OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org (OOo) (not "OpenOffice," due to a trademark dispute) is an office applications suite. OpenOffice.org is a community-based project and is based on the open-sourced code from an older version of StarOffice created by Sun Microsystems. The project aims to compete with Microsoft Office, and emulates Microsoft Office's look and feel to some degree. It is compatible with the file formats of Microsoft Office, but also implements its own XML-based file formats. By using file compression after the XML generation, the XML-based OpenOffice.org files are generally smaller than the equivalent binary Microsoft Office files.
There are OpenOffice.org versions for Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X (The Mac OS X version of OOo requires the use of X11).
Newer releases of StarOffice are based on the OpenOffice.org codebase (similar to the relationship between Netscape Navigator and Mozilla). Although StarOffice is itself a commercial product, OpenOffice.org is released under the LGPL and the SISSL and thus it is free software.
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2 Historical background 3 GNOME integration 4 Openoffice.org in the marketplace 5 Development 6 OpenOffice.org extensions 7 See also 8 External links |
Version 1.1 was released on September 2, 2003 and it includes:
The first major release, 1.0, came out on the May 2, 2002.
It included:
Overview
Math has been integrated into other programs and is no longer available as a standalone product.
The OpenOffice.org 2.0 beta and release candidate is called Pelican.
There are other projects which run as an aide to support the main OpenOffice.org project - including documentation, localisation and the application programming interface. All these projects welcome assistance, according to individuals' skillsets. There is also a scripting project which aims to be a repository for distributing macros.
In August of 1999 Sun Microsystems purchased StarDivision, a German software company who produced an office suite known as StarOffice. Sun's strategy at the time was to provide an alternative office suite to the dominant Microsoft Office. They opened up the source code in 2000 and the OpenOffice.org project started. This allowed Sun to access rapid development with little cost. It also allowed the general public a version of StarOffice, which is totally free, including the source code.
With careful configuration, OpenOffice.org will integrate with other databases such as mySQL and postgreSQL, offering the same functionality as the Microsoft Access database.
Sun Microsystems, Inc. is integrating OpenOffice.org with GNOME, which means that the applications of OpenOffice.org will become part of GNOME office.
Ximian is attempting to speed the integration with GNOME and is developing software patches against the main release which let OpenOffice.org use the GTK widget toolkit used by GNOME applications. On systems that run GNOME, this will give OpenOffice.org the same look and feel as the other GNOME applications running on that system. Ximian includes OpenOffice.org in their product Ximian Desktop [1].
Microsoft has, as a key competitor in the marketplace perhaps unsurprisingly denounced the usefullness of OOo. When the Israeli employment agency announced plans to switch from using Microsoft Office to OOo, an unnamed Microsoft representative was quoted ([1]) as saying "The employment agency has selected an immature and unproven software package and its functionality is at the best close to Office 97."
The OpenOffice.org API is based on the OpenOffice.org component technology and consists of a wide range of interfaces defined in a CORBA-like Interface description language.
OpenOffice.org uses a modified version of mozilla.org's BugZilla to track issues. CollabNet's BugZilla is called IssueZilla as it extends that bug-tracking system towards more generalized Issue tracking, which is a superset of bug tracking, to report an issue/bug.
It allows everyone to keep track of the many big and small tasks, requests, enhancements, whatever that circulate throughout an Open Source project. What is more, the issue tracker makes it easier to determine if any another user has had similar problems. And if the problem has been resolved, it can alert the relevant people to the solutions found.
Historical background
GNOME integration
Openoffice.org in the marketplace
OpenOffice.org has emerged as the most prominent alternative to the dominant Microsoft Office application suite of office software. Indeed the ability to import from and export to Microsoft Office file formats is an important feature of OOo for many of its users.Development
OpenOffice.org extensions
See also
External links
