OpenOffice.org 3.0

[six7s]

from Florian Effenberger
(7 hours ago)

Quote:

OpenOffice.org 3.0 now on general release

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

But wait... there's more!


from Louis Suarez-Potts (2 hours ago)

Quote:

It's Popular! ... and the site is down temporarily

All,

We must apologize. OpenOffice.org 3.0 is proving immensely, staggeringly popular. And our site is down as a result. While we fix things, we urge you to be patient and try again later on tonight, tomorrow, this week. It will still be there.

Oh, by popular, we mean it: figure hundreds of thousands of users, mostly Windows users, but also Mac OS X and Linux and Solaris users, all trying to download it all at once.....

Cheers, and thanks for your patience,
Louis

[elgarak]

Well, they're back up... sort of.

They have a download page with a table of all versions. I downloaded the Mac OS X English version with no problems, albeit quite slow.

[Gord_in_Toronto]

And it's also available for OS/2 -- eComstation. Wooppee!!

Maybe I'll be able to sell my Win XP notebook.

[Floyt]

Seems they finally got individual error indicators on bar graphs. 5 months too late for me, but I guess slugging it out with S-PLUS was good for my karma...

[Aerik]

Haha. DOS by legitimate downloads. Same thing that happened to Firefox. That's gold.

[pingnak]

It'll turn up in the Ubuntu's Synaptic database sooner or later as a 'patch'.

I'm not so desperate for the new goodies that I can't wait for that.

As for selling your Windows notebook, just install Linux on it.

Problem solved!

It instantly fixed all the things that were wrong with it that came with Vista. Serious things, like audio sounding like a bad phonograph, and many of my old M$ development tools not working. WINE turned out to be more compatible than Vista for many things, and eventually most of those things got replaced with open source tools. All that's left is Adobe's apps running in VirtualBox... for now.

[jsiv]

Why is the name so silly?

[negativ]

Originally Posted by pingnak

It'll turn up in the Ubuntu's Synaptic database sooner or later as a 'patch'.

It's not a "patch", it's a major version update. It probably won't show up in the Hardy repositories at all, given that Hardy is a Long-Term Support release.

AFAIK, OOo 3 will be included with the upcoming Intrepid release.

[alfaniner]

Is this a recommended alternative to Word and other things?

[Highly Selassie]

Originally Posted by jsiv

Why is the name so silly?

They couldn't call it OpenOffice because someone else had the trademark. So, in typical open source fashion, they patched it with an awkward extension instead of coming up with something new and original.

[six7s]

Originally Posted by alfaniner

Is this a recommended alternative to Word and other things?

yes

why.openoffice.org/

Quote:

OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.
Get OpenOffice.org 3 now

[geni]

Originally Posted by alfaniner

Is this a recommended alternative to Word and other things?

Depends who you ask. Microsoft would say no. I know some students got through university useing it.

[pingnak]

I dumped my Office 2000 for StarOffice (before they renamed it to OpenOffice) as soon as Sun made it free.

Haven't looked back.

NO dancing paperclip! None. No need to find it and kill it.

Need I say more? That should be enough for ANYONE!

[ZirconBlue]

Originally Posted by pingnak

I dumped my Office 2000 for StarOffice (before they renamed it to OpenOffice) as soon as Sun made it free.

Haven't looked back.

NO dancing paperclip! None. No need to find it and kill it.

Need I say more? That should be enough for ANYONE!

Um. The paperclip disappeared from MS Office quite some time ago. Office 2003 still had it available, but it was disabled by default. Office 2007 got rid of it entirely.

[six7s]

Originally Posted by ZirconBlue

Um. The paperclip disappeared from MS Office quite some time ago. Office 2003 still had it available, but it was disabled by default. Office 2007 got rid of it entirely.

The paper clips lives on, in Windows RG!

[Dunstan]

Originally Posted by geni

Depends who you ask. Microsoft would say no. I know some students got through university useing it.

