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OpenOffice 1.1.5 Released
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Sep 21, 2005 10:20 PM
from the free-spreadsheets dept.
from the free-spreadsheets dept.
Community Technology writes "New stable release of OpenOffice has been released. Download OpenOffice 1.1.5 from OpenOffice.org"
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Sweet! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Interesting)
In addition, can it open spreadsheets with more than 32,000 lines? I know Excel tops out at 64,000 which for my needs sometimes is not enough. I have searched the prefs in previous versions but can't find any way to open files with that many lines. Well, the open, but the cut off anything after the max line number. I regularly get csv files with 50-75K lines that are of different formats and would like to be able to open them in a spread sheet, especially OO. I us
Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Interesting)
Examining the file is the first step towards inserting the data into a database. I work in bioinformatics. I get files from customers which often share only two common characteristics - they hold some data, and they are tab or comma delimited. Other than that, they could be two columns with 50 rows, or 100 columns with 75,000 rows. Opening the file and looking at it is the first step. A spreadsheet is a handy tool for doing that. I'm not sure if you have used a text edi
Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Informative)
you might look into trying it out - it might be a 'beta' but it's been very stable on our range of machines - we don't open any massive sized files like what you are looking for, and for that matter i haven't tried out the db side of the new release, but overall it's worth looking into if you are simply trying to open & examine large files.
oh, and i seem to recall that the max rows limit was increased in the 2.x oo spreadsheet app as well, but can't remember how much...
Parent
Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Interesting)
And in other news, Slashdot's posting page looks... different.
Eww! What about quoting? (Score:3, Interesting)
Version 1.1.5? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Version 1.1.5? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think 1.1.5 is a back-port of some stuff? The homepage mentions OpenDocument support.
This new slashdot layout is freakin me out... looks cool, but I have to look around to find things again. Strange parallels with OOo...
Re:Version 1.1.5? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Version 1.1.5? (Score:3, Funny)
In other words, it has superior stability compared to MS Word.
The build system of OpenOffice is fantastic. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The build system of OpenOffice is fantastic. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The build system of OpenOffice is fantastic. (Score:2)
Re:The build system of OpenOffice is fantastic. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The build system of OpenOffice is fantastic. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:The build system of OpenOffice is fantastic. (Score:4, Interesting)
It'd be like building a bridge across the English Channel. It will take longer to build such a bridge than it would to build a bridge across a 10 m wide stream.
Parent
Re:The build system of OpenOffice is fantastic. (Score:2)
And is also its Achilles heel. (Score:5, Informative)
Disclaimer: I am a Mac OS X OpenOffice.org developer and a founder of the NeoOffice [neooffice.org] project.
As someone who's wrangled with the OOo build system since 2001, I have to respectfully disagree. While it is good that it supports so many different operating systems, the build system is also one of the major Achilles heels of OOo. Some examples:
The end result of all of this is that the entire 8 million line plus project is quite dependent on its build system in order to successfully compile. The system is so intricate that most all of the attempts to move it to a different system, such as XCode, have failed. This is a bummer. From a Mac perspective, it sucks ass to be forced to use command line tools for such a huge project. You lose access to such useful tools as the symbolic browser information (e.g. "Jump to Definition" for a symbol in an editor file) and within-project searches. Not to mention you don't gain access to other nice things in the environment like distributed compiles. Probably the worst side effect, however, is that most Mac developers aren't command-line junkies (unless they were MPW freaks like me). They've been raised on CodeWarrior and other great IDEs. It's a real turn-off to have to learn an arcane command line build system that is used for only one program and will probably not give you any useful skills for any other applications on the Mac platform. Forget about being able to examine the interface in InterfaceBuilder or ResEdit, too.
The whole complexity of learning the build system and all of the custom formats involved has been a real turn-off for many a Mac developer who just take a look at the build instructions and vomit. The lack of standard dev tools has definitely hindered my productivity, and I'm sure I'm not alone. A fantastic build system is one that doesn't get in a developer's way and on Macs at least, that's most definitely not the case.
ed
Parent
But how else can you do portable? (Score:4, Insightful)
without something portable like Ant or SCons, you end up needing either to
-build your own tools (this is what Microsoft's shared source version of
-require a common toolchain on every box (e.g. Unix make+the unix commands; cygwin on windows)
The trouble with IDEs, is that they are either platform specific, or use their own configuration files to control the build. In Java Ant has finally become common enough (after 5 years) that it is broadly supported in IDEs, so you get the best of both worlds.
