OpenOffice.org Ninja

Matrix notation in OpenOffice.org Writer

2011-02-12T16:05:00.006-07:00

You don't need to blow money on Microsoft Word to write nice math notation. Say you are taking Linear Algebra or doing other mathematics that requires matrices: here is how to easily write a matrix in the free-of-charge, open source, cross-platform, OpenOffice.org Writer.

After installing OpenOffice.org and starting Writer (which is the equivalent of Microsoft Word), click Insert - Object - Formula. This starts the formula editor.

At first glance, the formula editor can be confusing. To get orientated, glance at the elements dialog:

At the top of the elements dialog, there are categories of math elements: to view the name of the category, hover the mouse cursor over the category icon. Then, to view the entries in the category, click on the category icon. The categories include:

Unary/binary operators
Relations
Set operations
Functions
Operators
Attributes
Others
Brackets
Formats

At the bottom of the elements dialog are the math element entries: click an entry to insert it into the editor.

Here is a basic 2x2 matrix A with entries A₁₁=a, A₁₂=b, A₂₁=c, and A₂₂=d:

The first time you try to draw this matrix, you may try to enter this math formula:

A = [ matrix { a # b ## c # d } ]

However, the matrix brackets are too short, and A is not bold. To scale the brackets taller and to make A bold, enter this formula instead:

bold A = left [ matrix { a # b ## c # d } right ]

Wait about one second for the matrix to update in the OpenOffice.org Writer window. If you are satisfied and wish to exit the formula editor, double click on any blank area of the Writer document.

OpenOffice.org math formulas can similarly be added to other document types including as Impress (like PowerPoint) and Draw (somewhat like Visio).

OpenOffice.org's math editor is sufficient for math homework and casual math use, but if you are writing a scholarly paper, TeX is the de facto standard.

You know your office suite is bloated when..

2009-06-23T07:18:00.002-06:00

You know your office suite is bloated and too complex when the help menu prominently features an "Office Diagnostic" feature covering memory, disk, setup, compatibility, and "known solutions."

Well, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 includes Office Diagnostics. The "known solutions" makes sense: Office crashes, it records a signature of the crash, submits it to programmers, and looks for updates. However, why check memory and the disk? In an office suite? Sure, hardware fails, but doesn't checking hardware belong in the operating system and not in an application? Besides, when was the last time you using Firefox or OpenOffice.org, it crashed, and later you found out it was the memory or the disk's fault?

What's worse is this diagnostic took at least 20 minutes to finish on a nice dual-core with 2GB RAM.

OpenOffice.org isn't necessarily have a reptutation for being lean itself, but developers are pushing hard to make OpenOffice.org 3.2 the fastest version yet. Stay tuned for more.

Orientation for New OpenOffice.org Users

2009-06-01T13:46:00.001-06:00

Know anyone new to the OpenOffice.org community needing a guide to r support, tutorials, community insights, templates, clip art, extensions, and blogs? Read my newest article "OpenOffice.org New User Orientation" on WorldLabel.com's blog.

Microsoft support for OpenDocument (ODF)

2009-05-04T10:56:00.003-06:00

Recently released, Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 supports OpenDocument Format version 1.1. With Microsoft's tarnished history of abusing standards for profit and obvious preference for Microsoft's own Office Open XML, what could Microsoft's ODF support possibility look like?

Office 2007 SP2 supports ODF is supported out of the box. There's nothing to add on or enable: It Just Works(tm). OpenDocument is listed among other formats in the File and Save dialogs. Remarkably Excel and PowerPoint list OpenDocument last. The order is neither alphabetical (XPS comes before OpenDocument) nor not in terms of conversion fidelity (because CSV also comes first).

To evaluate the quality, I opened the reference document ODF_text_reference_v3.odt in Word 2007. Overall the conversion was respectable for what is essentially a version 1.0 release for Microsoft Office. The bugs I noticed were:

Tracked changes were missing.
The second level of an ordered list was indented like first level (that is, it was not intended correctly).
An inline image was out of place.
One active hyperlink was neither blue nor underlined (though another hyperlink is fine).
All form controls were missing.
Not exactly a format bug, but Word 2007 considers "OpenDocument" misspelled though "WordPerfect" is recognized.

I also tested saved simple spreadsheet functions in OpenOffice.org 3.1 (release candidate 1) and opened it in Excel. A chart converted nicely, but Excel silently converted all the functions to their last values. That's often fine for viewing but worthless for collaboration. Microsoft seems to be waiting for OpenFormula (ODFF) standard to be finished, but Rob Weir points out that some Microsoft Office customers were already saving spreadsheet formula in ODF using the OpenXML/ODF Translator Add-in for Office, a project involving Microsoft.

Undoubtedly there are more bugs and quirks that will show up in certain types of documents. For example, Ivan N. Zlatev noticed a few. Generally I expect simple ODF word processor documents will transfer easily, but large business document will suffer.

To be fair, any large software program has bugs, and Office 2007 SP2 is Microsoft's first take on ODF in Office. Furthermore, not all differences are bugs, and Microsoft gets bonus points for documenting implementation details. For example, ODF allows for larger page sizes, but Word 2007 imposes a limit of 22x22 inches on all document formats.

Even ODF poster child OpenOffice.org has bugs in the ODF implementation. My favorite is 64237: until version 3.0, OpenOffice.org implemented the paragraph hidden property backwards.

Microsoft has opened the ODF door and will be pressured on better interoperability, so even my inner cynic has a hard time imagining interoperability will not improve. With Office 2007 SP2 and Wordpad in Windows 7 supporting ODF, the future looks bright for OpenDocument Format. Has Microsoft turned a new leaf? Microsoft's recent investments in ODF, PDF, and web standards (in Internet Explorer 8) are probably more a function of government regulation or business demand than corporate goodwill. Backed into a corner or otherwise, Microsoft has done the right thing, but further work is necessary before the general public can use ODF transparently in Office.

Microsoft has surrendered on web standards and office document formats, and they will focus the battle elsewhere. By the time Evolution and Thunderbird gain traction as competitors to Outlook, Microsoft will have business users addicted to more complex technologies such as Sharepoint and software as a service (SaaS).

OpenOffice.org Opens up for Business

2009-04-20T14:45:00.001-06:00

For an introduction to OpenOffice.org for business users and an argument to use OpenOffice.org in that context, see "OpenOffice.org Opens up for Business" at WorldLabel (written by yours truly).

Thank you to WorldLabel for their dedicated support for OpenOffice.org. I clearly recall in 2006 WorldLabel putting a non-trival amount of cash behind a contest to promote development of OpenOffice.org templates and clipart, and now WorldLabel's blog promotes open source. OpenOffice.org could use a few more friends like WorldLabel.

Multiplatform OpenOffice.org 3.0 Benchmark

2009-03-31T07:49:00.002-06:00

It's time for an OpenOffice.org benchmark rematch. Go-oo has been proudly boasting it is "Better, Faster, Freer," but last time when we tested OpenOffice.org 2.4, Go-oo came in fourth place out of four. Since then Go-oo developers addressed some problems, and now we're checking a new version 3.0 and adding benchmarks on Windows.

Editions

The following editions were tested. The abbreviated code identifies each edition in the charts.

Ubu Go-oo: Universal Linux build of Go-oo 3.0.0 on Ubuntu.

Ubu PPA: OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 on Ubuntu. Ubuntu 8.10 normally comes with OpenOffice.org 2.4, so this is the version from the popular OpenOffice.org PPA. Like the OpenOffice.org edition that ships with Ubuntu, PPA is based on Go-oo.

Ubu StarOffice: StarOffice 9 on Ubuntu with Java JRE 1.6.

Ubu Vanilla: Vanilla OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 on Ubuntu. Vanilla means it is the unmodified version available from www.openoffice.org.

Win Vanilla: Vanilla OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 on Windows without a Java JRE.

Win Portable: Portable OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 on Windows modifies the vanilla edition with executable compression, by removing some files, and by making other changes.

Win StarOffice: StarOffice 9 on Windows with Java JRE 1.6.

Environment

The test environment is a modest machine from several years ago:

Operating system: Microsoft Windows XP SP3
Operating system: Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) with Linux kernel 2.6.27
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (32-bit, single core)
RAM: 1.5 GB DDR 333 (PC 2700)
Hard disk drive: SAMSUNG HD501LJ 500 GB SATA
Video: Via VT8378 S3 Unichrome IGP at 1024x768

Benchmark process

Like previous benchmarks, this OpenOffice.org benchmark uses automation to precisely measure the duration of a series of common operations: starting the application, opening a document, scrolling through from top to bottom, saving the document, and finally closing both the document and application. Automation is much more precise than a human with a stopwatch, and with the small durations in these tests, automation is necessary. Each of the five tests are repeated for 10 iterations. Before each set of 10 iterations, the system reboots. The purpose of rebooting is to measure the difference in cold start performance where information is not yet cached into fast memory. A reboot marks a pass, and there are 10 passes. That means for each edition of OpenOffice.org, there are 100 iterations. Multiplying by 5 tests and by 7 editions of OpenOffice.org yields 3500 total measurements collected for this article.

Some editions don't have a quickstarter, so I disabled it for all editions as in previous articles.

Two steps back

Speed doesn't tell the whole value of an application. People buy cars based on price, reliability, appearance, fuel economy, storage capacity, and so on. Likewise an office suite is measured by its compatibility, reliability, and productivity. This article focuses on one aspect—speed—but gathering these observations revealed a sea of regressions related to the automation necessary to gather precise performance measurements. All the OpenOffice.org 3.0 editions tested suffered from more bugs than OpenOffice.org 2.4, and StarOffice and Vanilla OpenOffice.org worked the best while OxygenOffice and Go-OOo contained the most difficult bugs. None of these bugs would affect a typical user, but it made benchmarking using automation difficult and, in some cases, impossible.

