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OpenOffice.org 2.4 Released

Posted by Zonk on Thu Mar 27, 2008 02:03 PM
from the free-and-friendly dept.
Software Linux
ahziem writes "The multiplatform, multilingual office suite OpenOffice.org has announced the release of version 2.4. New features include 5 PDF export enhancements, text to columns in Calc, rectangular selection in Writer, bug fixes, performance improvements, improvements supporting the growing library of extensions such as 3D OpenGL transitions in Impress, and much more. Downloads are available either direct or P2P. In September, OpenOffice.org 3.0 will add PDF import, Microsoft Office 2007 file format support, and ODF 1.2."

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[+] OpenOffice.Org Now Under LGPLv3 107 comments
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Sun has moved OpenOffice.org to the LGPLv3 license. In his blog Sun's Simon Phipps cites worry over software patents as being one of their main reasons for this move: 'Upgrading to the LGPLv3 brings important new protections to the OpenOffice.org community, most notably through the new language concerning software patents. You may know that I am personally an opponent of software patents, and that Sun has already taken steps in this area with a patent non-assert covenant for ODF. But the most important protection for developers comes from creating mutual patent grants between developers. LGPLv3 does this.'"
[+] An Early Look at OpenOffice.org 3.0 369 comments
ahziem writes "With the final release 167 days away and an alpha version available, it's time to look at OpenOffice.org 3.0's new features: view multiple pages in Writer, notes in the margin, Microsoft Office 2007 file format support, Solver in Calc, new visual theme in Calc, native tables in Impress, more columns in Calc, error bars in charts, performance improvements, real native Aqua Mac support, and more."
Firehose:OpenOffice.org 2.4 Released by ahziem (661857)
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  • I can't wait for that. PDF import will turn OpenOffice.org into a poor-man's Adobe Acrobat.

    • Re:PDF import? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rbanffy (584143) on Thursday March 27, @04:05PM (#22885696) Homepage
      "I can't wait for that. PDF import will turn OpenOffice.org into a poor-man's Adobe Acrobat."

      I would rather say a free man's Adobe Acrobat. It's not about the cost - it's about the freedom.

    • Re:PDF import? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nurb432 (527695) on Thursday March 27, @04:37PM (#22886112) Homepage Journal
      Acrobat sux for reading in and editing existing documents. You would be better off editing the original document and re-exporting to PDF.
    • FYI, the brand new version of Inkscape [inkscape.org] (released 3 days ago) has very good PDF import (and export). You can modify text, modify vector-based drawings, remove or add pictures... all you've ever dreamed of.

      I think it's only possible to edit one page at a time, but with pdftk it shouldn't be much of a limitation.

      • Re:PDF import? (Score:4, Informative)

        by TheRaven64 (641858) on Thursday March 27, @02:10PM (#22884272) Homepage Journal
        Acrobat is for editing and creating PDFs, not displaying them (although it can do that too). KPDF does not have this support.
      • Note the difference between Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader. Adobe Reader is one of several PDF readers available on Linux, along with evince, KPDF, xpdf, etc. Acrobat lets you create and modify PDFs. Right now, OOo only lets you create PDFs -- modifying them is currently not possible.

        • Re:PDF import? (Score:5, Informative)

          by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746) on Thursday March 27, @02:48PM (#22884680)

          Note the difference between Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader.

          A note for clarification: Adobe Reader used to be named Acrobat Reader, so users mistaking one for the other have been understandably mislead by Adobe's own marketing in the past.

            • Re:PDF import? (Score:5, Informative)

              by Schnapple (262314) <tomkidd@viat e x a s .com> on Thursday March 27, @03:32PM (#22885286) Homepage

              Well, if anything, Acrobat Reader is more precise of a name. It reads Acrobat files. Seems pretty clear to me.
              Yeah but I think the problem Adobe was having is that no one got that Adobe Acrobat != Adobe Acrobat Reader. They probably couldn't sell Acrobat at all since people saw they were charging $200 or whatever for Acrobat and said "Why would I pay for that? I can get 'Acrobat' for free online!" while at the same time wondering how one would make PDF files (this is before PrimoPDF and another hundred good ways to make simple PDF files became available). Worse than that, people would go to the Adobe site and look for "Acrobat", find the not-free Acrobat product instead of the free Acrobat Reader, think that suddenly they needed to pay money to view a PDF file, and leave in disgust. Renaming the product Adobe Reader, in theory, avoids this confusion and also makes it out like Reader is a generic viewing app that reads PDF's.

