceptable behavior. The job of a CEO is to give direction, the job of the COO is to figure out the best tactics to get there and the job of the CIO/CTO is to figure out which tools will best help the company get there.
Edited 2008-10-16 23:46 UTC
Funny thing is, a friend of mine has a small company that specializes in writing FOSS software on-demand (Yes, it’s possible to earn a living that way if you are good at it). He once told me that resumes sent to them in “.doc” format go directly to the trash. Ahh, sweet revenge
“Funny thing is, a friend of mine has a small company that specializes in writing FOSS software on-demand (Yes, it’s possible to earn a living that way if you are good at it). He once told me that resumes sent to them in “.doc” format go directly to the trash. Ahh, sweet revenge
“
Actually it shouldn’t matter what format the resume is in, that is the whole point. I realize there are plenty of people that are “FOSS or die”, and many that are “MS or die”. I prefer “Whatever is best for the job or die”.
Unfortunately there are too many fanatics on both sides of the fence.
Or perhaps it has nothing to do with FOSS vs. MS but the fact that a resume or CV should be in PDF so that you KNOW the formatting is correct on the other end.
I might hope that any resume sent in a .odt format would be treated the same.
“Or perhaps it has nothing to do with FOSS vs. MS but the fact that a resume or CV should be in PDF so that you KNOW the formatting is correct on the other end.
I might hope that any resume sent in a .odt format would be treated the same”
I agree completely.
Like it or not, licensing matters. Proprietary formats are a trap, and IMO they should be avoided like a pest whenever possible. Sorry but I don’t buy the “can’t we all just get along while I sue you?”.
But the above is beside the point.If someone sends a resume to a (conspicuously!) FOSS-centered company in a format that brings so many headaches to FOSS developers, this person is either blissfully ignorant of FOSS, not very interested in the job or plain rude, and their resume belongs in the trash. It’s just the first filter.
yes, if layout is important (especially math intensive papers) do yourself and favor and take the opportunity to learn LaTeX.
After switching from MS Office to LaTeX for my Mathematics work, my productivity increased 10 fold.
I’ve published 17 books with it. Works great on my Mac and now on Linux as well now that I discovered WineFish (previously I used Kile and had trouble when I changed font size, the combo box would stick and so it was a pain to use).
on OS X I always used TexShop. I added bibtex when I wrote my Paper for my Senior Seminar class (man does bibtex make it super easy to deal with references in a paper, no matter how long git is).
Now on windows I use texnicenter. it has all available documentation built in (the stuff I used while on the mac) and the IDE environment is very good.
I played with Kile and loved it as well. never tried your app before.
Winefish is based on Blushfish the html editor and should be available in your Linux distributions repositories. It is for Ubuntu. I use TeXShop on the Mac as well. I have never tried LaTeX on Windows. I thought of trying an XML document authoring solution like TEI or Docbook since my area of academics is the humanities, but I LaTeX is so much more efficient, so much simpler, so much more support, it is many good free editors on the Mac and Linux, and I can convert it into almost any format I want to and it keeps most the structure and formatting. And the text looks great when I get the books back. And LaTeX availability is so widespread – they even have one for RISC OS as well. I self-publish with Lulu and I never had a problem with formatting using LaTeX. I also make great PDF/A-1a’s with tagging via OpenOffice.org for another version of my texts. I get it into OpenOffice.org via latex2rtf and it even preserves structure that way. I even embedded Flash Paper versions of my texts in a PDF just with LaTeX and it works in Adobe Reader.
XML based layout can get very complex and is not suited to everything. Next time you are on windows, install MiKTeX and get a copy of Texniccenter http://www.toolscenter.org
Edited 2008-10-15 01:33 UTC
I agree with you in principle, and as a mathematician I use LaTeX a lot. However I find doing layout in LaTeX painful. LaTeX has a default behavior of “f–k you, I know best” when it comes to layout. If you’re the sort of person who doesn’t care too much where your graph ends up then that’s fine, but if you want a graph to appear where you want it in the text then prepare for a fight. Overriding LaTeX’s default behavior isn’t always as easy it could/should be
All that being said, once you manage to beat LaTeX into submission (or LaTeX has beaten you into submission) the output is excelent and I’ve yet to find anything I’d even consider replacing it with.
I use LaTeX for long documents/books that are mostly text. I wouldn’t use it for a picture books though. I made my picture books with Scribus.