Let's quickly count these bugs

Since before OpenOffice.org 3.0, automation sessions crash harmlessly on exist (issue 59026). No big deal.
All Windows editions required a workaround for the error AttributeError: loadComponentFromURL (issue 90701).
Go-OOo and OxygenOffice have a workaround for 90701, but it's worse on Windows.
Using automation causes OxygenOffice and Go-OOo to crash on Fedora and Ubuntu (bug 479346). The bug is so severe it was not possible to test Go-OOo 3.0.1, OxygenOffice 3.0.0, or OxygenOffice 3.0.1. On Linux only Go-OOo 3.0.0 worked.
A certain use of automation causes OxygenOffice 3.0 and Go-OOo 3.0 to crash on Windows (bug 487074) making them impractical to test on Windows.
On Windows a regression prevented bootstrapping OOo (issue 99754). The workaround wasted a few hours.
Python on Portable OpenOffice.org would immediately quit on one of my machines (the real test machine). The Windows Event Viewer logged theses errors

SideBySide
Dependent Assembly Microsoft.VC90.CRT could not be found and Last Error was The referenced assembly is not installed on your system.

and

Generate Activation Context failed for C:\OpenOfficePortable\App\openoffice\Basis\program\python-core-2.3.4\bin\python.exe.
Reference error message: The operation completed successfully.

until I installed the Microsoft Visual C++ runtime.
Portable OpenOffice.org froze four times during its 100 iterations.

While these regressions don't affect end-users directly, OOo should remember Steve Ballmer's mantra "Developers, developers, developers." It is the developers who build a rich ecosystem which makes OpenOffice.org attractive— especially to business users. Let's entice developers with an easy platform.

Results

Cold start performance is the most critical factor to the perception of fast performance. While the Go-oo homepage brags about its fast startup, the results aren't a resounding win for Go-oo. Because of Go-oo bugs, it could not be tested on Windows, and on Linux it's a mixed bag for Go-oo where it takes first and last place. Clearly on Linux the PPA edition is the winner at 2.28 seconds, but it's the only one of the four Linux editions that can take advantage of system libraries already loaded by other programs such as GNOME. The three other editions (which ship with their own copies of system libraries to be compatible with different Linux distributions) are surprisingly indistinguishable considering the many performance factors such as features, patches, compiler version, and compiler options.

On Windows, I expected Portable OpenOffice.org to take the lead because of its use of compression, which minimizes disk I/O. (Disk I/O severely degrades cold start performance.) However, Vanilla OpenOffice on Windows won at 2.83 seconds. Vanilla's advantage over StarOffice may be a difference of features or that only StarOffice was tested with a Java JRE (which it installs by default).

These charts are boxplots (drawn using R) showing the median and variance. Lower numbers are better.

Another important performance metric is warm start performance, which means starting OpenOffice.org a second time in a row while the disk information is cached in RAM. Because of the cache warm starts are always faster than cold starts. The dramatic difference between cold starts and warm starts shows the vital role of minimizing disk I/O. A quickstarter is intended to make all starts seem like warm starts, but quickstarters have their own drawbacks.

Like in cold starts, Linux PPA takes the lead in warm starts at 0.93 seconds. You can see by the outliers (indicated by dots) that Ubuntu PPA is unique: usually the second and all subsequent iterations have the same performance, but for Ubuntu PPA the second iteration scores halfway between the cold and warm. The three Windows editions are similarly grouped, and again, Go-oo takes last place.

The next step in the benchmark is opening reference document ODF_text_reference_v3.odt. When opening the document after a cold start notice how similarly Vanilla and StarOffice perform on each platform. Likewise, Go-oo and PPA perform similarly—probably because system libraries wouldn't give an advantage in this operation. Finally Portable has a 33% advantage over Vanilla—probably because of executable compression. StarOffice and Vanilla take last place with PPA again taking first place.

Don't put all your money on Ubuntu yet: things look completely different when opening a document after a warm start. Now Windows takes a big lead over Ubuntu, and Vanilla Windows shows a dramatic 44% edge over Vanilla Ubuntu. Portable OpenOffice.org's executable compression weighs it down only a fraction in this race where CPU speed is paramount. Go-oo's patches (which are also in PPA) help but not enough to crush Redmond. It's hard to say with certainty, but the credit could be due to efficiency in Microsoft Visual C++ 9 (used to compile OpenOffice.org on Windows) over the open source GCC (used to compile OpenOffice.org on Linux).

The scrolling test simulates someone pressing the down arrow key to scroll from top to bottom. This test is so synthetic it won't be included in the final tally. Still, you can see Microsoft has the upper hand, which I attribute to better video drivers. Also, the difference between cold and warm starts illustrates how OpenOffice.org dynamically loads code into memory as necessary to render objects on the screen.

If you don't like waiting to save a text document, don't use the Go-oo Universal Linux build. Otherwise, all editions scored similarly with StarOffice taking its first victory by a slight margin.

Now there is nothing left to do except close the document (which is already saved) and exit OpenOffice.org. Even here you can't shake the difference between cold and warm starts: OpenOffice.org is clearly accessing new data on the disk even while exiting. On Windows the warm start times are beautifully identical, and Portable's success over Vanilla in the cold start category implies OpenOffice.org is opening an internal DLL (perhaps to save settings to the OpenOffice.org registry). On Ubuntu, Go-oo takes first and last place after warm and cold starts (respectively). All these scores fit within my personal threshold for patience.

Counting all the races now, the champion of cold starts shouldn't surprise you if you read the last article. Last time the Fedora edition of OpenOffice.org licked its competitors on Fedora, and now Ubuntu PPA OpenOffice.org does the same on Ubuntu. Clearly there is a home field advantage on Linux: OpenOffice.org performs best when it avoids loading separate copies of libraries. As the Linux Standard Base (LSB) grows, maybe one day OpenOffice.org can avoid the library mess. Even so Intrepid Ibex squeezes out victory over Windows XP.

For people who use OpenOffice.org often, the warm start performance numbers carry more weight. Boosted by huge gains in the speed of opening a document, Windows XP whips the enduring Ibex.

Conclusion

Which OpenOffice.org edition is fastest? All OpenOffice.org editions and both operating systems performed well, and it's not possible to identify a single champion. Go-oo's tweaks often (but not always) gave it an advantage over Sun Microsystem's Vanilla edition, but OpenOffice.org PPA's system libraries gained the most substantial advantage.

OpenOffice.org 3.1 is just around the corner, and the rumor is the new performance improvements make is fast. I hope to see Go-oo and OxygenOffice fix the automation bugs, so they can be better represented in the next showdown. (I'd even more hope they would upstream all their patches despite the political drama, but that's another story.)

Subscribe to www.OOoNinja.com's news feed in the top right of the page. Upcoming articles will delve into practical steps you can take to improve performance while shedding light on some performance myths.

New Features in OpenOffice.org 3.0 March 2008
The Fastest OpenOffice.org Edition September 2008
Is OpenOffice.org Getting Faster? May 2008
Benchmarking Microsoft Word 95 through 2007 July 2008

April Fools' Day Pranks

2009-03-30T13:16:00.014-06:00

Say April Fools' with five OpenOffice.org pranks. Open source has a sense of humor too!

Pick someone who isn't your boss, and it's best not to pick anyone under pressure such as that of a tight schedule on a big project.

AutoInCorrect

Exploit the AutoCorrect feature to mess with your unsuspecting coworkers. It just takes a few minutes on the victim's computer:

Start OpenOffice.org Writer.
Click Tools - AutoCorrect.
In the Replace field type a common word spelled correctly.
In the With field write a subtle typo or obvious blooper.
Click OK.

Here are a few ideas to get you started.

Replace	With
and	Andrew is cool
can	cna
don't	do
I	I have gas
report	My Little Pony
the	duh
Why	Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?

When the fun is over, click on the new entries and delete them.

This article was inspired by Amy Bennett's "5 DIY pranks for the enterprising geek".

Disappearing menu bar

Make the Writer menu bar disappear.

Close OpenOffice.org completely (including the quickstarter, if it is running).
On Windowss, open up the folder c:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\Basis\share\config\soffice.cfg\modules\swriter. On Linux, look in /opt/openoffice.org/basis3.0/share/config/soffice.cfg/modules/swriter/menubar/.
Tip: To modify Calc instead of Writer, substitute scalc for swriter.
Tip: The path varies for OpenOffice.org version 2 and on many Linux systems, so if you can't find it, do file search for swriter.
Rename the file menubar.xml to menubar.xml.bak.
Start OpenOffice.org back up (if it was already started, so as not to arouse suspicion prematurely).

When the fun is over, rename the file to the original name.

Thanks to Mr. Excel for this idea.

Scary Splash Screen

Strike fear into the hearts of your colleagues when they start OpenOffice.org to find Microsoft Office branding: just switch out the splash screen.

I Love Ponies

Sure, who doesn't love ponies. In fact, ponies are so great that every time the victim presses the left arrow, it will conveniently open up his favourite web page www.ILovePonies.com. What a time saver!

This prank is trickier to implement, so practice on your own system and give yourself extra time.

Start OpenOffice.org
Click Tools - Macros - Organize Macros - OpenOffice.org Basic.
Click the Edit button.
Paste in this code: Sub ILovePonies ' Use this line for Microsoft Windows Shell( "cmd.exe /cStart http://www.ILovePonies.com " ) ' Use this line for Linux Shell( "xdg-open http://www.ILovePonies.com " ) End Sub
Delete the line of code (starting with "Shell") not applicable to your operating system.
Click File - Close.
Click Tools - Customize.
Click the Keyboard tab.
Click on the shortcut key you want to change. I suggest Left.
Under Category, click OpenOffice.org Macros to open it up.
Open the "folders" user, Standard, and Module1.
Click the Function ILovePonies.
Click the Modify button.
Click OK.

