2008/10/8 Dotan Cohen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > 2008/10/8 James Knott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > I have been reading eweek articles for years and haven't seen that web > > buyers mag. > > > > Here is the first page of the two page article: > > When sun microsystems bought the little-known StarOffice productivity > suite in 1999 and soon thereafter released the product's code base as > open-source software, it was unclear how far the arguably quixotic > initiative might reach—and what damage it could possibly wreak on > Microsoft's ironclad grip on the office productivity market. Now, nine > years later, Sun and the project that grew up around that code base, > OpenOffice.org, are on the verge of a major 3.0 release. While > OpenOffice.org hasn't achieved the same measure of mainstream adoption > as its ideological cousin, the Firefox Web browser, the freely > available office suite has helped advance the state of file format > standardization to the extent that Microsoft first developed its own > open-file format and is now prepared to include support for the > ISO-standard OpenDocument format in Office 2007. I tested > OpenOffice.org 3.0 in a near-final RC3 version and was pleased with > the progress that the project has made toward improving format > compatibility and feature parity with Microsoft Office. I also tested > a beta release of StarOffice 9, which is the commercial version of > OpenOffice.org for which Sun offers support and intellectual property > indemnification. As with previous versions of the suites, the extent > to which OpenOffice.org or StarOffice can serve effectively as a > replacement to Microsoft Office will depend on the features and > documents you use in your organization. Since OpenOffice.org is free > to download and take for a spin, it's certainly worth giving the suite > a run in your environment to judge for yourself. > > Platforms and formats > As in previous versions, openoffice.org 3.0 runs on Windows, Linux, > Solaris x86 and Solaris Sparc. Both the Windows and Linux flavors of > OpenOffice.org are available in both 32- and 64-bit x86 editions. New > in OpenOffice.org version 3 is native support for Apple's OS X. > Previous OpenOffice.org iterations required the X11 server to run, > which made OpenOffice.org a bit of a misfit on the OS X desktop. > OpenOffice.org supports the newest version of the OpenDocument file > format, ODF 1.2. The latest version of ODF includes accessibility and > metadata enhancements, as well as a means of specifying spreadsheet > formulas that's more detailed than what was laid out in ODF 1.0. The > lack of formula specificity in ODF 1.0 meant that certain aspects of > storing spreadsheet formulas were up to the application developer to > define, which could lead to incompatibility between documents created > with different ODF implementations. The formula issue hasn't been a > major problem so far, since OpenOffice.org/StarOffice has been the > primary ODF implementation, but the formula improvements in ODF 1.2 > lay the groundwork for broader adoption of the document standard. Also > new in OpenOffice.org 3 are import filters for Microsoft Office > 2007-formatted documents. The XML-based .docx, .xlsx and .pptx formats > in which Microsoft's suite now save documents by default. I tried out > OpenOffice.org 3's Office 2007 format support with a few documents and > found the fidelity fairly good overall, but marred by enough small > errors to disrupt roundtrip, cross-application document collaboration. > OpenOffice.org 3 fares much better at this point with Microsoft's > older, binary Office formats. When maintaining file format fidelity is > paramount, I suggest that users opt for Adobe's PDF format, which > OpenOffice.org has supported well as an export format. New in > OpenOffice.org 3 is limited support for importing and editing PDF > documents, through a freely downloadable extension. The marketing > materials at the OpenOffice.org project site describe the PDF import > option as a resort for making small changes to PDFs for which the > editable originals have gone missing; in other words, users should > keep their expectations for this feature fairly modest. Indeed, after > spending a bit of time testing the suite's new PDF import function, > I'd be hard pressed to imagine many circumstances in which I'd find > the feature useful. Imported PDF documents open within the suite's > presentation application, Impress, and text is editable on a > line-by-line basis. I was able to import a PDF I had created using > OpenOffice.org with fairly good fidelity, but when I opened one of > eWeek's product > > For those who want the rest, here is a login: > Username: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Password: ifwxacbgea > > -- > Dotan Cohen > > http://what-is-what.com > http://gibberish.co.il > א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת > > ä-ö-ü-ß-Ä-Ö-Ü >
thanks, Dotan. Hopefully they won't throw you out now! -- Guy using dutch OOo Aqua 3.0.0 RC4 on a iMac Intel DualCore Tiger and brazilian OOo Aqua 3.0.0 RC4 on an Intel MacBook Pro Leopard -- please reply only to [email protected] -- Dodoes can't afford to have headaches