        • Re:PDF import? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by an.echte.trilingue (1063180) on Thursday March 27, @03:00PM (#22884852) Homepage
          Even with acrobat pro, you can't do too much editing to existing to PDFs: change a little text here and there, add comments and that's about it.

          I understood that this was because of the way that PDFs store information based on positioning, curves, gradients, etc, so I am skeptical about what this feature of OOo actually does, given that some very expensive commercial software does not even do this. If, however, OOo does allow users to really load and edit PDFs, this could be the break though that it has been waiting for.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by TheRaven64 (641858)
            You can put pretty much any arbitrary metadata you want into a PDF. There is a nice service for OS X that takes the selected text and runs it through pdflatex to give a typeset equation. It also embeds the LaTeX source in the metadata, so it can reverse the process and let you edit the code again later. You could put the contents of an ODF file in PDF metadata if you wanted, which would then allow editors to modify the content and readers to just display it. I believe this has been proposed before, so i

        • Re:PDF import? (Score:5, Funny)

          by sarhjinian (94086) on Thursday March 27, @05:58PM (#22887032)
          I wish I could go longer than a week without someone saying "My Adobe doesn't work!"? Your Adobe what? Reader? Acrobat? Photoshop? Baked mud brick?

        • Re:PDF import? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Teun (17872) on Thursday March 27, @06:41PM (#22887478) Homepage
          You can use PDFedit [sourceforge.net] for editing.
          Not perfect but often sufficient.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Knuckles (8964)
            Just FYI, Acrobat can do a million things more than just creating dumb display-only files.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Heembo (916647)
              Agreed. Acrobat does a great job of leading you down the road of depending on Abobe's proprietary world of advanced PDF functionality that is better left to other technologies.

              • Re:PDF import? (Score:5, Insightful)

                by Knuckles (8964) <knuckles&dantian,org> on Friday March 28, @01:09AM (#22890452)
                Be that as it may (and I think it's a good point), fact is that it allows non-experts to do very fancy stuff that I wouldn't even know how to do with other means. Maybe the non-proprietary alternatives should simply try to be better, this approach seems to be more promising than simply being annoyed about PDFs impressive feature set.

          • Re:PDF import? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by genesus (1049556) <john@johntennyson.com> on Thursday March 27, @04:14PM (#22885838)
            Never used fillable forms? Acrobat's ability to change and manage the form data and the advanced editing features are a godsend, especially working with locked government pdf forms that are not set up properly at all.
      • OOo has had PDF export for quite some time -- since around v2.0 or so. GIMP's support for importing PDFs is limited to the images, I believe.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by mhall119 (1035984)
            Which is essentially what the GP was saying, you can't edit a PDF as a text document in Gimp, you can only edit it as an image.

  • Mac Version (Score:5, Informative)

    by rubeng (1263328) on Thursday March 27, @02:10PM (#22884264) Journal
    I'm really looking forwards to a native (non X11) Mac version. NeoOffice works OK but seems a bit slow. I see that about a week ago a new native development shapshot was released [openoffice.org].

    • Re:Mac Version (Score:5, Interesting)

      by w3c.org (1039484) on Thursday March 27, @03:03PM (#22884894) Homepage
      Yeah I've been using the 3.0 beta for a week now, on my good ol' powerbook, and it rocks. Really. No X11, it's quick (can't tell how fast loading is from NeoOffice, but quite faster). I didn't run NeoOffice since. Sure, it can be quirky, it has its glitches, but it runs ok, and saves & restores document perfectly if it crashes (happened just an hour early, got everything I was working on restored). Great thing. Go, OpenOffice team, go! :)

  • Also, Neooffice 2.2.3 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 27, @02:10PM (#22884278)
    FWIW, NeoOffice [neooffice.org], a Mac Os X port of OpenOffice.org just had a new release last week. It's based on the 2.2.1 code and adds Quicktime video support, import from scanners and cameras, Mac OS grammar checking in Leopard, and some more stuff. Details here [neooffice.org]. Don't forget if you download it to grab the latest patch [neooffice.org] too.

    The insane thing is NeoOffice only has two code developers.

  • Most useful extension (Score:5, Informative)

    by phayes (202222) on Thursday March 27, @02:12PM (#22884298) Homepage
    REGEXP search & replace! Supposing you're a geek... Of course we're all geeks here on slashdot, right?

  • Thank god! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Digi-John (692918) on Thursday March 27, @02:17PM (#22884352) Homepage Journal
    My life has been empty without the ability to switch between slides in STUNNING 3-D! I seriously just peed a little in excitement.
    Come on; there's not even a reason to have *any* transitions between slides. Nothing says "Oh god, what an amateur" than seeing slide after slide spiral into another one, or slowly dissolve, etc. Transitions are just a way to waste your time trying out different possibilities instead of polishing your content or doing something else useful.

    • Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by stuporglue (1167677) on Thursday March 27, @02:22PM (#22884396) Homepage

      Nothing says "Oh god, what an amateur" than seeing slide after slide spiral into another one, or slowly dissolve, etc.

      Depends on the transition, the material and the audience. For example, if you're switching between a before and after slide (eg. with photos) using a crossfade can make it more clear what the differences are. Also, some suits prefer a smooth transition to a blocky sudden switch.

    • Re:Thank god! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by claus.wilke (51904) on Thursday March 27, @02:45PM (#22884634)
      I would argue that if you are preparing a presentation that is running by itself, without a human presenter, a simple but elegant transition effect will work better than no effect at all. This might be quite useful for exhibits at tradeshows and similar occasions.

      • Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Colonel Korn (1258968) on Thursday March 27, @02:44PM (#22884614)
        The GP's complaint against transitions is that they serve no functional purpose. One reply pointed out that in some very limited cases, they do (before/after photos benefit from a crossfade), which is reasonable. Your reply equates transitions with video and audio, which is absolutely unreasonable in the framework of the GP's post. Video and audio have obvious utility. Transitions are almost always decoration, and I agree with the GP that they're usually a distraction from the material.

        • Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Funny)

          by Thornburg (264444) on Thursday March 27, @03:17PM (#22885088)
          Hey, this is Slashdot! You're not allowed to use interpretive thought or intelligible communication. Please go to some communication-nerd website and post your well-reasoned, level-headed thoughts there. We don't want them here!

          (For those completely devoid of sarcasm detection skills, the above post may be used to calibrate your Sarcastometer--it should score 8.6).

        • Re:Thank god! (Score:4, Insightful)

          by xtracto (837672) on Thursday March 27, @04:32PM (#22886068) Journal
          Transitions have a specific use and is to "inform" your audience that you have changed the slide. Even a very discrete fade out transition is sometimes useful. When you give a presentation people are usually looking at you and hear you talking. They just refer to the slide when it is shown at first *or* when you point at a specific feature of the slide.

  • Only one comment (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zappepcs (820751) on Thursday March 27, @02:29PM (#22884456) Journal
    I'm using Office XP Pro side by side with OO. There is really no major differences now between the two in my use of office packages. One thing is for certain, at this update rate I could not afford the MS version of updates, but with OpenOffice... meh, this is great. If I could get a car manufacturer to upgrade my vehicle for free once a year (new cupholders, dash panel, etc.) It would also be great, but I'll settle for what I get with OpenOffice thank you very much.

  • Any word (Score:4, Informative)

    by Kelz (611260) on Thursday March 27, @02:56PM (#22884804)
    On when they're going to fix autoformat? Has anyone else ever tried to make a resume in OO (god forbid you use bullets or tabs)?

    • Pet Peeve... (Score:4, Informative)

      by mutube (981006) on Thursday March 27, @03:15PM (#22885058) Homepage
      Auto-completing words when writing bullet lists. If you don't end the lines with full-stops, hitting Enter will auto-complete some random word instead of starting a new line. You're list of "My Favourite Animals" becomes:

      catastrophicdogmaticfishfingermousetrap

      Which, as you can imagine, is quite distressing.

  • I wish OOo would sign (PGP or authenticode) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mlts (1038732) * on Thursday March 27, @02:57PM (#22884818)
    I wish the OpenOffice.org project maintainers would PGP/gpg sign their MD5 sum files at the least, or if they can get a code signing key, Authenticode sign their installer on Windows.

    PGP/gpg is available at no cost, and having the key available from keyservers (and signed by a good number of people) would provide basic software assurance.

    I know this is a relatively small gripe, but just for integrity reasons it would be nice that they did so, so I knew a copy I have was not corrupted (or even worse, tampered with.) OOo does such a major role in day to day use for a lot of organizations that if a compromised version made its way around the Internet, it could mean a major disaster.

    Last, and I know I'm boring with this, a number of companies won't install anything on their machines unless the files are cryptographically signed in some way. This is more of a legal CYA policy, but it would be nice to be able to use OOo in places like this and have validated, signed executables.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Zadaz (950521)

      a number of companies won't install anything on their machines unless the files are cryptographically signed in some way

      Sure! Just like my copy of Windows, OSX, Photoshop, Acrobat, Office, Toast, and... every other commercial application that I've ever had are cryptographi--

      Oh, wait. Hell, even Firefox doesn't have a sig. to download.

