Re: [Sheflug] OpenOffice.org 3.0

[Chris Warburton <chriswarbo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wednesday 15 October 2008 09:42:05 Richard Ibbotson wrote:
> Yes.  The general design idea behind OOo is that with every major
> release such as 1.xx or 2.xx they will introduce new things and move
> towards the ultimate aim of making OpenOffice.org the best office suite
> out there.

OpenOffice.org's strength, I think, lies in its closeness to Microsoft Office 
pre-2007. With many people getting confused by Microsoft Office 2007's 
interface (the kind of people who only learn the combination of buttons to 
press, rather than grasping the interface paradigms and metaphors used) it is 
a good opportunity to spread OpenOffice.org as a familiar-feeling free office 
suite, which is still being updated and improved (as opposed to, say, 
Microsoft Office 2003 which is now left to rot since 2007 is out).

Personally though I just use AbiWord, since I don't need it to feel like 
Microsoft Office and Abiword is a LOT quicker to start up than OpenOffice.org. 
Also OpenOffice.org Calc needs some improvements to its graphs before it is 
usable for me in Physics labs, I'll check out the new version but if they've 
not been made yet then I'll stick to Gnumeric.

Don't get me wrong, I am still a fan of OpenOffice.org, but it is often 
complete overkill for what I need, and doesn't support some features I 
require. But hey, it's all Free Software which means I can choose. I keep it 
around since its proprietary format handling is unequalled amongst Free office 
suites :)

Thanks,
Chris

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