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NewsVac: News from around the Web
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Sun StarOffice 9 coming November 17th. Do you care?
1 week, 2 days ago
From the "why pay when you can get it for free" files: InternetNews.com has learned that Sun is set to release StarOffice 9 on November 17th. StarOffice is Sun's office suite offering currently based on the OpenOffice.org code base. Considering that the two products are nearly identical though, it makes you wonder why Sun even bothers anymore. -
Go-oo: A Lighter, Faster OpenOffice, With Extras
1 week, 2 days ago
One of the main complaints about the open source OpenOffice.org suite of productivity applications is that the applications are slow compared to the comparable Microsoft Office apps. If you've run into this problem, and if you use OpenOffice but occasionally run into compatibility problems in sharing files with the Microsoft Office applications, try Go-oo. Even if you don't use Go-oo all of the time, it is good to use in conjunction with OpenOffice for several reasons. Here they are. -
OpenOffice vs. Google Apps
1 week, 3 days ago
Not only does OpenOffice.org match Google Apps in convenience and availability, but feature for feature it leaves Google Apps writhing helplessly on its back and choking on FOSS dust. -
Where to find royalty-free cliparts for OpenOffice.org?
1 week, 6 days ago
Open source office suite needs some decent open and royalty-free cliparts. This tutorial presents valuable clipart repositories and an extension which enables direct downloading of graphics into the OpenOffice.org documents. -
CodeWeavers to Offer CrossOver For Free On Tuesday
3 weeks, 4 days ago
You might recall that several weeks ago Jeremy White, president and CEO of CodeWeavers, promised to had out free licenses for the popular commercial version of Wine if at least one of a handful of (seemingly) unlikely economic goals CodeWeavers set were met before President George. W. Bush left the White House. Surprisingly, one of those goals has been met. Gas prices have dropped below $2.79 a gallon in the Twin Cities and that means free software for everyone tomorrow at CodeWeavers. -
Animating slide shows in OpenOffice.org Impress
1 month ago
Animation is one of the less-known features in OpenOffice.org Impress. Its most obvious uses are for transitions for individual objects on a slide (rather than for the entire slide), or for dramatic emphasis and calling attention to objects. But it can also be used for more serious purposes, such as illustrating a procedure that is clearer if you can see it in motion -- for instance, one of the most effective animations I saw showed was on a Society for Creative Anachronism site that explained how the links in chain mail fitted together. -
OpenOffice 3.0 released amid fears of development stagnation
1 month ago
The OpenOffice.org (OOo) project ranks high among the most popular open source software applications. The cross-platform productivity suite, which has been adopted by government agencies, companies, and individual users around the world, got a big boost this morning with the official release of version 3.0. The new version includes a modest assortment of significant new features and brings improved support for document standards. -
Open Office 3 new features
1 month, 1 week ago
The latest release of OpenOffice.org has generated a lot of interest. Check out this gallery to see what's new. -
OpenOffice.org 3.0 Releases Monday
1 month, 1 week ago
The OpenOffice.org 3.0 suite of productivity applications arrives Monday, but, as noted at Download Squad, you can get it today. The OpenOffice team has posted it to a number of mirror sites. The list to check is here. As Download Squad notes: "Just pick one in your region, navigate to the folder marked 'stable' and grab the appropriate files for your operating system from the '3.0.0' folder." If you want the Windows version and not the Linux version, FileHippo has it available today. Here's more on what's under the hood. -
ODF – Our work here is done?