I tried using it, but found it impossible to share files with anyone using Word without the formatting getting hopelessly screwed up.

[pingnak]

As I said, I *never* looked back.

Later versions of OOo include a PDF export. So you just send the PDF files to clueless people who are allergic to money.

[Dunstan]

Originally Posted by pingnak

As I said, I *never* looked back.

Later versions of OOo include a PDF export. So you just send the PDF files to clueless people who are allergic to money.

That does me little good if I need to send people files they can edit with Word. Those people aren't necessarily "clueless" or "allergic to money"; for example, they may work for an organization that uses Word.

Look, I'm sure OOo is wonderful for many people. It just didn't suit my needs.

[geni]

Originally Posted by Dunstan

That does me little good if I need to send people files they can edit with Word. Those people aren't necessarily "clueless" or "allergic to money"; for example, they may work for an organization that uses Word.

Look, I'm sure OOo is wonderful for many people. It just didn't suit my needs.

Support for word appears to be getting better (always helps of course if you avoid the fancier formating). But yes if you are working with a company that uses MS exclusively then you are probably going to have to do the same.

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Originally Posted by geni

Support for word appears to be getting better (always helps of course if you avoid the fancier formating).

Heh. Fancier formatting... like links in text that's not set to the default font size: http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=66871

If I did any heavy document creation and editing, that alone would be a deal-breaker for me. Since I don't, however, OpenOffice is nice to have around.

[logical muse]

Originally Posted by six7s

yes

Quote:

It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

why.openoffice.org/

I tried, unsuccessfully, to get it to paint my house.



eta: I jest, of course. I use it, have done for years. Love it.

[Arthur Denton]

I love open office, and I've been using it since version 1.0. Way to go OO!!

[six7s]

from Florian Effenberger
(7 hours ago)

Quote:

Early on Sunday morning, the OpenOffice.org Community passed the ten million downloads mark for the latest version of its software, just four weeks after the launch on October 13th. The week also marked the first time the OpenOffice.org Annual Conference has been held outside Europe.


November 10, 2008 -- Early on Sunday 9th, the OpenOffice.org Community achieved an historic milestone, when the ten millionth person clicked on the "Download OpenOffice.org" button since the Community announced version 3.0, just four weeks ago. The week also saw the first time the OpenOffice.org Annual Conference has been held outside Europe, with over four hundred people attending the Conference in Beijing, China from Wednesday to Friday.

John McCreesh, Marketing Project Lead, explained the importance of the two events. "Since the launch of OpenOffice.org 3.0, we have had a verifiable record of downloads from central website. We were delighted to hit a million downloads in the first two days. Four weeks later, we have hit ten million, and we are still seeing an amazing 250,000 - 350,000 downloads a day. For a community with no advertising budget, this is an astonishing level of product awareness around the world. Add to this the success of our Beijing Conference, and there can be no doubt that OpenOffice.org is now genuinely a global phenomenon."

What makes the statistics impressive is that they only record downloads via the OpenOffice.org website, and exclude for example large numbers of Linux users who generally download software from their own distributor. There are estimated to be eight million users of Ubuntu Linux alone, the majority of whom rely on OpenOffice.org for their office software. In addition, many users obtain OpenOffice.org via other mirrors, peer-to-peer networks, CDs, or other media. The total number of OpenOffice.org users worldwide is not known, but the Community believes it is well on track to reach its declared target of a 40% market share worldwide by 2010.

Finally, even with this level of market acceptance, the Community is not complacent. The OpenOffice.org Bug Bounty Programme is still open, offering cash prizes of up to 500 Euro to new developers who help fix bugs reported by users. This is part of ongoing activity to encourage additional developers, which has already resulted in a record number of contributors working on the 3.0 release.


