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Take a Closer Look at OpenOffice.org 2.3
Seriously, if you want to break free of Microsoft software, a good place to start is your
office suite. Here's what you'll find in OpenOffice.org 2.3.
If you're like most folks, you've been using the main Microsoft Office products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and
Access) for as long as you can remember. After all Microsoft Office has come pre-installed on new PCs for years
and many companies have standardized on it. Having been stuck in the Microsoft Office world for so long, chances
are that you haven't had the need or the interest in experimenting with another office suite, let alone an open
source office suite. However, now there's really a good reason to express an interest an open source office suite--OpenOffice.org
2.3
OpenOffice.org 2.3, released to the public in October 2005, is a full service office suite and includes a word
processor called Writer, a spreadsheet called Calc, a presentation creator called Impress, and a database called
Base. Each application in OpenOffice.org 2.0 rivals its Microsoft Office counterpart in every way making the entire
package a truly significant competitor. Raising the bar is the fact that OpenOffice.org 2.0 uses the standardized
OpenDocument format, which is XML-based file format designed to remove the barriers imposed on documents by proprietary,
vendor-specific, file formats. Oh, yea, and it's free!
Let's take a look at some of the features in OpenOffice.org 2.3 as well as take a look at a brief overview of
each of the applications.
The OpenDocument Factor
While there are a whole host of cool features in OpenOffice.org 2.0 that are designed to make the office suite
as comprehensive as possible as well as improve usability, the most intriguing one has to be the support for the
OpenDocument file format. As mentioned, OpenDocument is an XML file format that can be used by any office application
to create documents that are free from being locked in to proprietary, vendor-specific, file formats, thus allowing
the creation of text, spreadsheet, chart, and graphical documents that can be viewed, edited, and printed regardless
of what office product is used to create the document.
The reason for calling this the most intriguing enhancement is that the OpenDocument format was approved as
an OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) standard. OASIS, ( http://www.oasis-open.org/),
is a nonprofit international consortium that drives the development and adoption of many e-business standards including
XML-related standards and specifications. In addition, OpenDocument has been submitted to ISO (International Standards
Organization) for ratification as a public standard.
As such, OpenDocument stands to make a big splash in the industry and OpenOffice.org 2.3 is the first open source
office suite to provide full fledged support for the OpenDocument standard. For more details on the OpenDocument
standard, check out the OASIS OpenDocument datasheet, (http://www.oasis-open.org/who/data_sheets/OASIS-opendocument-datasht-a4-05-06-20.pdf
).
The applications
OpenOffice.org 2.3 provides a collection of applications that work together to provide all the features you'd
expect from a standard office suite. And to help make it easier for anyone who has used Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org
2.3's designers seem to have spent a great deal of time and trouble making the user interface of each application
look and feel like their counterparts. So, if you're currently using Microsoft Office, you'll feel right at home
if you decide to use OpenOffice.org 2.3.
Writer
Writer is of course the word processor and it offers just about every necessary feature that Word provides.
Some things are missing, (there isn't a grammar checker) some things have different names, (instead of VBScript
for macros you have OpenOffice.org Basic or JavaScript) and of course some things are in different places. (Be
sure to keep in mind that the OpenOffice.org 2.3's Help system is very comprehensive and even provides a huge table
for translating Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org terms.) However, you'll find things in Writer that aren't in
Word. For instance, Writer has the ability to directly export documents to Portable Document Format (PDF) files.
Writer can also double as a very functional WYSIWYG HTML editor and even comes with a host of graphical elements
for creating very nice looking Web pages.
Calc
Calc is OpenOffice.org 2.3's spreadsheet application and provides everything that Excel does for compiling,
organizing, and graphically displaying your data. This version of Calc provides support for up to 65,536 rows of
data and its DataPilot feature makes it easy to import external data and manipulate it in whatever way you want.
Once you've got your data looking just right, you can save your spreadsheet as a PDF file for easy distribution.
Impress
Impress is a presentation program and just like PowerPoint, will allow you to create some pretty, well, impressive
presentations. While it lacks the number of presentation templates found in PowerPoint, it more than holds its
own when it comes to special effects, animation, and file format capabilities. Not only can you export presentations
to PDF files for a sharing a static version of your presentation, but you can also export a presentation as Macromedia
Flash (SWF) files allowing them to be played on any computer with the Flash player installed.
Base
Base, a database program like Microsoft Access, is a new addition to the OpenOffice.org 2.3 suite. In addition
to allowing you to easily create databases, forms and reports with intuitive wizards, Base can work as a front-end
to a variety of existing database systems, including Access databases (JET), ODBC data sources and MySQL.
Other apps
In addition to the big four applications, the OpenOffice.org 2.3 suite bundles in a couple of other handy little
applications. First off there's Draw, a great vector graphics editor with a feature set comparable CorelDRAW and
is perfect for creating flowcharts. Then there's Math, which like the Microsoft Equation Editor is a tool for creating
and editing mathematical formulas.
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