1 month, 3 weeks ago
Day 0 had been concluded with a tasty Korean meal (washed down with possibly a tad too much Korean vodka) and it was very interesting to hear some of the views from NB members on how they thought the office formats future will play out (and no, there were no Microsoft, IBM or Ecma people at the table). One view was that ODF had served its purpose (to get MS formats out into the open) and should now declare victory before fading away gracefully; another was that OOXML would surely become the default format of the OpenOffice.org suite, and that this would crystallize the real option users had: to use FOSS or commercially-licensed Office packages. I’m not sure I’d go with either of these but still, it was refreshing to get some new perspectives rather than the stale repetitions that have too often characterised the exchanges of the past months. It will be interesting to see what really happens ... personally I think ODF is more likely to emerge as a kind of “default choice” than OOXML (not perhaps, that most users care). -
OpenOffice.org Edition Performance Smackdown
1 month, 3 weeks ago
OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 comes in a dozens of editions, and each edition has its own features, performance improvements, bug fixes, and new bugs. Which edition is the fastest to start and to open a document? Ask these 3000 measurements. -
OpenOffice.org 3.0 Promises New Life for Office Software
2 months ago
OpenOffice.org is in an unenviable place. Office suites -- word processors, spreadsheets, presentations and the ilk -- are utilitarian, complex bundles of software. They are a necessity of modern life, used daily by individuals and businesses all over the world. It isn't that people take them for granted. People don't consider them much at all. It has been a long time since I've had any feelings whatsoever about an office suite. There have been developments in office software that have been innovative, such as online document creation. And though useful, I still can't honestly say that I've been enthusiastic about (or, since Clippy was retired, repulsed by) any office application. -
OpenOffice 3 Release Candidate Arrives
2 months, 1 week ago
The next major release of the most popular open-source office suite is so close that you can almost taste it. -
OpenOffice.org: Knowing when to use Impress
2 months, 1 week ago
With Labour Day past, we back in the season of slide shows -- million of them daily in both academia and business. For over a decade now, slide shows have become an accepted prop for public speaking, regardless of whether they are useful or well-designed, and the trend shows no sign of slowing. You can, of course, just acquiesce and accept that as soon as you click to the first slide, most of your audience will sigh deeply and sit back low in their chairs. But, if you really want to make slide shows work for you, you'll think before opening up the Impress wizard. -
Maemo gains KOffice port
2 months, 1 week ago
A blogger on KDEdevelopers.org has ported the KDE-based KOffice office suite to the Maemo distribution used with Nokia's Internet Tablets. The port between the two Linux-based environments is functional, but still has some problems, according to the poster, "mkruisselbrink." - More News
Linux.com : Office Software
SoftMaker Office 2008 focuses on compatibility with Microsoft Office
The free and open source office suite OpenOffice.org might be a killer app for many, but its inability to properly display documents created in the proprietary Microsoft Office formats hinders its widespread acceptance in multi-OS business environments with many legacy .doc and .xls files. If changing over to an open document format is not an option, try SoftMaker Office. It's no OpenOffice.org-killer, but it's a full featured office suite that has great compatibility with Microsoft Office. Sure, it costs $80, but you can increase your karma by running it on Linux.
Sun wrestles itself with StarOffice 9
StarOffice 9 reminds me of the classic Monty Python skit in which Graham Chapman wrestles himself. Although StarOffice is being aggressively presented as an alternative to Microsoft Office, it seems to be equally marketed and bundled to compete against OpenOffice.org, the free software project that is sponsored by Sun and that shares a common code base with StarOffice. The trouble is, the differences between the two have diminished with each release, until, with StarOffice 9, you have to wonder who the potential customers might be.
Crafting offers and invoice documents with Kraft
Kraft helps you keep track of business offers and invoices and can generate PDF files to help you easily issue these routine documents to third parties. Since Kraft is a KDE application, it can draw contact information directly from your KDE address book, so you don't have to duplicate or sync your contacts in order to generate an invoice.
Sun Presenter Console extension is useful but undocumented
Currently in late beta, the Sun Presenter Console (SPC) is Sun Microsystems' latest extension for OpenOffice.org and StarOffice. Other extensions from Sun in the last year, such as the Sun PDF Import Extension, Sun Presentation Minimizer, and Sun Weblog Publisher, have sometimes been lacking in design and sometimes buggy, but all of them are so invaluable that you might wonder why they are extensions instead of new features. SPC is no exception. It gives slide show presenters a separate view of their presentation and some tools to help them organize and deliver their talks, but includes no indication of how to set it up or use it.
Using Calc to manage schedules
If you want to keep tabs on your deadlines, you don't need a fancy project management application -- often, a simple spreadsheet can do the job. To see how, let's create a spreadsheet that tracks task deadlines, shows the current status of each task, and highlights scheduling conflicts. In the process we'll learn a few useful Calc techniques.
Four layout extensions for OpenOffice.org Writer
OpenOffice.org Writer is as much a desktop publishing program as a word processor. That fact, however, has yet to have much influence on the extensions created for Writer -- perhaps because most users prefer manual formatting to organizing themselves with page styles, templates, and other elements of document design. Still, extensions for layout are starting to appear, as demonstrated by four extensions that help you automate layout: Alba, which manages page orientation; Pagination and Pager, which manage page numbering; and Template Changer, which allows you to change the template, and therefore the entire layout of documents, on the fly. And all but one of these extensions use styles and templates, the way that OpenOffice.org is built to work, which means that they are highly stable.
OpenOffice.org 3.0 is an incremental improvement
OpenOffice.org 3.0, which is being released today, is not the great leap forward in look and feel that version 2.0 represented, but it justifies its label as a major release with dozens of changes, some major, some minor, but in all more than can be easily summarized.
Create OOo reports with ease with Sun Report Builder
The Sun Report Builder extension adds powerful reporting capabilities to OpenOffice.org Base, and using it to create reports is easy, as we can see with a simple example. Suppose you're a freelance writer, and you want to keep track of your submissions using a simple OpenOffice.org Base database that stores article titles, publications, submission dates, current status, and payment rates. This is a useful solution, but adding reporting capabilities turns the database into a handy analytical tool. With Sun Report Builder you can generate a list of articles grouped by publication, shows the sum of article payments, and displays a chart of payments for each publication.
