2002.06_Openoffice,Org 1.0-the Latest Office Suite.pdf

REVIEWS

WHERE DO

OpenOffice.org 1.0.0

YOU WANT TO

BE TOMORROW?

W hen the latest version of OpenOffice.org

At the time of

writing

OpenOffice.org

1.0.0 had just been

released. Richard

Ibbotson takes a

look at the project’s

history and what

the first full version

has to offer

appeared on the Net on 2 May 2002, the

OpenOffice servers suffered what has

become known as the Slashdot effect. Some of the

mirrors were working – many weren’t – but they

were running at a snail’s pace due to the massive

demand for the new office suite. On the following

day, the message “internal server error” was seen on

thousands of computers around the world. There is

such an amazing demand for this office suite that the

OpenOffice infrastructure, and that of the whole

Internet, cannot keep up with the download

requests, or for further requests for an improvement

or an update.

This once again reinforces the fact that Open Source

and Free software is very much in demand, and many

of the world’s economies are in need of such well-

finished products. The OpenOffice site hosts a project

mission statement which highlights its goal: “To create,

as a community, the leading international office suite

that will run on all major platforms and provide access

to all functionality and data through open-component

based APIs and an XML-based file format.” Even in its

early stages it is turning heads and much debate is

taking place amongst the international GNU/Linux

community about issues related to this office suite and

possible future developments.

History

Where did the OpenOffice project come from? It didn’t

just spring up out of the ground in the way that so

many things do. Back in the 1990s a German company

called Star Division authored an office suite called

StarOffice. As it was, it was a bit old fashioned and

some people didn’t like it. But, it did work and it could

be used to produce some reasonably good finished

documents. The concept of the free office suite had

been born of a mindset which is not normally found

outside the borders of Europe.

In the summer of 1999 Sun Microsystems, over in

California, came to the conclusion that it was high time

that someone gave Microsoft some competition on the

office suite front. It was at this time that the US

Department of Justice was getting the antitrust case

together against Microsoft. It was therefore a

fashionable time to offer an alternative to the MS office

suite. Sun saw that StarOffice could be improved a little

bit with their help and support. StarOffice 5.2 was thus

produced and distributed into every corner of the globe.

For a long time all you had to do was load up the

Sun Microsystems Web site into your browser and order

a free CD which Sun would send to you at no cost to

yourself. On arrival you could use the software

contained in the CD with several different versions of

Unix as well as GNU/Linux and MS Windows.

In October 2000 Sun Microsystems provided open

access to the StarOffice source code, APIs and XML-

based file formats in order to promote growth and

innovation in the field of XML. This Open Source project

attracted a global community of developers, centred

around http://www.openoffice.org . Sun continued to

have close links to the OpenOffice project, and itself

contributed code.

Future versions of StarOffice, including the 6.0

release, will be built using the OpenOffice APIs and file

formats. The source code is written in C++ and

produces language-neutral and scriptable functionality

including the Java APIs. This technology introduces the

next-stage architecture enabling users to access the suite

Changing text options in the word processor

LINUX MAGAZINE

Issue 21 • 2002

REVIEWS

as separate applications rather than one large piece of

uncontrollable bloatware. Other features are also

present, which includes XML-based file formats. There

will be a commercial version of StarOffice and a

separate OpenOffice project.

There are probably a lot of people out there who are

wondering about licensing issues. OpenOffice uses a

dual-licensing scheme for source-code contributions.

These are the GNU Lesser General Public Licence and

the Sun Industry Standards Source Licence. There is a

definite road map to the development cycle, which is

being closely followed by all parties involved. There are

more than twenty different public projects involved with

OpenOffice, all of which are broken down into sub-

projects – each one with a specific task or goal.

What makes OpenOffice

so popular?

Maybe it’s because it’s a feature rich full-blown office

suite that does all or most of the things that MS Office

can do and a few other things besides. The full suite

was tested in several small companies around the

Sheffield area. A few office secretaries were asked to

use the software without training. The result was they

all said that they found it hard to tell the difference

between OpenOffice and the Microsoft equivalent.

Some of them even took theirs home and they now use

it out of working hours for their own documents under

Windows 98 and Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

then it’s best to consult this online treasure trove of

helpful folk who know what to do next. You might also

find it useful to know that there is an enormous online

help manual, which you can get into by clicking on

Help/Contents. What comes up on the screen next makes

other proprietary look a bit tame and out of date. Each

part of the OpenOffice suite has it’s own help file which is

extremely comprehensive, to say the least. So, if you can’t

quite understand what to click on, try clicking on Help

first and that should sort you out.

To sum up, there’s no real reason for paying for

proprietary software at exorbitant prices and with such

peculiar licensing schemes when you can get hold of an

application like OpenOffice. Whether it’s for home use or

that all-important corporate presentation there’s not much

point in using anything else. This review of OpenOffice

1.0.0 was written using OpenOffice 1.0.0. At no time did

the office suite show any signs of instability neither did

the computer have to work too hard to produce a

finished document. The hardware was exactly the same

as that which is available in most offices around the

world. OpenOffice would seem to be everything that it’s

authors claim it is. To get hold of your copy have a look at

the info panel for a Web page to download from.

Drawing functions

Slimmer and quicker

In the original StarOffice the user was presented with a

heavyweight GUI, which was extremely sluggish.

OpenOffice works in a different way. You ask for a word

processor by selecting File/New/Text Document and what

you see on the screen a few seconds later is just the word

processor that you asked for. You can do the same for

spreadsheets or the OpenOffice drawing package – which

is excellent – or if you want to produce a completely and

truly cross-platform PowerPoint presentation, you can

produce it on a GNU/Linux workstation or laptop or MS

Windows workstation. After producing an MS Word

document on your GNU/Linux computer you can print to

file as a Postscript document and then convert that into

PDF format or TeX using something like ps2pdf or

TeXmacs or even an HTML document for Web pages. The

possibilities are endless and you can keep your MS Word

document handy on your computer just in case you need

to email it to someone who is still bogged down in the

world of proprietary software.

If you do need or want a database then it’s much

easier not to be tied to Access. You can use a GNU/Linux-

based database or any other MS Windows-based

database such as MySQL or Oracle, both of which are

much more stable. If you want support for OpenOffice

then there is a great deal of help from the mailing lists.

See the info panel for the relevant Web page. If you do

have any problems installing or configuring OpenOffice

Info

OpenOffice.org Web site: http://www.openoffice.org

OpenOffice download: http://www.openoffice.

org/dev_docs/source/1.0.0/index.html

OpenOffice documentation: http://www.openoffice.

org/documentation.html

OpenOffice projects: http://projects.openoffice.

org/index.html?JServSessionIdservlets=czxtikdas3

Ask questions on the mailing lists: http://www.open

office.org/mail_list.html

TeXmacs: http://www.texmacs.org

OpenOffice

Supplier OpenOffice.org

Web ttp://www.openoffice.org

For Big improvement on

StarOffice 5.2

Against Database support not ideal

rating

Issue 21 • 2002

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