'OpenOffice.org' ('OOo' or 'OO.o') is a
free and open source software office suite available for many different
operating systems including
Linux,
Microsoft Windows,
Mac OS X,
Solaris,
FreeBSD,
OpenBSD,
OpenVMS and
IRIX.
[1] It supports the
OpenDocument standard for data interchange.
OpenOffice.org is based on
StarOffice, an office suite developed by
StarDivision and acquired by
Sun Microsystems in August 1999. The
source code of the suite was released in July 2000 with the aim of reducing the dominant
market share of
Microsoft Office by providing a free, open and high-quality alternative. OpenOffice.org is
free software, available under the
GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
The project and software are informally referred to as "'Open Office'", but project organizers report that this term is a
trademark held by another party, requiring them to adopt "'OpenOffice.org'" as its formal name.
[2]
Overview
According to its
mission statement, the OpenOffice.org project aims "''To create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format.''"
[3]
OpenOffice.org aims to compete with Microsoft Office and emulate its look and feel where suitable. It can read and write most of the
file formats found in Microsoft Office, and many other applications; an essential feature of the suite for many users. OpenOffice.org has been found to be able to open files of older versions of Microsoft Office and damaged files that newer versions of Microsoft Office itself cannot open.
[4] However, it cannot open older Word for Macintosh (MCW) files.
[5]
OpenOffice.org Writer editing an HTML document
The primary development platforms are Microsoft Windows, Linux and Solaris. There are also ports available or in progress for Mac OS X,
OS/2 and many Unix-like operating systems such as
FreeBSD.
[6]
Federal Computer Week issue listed OpenOffice.org as one of the "5 stars of open-source products."
[2] In contrast, OpenOffice.org was used in
2005 by ''
The Guardian'' newspaper to illustrate what it claims are the limitations of open-source software, although the article does finish by stating that the software may be better than MS Word for books.
[2]
OpenOffice.org is a collection of applications that work together closely to provide the features expected from a modern office suite. Many of the components are designed to mirror those available in Microsoft Office. The components available include:
;
Writer: A
word processor similar in
look and feel to
Microsoft Word and offering a comparable range of functions and tools. It also includes the ability to export
Portable Document Format (PDF) files with no additional software, and can also function as a
WYSIWYG editor for creating and editing
web pages. One important difference between Writer and Microsoft Word is that in Writer, many functions and number formats from Calc (below) are available in Writer’s tables.
;
Calc: A
spreadsheet similar to
Microsoft Excel with a roughly equivalent range of features. Calc provides a number of features not present in Excel, including a system which automatically defines series for graphing, based on the layout of the user’s data. Calc is also capable of writing spreadsheets directly as a PDF file.
;
Impress: A
presentation program similar to
Microsoft PowerPoint. It can export presentations to
Adobe Flash (SWF) files allowing them to be played on any computer with the Flash player installed. It also includes the ability to create PDF files. Impress suffers from a lack of ready-made presentation designs. However, templates are readily available on the Internet.
[9][10][11]
;
Base: A
database program similar to
Microsoft Access. Base allows the creation and manipulation of databases, and the building of forms and reports to provide easy access to data for end-users. As with Access, Base may be used as a front-end to a number of different database systems, including Access databases (JET),
ODBC data sources and
MySQL/
PostgreSQL. Base became part of the suite starting with version 2.0. Native to the OpenOffice suite is an adaptation of
HSQL. While ooBase can be a front-end for any of the databases listed, there is no need for any of them to be installed.
;
Draw: A
vector graphics editor comparable in features to
CorelDRAW. It features versatile "connectors" between shapes, which are available in a range of line styles and facilitate building drawings such as flowcharts. It has similar features to
Desktop publishing software such as
Scribus and
Microsoft Publisher.
;
Math: A tool for creating and editing mathematical formulae, similar to
Microsoft Equation Editor. Formulae can be embedded inside other OpenOffice.org documents, such as those created by Writer. It supports multiple
fonts and can export to PDF.
;
QuickStarter: A small program for Windows and Linux that runs when the computer starts for the first time. It loads the core files and libraries for OpenOffice.org during computer startup and allows the suite applications to start more quickly when selected later. The amount of time it takes to open OpenOffice.org applications was a common complaint in version 1.0 of the suite, and Quickstarter was a
solution of sorts. Substantial improvements were made in this area for version 2.2.
; The
macro recorder: Is used to record user actions and replay them later to help with automating tasks, using
OOoBasic.
It is not possible to download these components individually on Windows, though they can be installed separately. Most Linux distributions break the components into individual packages which may be downloaded and installed separately.
OpenOffice.org Basic
Main articles: StarOffice Basic
OpenOffice.org Basic is a programming language similar to Microsoft
Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) based on
StarOffice Basic. In addition to the
macros, the upcoming Novell edition of OpenOffice 2.0 supports running Microsoft VBA macros, a feature expected to be incorporated into the mainstream version soon.
