back to article OpenOffice 3.2 is on tap

OpenOffice 3.2 is available for download. Improvements in the latest release of the open source office suite include faster start-ups, improved compatibility with other office programs, and several new features (with special attention to the Calc spreadsheet program.) At the same time, the OpenOffice.org team is celebrating …

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  1. Alien Doctor

    I'd like it more...

    when smaller updates worked without having to download the suite again (I know, broadband blah blah, doesn't matter, blah), but moreso, why can't we have a non-american English language default installation set instead of having to piss around with add-on libraries and rule-sets?

    1. The Original Ash
      Happy

      Re: I'd like it more...

      - I agree. Incremental updates would be much more efficient on both their server bandwidth and compile time. However, we must assume there is a reason for their not being incremental updates; Possibly that there were so many changes that a whole new release was required, or that it's too risky to miss some dependencies.

      - English is the international business language. It makes sense to release in English, and have other languages as extensions of the main package. Or would you prefer to pander to the P.C crowd and download *every* language pack when you have to update? Because that's the alternative.

  2. Kanhef
    Flame

    PPC Mac lunacy continues

    I can get version 3.2 in Danish, German, Japanese, or Serbian, but if I want the English version, they'll only give me 2.4 . Enough digging through the ftp site discovers the most recent build, but it's not easy to find. This is beyond insane: the code must be good, since they've released other localizations, and the localization must be good, since they've released the Intel version, so I can't see any reason not to make this one available.

    1. Kanhef

      correction

      *Used* to be hidden on the download sites. Looks like they've expunged all traces of the 3.x builds now. Would be awfully nice if they had a 'platform no longer supported' message, rather than saying 3.2 is available and then going to a 404 page.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Download the GB English version here!

    http://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/office/openoffice/localized/en-GB/3.2.0/OOo_3.2.0_Win32Intel_install_wJRE_en-GB.exe

    1. Alien Doctor

      Nice of a UUG...

      to post a win32 version (or have I smoked too much tonight to recognise a dig at those of us pitiful windoze users that still have their winboxes for legitimate reasons?)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Gates Horns

      RE: Download the GB English version here!

      Winblows owners only...

    3. The BigYin

      Did you have to dig for this?

      If so, THAT is the problem folks are moaning about.

      Thanks for the like though!

  4. Red Bren
    Unhappy

    Still no R1C1 notation in Calc

    So I still can't recommend it for serious business use.

    1. karakalWitchOfTheWest
      IT Angle

      I use OO and Excel for "serious Business"...

      ...and I never ever needed to use this R1C1 notation. And neither did any of our customers... So I don't think it is that much a problem...

    2. Tim Parker

      R1C1

      R1C1 was apparently in the Novell edition of OO since at least 2007, and the core functionality in OO itself for a similar time. Looking at some of the dev tickets, part of the sticking point seem to be GUI related. The ADDRESS function supports R1C1 as well as A1, although hardly the point.

      I find it incredibly hard to get even slightly interested in office suites however....

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Paris Hilton

      RE: Still no R1C1 notation in Calc

      Is there a ribbon?

      I just had Excel 2007 foisted on me and it's painful to use.

      I wouldn't recommend it for serious business use either!

      (Paris - she could be on the business end of certain activities and I wouldn't complain)

    4. Ben Jury

      Eh?

      As a serious business user, I can say I dont think I've ever used R1C1 notation...

    5. The BigYin

      Have you logged a feature request?

      Or gotten involved?

      Or looked at the code?

      Or sponsored someone to do this?

      It's all very well moaning that it doesn't do X, but if you don't ask for X (and get involved in delivering X). This is the big difference between FOSS and proprietary. FOSS is only ever as good as the community involvement, and it moves in the direction that the community wants. If you are not in that community...then you only have yourself to blame really.

      Personally, I am looking forward to giving 3.2 a bash at home (I am stuck using MS at work).

    6. Keith Oldham
      Linux

      Re : Still no R1C1 notation in Calc

      Strange there is in mine (3.1.1)

      Tools - Options-OpenOffice Calc - Formula syntax - Excel R1C1

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Ribbon

    But does it have a ribbon to make it annoying to use yet ?

    1. OkKTY8KK5U

      Re: Ribbon - oh, please no

      Please, don't give them any ideas like that. Then I'd have to switch to Abiword or something.

    2. GeorgeTuk

      It annoys you so it must annoy everyone right?

      Quite a few users here prefer the ribbon over the old style.

      Yeah its slower but when people moan they are not getting value for money on Office released then they change something and everyone moans you got to feel for them....a little bit.

      1. Kanhef
        Gates Horns

        lack of choice is annoying

        It would annoy far fewer people if they had provided an option to switch back to the traditional interface. Being forced to use the new one, not because it is better, but because it is what someone at Microsoft decided everyone should use, is what rubs many people the wrong way.

