[PCWorld]

Post your comments for OpenOffice.org Beta Fails the Office 2007 Test here

[AySz88]

I find it very poor taste to primarily criticize OpenOffice. You briefly recognize Microsoft's share of the blame in the text, but the headline and emphasis is all on OpenOffice's 'failure'. Responsibility lies with both parties.

[pmelo86]

I think you should review your review, as you've said: MS Office 2007 doesn't conform to it's own standards, so, what if Oo does it? you can't know it, just think twice, please.

[lituus]

please people, don't keep falling for PCWorld's increasingly badly written posts that are based on insufficient research. They are nothing more than link/comment/page-view bait. I know this comment will probably be deleted by them too soon/my account might be deleted, but I feel like I must say this.
On a separate note: the "30k DreamPC" giveaway seems to have been a "bait" too. Why was no winner announced? (>1 month now)
As regards the post, yeah, MS can try to support ODF (another ISO standard) too. etc. etc.

I am withdrawing the grayed out text, congratulations to the guy who won! I was just hoping PC World had atleast made a prominent post that a winner had been selected without giving out the name till the paper-work was done. However, I stand by my statement about the bad quality of recent (past 2-3 months) articles on PC World.
Message was edited by: lituus

[mphenterprises]

lituus said:

On a separate note: the "30k DreamPC" giveaway seems to have been a "bait" too. Why was no winner announced? (>1 month now)

Hi Lituss. Please do not make statements for which you have no basis. If you are concerned about the winner, please see this Discussion:

http://forums.pcworl...rt=495&tstart=0


Post #507


An article is in the works regarding the winner and what he is going to do with it.

[spatialguru]

That's what beta test periods are for - testing before releasing for public stable consumption - hopefully they can patch up those functions before final release (assuming the XML formats are on the list for planned completion). It's another nice thing about open source development - having no forced "sales-based" release cycle - so if the production team sees your concern as important they can hold off final 3 release.
Does Office support the Open Document Format? It's always been open for them to implement :)

[bampcs]

It's a beta for God's sake. They said don't use it for production. You were just "playing" with it. Don't you think they know what the problems are already? And perhaps it is not OO's problem but a MS problem instead. MS Office 2007 is just too expensive for most people's tastes. OO works just fine for the vast majority of people out there. Let's talk about the resource hog that is Vista instead. SP1 doesn't go far enough...

[readerXYZ]

This article is poorly written and misleading to the audience. It assumes that the Windows XML standard and the OpenOffice standards are the same, when everyone knows they are not. Since MS got away with having their own Open XML standard approved they can choose whether to support other competitors standards or not and most likely they wont. Has the author tried saving a document from Windows ".doc" into Openoffice format? This article won't convince to change or buy a poorly compatible version of MS Office compared to a BETA version of OpenOffice, so I'm sticking with OpenOffice.

[wmd8786]

Nice bungle... Micro$oft's version of Open Document is != to the OpenDocument standard. Most every other word processing software has no problem adhering to the OpenDocument standard, including WordPerfect and OpenOffice. Your belief that OO not being able to open a Micro$oft standard is their problem shows your bias. The finger should point in the other direction. It is Micro$oft's arrogance, that they believe they are the standard that should be chastised. Get your facts straight. BTW, converters exist. See: http://odf-converter.sourceforge.net/

[darklightning]

Of course it has problems. People nowadays fail to remember that Beta, is Beta! It has bugs, and they are meant to find out. Also, previous versions of office do not natively support Office 2007 formats either. So, I don't blame OO for not supporting it.

[nastone1]

This is a totally stupid article. ITS A BETA!!!! Thats why we have betas is to fix the issues.

[nmcallister]

Hey guys, I sure hope they can get it working... but when you say "it's a beta, of course it doesn't work," you're falling for a tactic that the proprietary software companies use. They're forced to comply with annual release schedules to meet their revenue projections -- open source projects aren't. To shove OpenOffice 3.0 into beta when one of the most important features clearly doesn't work seems inexcusable. Beta is for testing, not for writing new features. If it can't open a simple document now, how is it going to open a complex business document later? As for whether Microsoft Office supports ODF, no -- Microsoft doesn't support it. But others do -- look for plugins that let Word and Excel read and write ODF-formatted documents at http://odf-converter.sourceforge.net/

[holloway]

Beta usually means feature complete but with remaining bugs.
Let's take a hypothetical example (this is not a real example in any way -- I'm just making it up to illustrate a point): let's say that OpenOffice.org had a bad XML parser that parsed ASCII BELL characters into an internal DOM (XML files are not allowed to have ASCII BELL). Fixing this would be simple and yet it would yield major results.
It's often the way in software that minor things like this can add up result in major changes in perceivable features. Again, I'm not saying that this is the case for OpenOffice.org in this case because it's only through an analysis of the file that Neil used that we could verify any extent. To say that it's an endemic problem in a beta without backing up these claims with software-engineering examples means that it's just guessing. Guesing is no bad thing. If a Toyota car in beta wouldn't turn on then I'd be concerned too, but it might just be an loose wire :)

[rgreen4]

Saying that OO 3.0 doesn't have to worry about opening a MS Office 2007 file because MS Office doesn't fully support the standard is ignoring the 800 pound gorilla in the corner. The whole basis of the existance of Open Office as a viable alternative to MS Office is that it is fully compatible with MS Office. But, version 2.3 was not. I downloaded it to see how compatible and functional it would be as an alternative.