Links

Information about OpenOffice.org 3.0 software: http://www.openoffice.org/product/
Download OpenOffice.org 3.0 for free: http://download.openoffice.org
The OpenOffice.org Bug Bounty Programme: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/...gBountyProgram
The case for OpenOffice.org: http://why.openoffice.org
The OpenOffice.org Annual Conference 2008: http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2008/
Planet: http://marketing.openoffice.org/planet/
Graphs: http://marketing.openoffice.org/marketing_bouncer.html
FAQ: http://marketing.openoffice.org/mark...uncer_faq.html


Contacts

John McCreesh (UTC)
OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Lead
jpmcc @ openoffice.org
+44 (0)7 810 278 540

Florian Effenberger (UTC +01h00)
OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Co-Lead
floeff @ openoffice.org
+49 151 14424108

Louis Suarez-Potts (UTC -05h00)
OpenOffice.org Community Manager
louis @ openoffice.org
+1 (416) 625 3843

International Marketing Contacts: http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html


About OpenOffice.org

The OpenOffice.org Community is an international team of volunteer and sponsored contributors who develop, translate, support, and promote the leading open source office productivity suite, OpenOffice.org®. OpenOffice.org's leading edge software technology (UNO) is also available for developers, systems integrators, etc. to use in OpenOffice.org extensions or in their own applications.

OpenOffice.org uses the OpenDocument Format OASIS Standard (ISO/IEC 26300) as well as supporting legacy file formats such as Microsoft Office, and is available on major computing platforms in over 100 languages. OpenOffice.org software is provided under the GNU Lesser General Public Licence (LGPL) and may be used free of charge for any purpose, private or commercial.

The OpenOffice.org Community acknowledges generous sponsorship from a number of companies, including Sun Microsystems, the founding sponsor and primary contributor.

[six7s]

[ooo-announce] OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 is now available for download

The OpenOffice.org Community is pleased to announce the release of OpenOffice.org 3.1.1, a minor update to OpenOffice.org 3.1.0 released in May 2009. OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 (EN-US for Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux,and Solaris) is available for immediate download from http://download.openoffice.org. Please contact the appropriate native-language project http://projects.openoffice.org/native-lang.html for details of availability in other languages, and the appropriate porting project http://porting.openoffice.org for details of other platforms.

Full details of the bugs fixed may be found in the release notes http://development.openoffice.org/releases/3.1.1.html. Details of the security vulnerabilities fixed will be published in our security bulletin http://www.openoffice.org/security/bulletin.html on September 11th when the standard public disclosure embargo expires. To our knowledge, none of these vulnerabilities has been exploited; however, in accordance with industry best practice, we recommend all users of earlier versions to upgrade to 3.1.1.

The next version of OpenOffice.org to contain significant new functionality, OpenOffice.org 3.2, is expected to be available around the end of November 2009.

The OpenOffice.org Community

[Almo]

What annoys me is how people send around Word files like they're .txt files. They just assume everyone has Word.

[moopet]

Originally Posted by Almo

What annoys me is how people send around Word files like they're .txt files. They just assume everyone has Word.

You mean like this?

Originally Posted by Dunstan

That does me little good if I need to send people files they can edit with Word. Those people aren't necessarily "clueless" or "allergic to money"; for example, they may work for an organization that uses Word.

Word documents are horribly suited to any kind of sharing of information. A WP which uses open formats by default, such as OOo, goes some way to mitigating that, but people should just pick the correct tool for the job in the first place.

* moopet goes back to his window full of vim.

[Floyt]

Yesterday I handed in my PhD thesis, proudly written, spreadsheeted and lay-outed entirely in OOO. Worked for me

[ZirconBlue]

Originally Posted by Almo

What annoys me is how people send around Word files like they're .txt files. They just assume everyone has Word.

That's because, in fact, everyone does have Word. At least in terms of business communications. I've never once, in the last decade plus, had a single customer or vendor that couldn't open any Word files I have sent to them.

[moopet]

I've had recruitment agencies re-save my CV in the latest Word before forwarding it on to companies who were running older versions without the plugin. So they couldn't read it at all. Mind you, I've also had technical recruiters who couldn't open my CV when I sent it to them in PDF, either, mostly because they're stupid.