When nobody is laughing anymore, go back to Tools - Customize and click the Reset button.

Thanks to Hildreth for the idea and to DannyB for a way to do it in OpenOffice.org.

Rickroll'd

If you prefer the 1987 musical stylings and energetic dance performance of Internet meme star Rick Astley, replace the ponies URL in the above joke with the URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0 for a Rickroll.

Don't forget to turn the speakers up so everyone can enjoy!

What about you?

Share your favourite, work-safe April Fool's Pranks in the comments. Be sure to credit the source (preferably by name and URL).

Secrets of OpenOffice.org 3 alternative installation

2009-03-02T08:17:00.006-07:00

The following are several reasons you may want this alternative method for installing OpenOffice.org on Windows:

You need to install OpenOffice.org without local administrator rights.
Your system administrator has set policies to prevent this installation.
You need to install OpenOffice.org without the system integration (file associations and menu shortcuts).
You need to install OpenOffice.org on portable media (such as a USB disk). Roll our own Portable OpenOffice.org!
You need to install multiple versions of OpenOffice.org in parallel. For example, you can install and simultaneously run versions 2 and 3.
The standard installation method fails.
You need to perform a network installation on a server.

If none of these apply to you, you may instead wish to use the standard installation.

Background

OpenOffice.org version 2 and later use a two-phased installation:

The Nullsoft Installer .exe unpacks several files to a temporary folder on the desktop. Then, it automatically starts the next step.
The Microsoft Windows Installer performs the actual installation.

A benefit of this system is that the Nullsoft Installer allows a much smaller download while the Windows Installer is Windows' native and preferred installation system (especially nice for installing through Group Policy and Active Directory).

OpenOffice.org installs simply without significant registry changes or placing files outside of its Program Files directory: this makes the OpenOffice.org application easy to relocate to different folders—even on different computers.

Procedure: Method 1

To perform the alternative installation using only one computer, follow these steps to perform what is called a "Network Installation." Don't worry about the "Network" name if you do not use a network. The end result will be a "portable" installation with any system registration (file associations, shortcuts, etc.). Here's how:

Download OpenOffice.org. Depending on the version, language, and JRE option, the file will have a name like OOo_3.0.1_Win32Intel_install_en-US.exe.
Run the downloaded file.
Click Next

and then Unpack.
Click Cancel

then Yes

then Finish.
On your desktop, open the newly-created folder which has a name like OpenOffice.org 3.0 (en-US) Installation Files (which varies depending on the OpenOffice.org version).
While viewing the folder, click Tools > Folder Options.
Click the View tab.
Uncheck Hide extensions for known file types. (If it was already unchecked, leave it unchecked.)
If you are prompted to apply settings to all folders, click No
Click OK to close Folder Options.
Click the File > New > Text Document.
Name the new file install.bat. Windows may warns you: "If you change a file name extension, the file may become unusable. Are you sure you want to change it?" Click Yes to accept the warning.
Right click on install.bat and choose Edit.
Type the following in the file:msiexec.exe /A openofficeorg30.msi

NOTE: The filename openofficeorg30.msi may change slightly depending on your OpenOffice.org version. Use the name of whichever filename you actually have. In case Windows is hiding filename extensions, look for the one file with type Windows Installer Package.
Save the file and close Notepad.
Run the batch file (by double clicking on it).
Follow the instructions in the installation program. If necessary, adjust the installation path. Whichever installation path you choose, add something like OOo to the end of it. For example, instead of just C:\, use c:\OOo to keep all the files organized.

Now OpenOffice.org is installed. There are no file associations or menu shortcuts, so you must start the application directly. If you installed it in (for example) C:\OOo, then run C:\OOo\Program\SOffice.exe. Then, there are two ways to open existing documents.

Click File > Open, or
Drag the file and drop it on the blank OpenOffice.org window.

Procedure: Method 2

If you have local admin privileges on computer X but not computer Y, you can use this procedure.

Install OpenOffice.org normally on computer X.
Copy the OpenOffice.org installation folder (typically something like C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3.0) from computer X to computer Y.

Procedure: Uninstall

To uninstall methods 1 or 2, simply delete the folder with the application.

Procedure: Method 3

Download and use Portable OpenOffice.org.

Network Installation

Did you actually want to do a network installation (also called an administrative installation)?

Follow Method 1 (above) to install OpenOffice.org centrally on a server.
On each desktop, run the openofficeorg30.msi created in the installation target directory. This step installs the program files locally, registers file associations, creates shortcuts, etc.

Procedure: Silent Installation

A silent installation installs OpenOffice.org without user interaction, so it can run unattended from a batch file.

Start with the same procedure as method 1 until the point of creating the batch file.
Instead, make the following the contents of the batch file: msiexec.exe /qb /norestart /i openofficeorg30.msi
Run the batch file

Applies to

OpenOffice.org 3
For OpenOffice.org 2 see, "Secrets of alternative installation on Windows")
Microsoft Windows XP (and probably Vista but not tested)

New Features in OpenOffice.org 3.1, an Early Look

2009-01-20T06:53:00.010-07:00

OpenOffice.org 3.1 is 65 days away, and developers are finishing up more than 1000 issues targeted for this Microsoft Office killer packing an army of new features, enhancements, and bug fixes.

Antialiased drawings

By far, the most requested feature in this release is anti-aliasing, which smooths edges of diagonal lines. On the left is OpenOffice.org 3.0, and the right is OpenOffice.org 3.1. Both images are enlarged to show detail.

Drawing primitives (including lines, circles, and charts) are antialiased in Calc, Draw, Impress, and Writer. Antialiasing is supported in editing and export modes, but not yet in full-screen mode.

Solid dragging

Drawing objects are further improved through the new solid dragging feature. Before only a wireframe was shown; now a 50% transparent copy is painted.

Translucent selections in Writer

OpenOffice.org 3.0 brought eye candy for selections to Calc, and OpenOffice.org 3.1 brings the same eye candy to Writer. Compare the un-highlighted text (top) to selections in Writer 3.0 (middle) and in Writer 3.1 (bottom):

Chart axes and labels

When charting negatives values, Calc would always draw the axes and their labels at the outermost edges. That's unnatural compared to the way we were taught in school: the labels should cross the axes at zero. Now there is a new set of options to place the axes and labels wherever is convenient. Take for example this XY scatterplot (shown in OpenOffice.org 3.0 without antialiasing):

In OpenOffice.org 3.1 set the position of axes and their labels in the new properties dialog tab called Positioning:

The result is a more familiar chart:

Outline levels

Technical writers can now can define outline level and numbering style independently for each paragraph (or paragraph style). This feature is useful for creating a sophisticated table of contents.

Replying to notes

OpenOffice.org 3.0 introduced notes in the margin, and in 3.1 collaborators can carry discussions through these notes. Notice any text that is highlighted when the Reply option is selected becomes a citation (like quoting an email).

Increase font size button

Two new buttons accelerate the process of increasing and decreasing the font size in Impress presentations.

Grammar checking

OpenOffice.org 3.1 incrementally improves the grammar checking infrastructure. Version 3.0 allowed the LanguageTool extension to provide as-you-type-your-mistakes-are-underlined-in-blue grammar checking, and version 3.1 extends the spell checking dialog for grammar checking.

Overlining

You can be "overwhelmed," so can you be "underwhelmed" too? Yes, and likewise to underlining, now you overline characters too. Stranger yet, it turns out overlining has practical uses including repeating decimals, line segments, high energy physics, logic, and electronics

Hyperlinks management

When you type a web site address, OpenOffice.org automatically converts it to a clickable hyperlink. Many people don't know how to convert it back to regular text. (The methods include Undo, CTRL+Z; Default Formatting, CTRL+M; and disabling URL recognition in AutoCorrect.) Now there is a more obvious method: the context menu (also know as a right-click menu) features the new commands Open Hyperlink, Edit Hyperlink, Copy Hyperlink Location, and Remove Hyperlink.

Accept tracked changes

Collaborators will enjoy the new context menu facilitating acceptance or rejection of recorded changes.

Control slideshow media

Before OpenOffice.org would play any movies and audio when the slide opened, but Impress 3.1 can flexibly start, pause, and stop media using custom animation effects.

Sorting improvements

A - B - C - D - E - F - G. You would think there isn't much left to do with sorting, but OpenOffice.org 3.1 brings no less than four improvements to sorting cells in Calc. They are keeping cell notes with their contents, identifying the default column for the sort toolbar buttons, not sorting column headers, and stable sorting. In previous versions, the unstable sorting would yield random results in certain situations.

Missing values

There is a new option to determine how missing values will be handed in charts.

Macros in Base

OpenOffice.org Base gets a huge boost now that OpenOffice.org 3.1 allows macros in .odb files. Furthermore, Base macros can be bound to events. Helping it compete with Microsoft Access, Base developers will save time and enjoy new possibilities such as creating navigation forms (called switchboards in Access).

SQL syntax highlighting

SQL is a first-class citizen in Base. In OpenOffice.org 3.1 the SQL editor highlights SQL syntax, which is helpful for finding typos such as a missed quotation mark.

Relative database paths

The paths of spreadsheet and dBase files serving as databases can be stored relatively in .odb files. This feature makes it easier to share these databases across machines, networks, and especially across operating systems.

See more new features in Base.

Internationalization

People whose native languages are Hebrew or Arabic will delight in OpenOffice.org 3.1's the RTL improvements. Foremost, controls can now be RTL. Also, prominent new buttons on the toolbar (next to paragraph alignment) make it easy to mix RTL and LTR text. RTL settings are honored throughout OpenOffice.org—now including charts text elements, HTML export, Impress slide view, and page preview. See also "RTL related issues fixed in OpenOffice.org 3.1".

Speed

Each OpenOffice.org includes performance improvements.

