Data Circle

OpenOffice.org 2.0.1 Update Released via Beta News

OpenOffice.org, the main open source challenger to Microsoft Office, has recently been updated to a new version. Although this isn’t quite as big a shift as the move from 1.1.x to 2.x, there is a huge list of features and enhancements, ranging from API improvements meaning that the SDK now works on OS X to a large number of internationalisation improvements. The list is too long to even summarise here, but if you’re interested you can take a look yourself and see how much stuff has changed in just one minor version release.

I for one am certainly impressed by the amount of progress that is being made in the OO.o office suite, and I think once a few more minor releases have been made we’ll be looking at a piece of software that can mount a serious challenge to Microsoft’s domination of the market. The only things that I think are currently missing from OO.o are decent importers for Word documents (even now I still find some that just won’t import properly – this isn’t really a criticism of the developers but it’s something many people would find incredibly useful) and a more intuitive UI(User Interface). The one thing that has always impressed me about Word and Excel is that I can usually find the options that I need just by browsing the menus, whereas in OO.o they don’t seem to be in the “obvious” places – although this could just be down to the fact that I’m used to Microsoft Office and the way it does things.