As a quick test of the upcoming OpenOffice 2.0 release I downloaded 1.9.79 version of the software and ran through a set of tasks that an advanced office worker might use. The applications suite is full of new features, and at first glance looks nicer.
Initially I download and unzipped the Linux binary tarball from the Open Office website and ran the following commands to get the package to install in mepis 2004 - debian linux.
convert rpms to deb with "alien -k -c *.rpm"
install debs: dpkg -i --force-overwrite *.deb
chmod a+rx /opt/openoffice.org1.9.74/program/soffice
/opt/openoffice.org1.9.74/program/soffice
Different office workers have differing needs – for example accountants and bankers would be more likely to give Calc a thorough testing. Your average office worker doesn’t use MS Access, so I skipped the testing of the new database functionality. I also skipped testing the drawing functionality, digital signitures, and VBA Scripting, Here are the results with pictures.
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Success? |
Tests done in Write
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Notes |
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Y |
Create a table with formatting
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Layout on some of the dialog boxes is clunky – lots of unused space
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Y |
Table within a table |
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Y |
Add an image – put it in the table |
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Y |
Create a style – use it to format part of the table |
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Y |
Manipulate an image |
Lots of functions require JRE for image management. The JRE missing window opens 7 times and you have to click ok each time. |
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Y |
Change the first row of table to grey |
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Y |
Rotate text in the first row of the spreadsheet 90 degrees |
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Y |
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Y |
Test the word count feature
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Y |
Copy formatting (paintbrush) |
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Y |
Create Index for document |
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Y |
Check Spelling |
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Crash but worked. |
Save as HTML to check the quality of the output
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Looks great except the rotated text was stripped out and the table of contents didn’t work like anchors. Generally fairly clean HTML generated. Crashes have a nice recovery
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Y |
Open a MS Word 2003 document with Styles, Indexes, Change tracking, and fields. Change the document, save it and open it Word 2003 in windows
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Worked excellently with the exception that embedded items were turned into pictures and were squished a bit on the round trip back to word. If you stick to embedding pictures instead of OLE objects you should be fine. Not a huge loss.
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N |
Edit Python Scripts |
The JRE missing window opens 7 times and you have to click ok each time. |
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Y |
Export to pdf |
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Tests Done in Calc
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Why still no Lotus 123 import filter? |
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Y |
Add a row
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Doesn’t have some of the old Lotus 123 keystrokes – CTRL and + keys should give you a new row, CTRL and - keys remove a row. |
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Y |
Sort the spreadsheet |
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Y |
Format the spreadsheet as a List /Autofilter table |
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Y |
Change the text in a cell so that part of it is Bold and in a different font |
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Y |
Change the header of the spreadsheet
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Y |
Create a basic Chart |
Charting functionality doesn’t feel as slick as Excel. Although Improv from Lotus probably had one of the best charting tools I’ve ever used. |
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Y |
Create Pivot Table (DataPilot) |
Seems to work like Excel. I don’t often use this feature. |
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Impress |
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Y |
I’ve always found Impress met my functionality needs. Really the only “cool” feature that I liked from PowerPoint is the ability to create a webcast with Windows Media and PowerPoint. |
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Crash |
Practice Presentation |
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Interoperability
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Y |
Embed a Calc spreadsheet into Write |
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Crash |
Copy and paste table into a presentation |
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Somewhat |
Copy and paste a table from Write into Calc |
Cells didn’t come over cleanly, several spanned columns. |
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Crash |
Paste a table from Write into Impress |
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No |
Paste a Table from Calc into Write
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Didn’t work as expected. Either embedded spreadsheet, or pasted all selected data into every cell.
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I had a look at the xml (.odt) file that was generated. When I opened it with kwrite it appeared as garbage. I assumed that there are using gzip as they have in the past so I tried unsuccessfully to uncompress the file. Renaming the file with a .gz extension didn’t work either.
If they are able to deal with the crashes and interoperability issues then I would rate this application suite a 7.7 of 10. It hasn't quite caught up with MS Office 2003 in terms of functionality - but who cares? OpenOffice 2.0 is more than good enough for your average office worker. The suite is comparible to older versions of MS Office, which are functioning fine on millions of desktops around the world. The only things that I really disliked was the increased reliance on proprietary software (Java JRE) and the interoperability issues I experienced cutting and pasting tables between calc, write and impress. The Beta is currently a bit slow – however that should improve once it is released and any debugging code is removed. The user interface feels significantly nicer than the previous version; however, the dialog boxes are still not perfect. The suite uses Oasis file format – which may become the holy grail of document formats. HTML editing in write is far superior to MS Word and I recommend OpenOffice as a filter for word documents that require conversion to HTML or Oasis. Write includes a long awaited WordPerfect import filter. Overall I was extremely impressed with the new MS Office interoperability and the application’s overall functionality.
Score Card:
Very good new functionality
Oasis file format – may be the new killer feature
Meets the needs of your average text oriented office worker
Excellent MS Office Integration
Annoying Java JRE reliance. Either open source java or remove the dependancy.
Dialog boxes occasionally still feel clunky
Crashes and table copy and paste issues need to be cleaned up before gold release
Free and open source
7.7 out of 10
*This document was created in OpenOffice 1.9.79
Posted by Anthony at March 3, 2005 04:24 PM
