October 12, 2005

OMFG!
No one knows for certain when OpenOffice.org 2.0 stable will be released, but Mad Penguin's bet is that the stable 2.0 release will come before any recently purchased cartons of milk expire in your refrigerator.
posted by Skrik 19 years ago
  • Given the state of my refrigerator, that means OO.o 2.0 should be out 3 days ago. w00t! Where's my download?
  • How's the loading time going to be on this new version? Under two minutes on my iBook would be nice.
  • That's the catch. The manual says it should load by the time your NEXT carton of milk spoils.
  • That's nice. I'm not going to hold my breath.
  • I still have not had an issue with the latest beta. Nice piece of software, and the Math program is awesome (especially since I don't know LaTex.)
  • The last OO was nice, but that 60 MB download was lame. Glad I wasn't on dialup.
  • I do be loving this and would do away with Microsoft Office altogether were it not for the fact that Word had a very good Chinese dictionary feature that I can't find an open source equivalent to, and doing the final check that .doc files I produce for clients don't have any lkay-out problems if there's a lot of tables and the like. The RC version (1.9 something?) of Writer on my laptop loads in about ten seconds.
  • especially since I don't know LaTex. One of these days I'm going to muster up the time to sit down and learn Tex and LaTex.
  • mct: It's actually pretty easy to do LaTeX. TeX has a slightly higher learning curve. The not so short guide to LaTeX is very good. There's also the Gentle Guide to TeX.
  • I tried looking in the FAQ, but I couldn't find nothin -- as a simple no-tech-knowing user, I have to wonder why OO doesn't use .doc format for text by default? What are the benefits of .xjflp or whatever it's called?
  • Ah, thanks for that. I may have to give it a run, now.
  • scartol: The benefit is that it is an open format, which means everyone knows how to read and write it. The .doc format, in contrast, is only known to Microsoft, and everyone else has to figure it out through trial and error (If I were in a snarky mood, I'd say Word does too ;-) This isn't a big deal in a world where everyone uses MS Word, but becomes problematic if you'd like to have a little competition in the office suite world.
  • Also, OO allows you to save your work in .doc (granted, it works spottily on the old version of OO I used) or .rtf format, which Word and other word processors can read if you need to move your work to another computer. Is .rtf open format? I know some things go wonky if you use .rtf, but way back when I was still in love with the word processor that came with Lotus I used it a lot when I wanted to write on my computer and print at the college library.