      I'm not saying the danger isn't there, but generally if someone has access to make nefarious changes to an archive, modifying the signature as well is pretty trivial, if not m

  • What I hope for (Score:4, Interesting)

    by the_crowbar (149535) on Thursday March 27, @03:07PM (#22884946)
    Two things that bug me about OOo 2.3:

    1) On Linux Impress can not handle more than a few slides before using 100% CPU power. We have several digital billboards (50" Plasma Tvs) and I was tasked with making sure they had something to display. No prob I thought. I set up 3 media pc cases with Ubuntu 7.10 (i386, onboard nvidia gpu) and installed OOo. I was having some problems creating the slide shows with OOo Linux. I switched to my Windows box and was able to create a basic slide show. (1280x720 resolution maybe 10 slides) I tried running the show on my Ubuntu desktop (amd64) as well as the media pcs (Ubuntu i386) and OOo Impress would jump to 100% CPU after a few slides. In the end I used Wine and PowerPoint viewer to display the slideshow because it worked without killing the CPU. Here's hoping 2.4 fixes this bug.

    2) OOo base is unable to open a new form from a button on a form. I was trying to use OOo Base as a quick proof of concept for a new HR database. It is easy enough to connect Base to a MySQL DB and create a form to modify records. The problem came when I tried to create a search page. The search was fine. I could display the results in a table, but then there is no way to select a result from the table and then open it in another form. This is not really a bug rather than a much needed feature. At this point Base is ok for only the simplest of things.

    the_crowbar

    I can't wait to try out OOo 2.4 to see if they have fixed these two things.

  • OpenGL 3D effects before antialiased graphics???? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wpegden (931091) on Thursday March 27, @04:46PM (#22886218)
    Openoffice still doesn't do good anti aliasing of vector graphics (for example, in a presentation). It seems idiotic to implement OpenGL "eye candy" before dealing with this half-decade old issue. Who is going to put up with crappy-looking drawings, just because they can now transition between them smoothly?
    Here's one thread on the issue: http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=33584 [oooforum.org]

  • Get rid of modal dialog boxes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xiox (66483) on Thursday March 27, @06:08PM (#22887138) Homepage
    One of the most annoying features of OpenOffice are all those modal dialog boxes. Why do I have to keep closing the formatting dialog whenever I switch between different bits of text? It really slows down repetitive operations. Many of the dialogs could become non-model, giving a much smoother feel to the whole program.

  • Waiting for outliner (Score:4, Informative)

    by harlows_monkeys (106428) on Thursday March 27, @06:34PM (#22887398) Homepage

    The major thing OO is missing for me on the word processor front is good outliner support. There was a note from the developers posted on their forums a while back where they acknowledged that adding this is important, and that the navigator stuff is not a substitute. So, the good news is, OO will get good outliner support. The bad news is that it is going to be a lot of work, so it might not be soon. :-(

  • Too slow (Score:4, Informative)

    by kylehase (982334) on Friday March 28, @12:46AM (#22890308)
    I just installed OO 2.4 to work on a few spreadsheets and it feels really slow. The response (so far) was worse when working with graphs.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by TheRaven64 (641858)

        You see, OpenGL support was once present in StarOffice, but was removed due to problems with the newer OOo code.
        For transitions? Really? I used StarOffice 5.0, 5.1, 5.2 and 6.0, but I don't remember Impress doing 3D transitions. I do remember some OpenGL-based 3D options in the drawing tool...

        • Re:hopefully (Score:5, Informative)

          by xaxa (988988) on Thursday March 27, @03:22PM (#22885142)


          Uh, has KMail gotten around to composing HTML Mail or making it easy to insert links yet? Last I heard, the developers seemed to have a philosophical thing against HTML for some reason.

          KMail will compose HTML emails. At the moment, it won't reply to the HTML part of a multipart message in HTML, it will take the plain text part.

          They don't have a philosophical objection to adding support for this though. I had a look on the mailing list a couple of weeks ago (this came up in a sub-thread somewhere). The current developers don't want to spend time implementing it, they're unpaid so they do what they want to do on Kontact/KMail. They're happy for someone else to add the functionality though, or for someone to pay someone else to add it.

          Yeah, most of my emails are plain text, but I do end up sending links to people quite often, and having to copy a plain text link out of an email client into a web browser is a lot slower than just clicking on a link. It's also nice to send and HTML email from time to time. If you prefer not to write HTML email, that's nice, but I take it as a limit on choice.
          In the composer window, click Options, Formatting (HTML).
          KMail highlights links it finds in the text, it's good at this (I've never had to copy and paste a link from a plain text message).

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