Since OpenOffice is the more compatible of the two (in that it will open .docx files whereas Office 2007 will not open .odt files, etc), and since OpenOffice will produce PDF files which look the same when viewed on any computer (indeed, that very function is the entire purpose of “Portable Document Format” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_Format ) … then by your own stated policy you should of course use OpenOffice and not office 2007.
3.0 STILL lacks proper support for OpenType fonts, which has now been pushed back to 3.1 or 3.2. Luckily, I have a nice selection of Type 1s from long ago, but for someone just getting started with building a font library, this could be a real PITA…
The practical side of me asks why font library builders weren’t sent off in the ‘B’ Ark.
Edited 2008-10-13 15:23 UTC
You’re thinking of “font hoarders” who just “acquire” thousands of fonts which they then proceed to never use. Somebody who actually builds a font library goes out and carefully chooses a smaller set of really nice typefaces for different uses, then actually USES them.
While you really don’t need to do this when it comes to commercial office software (MS Office comes with a number of superb faces from Monotype, while WP Office comes with a nice selection of nice Bitstream faces), you really DO need to “roll your own” library with OpenOffice.
Edited 2008-10-13 16:25 UTC
Yes, but then all the good font library builders would be wiped out by a particularly nasty virus picked up from an unsanitised telephone.
Still with an update system so bad, most regular users will never even get it installed. Man, how many OOo 2.1 installs I’ve come across because the update mechanism is as good as useless.
As a large and steadily increasing attack vector, it’s about time office suites had a Firefox / Sparkle style update mechanism. MS Office kind of does it if you use Microsoft Update to include Office checks in Windows Update, but it’s still not prompt enough and too naggy.
I was excited to read that this was released today. I downloaded a Windows version and Mac version to have for distribution at my company. I was excited to install the Mac version with native Aqua support. Very nice integration with the OS. Great job OpenOffice.org!!! One noticeable problem….out of the box….it is SLLLLOOOOWWWW! By default the Java Runtime is enabled in the preferences. I disabled it and it works MUCH better. It’s still fairly slow on my black Macbook w/ 1GB RAM and OS 10.4.11. Has anyone else noticed this speed issue?
From Terminal.app $java -version
Java Version 1.5.0_07
WOW,
I always prefer iWork because OO is annoyingly slow.
I disable java and the memory drop from 78mo (rsize) to 3mo, and from 1.13go (vsize) to 510mo. It also seems snappier.
What is the drawback?
I use use Pages for any documents with graphics – I don’t know how OpenOffice.org 3 does on graphics, but I have not been happy with previous versions.
Why is there no Mac PPC release? Will there ever be? Or will we be ignored?
Edited 2008-10-13 16:43 UTC
I am waiting for the PPC versions as well. On the download pages, if you choose other versions and languages they have it for a couple non-English language versions.
When I follow the link OS News gave in the article I get the following
“ERROR
The requested URL could not be retrieved
While trying to retrieve the URL: http://download.openoffice.org/
The following error was encountered:
* Access Denied.
Access control configuration prevents your request from being allowed at this time. Please contact your service provider if you feel this is incorrect.
Your cache administrator is root.
Generated Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:48:39 GMT by cache5.sjc.collab.net (squid/2.5.STABLE3)”
No, isn’t a bad link. Your network administrator that is blocking you from access download.openoffice.org.
Did you notice the “Access Denied” message?
Edited 2008-10-13 17:26 UTC
or it could be that the site has taken a hammering and they have quickly altered the front page to minimise the impact on the web site.
I do not have a network. I am directly connected to the internet from one machine and I did not set it up to block anything. Unless Comcast hates OpenOffice.org, and came up with a detailed message about it and is faking its identity as the hosting provider of OpenOffice.org, then it is OpenOffice.org host that is down.
the message from squid is actually coming from “collab.net”, which is the owner of the oo.o IP.
PING http://www.openoffice.org (64.125.134.147) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from lemonlime.sfo.collab.net
Edited 2008-10-13 21:18 UTC
So far Ooo have implemented a lot of useful features already existing in M~A`^A§ office. Multiple screens notes. Etc. However it took a long time to do so. especially considering how long they have been available in M~A`^A§. I must admit that I would like to know how Ooo handles notes/comments I’m a proof-reader (english is not my native/work language). And I need to know if it handles things exactly the same way. I would also like the ability to write to docx. Even if Ooo do have all the features I’ve missed I think I’ll with with the upgrade untill 3.0.1 in december.
Compare apples with apples. Did you realise that the inverse situation is worse? With Office 2007, not only do you not get the ability to write OpenOffice format (Opendocument) .. but you do not even get the ability to read OpenOffice format files.
At least with OpenOffice, you get the ability to read .docx files.
