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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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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

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.

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