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Jewish World Review April 15, 2005 / 6 Nisan, 5765 OpenOffice Has New (Beta) Version By Mark Kellner
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
I knew things were different when I added a word count button to the tool
bar. On a free word processing program that reads and writes Microsoft Word
files. OpenOffice 2.0 is here, or pretty darned close to "here," since it's
available in a Beta release from http://www.openoffice.org.
Having open source software means, in effect, that the world is your
development lab: anyone, anywhere, can come up with an improvement or fix
for the program and submit it to the OpenOffice.org Web site (and community)
for consideration and use. In fact, the group welcomes such freelance help
on documentation, frequently asked questions and for its marketing plan (the
latter being found at http://marketing.openoffice.org).
This may be the only way, of course, that OpenOffice can compete with
Microsoft, which has multiple billions of dollars, and tens of thousands of
employees, to dedicate to any given product or project. By getting itself
out into the marketplace, OpenOffice is aiming to take some of Microsoft's
market share.
Whether or not this new version will succeed, there are some nice
improvements. On the word processing side, I like the ability to customize
the toolbar so easily, and I also like having a toolbar that not only looks
like the one in Microsoft Word, but also has familiar Word features such as
a formatting "paintbrush" and a "Navigator" pane that shows what the active
hyperlinks in a document are, along with other special items such as
headings, tables, sections and indexes.
The program will read — and write — Microsoft Word-compatible files, as well as the Rich Text Format, a straight "text document" and export files in HTML
and PDF, all just like the more-expensive programs. Compatibility, then,
shouldn't be a major problem.
In short, the OpenOffice Writer program — their version of Word — is even
more of a match for the Microsoft application than it was the last time this
column looked at the OpenOffice package. While a journalist might be
expected to obsess over word processing programs, they're important to
everyone, or so it seems: word processing is probably the major daily task
of computer users in offices, schools and at home, at least when we're not
surfing the Internet.
The suite also includes a database, a spreadsheet, a presentation program
and a drawing program. The spreadsheet is extremely similar to Excel in form
and function; I don't believe most users will have a problem working with
it. The presentation offers quite a bit: two templates and a host of special
effects, but it's not yet a total clone of PowerPoint. Then again, at the
price, it doesn't have to be; what you get here is certainly enough to begin
with in making and using good presentations. (I'm also betting that a
corporate-standard presentation PowerPoint format will make the move to
OpenOffice's "Impress" program without too much hassle.)
Some things remain the same from earlier versions: there's no e-mail client,
so be prepared to download Thunderbird (http://www.mozilla.org) if you want
a free e-mail program to go with your free office suite. There are Mac
versions of OpenOffice, but not this newest Beta release, yet.
As with any open source program, support will be where you find it: on the
Web, mostly, via discussion lists and message boards. Again, this is part of
the nature of open source software. If you can handle such ambiguities, free
software isn't a bad way to go.
What excites me overall is the continuing move of OpenOffice towards the
full office application experience. There's a lot to like here, and
investigating it won't cost you a penny.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Mark Kellner has reported on technology for industry newspapers and magazines since 1983, and has been the computer columnist for The Washington Times since 1991.Comment by clicking here. © 2005, News World Communications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of The Washington Times. Visit the paper at http://www.washingtontimes.com |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||