    3. Oliver 10

      The dang ribbon

      That danged ribbon is what drove me to OO in the first place. At work I have a choice of OO v2.4 or MS Office 2007. I HAD v2003 until about 18months ago when they upgraded my machine but disallowed downgrades....so I checked out OO v2.4, decided it had less of a learning curve and haven't looked back. Nice side bonus: I can write 100 page reports with graphs, pics and the like and keeping the last 5 copies of changes is probably just paranoia carried over from having MS Word crash on my in really bad ways, corrupting the documents....have YET to have OO bone me up in the same way. Sure its "not pretty" but I'll take the function over the from any day. Nice job by Sun...

  6. batfastad
    Jobs Horns

    300m downloads?

    Is it because you have to download the whole entire suite when everyone upgrades?

    That's the one thing that annoys me about OOo

    Guess I've been spoilt by the excellent Firefox update system though... that's how it should be done.

    For OOo on Mac OSX PPC questions... check out NeoOffice. The few remaining G5s we have left at work all use that and it seems to work alright.

  7. gerryg
    Linux

    What an unreal set of postings so far

    en_GB version bit difficult to find

    PPC version bit diifficult to find

    Still no R1C1...

    Is this the best that can be done these days?

    Why not try, "look, we like paying stupid money for software we are eventually going to be compelled to buy again?"

    Just a thought

  8. matthew1471

    Copy and paste.

    Type your comment here — plain text only, no HTML

    I wonder if this version will let you copy a selection from Calc and paste it into a Writer table without having to do some ridiculous amount of clicks, selections and [eventually] deleting the pasted Calc table?

    1. Keith Oldham
      Linux

      Re : Copy and paste

      Puzzled

      Copy - Paste Special -Paste formatted text works for me for putting the contents into a new table

    2. willowtoo

      Well, let's see

      Select the area. I guess that's a click/select/release so 1 mouse click so far.

      Then ctrl&C for copy.

      Switch to Writer, Got be a click there.

      The Ctrl&shift&V. Click on formatted, I could suggest typing F but let's have that one.

      Then an enter.

      So I make that 3 mouse clicks, one area drag and 6 key depressions.

      Of course I am only selecting a rectangular table, not picking out several different shaped areas from across the spreadsheet. That, I would imagine, involves quite a lot more clicking, dragging, swearing, etc.

      1. Keith Oldham
        Linux

        Re : Well, let's see

        Didn't use the keyboard

        Right-click -copy

        Change to Write

        Right click -paste special -double-click formatted text

  9. Greg J Preece

    Woah, that's fast

    Just tried it out on Kubuntu and they weren't kidding about load times. The whole thing feels a lot nippier. Nice one!

  10. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

    Is that a legitimate British edition?

    As I write, according to http://download.openoffice.org/other.html

    the English-GB language pack is still only released for OOo 3.1.1 and won't(?) work with 3.2, and I don't see mention of a complete British-English download, so where does the file that you linked to fit in? Is it just that this page hasn't been updated?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Open Orifice - mostly "Great" except for the lies.

    It's all to easy to forget what tremendously huge strides have been taken since competition to Microsoft have taken off...

    But the developers - and I mean that in the sense of while they ASK for new people they do nothing about sharing the knowledge, provide or facilitate the training of new programers or to include the contributions of those not in the clique.

    So anyway, my main gripe with THEM is that they have programmed Open Office to NOT embed the fonts used in the production of work....

    Like I have ~2000 fonts, from all the programs I have ever used and or owned and or obtained for free off the net etc., and that is FINE.......

    BUT - when I do say an A1 poster - for personal or commercial use, then I save it that is good., and when I reopen the work, it appears as it was made.

    It might say "Come See The Circus

    With Jumbo the Mighty Elephant" etc.

    But when I copy the file to a disk or USB stick and then take it to another machine - without the same fonts in it, or if I save it as a Microsoft document, or I save it for archival purposes, and then reopen it 20 years down the track.,

    Then guess what., All of my fantastic FONT based artwork, with the headings and colors and locations, margins, layouts and word, line and letter spacing - from using 7 or 8 of my own exotic font's and font effects - well it's all gone and it defaults back to Times New Roman 12 point......

    So that is the trap - There is a huge discrepancy between"'What they say" with the Freedom / Open Source / ISO standards / ARCHIVAL QUALITY - and how they contradict themselves and HOW they restrict you from using you from using your OWN resources...

    And when cornered the weasels say, "Oh unauthorised font use is copyright infringement"...

    So tell me weasels, "How does what the end user doing what they want with their own resources, make you responsible for copyright?

    Losers.

    1. Uncle Slacky Silver badge

      Save as PDF?

      If you want to preserve fonts and formatting, surely that's the way to go?

  12. Dylan Fahey
    FAIL

    Don't think Templates will be any harder to use

    God damn OOO for making templates the hardest thing to use.

    Hide them.

    Make no menu item to where they are.

    Here's one of the places, if you can god damn find it:

    C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenOffice.org 3\Basis\share\template\en-US\wizard\styles

    1. Keith Oldham
      Linux

      Re : Don't think Templates will be any harder to use

      File -New -Templates& Docs -pick the one you want

  13. Change can be good
    Pint

    OpenOffice has come up with another remarkable version

    Awesome version! Very impressed.

  14. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

    Ah!

    OOo 3.2.0 GB complete download and 3.2.0 GB add-on language are now visible at http://download.openoffice.org/other.html

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