Office Archive

In an upcoming version of WordPerfect due in 2007, Corel announced this week, users will have the options of reading and writing in both Microsoft Office Open XML format (introduced in Office 2007) and OpenDocument Format. Will WordPerfect become the ODF word processor of record? Corel's answer was surprising.

While the capabilities of operating systems have improved over the last years, the improvements have largely focused on under the hood changes. New functionality is reaching the user via additional applications which allow her to write a DVD, connect to her mp3 player, download streaming video locally and other tasks which were not present before. But the graphical interface of the computer itself is keeping the same concepts introduced with its appearance. One could argue that the graphical environment of computers is exactly the same for the last 10 years and only cosmetic changes take place in newer versions of operating systems. Moving away from the desktop metaphor is harder than it seems. Even alternative operating systems have embraced the concept instead of exploring new ideas. This article describes a solution which attempts to free the user from the files/folder concept.

History tends to leave behind mostly two kinds of information - the irrelevant and the biased. Archaeologists are either digging up people's thrown away junk, or reading some emperor's pompous account of his great deeds. The archaeology of the future will involve carefully extracting random 1s and 0s off of media and theorising what it all could mean. In the reckless and fast moving digital world, many stumbling blocks have been created that would drastically inhibit future generations learning about our ancient digital existence.

The KOffice team is proud to announce the 1.6.0 release of its office suite. This release is mostly a feature release of Krita and Kexi, but also contains major enhancements to the OpenDocument and MathML support of KFormula and new scripting functionality. This version also contains a vastly improved version of KPlato, our project planning application.

Based on information discussed at the OOoCON conference in Lyon, OpenOffice starting with version 2.0.4 may include Firefox-like extensions. Also on the board is to incorporate the use of Mozilla Sunbird and Thunderbird into the OOo suite, connectors for Sun Calendaring and Microsoft Exchange support, and even an eventual redesign of OpenOffice 3.0 to run on top of Eclipse, Netbeans or Mozilla's XUL.

This article gives a visual walkthrough of some of the new features included in the latest version of Vim. "These are not the only new features. There are scores of others like Remote file explorer which allows one to directly edit a file residing in a remote location, better POSIX compatibility, Vim's own internal grep and so on which I have not covered here because this article is after all a visual walk through of the new features in Vim 7.0. It takes real genius and stellar coding skills to create and maintain such a versatile editor and Bram Moolenaar has proved yet again that he has the necessary ingredients to qualify him for the post."

Massachusetts will begin using OpenDocument as the default document format later this year as planned, but it will be sticking with Microsoft Office in the near term, the state's top tech executive said.

"The OpenDocument Format is an emerging file format standard for electronic office documents. Representing a triumph of common sense over the methods conceived before the rise of the Internet, ODF's goals are both exciting and controversial. Early adopters of the format include state and municipal governments in some near and far-flung places, and this makes the format's progress a thing to watch. Yet innovation theory tells us there are some hurdles we all must overcome before ODF becomes a regular topic of conversation at the ballpark. Those in the know, however, recognize that we're in about the second inning of a barn-burner. So, grab a hot dog and a beer, and settle in for a classic."

OpenOffice.org has been increasing in both popularity and visibility over the past several months. Version 2.0 has added a number of new features to bring it closer to feature parity with Microsoft Office, and it also offers full support for the Open Document format. However, a report just released by the French Ministry of Defense says that it still falls short of Microsoft's office suite in one important area: security.

ExtremeTech has an review of Zoho Office Suite, an online office suite. The interfaces are nice to work with, but inconsistent, and some basic features are missing, such as undo for the spreadsheet. But Zoho's spreadsheet still beats Google Spreadsheets, which have no charting and no multiple document capability. Though Zoho is closer to Web 2.0 dictums, ThinkFree Online delivers a richer feature set, and 1GB of free online storage. Of course, in terms of feature sets, all of the webware still has a lot of caching up to do with Microsoft's venerable installed standbys.

People say I rant too much. I complain and complain, but never seem to really like anything. As I promised a few weeks ago, I will talk about things I love about computers. After explaining why I like to complain and rant, this column will solely deal with fluffy bunnies, green meadows, blue skies, and shiny, happy people. I promise.

OpenOffice.org 2.0.3 has been released. It contains performance improvements, improved compatibility with Microsoft Office formats, support for Intel MAcs, and much more. Release notes, download page.

In a blow to Microsoft, Belgium's government departments will be instructed to use an open file format for internal communications. The OpenDocument Format is to be the standard format for exchanging documents within the government, according to a proposal that is expected to be approved by Belgium's Council of Ministers on Friday. The plan increases the pressure from governments worldwide on Microsoft to embrace open standards.

Users of Microsoft Office can now choose one of the Creative Commons licenses for work created in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Microsoft and Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that offers flexible copyright licenses for creative works, partnered with 3sharp LLC to develop and test this new copyright licensing tool, known as the Creative Commons add-in for Microsoft Office.