In C++ land, most people resort to the common toolchain, because only the ambitious fools with time on their hands bother to write their own build system. Does that mean it should't be done? No, just that it would be silly if every fairly large project came up with their own build tools. Instead every few years, we really ought to revisit the build processes and tools of the OSS projects, and see how they can be improved.
Parent
Not really "new" news (Score:5, Funny)
Er ... this happened a week ago. Good news, to be sure, though.
Note: OOo 1.1.5 can import OpenDocument files, but not export them.
By the way, what's with all the people complaining about how the site looks? I'm using Lynx and it looks totally normal to me.
Re:Not really "new" news (Score:3, Informative)
Slashdot's true motto (Score:2)
the looks of slasdot (Score:3, Funny)
Well, that says it all, doesn't it? I mean; it looks normal in Lynx! What more proof of the highly skewed and distorted layout do you need?
pssshhh stable. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:pssshhh stable. (Score:3, Informative)
Just a Microsoft Office clone (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone want to have a go at rethinking word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software?
Re:Just a Microsoft Office clone (Score:5, Interesting)
Lots of people are ready. The users don't want to.
Parent
Re:Just a Microsoft Office clone (Score:3, Insightful)
The choice is there, users choose not to take it.
Re:Just a Microsoft Office clone (Score:3, Insightful)
They do that because users understand spreadsheets and they don't understand databases. No, really.
A spreadsheet is a good prototyping tool, it doesn't force structure on your data - you can play with it and throw it lots of data dumps, reformat them, reposition them, and the overall structure of the data emerges from all that dirty work. Contrast this with a database in which the first thing y
REPLY:Just a Microsoft Office clone (Score:2, Funny)
Carlos
You mean like (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:LyX (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just a Microsoft Office clone (Score:5, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I am a Mac OS X OpenOffice.org developer and a founder of the NeoOffice [neooffice.org] project.
Yes, there are some folks rethinking the standard interfaces...such as Apple (with Keynote [apple.com] and Pages [apple.com]) and even Microsoft with Office 12 [zdnet.com] and earlier some of the UI design of Office:mac. On some platforms, it would even be possible to play around with alternative OOo interfaces by using OfficeBean (although I don't know of any off of the top of my head).
For office suites, however, I think the general interface paradigms are so commonplace now that any radical departure will be greeting by a nice resounding "WTF is this" from users. Case in point: OpenDoc [wikipedia.org]. It was, in my opinion, a valiant attempt at shifting the focus for productivity suites off of individual applications and onto a free-form content-centric view. The idea never caught on with users, and ones I always saw trying to use it were just confused by the idea and were still asking questions like "what do I open to create a spreadsheet?".
Not to mention I can't get that stupid "I just did the Excel..." lady from the Video Professor commercial out of my head. With millions of users like that, I doubt things will really be able to change that much :)
ed
Parent
Re:Just a Microsoft Office clone (Score:5, Insightful)
I would love to have a new, innovative, word processing software, spreadsheet software, and presentation software (although I use LaTeX and text editors for the former, so I'm not much of a word processor user anymore). However, OpenOffice's goal was never to become an innovative office suite (in the sense of revolutionizing word processors like Apple's Pages [apple.com] (or even LyX for that matter), revolutionizing spreadsheets like Lotus Improv [wikipedia.org], and presentations like Apple Keynote [apple.com]); it's goal was to provide 90% of MS Office's features and interface at a much lower price: free (as in beer and as in speech). And it does a decent job of doing that if you just can't afford MS Office (and, in some instances, a Windows or Mac OS license). I use OpenOffice on my computer. Even though I don't use it too often (I have been indoctrinated^Wintroduced to LaTeX, and don't have a need for spreadsheets and presentations [LaTeX can handle presentations, too]), I keep OpenOffice on my machine just in case I must work with MS Office documents.
OpenOffice is a very nice, pragmatic software project used for a free alternative to MS Office. OpenOffice isn't perfect and I actually prefer MS Office to OpenOffice for a few reasons (faster loading is the main key), but it is the no-cost solution to dealing with the MS world out there. OpenOffice didn't set out to become a revolutionary, innovative project. OpenOffice is an example of a program that tries to do a job that a $300+ program does, except offered for free.