Bugs

Some 1000 bugs were fixed in OpenOffice.org 3.1. One such bug, serious for office networks, was introduced in OpenOffice.org 3.0. The new file locking didn't work with OpenOffice.org version 2, Microsoft Office, or any application other than OpenOffice.org 3, so OpenOffice.org 3.1 reintroduces the file locking at the operating system level (in addition to its own file locking system based on hidden files).

Download

UPDATED: Download the final version from http://download.openoffice.org.

Warning: This is still an alpha quality release. Keeping in mind it may eat your data, download the OpenOffice.org 3.1 developer snapshot and try all the features for yourself. Find the closest mirror with the extended directory (not all mirrors carry it). Then, open the developer directory, and find the latest directory starting with DEV300.

Report any bugs you may find.

The final release ~~is expected April 30, 2009~~ was released May 7, 2009. The release has been delayed to fix bugs: thank you to Sun for taking the time to release a high-quality product.

Delete the recent document history

2009-01-04T15:33:00.004-07:00

OpenOffice.org doesn't come with a simple way to reset its recent documents history, but there are several methods available.

History Manager extension

Installing the History Manager extension is quick and easy on Linux, Mac, or Windows. Reload OpenOffice.org, and then click Tools - Add-Ons - History Manager. Then, use the simple dialog to resize or erase the list.

It's confusing that the list is not erased immediately, but it is cleared when you close OpenOffice.org. (Make sure to close the QuickStarter too.)

History Manager 2.1 was released when OpenOffice.org 2.4 was the most recent version, but History manager clears the history on OpenOffice.org 3.0.0.

BleachBit

BleachBit is a file and privacy cleaner (by yours truly) for Linux. BleachBit is most convenient if you want to clear multiple applications (such as Firefox, Adobe Flash, and OpenOffice.og) at once. Simply install BleachBit, check the box for OpenOffice.org - Recent Documents, and then click Delete. You should also delete the OpenOffice.org cache because it contains a cached copy of the recent documents history.

Manual

To manually remove the recent documents history, first close OpenOffice.org. Then edit the Common.xcu file in your OpenOffice.org user profile directory. The OpenOffice.org user profile path differs, but for OpenOffice.org 3, it's most commonly either:

Linux: ~/.openoffice.org/3/user/registry/data/org/openoffice/Office/Common.xcu
Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\{username}\Application Data\OpenOffice.org\user\registry\data\org\openoffice\Office\Common.xcu
Windows Vista: C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice.org\user\registry\data\org\openoffice\Office\Common.xcu

Edit Common.xcu and remove the XML node History. Alternatively, you can delete the whole file, but you will lose a bit of information such as whether you registered OpenOffice.org.

Finally, delete the corresponding cache file org.openoffice.Office.Common.dat in the /user/registry/cache/ directory, or you can re-run OpenOffice.org to regenerate the cache.

Customize or remove the splash screen

A Better Office .docx Converter

2008-12-08T07:00:00.003-07:00

There's plenty of ways to convert Microsoft Office 2007 file formats (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx) to OpenOffice.org. Now OpenOffice.org 3.0 imports these Office OpenXML files natively, but natively doesn't mean a fluent translation.

Any translation is subject to imperfections. For OpenOffice.org 3.0, it is the first public release of the Office 2007 converters. Overall, it is very good, but it stuggles mainly in areas related to tracking changes, comments, tables, and drawings. You can wait for OpenOffice 3 to mature, but there's another way for the impatient.

Knowing OpenOffice.org 3.0.0's weaknesses, I designed a .docx document specially to torture OpenOffice.org and to point out its weaknesses. Here is the first page in Microsoft Office Word 2007 where the document was designed:

Here is the same .docx document on the same computer (Windows XP) in OpenOffice.org 3.0.0 using its native filters:

Finally, here is the same .docx document on the same computer in the same OpenOffice.org 3.0.0, but the .docx was passed through odf-converter-integrator 0.2.1. Notice the conversion is much more accurate:

Originally I planned to retire odf-converter-integrator when OpenOffice.org 3.0.0 was released with native .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx support, but then I realized there is still a need for high-accuracy translations. Instead of retiring odf-converter-integrator, I've upgraded it with more features (such as handling templates: .dotx, .xltx, and .potx). The latest version is powered by OdfConverter 2.5, a popular converter usually used the other way: to open ODF files in Microsoft Office.

Expect similarly better conversions with .pptx and .xlsx files, and try it yourself: download odf-converter-integrator and the reference document OpenOfficeOrg300_docx_bugs.docx.

OpenOffice.org 3.0's new features, an early look
odf-converter-integrator software for converting Microsoft Office 2007 formats
Office Compatability Pack Review

The Fastest OpenOffice.org Edition

2008-09-29T07:34:00.014-06:00

OpenOffice.org comes in several editions produced by different groups. Each edition has its own features, performance improvements, bug fixes, and new bugs. Go-oo in particular boasts performance as a feature with its the slogan, "Better, Faster, Freer," but is there truth in advertising? Let's pit four OpenOffice.org editions against each other in a scientific speed smackdown.

The four editions are Sun Microsystem's OpenOffice.org (which I call "Vanilla"), Fedora's, Go-oo, and OxygenOffice Professional. If OpenOffice.org had a family tree, it would be a convoluted redneck family. The last three are derived directly from Sun Microsystem's code, and OxygenOffice is derived from (or part of) Go-oo. Some (but not all) patches in the derivatives go back upstream to Vanilla.

Benchmark test environment

The test system is a modest computer from several years ago.

Operating system: Fedora 9 i386 with Linux 2.6.26
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (32-bit)
RAM: 768 MB, DDR 333 (PC 2700)
HDD: Maxtor 6Y080L0, IDE, 7200 RPM, 80 GB
Video: Via VT8378 S3 Unichrome IGP at 1024x768

Benchmark test procedure

Like previous benchmarks, this OpenOffice.org benchmark uses automation to precisely measure the duration of a series of common operations: starting the application, opening a document, scrolling through from top to bottom, saving the document, and finally closing both the document and application. Automation is much more precise than a human with a stopwatch, and with the small durations in these tests, automation is necessary. Each of the five tests are repeated for 10 iterations. Before each set of 10 iterations, the system reboots. The purpose of rebooting is to measure the difference in cold start performance where information is not yet cached into fast memory. A reboot marks a pass, and there are 15 passes. That means for each edition of OpenOffice.org, there are 150 iterations. Multiplying by 5 tests and by 4 versions of OpenOffice.org yields 3000 total measurements collected for this article.

Only OxygenOffice enabled a quick starter by default, and as promised in the Microsoft Word benchmark, I disabled the OxygenOffice quick starter to give all editions a level playing field.

Benchmark results

The single most important test is cold start performance—how fast the application starts the first time after the computer reboots. Go-oo's home page brags about its low I/O, fast linking, and minimized registry access contribute to better performance. Is it enough for Go-oo?

What a close race! The cold startup performance results range from 4.83 seconds to 5.24 seconds, but for all the smack talk, Go-oo came out fourth out of four. Why? There could be lots of reason. First, Fedora can link to more system libraries, meaning it can share more code with other running programs, so Fedora doesn't need to include its own XML parser, pieces of Mozilla, etc. Second, Fedora is compiled using the latest GCC version 4.3, while OxygenOffice was built with GCC 4.1; Go-Oo, 3.4.6; and Vanilla, apparently 3.4.1 and 2.9.5. Third, Go-oo has more features and is 49% bigger than Vanilla. On the other hand, OxygenOffice is also large. Finally, Go-oo and Vanilla do not use the Hashstyle (also called DT_GNU_CASH or .gnu.hash) technology developed by ~~Go-oo hacker (employed by Novell) Michael Meeks~~ CORRECTED (twice) Red Hat based on research by Michael to accelerate linking (which happens early in a program's startup): only Fedora and OxygenOffice use Hashstyle.

It may be hard to tell because the benchmark results are so consistent, but most charts are illustrated as box plots. Lower is always better.

What about application startup after a warm start? (A warm start is starting the application a second time after a reboot when the disk cache speeds up loading.) Here OxygenOffice comes in a close second after Fedora while Go-oo and Vanilla practically tie for more distant third place. The difference between all cold and warm starts is about 4 seconds, which is consumed by slow hard disk drive technology, while new solid-state storage devices would see faster performance.

The second most important metric is opening a document, so I tested reference document ODF_text_reference_v3.odt. In colds starts the variation was significant: last-place Go-oo finished 27% slower than first-place Fedora.

The results for warm starts are similar but 5-6 seconds faster.

The scrolling test involves moving down each line from top to bottom, and three editions scored similarly except OxygenOffice which did shockingly bad. The scrolling benchmark is the most artificial and least important.

In exporting a document, Vanilla comes in both first (after warm start) and last (after a cold start). Here Go-oo picks up its only meaningful win, and it wins the race to export the document after a cold start. This chart does not start at zero because it would otherwise be too small to read.

It does take a moment to close OpenOffice.org.

In the end, Fedora OpenOffice.org scored the fastest performance by a significant margin, and OxygenOffice took home a strong second place. Go-oo barely beat Vanilla for third.

Scrolling and closing were excluded from the totals because people generally don't wait for them like they do for starting the application, opening a document, and saving the document.

The irony of bug-buddy

2008-08-16T14:05:00.006-06:00

bug-buddy is a tool to improve the quality of software by facilitating bug reporting. In a certain situation, bug-buddy does the opposite. With OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 vanilla edition, Fedora 9, and bug-buddy-2.22.0-2.fc9.i386, it is hardly possible to use OpenOffice.org. When opening a document from Nautilus, the window appears for a moment and disappears (and is actually crashing).. It crashes when opening a file dialog. It crashes during crash recovery. Resetting the user profile doesn't help. Running from the GNOME Terminal sometimes help. This error comes up on the console:

Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "gnomebreakpad": /opt/openoffice.org2.4/program/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.9' not found (required by /usr/lib/bug-buddy/libbreakpad.so.0)

The simple solution is to remove the bud-buddy package. For example: sudo rpm -e bug-buddy.