The KOffice 2.0 beta, part 2: Graphical and charting programs
Yesterday, I looked at the major applications in the first beta for KOffice 2.0. Now it's the turn of the rest of the beta: The KPlato project manager, KChart, the vector graphics editor Karbon, and the raster graphics editor Krita.
KOffice 2.0 beta hints at improved capabilities
KOffice has been trailing the office application leaders for a long time. Despite years of development, it has yet to match OpenOffice.org feature for feature, although its features are complete enough that they have attracted a loyal community. Judging from the first beta, KOffice 2.0 will still not rival OpenOffice.org or other free software rivals, but it should be a major step in that direction.
Manou Chen of Open.Amsterdam (video interview)
Open.Amsterdam (in Dutch; English PDF download available here) is working to convert most of the city of Amsterdam's computers to GNU/Linux and open source software, and to make sure that any remaining proprietary-OS computers owned by the city use open file formats instead of closed, proprietary ones. In this interview, project director Manuo Chen tells us how the project is going and a little about its goals -- and a little about some of the pitfalls it has encountered, too.
FastMailMerge rationalizes OpenOffice.org Merge functions
Mail merge, the production of multiple documents that differ only in minor details, remains a difficult task in OpenOffice.org Writer. Few use the function regularly, and when they do, the mail merge wizard seems to cause as much confusion as it resolves. Writer's original mail merge feature, retrievable from Tools -> Customize -> Add -> Documents -> Mail Merge is somewhat more straightforward, but, even with it, users are likely to confuse the original document and the information source. In comparison to those other alternatives, FastMailMerge is not only simplicity itself, but a welcome relief that easily lives up to its name.
OpenOffice.org Basic crash course: Saving user settings
The ability to save user settings can come in handy if you want to make your OpenOffice.org solutions more flexible, efficient, and user-friendly. In this article, we take a look at how to save user settings in a plain text file and then retreive them from there.
Turn OpenOffice.org into a Web-editing tool with ODF@WWW
Imagine being able to open any Web page on your server in OpenOffice.org, edit it, and save the changes back to the server by pressing the Save button. It may sound too good to be true, but that's exactly what the ODF@WWW project is set to achieve.
OOo Basic crash course: Creating charts with Base and Calc
While OpenOffice.org Base is good for storing and querying data, it doesn't provide any easy way to chart information. This is exactly what Calc does best, with its dedicated chart module. If you want to visualize data stored in a Base database, you can write an OOo Basic macro that pulls data from a database, inserts it into a Calc spreadsheet, and then creates a chart. Here's how.
AltSearch for OOo Writer functionality trumps first impressions
Alternative Find and Replace for Writer (AltSearch) has the ambitious goal of replacing and enhancing one of the most basic pieces of OpenOffice.org functionality. It's undermined by a chaotic interface, but if you have the patience to continue past first impressions, you will find AltSearch comes far closer to fulfilling its promise than you might initially imagine.
OpenOffice.org extension will add PDF editing
Easy PDF editing is coming to OpenOffice.org, but you'll have to be patient for a few months. Recently posted to the OpenOffice.org Extensions site, the Sun PDF Import extension (SPI) is only in beta, and only works with recent developer builds of OpenOffice.org 3.0, which is scheduled for September release. Right now, the quality of the final release is anybody's guess, but the beta's capabilities fall squarely in the middle of the available PDF import tools.
IBM Lotus Symphony turns old OOo code into enterprise Judas goat
Oracle and now IBM seem to have strange ideas about creating a business around open source software for the enterprise. First it was Oracle's Unbreakable Linux program, derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux sans its proprietary bits and supported for peanuts to beat RHEL and similar community projects such as CentOS. Now it's IBM, which has taken old OpenOffice.org code under the now-retired Sun Industry Standards Source License and released it as a proprietary closed source freeware office suite. The first stable release of IBM Lotus Symphony, released last week, has no obvious advantages over OpenOffice.org. The suite is targeted at enterprise customers, at the expense of free and open source alternatives.
Translate words with EuroOffice Dictionary extension
Need a multilingual dictionary tool that allows you to quickly translate words and expressions without leaving the convenience of OpenOffice.org? Drop in the EuroOffice.org Dictionary (EOD) extension.
OOo Basic crash course: Creating a simple application launcher
In previous installments of the crash course, you've learned how to build a simple basket tool, a task manager, and even a word game. This time, let's take a look at how you can use the skills you picked up from those exercises to create a simple application launcher, which will allow you to start virtually any application without leaving the convenience of OpenOffice.org. While working on this project, you'll learn how to create and use functions, handle errors, and how to populate list boxes using records from a database table.