[six7s]

Originally Posted by Floyt

Yesterday I handed in my PhD thesis, proudly written, spreadsheeted and lay-outed entirely in OOO. Worked for me

Go Dr Scarfie!

[a_unique_person]

Originally Posted by alfaniner

Is this a recommended alternative to Word and other things?

My son wanted a copy of Office, so I gave him a copy of OO to see how many complaints there were. (I tried the original OO and there were too many bugs for me back then.)

Not a single complaint. Looking good.

[a_unique_person]

Originally Posted by ZirconBlue

That's because, in fact, everyone does have Word. At least in terms of business communications. I've never once, in the last decade plus, had a single customer or vendor that couldn't open any Word files I have sent to them.

LOL. How about word users with old versions of word. Everytime the new version of Office comes out, confusion reigns amongst those old on the old versions.

[PogoPedant]

Originally Posted by Floyt

Yesterday I handed in my PhD thesis, proudly written, spreadsheeted and lay-outed entirely in OOO. Worked for me

Congratulations and bravely done!

I would never dare write anything that large and important using any kind of software more complicated than notepad. I use LaTeX for all my thesis-type work. (Of course, it has been years since last I wrote anything longer than a paragraph... times just may have changed)

[Rasmus]

Originally Posted by ZirconBlue

That's because, in fact, everyone does have Word. At least in terms of business communications. I've never once, in the last decade plus, had a single customer or vendor that couldn't open any Word files I have sent to them.

I got a CV once from someone in the latest word format that I couldn't open without

- understanding that the extension was indeed for a new type of word file
- finding and installing the plugin to my old office version

-> I am fairly good at that sort of thing; elsewhere he might just have ended up in the bin.

[Woolgatherer]

Thanks six7s this will come in handy. I have MS Office on the PC side of my mac but have to reboot to use it. Using this (OOO), I will no longer need to do that.

[tesscaline]

Originally Posted by Dunstan

That does me little good if I need to send people files they can edit with Word. Those people aren't necessarily "clueless" or "allergic to money"; for example, they may work for an organization that uses Word.

Look, I'm sure OOo is wonderful for many people. It just didn't suit my needs.

You do realize that Word can open and edit .rtf files, right?

[Dunstan]

Originally Posted by SkeptiChick

You do realize that Word can open and edit .rtf files, right?

The formatting always got screwed up whenever I tried that.

[ZirconBlue]

Originally Posted by a_unique_person

LOL. How about word users with old versions of word. Everytime the new version of Office comes out, confusion reigns amongst those old on the old versions.

I've never had that problem. For some reason, the companies I work for are always fairly late adopters. We just upgraded to the newest version of Office a couple of months ago. I've still been saving a lot of files in "Compatibility Mode", just in case.

[six7s]

Originally Posted by moopet

I've had recruitment agencies re-save my CV in the latest Word before forwarding it on to companies who were running older versions without the plugin. So they couldn't read it at all. Mind you, I've also had technical recruiters who couldn't open my CV when I sent it to them in PDF, either, mostly because they're stupid.

Indeed

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots.

So far, the Universe is winning.

Rick Cook

[TheDaver]

Originally Posted by ZirconBlue

That's because, in fact, everyone does have Word. At least in terms of business communications. I've never once, in the last decade plus, had a single customer or vendor that couldn't open any Word files I have sent to them.

Well not really. As far as I know, most commercial word processors on the market can open Word files, but they may not be formatted correctly due to differences between the two programs or due to using older-version .doc specs.

Originally Posted by a_unique_person

LOL. How about word users with old versions of word. Everytime the new version of Office comes out, confusion reigns amongst those old on the old versions.

Yeah, no kidding. It surprises me how badly Microsoft fails at making new releases even maintain compatibility with their own software.

Originally Posted by moopet

Mind you, I've also had technical recruiters who couldn't open my CV when I sent it to them in PDF, either, mostly because they're stupid.

Wow, that really is stupid. It just goes to show how useless these people are.