Parent
Re:Just a Microsoft Office clone (Score:4, Interesting)
I have used OOo exclusively for the past two years, mostly for school work. Between taking notes in class, typing assignments, etc, I spent many hours using it. While I also have MS Office 97, 2k and XT, I stuck with OOo because of a few default behaviours and features. First, it does not bullet, tab, etc by default. You have to actvely format the text. When taking notes in class this is crucial, because I really do not have time to fuss around with how the text looks like. MS Office was driving me crazy with its auto-everything behaviour, which cannot be turned off (it can be undone on a case-by-case basis, but that is not good enough for me). Second, it can export the file as PDF. When sharing files, this is amazing. Not to mention that most people cannot edit your work if you chose not to let them. And upon completing a course I can just archive the material as PDF, without having to worry about installing OOo or MS Office in order to read it. MS Office however, does not (or at least did not) have this feature.
Parent
Back to OOo 1.1.5 (Score:5, Insightful)
By the way, what's up with Slashdot? While the new look is kinda cool, why does it take several page reloads to display correctly in Firefox. I mean, you would think that they would made sure that the new design worked with Firefox.
2.0 Beta For MS Files (Score:5, Informative)
Can't find the bugs? Want mine? (Score:2, Informative)
I guess it's all in the features you use. I still use it because the price is right. And "pretty darn buggy" is still "only about as buggy as Microsoft Office."
64? (Score:3, Interesting)
Ever store a pointer in a long? (Score:5, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I am a Mac OS X OpenOffice.org developer and a founder of the NeoOffice [neooffice.org] project.
Ever write code that just stores a pointer in a long and assume void * is the same size? Ever written Win32/Mac code where you dump a pointer in a window reference constant and then just cast it out? This happens quite a bit in the OpenOffice.org code. Of course, since such assignments require casting, they're still valid even if the size of void * is no longer the sizeof long. gcc4 may spit out a warning at you, but it'll still be valid C.
I could go off on how a word processor/presentation program really should have no underlying need to address more than 2GB of memory, but I'll leave that for another time...I almost can fathom spreadsheets, but really the unsigned int row index will bite you in the ass *waaay* before a 2GB per process memory limit :)
ed
Parent
Re:64? (Score:3, Insightful)
Firstly a 64bit program will be bigger and probably slower (dispite what the zealots tell you) because of having to drag double sized data across the memory bottleneck.
Seeing as the Opteron/Athlon64/Turion64 run 32bit applications fast natively there's no actual point (other than religious) to build and run an office product (or, indeed, most other applications) in 64bit mode.
Re:64? (Score:3, Insightful)
In EDA tools, I've seen SPARC 64-bit binaries go slower and the x86-64 ones go quicker. That isn't
Re:64? (Score:3, Insightful)
For purely integer code on our v40z's, v20z's and W2100z machines there seems to be a 50% drop in speed, for floating point scientific code generally a bit less. This is the same for FORTRAN as well. These are all Opteron with dual channel memory.
I've tried similar
OpenOffice in government contracts... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a good chance to include the OpenOffice format (specifically, a reference to the Oasis Open Document specification), as part of a specification for a US Federal Government system. The current specification includes MS Office formats as acceptable document formats for reports, etc...and OpenDocument would be inserted along with MS Office as an acceptable report format. This specification will be the basis for a few more related specifications.
What I need are references to other US federal (preferred), US state/local, or non-US government use of OpenOffice (the app) or OpenDocument (the Oasis document standard). The higher profile the better.
So far, I've scraped up a couple references but not enough to make a simple and direct case for the inclusion of OpenDocument. (The practical and technical benifits are not always a good argument to make...who's using what seems to be more effective.)
Re:OpenOffice in government contracts... (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Witty comments with submission (Score:3, Funny)
I was expecting something like the following:
Although version 1.1.5 is a bit less of a jump than the upcoming 2.0, there have been a few impressive improvements. None of which I'm sure of, but not knowing those guys who work on the product, I'm sure it'll be great. I'm thinking of downloading this update in a couple of weeks, so what suggestions do you have for software to support this massive leap into the unknown?
Sweet: just installed Beta 2 on Ubuntu Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
I hope that the Ubuntu team packages the latest beta of OOo with the next Ubuntu release.
I have been running beta 1 when I need to run Windows for a long time.
* Healthier hacking: http://cjskitchen.com/ [cjskitchen.com]
MacOS X Version (Score:3, Informative)
There ist also a 2.0 beta version available: http://ooofr.org/telechargement/macosx/2.0/ [ooofr.org]
Of course you'll still need X11 to run those applications, but 1.1.5 works fine and stable for me (havn't tried 2.0 yet) on tiger with Apple's X11.