TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

OpenOffice.org is an open-source, multi-platform and multi-lingual office suite that resembles MS Office functionality.

Major Components:

Writer – a word processor you can use for anything from writing a quick letter to producing an entire book.

Calc – a powerful spreadsheet with all the tools you need to calculate, analyse, and present your data in numerical reports or sizzling graphics.

Impress – the fastest, most powerful way to create effective multimedia presentations.
Vector drawing tool Draw – lets you produce everything from simple diagrams to dynamic 3D illustrations.

Base – lets you manipulate databases seamlessly. Create and modify tables, forms, queries, and reports, all from within OpenOffice.org

Math – lets you create mathematical equations with a graphic user interface or by directly typing your formulas into the equation editor.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 New Features

Mac OS X Support

With Version 3.0, OpenOffice.org is now able to run on Mac OS X without the need for X11. Thus, OpenOffice.org behaves like any other Aqua application.

ODF 1.2 Support

OpenOffice.org 3.0 already supports the features of the upcoming version 1.2 of the ISO standard OpenDocument Format (ODF). ODF 1.2 includes a powerful formula language as well as a sophisticated metadata model based on the W3C standards RDF and OWL. ODF is being mandated and adopted in a growing number of countries. In addition; ODF is being implemented by many vendors for many different applications.

Microsoft Office 2007 Import Filters

In addition to read and write support for the Microsoft Office binary file formats (.doc; .xls, .ppt, etc.), OpenOffice.org 3.0 is now capable of opening files created with Microsoft Office 2007 or Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac OS X (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx, etc.). Thus, OpenOffice.org users can interact with users still using Microsoft Office. The various filters for the Microsoft Office file formats also make mixed environments possible, so that some users stay on Microsoft Office while others use OpenOffice.org.

Solver

OpenOffice.org now also has a solver component which allows solving optimization problems where the optimum value of a particular spreadsheet cell has to be calculated based on constraints provided in other cells. The new solver component should be particularly interesting to Mac users considering that Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac OS X apparently does not include a solver feature anymore.

Chart Enhancements

Many OpenOffice.org users requests support for displaying custom error bars and regression equations. The OpenOffice.org developer community including Sun listened to these users and added these highly desired features to OpenOffice.org 3.0. Thus; now it's possible to draw error bars based on error ranges provided in spreadsheet cells. In addition, it is possible to display regression equations as well as correlation coefficients.

1024 Columns Per Calc Sheet (Instead of 256)

With support for 1024 columns; OpenOffice.org 3.0 can now handle significantly more data than before. Previous versions only supported 256 columns.

Display of Multiple Writer Pages While Editing

When you are writing larger documents; it is often nice to see the current page in a context, i.e. to also see the previous and the next page. With the new zoom slider, it is now easily possible to change the zoom factor. More importantly, OpenOffice.org Writer can now display multiple pages at the same time. This features is particularly handy on large monitors or dual-monitor setups.

New, Fresh-Looking Icons

OpenOffice.org 3.0 got a new set of fresh-looking icons which makes OpenOffice.org a lot more fun to work with.