It seems people also have this trouble on SUSE, Ubuntu, and Gentoo. Another trick that may work is clearing GTK_MODULES such as by running GTK_MODULES="" soffice.

Troubleshooting OpenOffice.org

Benchmarking Microsoft Word 95 through Word 2007

2008-07-22T07:42:00.013-06:00

The responses to benchmarking multiple versions of OpenOffice.org varied. Common responses were oversimplification of the results and some unrealistic expectations. To put that data into perspective, here is a benchmark for Microsoft Word 95 through 2007. That's over a decade years of releases, each of which has definitely become fatter. Before you read the benchmark results below, do you think over the years Word has become slower or faster?

Benchmark test environment

The modest test machine is about three years old.

Operating system: Windows XP SP3 (clean install)
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 3000+
RAM: 768 MB, DDR 333 (PC 2700)
HDD: Maxtor 6Y080L0, IDE, 7200 RPM, 80 GB
Video: Via VT8378 S3 Unichrome IGP at 1024x768

Though this is the same hardware as the OpenOffice.org benchmark, the results are not an apples-to-apples comparison between Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org Writer because of differences in the test documents, operating system, and test procedure. Check back later for a direct comparison.

The Microsoft dilemma and the problem of quick starters

Benchmarking Microsoft Office has dilemmas. Microsoft Office 95 through Office XP install quick starters under various names in the Startup folder. These include Fast Start and Microsoft Office Startup Assistant (OSA). Their purpose is to improve startup performance by preloading Office into memory because hard drives are slow. Office 2003 and 2007 no longer load the OSA by default. The reason is likely because Windows XP introduced a prefetcher at the operating system level.

Quick starters don't really avoid any work. Quick starters simply hide the appearance of work by performing it before it is requested. To start the application, the operating system has to read the same amount of data from the hard drive (consuming disk I/O resources) and process it (consuming CPU resources). Being proactive is commendable, but there are drawbacks. First, quick starters use precious resources regardless of demand. If you don’t use the preloaded application, the resources that could improve other parts of the system are wasted. Speaking of precious resources, you probably experienced the second problem many times: the sluggish feeling of logging into a Windows XP session with many quick starters and system tray icons firing off simultaneously. Whether you notice them or not (because some load silently in the background), you may be waiting for Adobe Acrobat Reader Speed Launch, Quicktime, Winamp Agent, iTunes Helper, and others quick starters and services to load. It can easily be 30 seconds before the session is usable. A third problem with quick starters is they may be ineffective. Say you start Windows, then browse the web, and then open some PDFs, and then listen to some music. It's likely that by loading programs and accessing stored data, the operating system will eventually swap the preloaded application from RAM to the page file on the hard disk. Then, when you start the preloaded application, the operating system retrieves the file from the hard disk. In conclusion, quick starters are imperfect. Once we all get low-latency, low-seek-time solid-state drives so we can forget about quick starters, but these SSDs are only starting to enter the mainstream.

The goals of this benchmark include being realistic, being fair, being consistent, and measuring the amount of work as it relates to the user experience. If the quick starters were enabled, that would give Word 95 through XP an advantage over 2003 and 2007. Given the above problems and goals, I disabled Fast Start and OSA to better distinguish cold starts versus warm starts. I left Windows Prefetcher on its default settings. In the future when I benchmark OpenOffice.org on Windows, I will generally benchmark OpenOffice.org with its Quickstarter disabled too.

Benchmark test procedure

Very similar to the OpenOffice.org benchmark, this Microsoft Word benchmark uses automation to precisely measure the duration of a series of common operations: starting the application, opening a document, scrolling through from top to bottom, saving the document, and finally closing both the document and application. Automation is much more precise than a human with a stopwatch, and with the small durations in these tests, automation is necessary. Each of the five tests are repeated for 10 iterations. Before each set of 10 iterations, the system reboots. The purpose of rebooting is to measure the difference in cold start performance where information is not yet cached into fast memory. A reboot marks a pass, and there are 15 passes. That means for each version of Word, there are 150 iterations. Multiplying by 5 tests and by 6 versions of Microsoft Word yields 4500 total measurements collected for this article.

Benchmark results

A critical metric to the feeling of overall speed is starting an application on a cold start. The average cold start duration worsened 90% from Word 2003 to Word 2007. That's almost an order of magnitude. (In all the boxplots below, smaller is better.)

Notice the three outliers depicted as dots in the Word 2007 column. That is the Windows XP Prefetch progressively optimizing startup performance. The second cold start was slightly longer, but the third was about half. The fourth start was about a one-fourth of the first duration.

Warm starts from Word 2003 to Word 2007 deteriorated 247% from 0.13 seconds to 0.45 seconds. Also notice the difference for Word 2007 because cold and warm starts is 1.57 seconds - 0.45 seconds = 1.11 seconds. The difference of 1.11 seconds implies that work (71%) is done by the hard drive. To be fair, an application start under two seconds is quick.

Document tests were done with a special set of documents that use a wide variety of word processor features but are still backwards compatible to Word 95. Each version of Word used its own format for a total of three test documents: Word 95, Word 97/2000/XP/2003, and Word 2007.

The Word 97 format introduced multibyte encoding to support a wider variety of human languages: that made documents bigger and increased disk I/O (which is slow). That contributed to performance losses of 74% cold and 18% warm from Word 95 to 97. Word 2007 introduced the compressed .docx format which was smaller on the disk (so less disk I/O), but uncompressing and parsing XML requires much more CPU time. That contributed to performance degradation of 305% cold and 160% warm from Word 2003 to 2007.

Scrolling may measure screen painting, loading dynamic objects, and OLE automation. Again, Word 2007 is slower.

The times for exporting the document are all relatively fast, but performance still declined 114% cold and 58% warm from Word 2003 to 2007.

The times to closing the document and application are all reasonably quick, but guess what? Going from Word 2003 to Word 2007, it took 82% longer on a cold start and 75% longer on a warm start.

In the beginning, what was your guess: did you guess Word 2007 will be faster or slower? Well, here are all the tests rolled up together.

Word 2003 burned 7.05 seconds to run the gamut after a cold start and 6.17 seconds after a warm start. Word 2007 consumed 16.12 and 12.13 seconds (respectively).

Benchmark conclusion

Despite all the tweaks, tricks, hacks, and clever engineering, Microsoft's latest version of Word is a step back in performance. That's generally true of every new major release of any software. That's Wirth's Law. When Windows 95 came out, people joking exaggeratedly that "95" was the number of floppies Windows 95 shipped on. Though Windows 95 actually shipped on many fewer floppies, the point is that Windows 95 was a huge, slower beast compared to its predecessors. (Does anyone remember Windows 3.1, OS/2 Warp, and DESQview?) There were similar complaints for XP, and Vista's performance was the subject of the infamous "Vista Capable" class action lawsuit against Microsoft.

All that to say, whether you are upgrading to the latest Microsoft Office or OpenOffice.org on the same hardware year after year, someday something somewhere will have to give: you'll need to stop upgrading your software or start upgrading your hardware.

This article is the fifth in an ongoing series on performance.

PDF import and hybrid PDFs

2008-06-04T07:04:00.012-06:00

Now available for testing is the PDF import extension, which also includes hybrid PDF-ODF export. PDFs are designed for layout instead of for further editing, so when a word processor, spreadsheet, or presentation application exports to a PDF, the layout and document structure are lost. To avoid disappointment, you must keep in mind creating a PDF is not a reversible process because of the limitations of PDF as a format.

Implementations may either favor editing or layout. This extension's current implementation favors layout, so it imports PDFs into Draw. Keeping all that in mind, this extension still has many uses such as adding annotation, filling out forms, making minor edits, using a PDF as a picture, and reusing PDFs for which the original source is lost. Because of the limitations of PDFs, these uses may not be completely painless.

PDF import

The extension installs as easily as any OpenOffice.org or Firefox extension. OpenOffice.org extensions cannot register file associations with the operating system (though you can set them up manually), but importing a PDF is as simple as clicking on File and then Open. The import process takes a long time compared to opening an OpenOffice.org document because of the necessary guesswork caused by the limitations of PDF.

For a test, I exported ODF_text_reference_v1_1.odt from OpenOffice.org and imported it again. When the initial screen appeared with the results, I stared at it in disbelief. It looked just like the original. The text, layout, font faces, text colors, bold, italics, underline, and picture were well preserved.

Below are the original in Writer and the imported document in Draw. Doesn't it take more than a glance to identify which is the original?

It was only later after closer look that imperfections appeared. For example, interactive PDF form elements (including a text input form and a button) were visibly mangled. That may be fixed in a future release. Then, there are the limitations of PDF import. Each line of text is one or more text boxes. Hyperlinks are merely blue, underlined text without interaction. Superscript is just a smaller font positioned in higher text box. Comments are discarded.

Overall, this is a remarkable result for an early release. Future versions of the extension may take on other forms of PDF import, such as favoring text streams.

Alternative PDF import

OpenOffice.org did not pioneer PDF import—not even in the open source market. Some of the work in OpenOffice.org is done by xpdf, a PDF viewer. To import PDFs, open source alternatives include pdftohtml, Abiword, KWord, and Inkscape. There are also a host of proprietary applications.

