In September 2010, a third of OpenOffice.org developers (about 20) objected to the open-source office suite falling under the custodianship of Oracle after the company completed its buyout of Sun Microsystems. They feared that Oracle wouldn't provide whole-hearted support to an open-source application project that didn't significantly contribute to its bottom line. They created the Document Foundation and forked the office suite code to create another open-source suite they dubbed LibreOffice. A little more than four months later, the developers unveiled on Jan. 25 a stable release of their first product, LibreOffice 3.3 (the numbering sequence conforms to the OpenOffice product chronology). The developers spent the time adding new features as well as extensively cleaning up portions of the the legacy code, said Italo Vignoli, one of the founding members of the Document Foundation. Previous OpenOffice fans will appreciate that LibreOffice 3.3 looks very similar to OpenOffice 3.3 and that many of the new features are also new in OpenOffice. But there are also a number of key differences that set the two open-source suites apart. The installer file is available on libreoffice.org, as well as a "help pack" executable, which contains the English language help files. Not installing the help pack means users end up in the documents section on the LibreOffice Website. If Java is not installed on the system, the application returns an error, but the installer doesn't perform that check. So check that Java is installed before running the installer. Here are a few new features and cleanups that eWEEK found noteworthy.
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LibreOffice 3.3 Suite Advances While Staying True to OpenOffice Roots
by Fahmida Y Rashid
The Splash Screen
The splash screen will be familiar to anyone who has worked with OpenOffice before. LibreOffice 3.3 ships with Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Base and Math. It also ships with a number of templates, such as a budget spreadsheet.
Improved File Imports
LibreOffice developers recognized that not everyone uses OpenOffice or Microsoft Office for their word processing needs. LibreOffice 3.3 features improved file imports across a range of other applications, including Lotus Word Pro, WordPerfect and Microsoft Works, shown here. Even OpenOffice doesn't quite get Works import right, so this is a welcome feature.
SVG Import and Edit
Along with improved imports from word processing programs, LibreOffice now boasts the ability to import SVG files into Writer or into Draw to edit them. It is not yet perfect, but it's ahead of OpenOffice in this instance.
Easier Title Pages
A nifty dialog box makes it really easy to create title pages in Writer.
Cleaned-Up Printing
One of the areas where it is evident that the developers cleaned up the user interface for LibreOffice is in the print dialog boxes. Across all the LibreOffice applications, the print screen is easier to view compared with OpenOffice.org.
1 Million Rows and More Like Excel
For anyone who has imported large data sets into Calc, only to have it truncated because it hit the dreaded row limit, this is welcome news: Calc now supports up to 1 million rows, bringing it closer to Microsoft Excel. It also supports key bindings for using Excel keyboard shortcuts as well as Excel formula syntax.
Slide Handler
The developers also improved slide layout handling in Impress in LibreOffice 3.3, which makes creating presentations less painful.
New Extensions Bundled In
LibreOffice 3.3 now comes bundled with a number of extensions to make certain tasks easier. One bundled extension, PDF Import, allows users to import PDF files for editing.
Impress Extension Impressive
LibreOffice developers added a new presenter's console to Impress. Named Presenter View, this extension makes it easier to tweak presentation timing as well as to add notes to a slideshow.
Language Support
LibreOffice has developers around the world, and Version 3.3 is being released in several languages. Instead of creating a separate installer for each language, LibreOffice now has one installer that allows users to select which language to install.
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In September 2010, a third of OpenOffice.org developers (about 20) objected to the open-source office suite falling under the custodianship of Oracle after the company completed its buyout of Sun Microsystems. They feared that Oracle wouldn't provide whole-hearted support to an open-source application project that didn't significantly contribute to its bottom line. They created the Document Foundation and forked the office suite code to create another open-source suite they dubbed LibreOffice. A little more than four months later, the developers unveiled on Jan. 25 a stable release of their first product, LibreOffice 3.3 (the numbering sequence conforms to the OpenOffice product chronology). The developers spent the time adding new features as well as extensively cleaning up portions of the the legacy code, said Italo Vignoli, one of the founding members of the Document Foundation. Previous OpenOffice fans will appreciate that LibreOffice 3.3 looks very similar to OpenOffice 3.3 and that many of the new features are also new in OpenOffice. But there are also a number of key differences that set the two open-source suites apart. The installer file is available on libreoffice.org, as well as a "help pack" executable, which contains the English language help files. Not installing the help pack means users end up in the documents section on the LibreOffice Website. If Java is not installed on the system, the application returns an error, but the installer doesn't perform that check. So check that Java is installed before running the installer. Here are a few new features and cleanups that eWEEK found noteworthy.