People who use Office at work would like to be able to avoid purchasing an expensive software package to do work at home. If the document is an Excell file and is password protected, Open Office 2.3 will open the file, but will not save that file back as an .xls document. Fortunately MS themselves have come to the rescue with MS Office 2007 Home & Student. It has the big three - Word, Excell and Powerpoint, for only $122 (from Newegg) and on top of that it's good for use on three machines.

So why worry about downloading OO 3.0 with it's inconsistencies that may mess up an important office document when you can get the real McCoy for about $40 a machine? For those who don't have to worry about excanging critical files with someone using MS Office, OO still remains a viable and very inexpensive alternative. But, it continues to miss it's own stated goal - a seamless alternative to the 800 pound gorilla.

[AySz88]

Sadly, that (the above) is why Microsoft continues to hold a strong grip on the "office" segment: not because of any technical merit, but because it is too convenient for consumers to remain there.



I find it telling that rgreen4 says "you can get the real McCoy for about $40", while referring to MS Office - except that the point is exactly that MS Office is not and really should not be 'the real McCoy' at this point. The frustration of many (I think) is that ODF was the Open Document Format, and all programs which implement ODF should be "the real McCoy", in a freshened and competitive market without the baggage of Microsoft Office. Instead, Microsoft turned this on its head, and turned out a new "open" format, with that ridiculously long specification and so forth.



Hopefully OpenOffice can still persevere and help people migrate to break this mentality up. Unfortunately, I think there's been a loss of morale after OOXML got through as an ISO "open" standard (but that's another story).

[mmarcich]

The Office 2007 OOXML file formats simply do not play well with other software. These formats (word, excel, powerpoint) derive from technical specs comprising more than 6,000 pages, with features and functionality tied exclusively to Microsoft platforms and applications. It is no coincidence that in the same article you -- correctly -- gripe about the cost of Microsoft Office 2007 AND the inability of another software application -- OpenOffice 3.0 --to support the new format. How many people would pay the steep price for the extra functionality offered by MS Office 2007 if the free OpenOffice would allow them to share documents with Microsoft users? The obvious answer is: not many! Despite use of the word "open," OOXML is anything but. Until Microsoft changes its tune, the task for OpenOffice or any other application to support these formats is like trying to grab a handful of sand.

[rich5665]

Duh!!! That's why it's called a Beta version. Now how many version of MS Office were shoved down peoples throats until Microsoft finally got something right. Oh and lets not forget the service packs, as well as the untold number of security fixes that Microsoft's great creation. To me it's not worth the money, I'll stick with OpenOffice thank you.

[PeteF]

Why is it always everyone else's job to maintain compatibility with microcrud software? Let them follow the standards like everyone else, and there'd almost never be a problem. If they can't follow standards, don't use their software.

[rgreen4]

Because the World's open marketplace has made it the actual standard regardless of the committee approved standard. The world's competitive markets have discovered that by using Windows and MS Office products, their documents are guaranteed to exchange with other systems running the same software.

For about 15 years I used Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect as my preferred packages. 1-2-3 just worked well for spreadsheets and I had started with version 1.0 and was very familiar with it. I had been using WordPerfect almost from the start, and both packages were in use at the office so it made it easy to bring work home. Then Corporate decided to standardize on Office 97, later replaced by Office 2000 which is now being replaced by Office 2007. In order to maintain interchangability with the office documents, I changed as well.

The youth group I work with has changed to Office 2007, so in order to display the provided PowerPoint presentations, I had to change ahead of my company with is in the process of rolling out Office 2007 right now. To this day I miss WordPerfect which is a superior package to Word or Open Office either one.

[AySz88]

rgreen4 said:

Because the World's open marketplace has made it the actual standard regardless of the committee approved standard. The world's competitive markets have discovered that by using Windows and MS Office products, their documents are guaranteed to exchange with other systems running the same software.

FYI, this is called an externality (specifically, a "network externality", where one person's transaction causes others to want to do the same transaction). Externalities are one way to cause a free market to behave sub-optimally. That is, this is not an effect which is desirable within the free market system. Yet another reason for frustration.
(edit) clarification