Depending on your needs, there are other ways to import PDFs into OpenOffice.org. To import PDFs into Writer or Impress, you may be able to combine the new PDF import extension with copy and paste. If you just need to extract text, copy the text in Adobe Acrobat Reader and paste it into OpenOffice.org. This retains some formatting. If you just need to place a picture from a PDF into OpenOffice.org, take a screenshot or use Adobe Acrobat Reader's snapshot tool. To place a whole PDF as a read-only image, insert the PDF as an OLE object on Windows, click Insert - Object - OLE Object - Create from file. On Linux, you can convert PDFs to bitmap images (such as PNGs) using ImageMagick's convert tool with a command such as

convert foo.pdf bar.png

What makes OpenOffice.org stand from out these other solutions is hybrid PDFs.

Hybrid ODF-PDF files

Combine the viewing and printing portability of a PDF with the editing capabilities of OpenDocument Format. "Have your cake and eat it too," promises ODF is embedded in PDF. When these two open standards team up, you better watch your back, OOXML.

Most applications (such as Adobe Acrobat Reader) ignore the ODF bits and treat the whole hybrid file as a normal PDF. Presentation is pixel perfect. Wait. That's not all. OpenOffice.org 3.0 with this extension treats the hybrid as a normal ODF, so the ODF document opens in Writer, Impress, Calc, or Draw according on the original. (You didn't just expect Writer, did you?) Now you have lossless, editable, round-trip PDFs.

To export hybrid PDF files, you need the (inaccurately named) PDF import extension which adds a new checkbox to the PDF export dialog box. To import hybrid files, you also need this extension.

One downside of this hybrid system is adoption by users will be slow. Especially at first, not everyone will have OpenOffice.org 3.0 and this extension. Other applications may not adopt support for hybrid PDF-ODFs, but the genius is the dual-format strategy mitigates the problem, so everyone will gain at least some use from these hybrids.

Another downside is hybrid documents are larger files because some of the information is duplicated. For what it's worth, ODFs are compressed, and storage capacities are steadily climbing. Monster 2 TB drives are coming next year. Space is cheap, and you probably won't store all your documents as hybrids anyway.

What will be Microsoft's reaction? Office 2007 already has PDF export, and next year Office 2007 SP2 will support ODF natively. Will Microsoft Office one day see hybrid OOXML-PDFs, ODF-PDFs, both, or neither? Don't forget any move Microsoft makes will likely favor XPS, its PDF competitor.

Download

Test this extension in OpenOffice.org 3.0 or later. Though 3.0 comes out in September, the 3.0 beta and developers snapshots are available now. Currently the developer snapshot DEV300_m14 is newer than 3.0 beta.

Remember this extension is not yet a stable 1.0 release. PDF import extension builds are currently available for Linux, for Windows, or for Mac (download links updated 9 June 2008) courtesy of Pavel Janik. (Update 11 June 2008) The extension is available on the OpenOffice.org extensions web site, but it does not exactly require OpenOffice.org 3.0 Beta 2 (not yet available) as written. It works in DEV300_m18 (available now).

PDF Import Extension at the OpenOffice.org Wiki
New features in OpenOffice.org 3.0, an early look

Responses to "Is OpenOffice.org getting faster?"

2008-05-28T23:10:00.023-06:00

Perhaps I was naive when I wrote "Is OpenOffice.org getting faster?". Two responses especially surprised me.

PhireN on Digg claims the charts are misleading because the Y-axes do not start at zero. (Actually the last two charts do start at zero, but the first seven don't.) All the charts use the default axis starting point setting of R, the well-respected statistical software I had the pleasure of using to generate them.

If I wanted to be misleading or dishonest, I could have saved myself about two months (out of three) working on that article. After having the results ready in early April, I reworked a significant part of the benchmark system to minimize deviations in the data, which would have been hidden had I chosen a more common chart than a box plot. I repeated the tests to minimize noise and presented the charts as a box plot to show the spread of the data. I didn't throw out any OpenOffice.org versions, tests, or data points to present a glowing review. I didn't re-engineer the test document to make it load faster. Mark Asay [1] at CNET responds, "I'm not sure if this is supposed to count as advocacy, but it hardly sounds like a ringing endorsement." A ringing endorsement would have been nice: I probably would have gotten more attention and back links from OpenOffice.org-marketing types. How many benchmark articles go through all this trouble?

In any case, here are the same charts with the Y-axes forced to start at zero.

[1] Mark also wrote, "But perhaps we should be expecting OpenOffice's inefficiencies to be rectified and improved over time?" Of course they should improve, but did you see the article's second sentence with a link to a long list of OpenOffice.org performance improvements. Did you see the 50% improvement from 1.1.5 to 2.0.0? Performance is an ongoing effort with many successes. The latest versions are already rather efficient, so you won't see big wins like the jump from 1.1.5 to 2.0.0. A good outcome is not to become "too slow too quickly."

Mark, I tried not to overgeneralize any claims, yet you summarize the article with: "The spoiler? It's getting slower all the time." The real spoiler is omitting application start up times are the most common performance complaint, and OpenOffice.org has done a great job minimizing them. Many OpenOffice.org releases, including the latest two, have achieved the unnatural accomplishment of starting faster. I don't have any quantified data, but qualitatively the new Firefox 3.0 rc1 (touted for its performance improvements) feels very slow to start. Though Firefox is much smaller installed than OpenOffice.org, Firefox takes about as long to start.

Many responses have been positive. Dan Kegel writes, "I would like to see this benchmark run with multiple simultaneous users, e.g. simulating a busy LTSP server." Hmm. For a few years I actually ran OpenOffice.org on an LTSP server with over twenty users. Benchmarking speed on a terminal server is interesting, but it seems like the data would come out inconsistent. Personally I am curious how the memory usage would measure up because Linux shares certain memory across processes of the same application.

Ralwer writes, "One metric that would be interesting to compare is memory and IO use." Yes, those are great topics for more analysis. Already you can infer from the existing data here that OpenOffice.org is heavy on IO because of the differences between cold and warm measurements. Michael Meeks is among the intrepid hackers who have analyzed and improved OpenOffice.org IO. To this end, he has produced an interesting tool called iogrind.

Is OpenOffice.org getting faster?

2008-05-28T07:02:00.010-06:00

Some complain OpenOffice.org is slow and bloated. With each release there may be dozens of performance improvements, but there are also new features, some of which may slow things down. This the natural balance in software development, but in the end, what is the net effect on performance from one version to the next?

The benchmark

We need a good benchmark to produce good data, but what do we measure? Let's assume the most common operations are starting OpenOffice.org, opening a Writer document, scrolling from top to bottom using the down arrow, exporting the document, and closing both the document and OpenOffice.org.

This benchmark automatically performs these 5 operations while taking precise measurements. The tests are repeated because of inevitable noise in the results. The benchmark performs 10 passes where each pass begins with a reboot to test cold start performance. Cold starts are slower because hard drive information is not in cache memory. Each pass consists of 10 iterations, of which most iterations measure warm start performance. Warm starts are faster because the operating system has cached the hard drive information in memory. You may notice OpenOffice.org is faster the second time you open it. In this benchmark, testing each version of OpenOffice.org yields 500 measurements. With 11 versions, that is 5500 measurements.

The specific Writer document tested is the ODF_text_reference_v1_1.odt. All tests are done against unmodified vanilla builds from the OpenOffice.org web site.

Test environment

The modest test machine is about three years old. Of course, newer machines should perform better.

Linux distribution: Fedora 7
Kernel: Linux 2.6.23.15-80.fc7
Java: Sun 1.6.0_03
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 3000+
RAM: 768 MB, DDR 333 (PC 2700)
HDD: Maxtor 6Y080L0, 7200 RPM, 80 GB
Filesystem: ext3
Default settings in OpenOffice.org (no optimizations)

The results

OpenOffice.org startup performance is critical to the overall perception that the application is quick. The startup process involves many steps including loading the application into memory, resolving the linking of symbols, initializing fonts, reading configuration files, initializing the Java runtime, checking printers, checking for software updates, and importing any documents. At different points the startup process may stress the hard disk, CPU, memory, and network interface.

A 2003 document called OpenOffice.org "Q" Product Concept described these goals for OpenOffice.org 2.0 performance:

SO/OOo will improve its performance in four areas that are especially important to customers. The two most visible areas of improvement will be decreasing the Startup Time and Document Open/Save Time.

With startup time, they certainly succeeded as you can see in this boxplot depicting application startup times after a cold start, meaning directly after a reboot of the operating system without the benefit of caching. The single jump from OpenOffice.org version 1.1.5 to 2.0.0 slashed application startup time a dramatic 43%. (In all charts on this page, smaller is better.)

There are two competing laws at work: Moore's Law and Wirth's Law. Moore's Law basically states, You can cheaply buy a doubly fast CPU in two years. In contrast, Wirth's Law states that each new release of a software program grows more complex and slower to cancel out the effect of the faster hardware. In other words, today's dual-core CPUs run Vista about as fast as an ancient 80286 (20 years ago) running MS-DOS 3.1. It's unrealistic for software to be faster over time: newer software does more work. When a newer version performs more quickly, it generally means the previous version was inefficient. The goal is to delicately balance performance, new features, and development resources.

In the 1.75 years since the fast version 2.0.3 release, startup time has crept up a modest 0.70 seconds to version 2.4—. That still leaves a 20% improvement over 2.6 years from version 1.1.5 to 2.4. So much for Wirth's Law: it's more of a guideline than a law anyway.

D300m3 is short for DEV300_m3, an early OpenOffice.org 3.0 developer's snapshot— even older than the OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta. Performance may vary in the final 3.0 release five months later. A newer 3.0 snapshot could not be tested because of bug 88221 in newer OpenOffice.org 3.0 snapshots available at the time of testing.

A warm application startup is defined as starting OpenOffice.org twice in a row, so the hard disk information is cached in RAM for quick access. On Windows, the Quickstarter feature accomplishes roughly this goal. Above the boxplot shows the upgrade from 1.1.5 to 2.0.0 yielded an impressive 50% gain, cutting warm startup time in half. Also impressive, changes in performance after 2.0.0 are relatively minor for either people or the benchmark to distinguish. The latest stable release version 2.4 weighs among the best scores.