With OpenOffice, you also get the ability to produce and import PDF files.
Also, with OpenOffice, the support for reading and writing files compatible with Microsoft legacy formats is arguably better than the support for this same ability in Office 2007.
both odf and pdf support were added in office 2k7 sp2
Its out already?
How well does it work with OpenDocument? Can it support the full feature set of OpenDocument? Can it interoperate with OpenDocument 1.2 or is it constrained to OpenDocument 1.0? Does it pass the OpenDocument compatibility test suite?
Given MS Office 2007 poor interoperability with earlier versions of MS Office, I wouldn’t expect much of the interoperability with OpenDocument … but I may be surprised.
Is there are review of this published anywhere? I hadn’t even realised it was released.
“Given MS Office 2007 poor interoperability with earlier versions of MS Office, I wouldn’t expect much of the interoperability with OpenDocument … but I may be surprised.”
You have mentioned this earlier on. Please expand on the so-called poor interoperability of Office 2007 with earlier versions of MS office? It seems to work great with users of Office 2000 and 2003. If you are going back to Office 97, then maybe.
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/msoffice/?p=135
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/943449.htm…
http://www.bris.ac.uk/is/office2007/compatibility/2007-users.html
http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/Excel/microsoft.public.excel.se…
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/31785528/excel-2007-colo…
http://www.vistax64.com/vista-hardware-devices/75163-compatibility-…
http://www.techtalkz.com/microsoft-office-word/482673-word-2003-200…
http://www.technologyquestions.com/technology/microsoft-office/6380…
http://www.infopathdev.com/forums/p/8963/32618.aspx
… it wasn’t all that hard to find, really …
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=Office+2007+%22compatib…
38,000 hits.
“… it wasn’t all that hard to find, really … “
Funny…as I have not run into any of those. What were your experiences? Oh wait..you wouldn’t know as MS is not OSS.
Seriously, it is a huge issue. When Office 2007 was first released, there were many, many mainstream articles about how broken Office 2007’s “compatibility mode” actually was. Office 2007 had a very poor uptake rate, due in large part to this very issue.
Where have you been while all this has been happening?
“Where have you been while all this has been happening?”
Happily managing a mixed environment of *nix and windows servers/desktops. The environment also used and uses Office 2003 and 2007 happily. Being a sysadmin, the software was all experimented with well before it was even released with access to the betas, so Office 2007 was configured and deployed to save to the older formats. Basically, I did my job so all those “issues” were not issues. As well I was attempting to push OO.o for use at the same place to get away from the cost of upgrading, however at the time there were still way too many compatibility issues with document formatting, and especially with Impress in handling embedded video’s, audio, etc. With any luck OOo 3 has corrected that and I can begin to sell it to management.
I’ve been without Java on my personal box for over 5 years now. Guess what baggage OO3 installs. Java 1.6
Meanwhile, every paid for Office suite I purchase goes bankrupt (Gobe RIP).
Linux Format:
AFAIK, that is not quite correct. OpenOffice 3.0 does not support reading OOXML format files.
OpenOffice 3.0 can read .docx, .xlsx and .pptx files, (which is the default save formats for Office 2007), but not OOXML files.
There is no product at all that can even write (let alone read) OOXML files … ISO hasn’t even released the specification yet.
http://www.sun.com/software/star/odf_plugin/
The Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office gives users of Microsoft Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint the ability to read, edit and save to the ISO-standard Open Document Format (ODF).
The Sun ODF Plugin uses the same incomplete “understanding” of Microsoft Office internal formats as OpenOffice itself does.
As a matter of fact … it even uses much of the same codebase. OpenOffice is Sun’s product, after all.
You are probably much better off installing OpenOffice itself, and hence get yourself the real thing as far as interoperability with OpenDocument is concerned.
You will end up with a great alternative Office suite as a bonus!
Edited 2008-10-14 05:36 UTC
I think you missed the point… These are OO plugins to manipulate odf documents using MS Office software.
I think you missed the point. You are better off running the real OpenOffice product to manipulate odf documents, and to use effectively the same code as those Sun plugins “in reverse” in the form of OpenOffice’s support for Microsoft legacy binary formats.
This way you can avoid using MS Office software altogether. Escape the MS lock-in.
Better for interoperability, better for standards complaince, better in terms of being able to archive your documents for long-term storage (because you can use OpenDocument as your archival format, rather than the horrible depends-on-one-supplier and already-superceded-by-ISO-OOXML Office 2007 format). Much better for your wallet too.
Edited 2008-10-15 02:22 UTC