Apache OpenOffice 4.0 Has A New Sidebar

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Apache OpenOffice 4.0 Has A New Sidebar

For those committed to Apache's OpenOffice over LibreOffice, version 4.0 has been released as the first major release of this open-source office suite in more than one year...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTQxODQ

[timofonic]

I hope LibreOffice can cherry pick the interesting bits from this code, that's all I'm interested about it

Any news about upcoming LibreOffice too?

PS: They removed support for opening old StarOffice documents (if the code is so sucky, they can rewrite it), that's too negative for interoperability. And they are making OO more attached to Java too.

[mark45]

Support for StarOffice is for losers, anyone even remotely trying to stay up to date has upgraded their shit a long ago.

[timofonic]

Support for StarOffice is for losers, anyone even remotely trying to stay up to date has upgraded their shit a long ago.

Removing interoperativity is for worse losers, digital preservation could make you discover a document in a very old format that needs to be opened and maybe even imported.

With that mentality, projects like FFMpeg and their focus on legacy formats would never exist.

When dealing with legacy formats, you need to understand the Digital Preservation issue.

[mark45]

Yeah yeah the typical bullshit about "digital preservation" as if you're a public library collecting shit around the world for decades.
Everyone still using StarOffice era shit deserves problems. Like the IE6 idiots who think their browser should be supported for as long as there are users.

[Ericg]

I hope LibreOffice can cherry pick the interesting bits from this code, that's all I'm interested about it

LICENSE-wise? They can cherry-pick, OpenOffice is under the Apache license now. Interestingly enough, OpenOffice CANT cherry-pick from LibreOffice due to LO's license. TECHNOLOGICALLY-wise? I'm not sure. LO is moving away from Java more and more, and OO is moving closer to Java more and more. If nothing else they can cherry pick ideas and methodology, but not the exact implementation.

[znby]

Removing interoperativity is for worse losers, digital preservation could make you discover a document in a very old format that needs to be opened and maybe even imported.

With that mentality, projects like FFMpeg and their focus on legacy formats would never exist.

When dealing with legacy formats, you need to understand the Digital Preservation issue.

Given that this is an open source software package that runs on open source operating systems, it should remain possible to either download the old versions or build them from source, and run either on your computer, or (in the long term) run them in an older OS on a virtual machine or emulator.

On the other hand, keeping around cruft that almost nobody uses can make the code harder to maintain, can increase bug or vulnerability surface, and can potentially make the software more bloated (in terms of memory usage, build time, etc), especially if the code was intermingled with code that is still useful.

[timofonic]

Given that this is an open source software package that runs on open source operating systems, it should remain possible to either download the old versions or build them from source, and run either on your computer, or (in the long term) run them in an older OS on a virtual machine or emulator.

On the other hand, keeping around cruft that almost nobody uses can make the code harder to maintain, can increase bug or vulnerability surface, and can potentially make the software more bloated (in terms of memory usage, build time, etc), especially if the code was intermingled with code that is still useful.

A proper modular design avoids any kind of bloat. I hope LibreOffice splits the format support into a modular library thing, so all Office Suites/Text Editors/Viewers could use the same code for reading/writing. This could make possible that other projects could be more interested about contributing in better supporting those formats, providing fixes or better support of those (or even new supported formats).

Emulators? That's even more bloat. And using old software on new platforms is tricky too, that code could give incompatibilities with future OSes too.

What one thinks is cruft or garbage, others can find it useful. Did you know European Union and others invest a lot money in digital preservation?

http://www.digitalpreservationeurope.eu

[prodigy_]

Dear OpenOffice, can you please just die already?

P.S. Take Java with you, we won't miss it.

[omer666]

I personally think that a good office suite should open everything possible. As an example, LibreOffice recently added support for old Macintosh text formats, which is a mandatory feature for me, because I've got an old iBook running Mac OS 9 and Nisus, and because several Mac OS X users have been left with Pages as the only AppleWorks compatible word processor. Having a serious office suite open these documents is a relief for many users.