The large gap between warm startup time and cold startup time ranges from 70% to 81% of the total. This implies three-quarters of the cost of starting OpenOffice.org is bottlenecked at the hard drive, but as an exception to Moore's Law, hard drive performance increases very slowly. If OpenOffice.org wants to cut cold startup, it must cut hard drive access and not wait for hard drive performance to increase. On the other hand, solid state drives (SSDs), such as those found in the ASUS Eee PC subnotebook, perform better than traditional hard drives and are slowly becoming mainstream.

The performance of opening a document follows a different trend than application startup. From version 1.1.5 to 2.0.0, the opposite happened: the newer version was much slower. The difference was 3.46 seconds (70%) in changes made over 2.5 years.

Cold and warm document open times resemble each other, but the cold times are twice as long. Again, the gap is caused by hard drive performance.

Scrolling is less important performance metric. Nevertheless, the chart's shape is interesting. To my surprise, OpenOffice.org 3.0 DEV300_m3 breaks the trend and improves performance over version 2.4. I would have expected new features such as notes-in-the-margin feature to slow 3.0 down.

The benchmark exports (or "saves") to the version's native text document format, PDF, and Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP (.doc). The native format for 1.1.5 is .sxw. The native format of OpenOffice.org versions 2.0 and later is the OpenDocument Format (ODF).

Versions 2.4 and 3.0 show noticeably longer times. In version 2.4, the increase may be the new PDF features. For version 3.0, the increase may be the new OpenDocument Format version 1.2.

Times for closing the document and application are all quick. It's hard to beat a fraction of a second.

The cumulative times (adding up all the individual tests) for each version show a gradual upward trend. For cold start times, version 2.4 is 38% slower than 1.1.5 over a span of 2.5 years.

Similarly for warm start times, version 2.4 is 40% slower than 1.1.5.

In conclusion, OpenOffice.org is generally getting slower with each release. However, startup performance has made great improvements, the performance losses are relatively small, advances in new computer hardware are more than making up the loses, and OpenOffice.org continues to mature with new features. OpenOffice.org doesn't compel users to upgrade, so you are welcome to continue using older versions.

"But my OpenOffice.org is still slow?

There is no perfect benchmark, and a number of factors influence performance. For example, your machine may benefit from cleanup or from more memory. You may suffering from the rare, specific cases such as a huge number of bookmarks.

Subscribe to the site news feed. In this series of articles, we'll test how to really improve OpenOffice.org performance.

Multiplatform OpenOffice.org 3.0 Benchmark
Responses to "Is OpenOffice.org getting faster?"
OpenOffice.org obeys Moore's Law? (Is OpenOffice.org getting fatter?)
Benchmarking Microsoft Word 95 through Word 2007
List of performance improvements in OpenOffice.org

Reader's question: inserting a row in multiple sheets?

2008-05-24T08:10:00.001-06:00

How would you help Kevin who writes in with the following problem?

I need an OpenOffice miracle. I transitioned a small public library from M$ to OO recently, and nearly everyone was receptive to it (save one older woman, who for reasons she can't articulate, just plain hates OO.) I've been able to overcome every problem until now; here's what's happening:
Evil old woman is in charge of the schedule. She uses OO Calc to organize a monthly schedule where each week is on a separate sheet. When she wants to insert a row into all four sheets, I tell her to highlight the four sheets and the row should automagically be inserted into all of them. Unfortunately, this doesn't work. Is there another (simple/elegant) method for inserting a row across multiple sheets?

I've searched the documentation for a solution, but most error reports that deal with this are from OO 1.0. Please help!

First, I checked myself in OpenOffice.org 2.4.0 and in Microsoft Excel 2003. Indeed Excel performs multi-sheet insert operations simultaneously, but OpenOffice.org does.

Second, I checked the Issue Tracker and found issues 17044 and 29849. The first one more closely matches Kevin's need. Both issues are marked version 1.x, which means they were discovered in those old versions. The 1.x doesn't necessarily mean these issues don't apply to 2.4.0, and based on my quick tests, nothing has changed since then. Both issues also have 0 votes, no target milestone, and no recent comments: that generally means there is little interest in implementing these feature requests, so don't hold your breath. If Kevin were to register in the Issue Tracker, he could add two votes per issue. Even if by a miracle some developer decided to implement the feature request today, it wouldn't make it in until OpenOffice.org 3.1 in December.

Based on the information so far, there is no direct way to do this in OpenOffice.org. Now, is there a workaround? What about recording a macro? Should OpenOffice.org emulate all of Microsoft Office? How important is user satisfaction? How could Kevin manage the human element of the problem? Give Kevin your advice by posting a comment.

OpenOffice.org vs. Microsoft Office vs. Moore's Law

2008-05-15T07:11:00.005-06:00

Earlier we challenged Moore's Law with OpenOffice.org. Today we have a three-way match. In the first corner, we have heavyweight Microsoft Office; in the second, undefeated champion Moore's Law; in the third corner, underdog OpenOffice.org. Let's get ready to rumble!

Again we are measuring the installed disk usage of each release. Because old versions of Microsoft Office are not as accessible as OpenOffice.org, the sizes are based on system requirements printed at the microsoft.com web site—a site which is remarkably thorough. Another complication is Office's numerous editions. The number of editions has ballooned from a 2 in Office 4 (1994) to a confusing 9 in 2007. While all editions have Word, each edition has a different set of other products such as Access, Outlook, and Visio. Which should be measured? I used the printed values for the typical installation size for the Standard versions. Release dates are courtesy of Wikipedia.

The Microsoft Office data points fits an exponential curve remarkably well with R²=0.94. At this rate of growth, Microsoft Office Standard 2013 will be 5000MB, and the Microsoft Office Premium Platinum Plus 2013 edition (a larger edition than the Standard edition) will come on a set of Blu-ray discs.

The next chart combines the Microsoft Office installations, OpenOffice.org installations, standard (meaning new but modest) PC disk sizes [1], and maximum PC disk sizes. Watch out for the double Y axes: megabyte scale for disk usage and a gigabyte scale for disk capacity.

Inspection indicates Microsoft Office Standard editions growth more closely in step with maximum disk capacities while OpenOffice.org more closely follows standard disk capacities. That means each Microsoft Office version consumes a larger percentage of a contemporary hard drive.

Extrapolation estimates OpenOffice.org will reach 1000MB around the year 2024 and it will never exceed Microsoft Office's size. However, if the OpenOffice.org 3.0 standard edition bundles additional applications (such as Thunderbird and Lightning), the trend will change. Thunderbird 2.0 would add 44MB (11% of OpenOffice.org 2.4.0).

This is second in a series on OpenOffice.org performance. Subscribe so you don't miss anything. :)

OpenOffice.org obeys Moore's Law?

2008-05-13T07:18:00.009-06:00

Kryder's Law, a variation of Moore's Law, describes the trend "magnetic disk areal storage density doubles annually" [1]. In other words, you don't want to know how much I paid for a 40MB Seagate MFM drive in 1989, but today 1000GB drives rule the day for much less money. This increase in capacity follows a predictable trend.

Conversely to Kryder's Law and Moore's Law (which basically describes computers becoming predictably faster), Wirth's Law states software becomes larger, more complex, and slower [2]: in the end the win on one end is washed out by the loss of the other.

Let's compare these laws against OpenOffice.org to see which law wins. We'll measure the installed disk usage of OpenOffice.org for Linux in English as built by Sun Microsystems. The size of OpenOffice.org installation over time fits a linear equation with R² = 0.858 and an expoential curve with R² = 0.876: that means it is predictable like Kryder's Law.

Growth in the 1.x version series was slow, but the 2.x versions made up for it. The chart looks odd around versions 1.1.5 and 2.0.0 because they were released 36 days apart. The 3.0.0 beta currently also has a oddly sharp curve that will look more natural when its data point moves over to September 2008.

OpenOffice.org's disk storage usage comprises several parts. The vast majority of the space is in these subdirectories:

Subdirectory name	Description
help	Documentation
preset	Configuration
program	OpenOffice.org executable code including a functional copy of Python
share	Configuration, dictionaries, icons, templates, fonts, XSLT filters, etc.

The proportional disk usage of these directories has changed over time. The largest growing directory share has ballooned 513% from 23MB in 2002 to 141MB in 2008. In version 2.4.0, the many preinstalled dictionaries consume 83MB (59%) of the share directory. Meanwhile, the program directory has slowly increased by 52% over the same period.

One component of computing performance that has not grown as fast as others is hard disk seek times, so it's an overall win to store large indexes on a disk to speed access to large files [3]. OpenOffice.org uses this trick: indexes consume 7% of the dictionary directory.

Back to the Laws. Has the OpenOffice.org installation size indeed followed the general trend of growth in PC disk capacity? This chart, which compares the hard drive capacity to OpenOffice.org installations, indicates the answer is no. In 2002, OpenOffice.org version 1.0.1 consumes 0.45% of a then-common 40GB drive. In 2008, version 2.4.0 consumes 0.15% of a 250GB drive—common on new systems today—and even less of the monster 1TB drives available. OpenOffice.org has grown slower than predicted.

Conclusion

Though slower than Kryder's Law, OpenOffice.org's growth is still fairly predictable. The increase is positive and means a wider variety of features, more comprehensive documentation, and otherwise more of what customers want. Even today's larger OpenOffice.org installation occupies a lower percentage of a hard disk drive of 5 years ago.

OpenOffice.org performance

This article begins a series on OpenOffice.org performance. Subscribe so you don't miss anything. :)

OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta FAQ

2008-05-09T08:14:00.010-06:00

The real OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta is out and people are asking questions. Here are FAQ, a few other questions that should be FAQ, and errata.

This is a beta. What's the worse than can happen?

Minimally you should assume any document saved from a beta version will be totally lost, so you should backup your documents and not save anything from OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta that you are not willing to lose. As precedent, certain documents saved from OpenOffice.org 2.0 beta (three years ago) are hard to retrieve.

For more ideas of what can go wrong, see the list of issues discovered in OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta and issues planned to be fixed in OpenOffice.org 3.0.0. The issues planned to be fixed in 3.0.0 were found in different versions back to before version 1.0.0. Many of the issues planned to be fixed are already fixed in in the 3.0 development series.

If this risk is too great, use OpenOffice.org 2.4 until September when 3.0 is released as a final version.

The file associations are not registered. When I click on documents with extensions .odt, .doc, etc., OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta is not the application that opens.

The lack of file association registration is intentional. The beta is unstable and not intended for everyday use: it is intended for testing only.

Accepting that warning, you can register your own file associations. There are several ways. On Windows XP. Right click on the document. Choose Open With - Choose Program. Click Browse, and choose c:\program files\OOo-dev 3\program\simpress.exe.

On Windows, another way is to run the command setup.exe WRITE_REGISTRY=1

(thanks Joost Andrae).

In GNOME, right click the document and choose Open With Other Application. Then choose /opt/ooo-dev3/program/soffice.

How do I start OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta?

In Linux, run /opt/ooo-dev3/program/soffice .

On Windows, you can start OpenOffice.org 3 beta with the exception above regarding file associations.

Will the OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta installation coexist with my OpenOffice.org 2.x installation?

Yes, OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta will install in parallel so as not to touch OpenOffice.org 2.x installations. You can run both 2.x and 3.0 simultaneously.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 does (something wrong) when I do (something)

Gather information about the bug so that someone else can reproduce it. Next, query the Issue Tracker to see if it already has been reported. If not, report it to the Issue Tracker. Ask if you need help.

Do I have to install Java? I already have another version or I just don't want to install Java.

When downloading the beta for Windows, there is no option: you must download Java. OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta comes with Java Runtime 6 update 5. However, you don't have to install it. During the install, choose a custom install. Then, under Optional Components, uncheck the Java option.

Alternatively, see the comments for location to download OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta without Java.

What's new?

Here is what's new in OpenOffice.org 3.0

OpenOffice.org 3.0 features, an early look
OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta?
Interactive crop in Draw and Impress
Shared Calc spreadsheets
Desktop icon for Windows
OpenOffice.org's marketing team's list of OpenOffice.org 3.0 features

What should I test?

There many different things to test including whatever you normally do with OpenOffice.org, the new OpenOffice.org 3.0 features listed above, specifications marked for 3.0, issues listed in the Issue Tracker for 3.0, and the standard QA tests.

Which bugs have already been reported?

List of issues discovered in OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta

Why are my lists in Writer formatted incorrectly when saving in OpenOffice.org 3.0 and opening in OpenOffice.org 2.x?

A new feature makes list formatting incompatible from 3.0 to 2.4. See issue report 89210 for more information.

I cannot save documents on Windows Vista

OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta can't save documents on Windows Vista (issue #87244). The workaround is to click Tools - Options - OpenOffice.org - General. Select the OpenOffice.org dialogs.

Alternatively, upgrade to a newer DEV300 developer snapshot.

Interactive picture crop in Draw and Impress

2008-04-30T08:12:00.005-06:00

In OpenOffice.org 3.0 both Draw and Impress gain interactive cropping for pictures that resembles the WYSIWYG cropping found in Microsoft Office, the GIMP, and many other programs.

How to use interactive cropping

Open a document in Draw or Impress.
Click once on the image to select it. Notice the eight green handles.
In the picture toolbar, click on the button Crop Picture.
Notice the green, square selection handles become blue handles with a different shape.
Use the mouse to drag the handles to frame the image.

The cropping dialog

As an alternative to interactive cropping, the old cropping method via the dialog is still available. It works using either the keyboard or the mouse.

There are two ways to access the crop dialog:

Single left click on the image to select it. Then, right click on the image. Then, choose Crop Picture.
Single left click on the image to select it. Then, click on the Format menu. Then, choose Crop Picture.

Interactive cropping and cropping through the dialog both only work for bitmap images such as PNGs, JPEGs, GIFs, and BMPs, and cropping is not compatible with built-in shapes such as squares, circles, and stars.

Cropping in Writer

To crop an image in Writer:

Copy the image from Writer and paste into a blank Draw document.
Crop the image in Draw.
Copy the image from Draw and paste back into the Writer document.

Non-destructive cropping

OpenOffice.org 3.0's cropping is non-destructive. That means after you close OpenOffice.org and reopen your document, you can change your mind and reverse the crop. In this sense, a more accurate icon would be a frame rather than scissors: the process is more precisely described as hiding than cutting.

Non-destructive cropping has both pros and cons. Non-destructive cropping is good for general use but unsuitable for high-security situations requiring permanent redaction. Also, the hidden area of the image still occupies disk space.

To make a crop permanent, either:

Crop in an external graphics editor such as Photoshop or the GIMP before importing the image into OpenOffice.org.
Export to the final document PDF for distribution.
Use the Sun Presentation Minimizer and check the box Deleted cropped graphic areas.

Interactive cropping as an extension

OpenOffice.org 2.2 and later support CropOOo, an extension for interactive, quasi-destructive cropping. Solveig Haugland explains how to install and to use CropOOo.

CropOOo's cropping is permanent—to a point. If you unzip the ODF file, you can find the original uncropped graphic.

Where is the OpenGL 3D extension for Impress?

2008-04-24T08:16:00.007-06:00

OpenOffice.org 2.4 is here, and people are asking where is the touted OpenGL 3D extension for Impress? Inquiring minds want to know. It is perhaps the most exciting feature from the 2.4 release.

Initially I understood an .oxt extension would be released with OpenOffice.org 2.4.

After the OpenOffice.org 2.4 release, I tried to build the extension myself from the source. I did, but it wouldn't install in OpenOffice.org. I asked, and OpenOffice.org Extension Grand Ninja Stephan Bergmann explained it can't be done because of binary linking problems. Then, I asked Impress Grand Ninja Thorsten Behren who told me it is in fact possible to build it using a special build environment (which I did not use).

In conclusion, where is it? It's not available. When is it coming? Unknown.

Nevertheless, there are several ways right now to use the OpenGL transitions, though none are compatible with the vanilla OpenOffice.org.

Install OxygenOffice 2.4 (currently in beta)
Ubuntu and Debian users: install the package openoffice.org-ogltrans
OpenSUSE users: install package OpenOffice_org version 2.4 or newer with the file OGLTrans.uno.so
Mandriva users: install the package openoffice.org-core version 2.4 or newer with the file OGLTrans.uno.so
Install my old, experimental build which has the feature built in (not an extension) via HTTP or via BitTorrent
Search for OGLTrans.uno.so on rpmfind.net or pbone.net and install the appropriate packages for your Linux distribution
Windows users: right now this feature is Linux only

Thank you

Thank you to Shane M. Mathews, Thorsten Behrens, and Radek Doulik for engineering the 3D OpenGL transitions for Impress. Thank you to them and Stephan Bergmann for answering my questions, and thank you to Google for funding the feature under the Summer of Code 2007.

Shared Calc spreadsheets

2008-04-23T07:29:00.009-06:00

OpenOffice.org 3.0 introduces live sharing of Calc spreadsheets. Multiple people on multiple computers using multiple operating systems can edit the same OpenDocument spreadsheet at the same time.

How to use

The first user should open a Calc spreadsheet saved in OpenDocument format in a network location accessible to others.
Click Tools and then Share Document. This setting persists for the document even after the last user closes the document.
Check the box Share this spreadsheet with other users and click OK
Other users may now open the spreadsheet. Each user will see this warning:
Periodically each user should save the spreadsheet to merge his change and refresh changes from other users. In other words, the changes are only updated during saving. If there are any updates, OpenOffice.org shows a notification dialog box, and the changes will be marked with one color for each author. Here cell B3 was updated.

Conflict resolution

If two people change the same cell, the second person to merge his changes will see a dialog box called "Resolve Conflicts." It presents the choices "Keep Mine" or "Keep Other" for each conflict.

Document locking

If sharing is not enabled, the document is locked. Unlike previous versions, OpenOffice.org 3.0 shows who locked the document, how long the document has been locked, and an option to open a copy.

Competition, retraining, and limitations

Microsoft Excel has a similar feature called Share Workbook. Both applications have similar limitations on the features that can be changed while the document is shared.

OpenOffice.org locking works with the Excel application, but live sharing between the two is not possible. Two people using OpenOffice.org 3 cannot share an Excel spreadsheet: the OpenDocument spreadsheet format must be used.

OpenOffice.org 3.0's new features, an early look
OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta?
Desktop start icon in OpenOffice.org 3.0
Galaxy icon set in OpenOffice.org 3.0

Galaxy icon set

2008-04-21T19:35:00.022-06:00

OpenOffice.org 3.0 DEV300_m10 (which is still not a beta) is out featuring the Galaxy icon set in development since 2006.

Here are the Galaxy icons, now the default, shown in Writer and Calc on Windows XP:

Galaxy is the automatic default on Windows but not on my Linux system. You may have to switch from Automatic to Default (see below). Also, Galaxy can be installed manually in older versions such as OpenOffice.org 2.4, but Galaxy may not work as well in older OpenOffice.org versions.

Thanks to Dave for the tip on this story.

Changing the icon set

If you prefer a different look, just change it. The other icon sets are Tango, Industrial, and Crystal, and high contrast.

Tango:

Industrial:

Crystal:

The default in OOo 2.3.1:

How to switch icon sets:

Start OpenOffice.org.
Click Tools and Options.
Click OpenOffice.org and View.
Change Icon size and style.

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