[12]
OpenOffice.org Basic is available in the Writer and Calc applications. It is written in functions called subroutines or macros, with each macro performing a different task, such as counting the words in a paragraph. OpenOffice.org Basic is especially useful in doing repetitive tasks that have not been integrated in the program.
[13]
As the OpenOffice.org database, called "Base", uses documents created under the Writer application for reports and forms, one could say that Base can also be programmed with OpenOffice.org Basic.
File formats
OpenOffice pioneered the ISO/IEC standard
OpenDocument file formats (ODF), which it uses natively, by default. It also supports reading (and in some cases writing) a large number of legacy proprietary file formats (e.g.:
WordPerfect,
StarOffice,
Lotus software,
MS Works,
Rich Text Format), most notably including
Microsoft Office formats (some older versions of which it reads better than current versions of Microsoft Office itself) .
Additional software for exchanging files with Microsoft Office
★ In response to Microsoft's recent movement towards using the
Office Open XML format in
Microsoft Office 2007,
Novell has released an
Office Open XML converter for OOo under a liberal
BSD license (along with
GNU GPL and
LGPL licensed libraries), that will be submitted for inclusion into the OpenOffice.org project.
[14] This allows OOo to read and write Microsoft OpenXML-formatted word processing documents (.docx) in OpenOffice.org. Currently it works only with the latest Novell edition of OpenOffice.org.
★
Sun Microsystems has developed an ODF plugin for Microsoft Office which enables users of Microsoft Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint to read and write ODF documents.The plugin currently works with Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Office XP and Microsoft Office 2000. Support for Microsoft Office 2007 is planned for one of the next releases.
[15]
★ Several software companies (including Microsoft and Novell) are working on an add-in for Microsoft Office that allows reading and writing ODF files. Currently it works only for Microsoft Word 2007 / XP / 2003.
[16]
★ Microsoft provides a compatibility pack to read and write Office Open XML files with Office 2000, XP and 2003.
[17] The compatibility pack can also be used as a stand-alone converter with Microsoft Office 97. This might be helpful to convert older Microsoft Office files via Office Open XML to ODF if a direct conversion doesn't work satisfyingly.
History
Originally developed as the
proprietary software application suite StarOffice by the German company
StarDivision, the code was purchased in 1999 by Sun Microsystems. In August 1999 version 5.2 of StarOffice was made available free of charge.
On
July 19 2000, Sun Microsystems announced that it was making the source code of StarOffice available for download under both the LGPL and the
Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL) with the intention of building an open source development community around the software. The new project was known as OpenOffice.org, and its website went live on
October 13 2000.
Work on version 2.0 began in early 2003 with the following goals: better interoperability with Microsoft Office; better performance, with improved speed and lower memory usage; greater
scripting capabilities; better integration, particularly with
GNOME; an easier-to-find and use database front-end for creating reports, forms and queries; a new built-in
SQL database; and improved
usability. A
beta version was released on
March 4 2005.
On
September 2 2005 Sun announced that it was retiring the SISSL.
[2] As a consequence, the OpenOffice.org Community Council announced that it would no longer
dual license the office suite, and future versions would use only the LGPL.
[2]
On
October 20 2005, OpenOffice.org 2.0 was formally released to the public.
[21] Eight weeks after the release of Version 2.0, an update, OpenOffice.org 2.0.1, was released. It fixed minor bugs and introduced new features.
As of the 2.0.3 release, OpenOffice.org changed its release cycle from 18-months to releasing updates, feature enhancements and bug fixes every three months.
[22]
StarOffice
Sun subsidizes the development of OpenOffice.org in order to use it as a base for its commercial
proprietary StarOffice application software. Releases of StarOffice since version 6.0 have been based on the OpenOffice.org source code, with some additional proprietary components, including:
★ Additional bundled fonts (especially
East Asian language fonts).
★
Adabas D database.
★ Additional document
templates.
★
Clip art.
★ Sorting functionality for Asian versions.
★ Additional file filters.
★ Migration assessment tool (Enterprise Edition).
★ Macro migration tool (Enterprise Edition).
★ Configuration management tool (Enterprise Edition).
OpenOffice.org, therefore, inherited many features from the original StarOffice upon which it was based including the
OpenOffice.org XML file format which it retained until version 2, when it was replaced by
OpenDocument.
Development
Overview
The OpenOffice.org
API is based on a component technology known as
Universal Network Objects (UNO). It consists of a wide range of interfaces defined in a
CORBA-like
interface description language.
The
document file format used is based on
XML and several export and import filters. All external formats read by OpenOffice.org are converted back and forth from an internal XML representation. By using
compression when saving
XML to disk, files are generally smaller than the equivalent binary Microsoft Office documents. The native file format for storing documents in version 1.0 was used as the basis of the
OASIS OpenDocument file format standard, which has become the default file format in version 2.0.
Development versions of the suite are released every few weeks on the developer zone of the OpenOffice.org website. The releases are meant for those who wish to test new features or are simply curious about forthcoming changes; they are not suitable for production use.
The project is still essentially run by StarOffice staff, and getting external contributions into the core codebase is generally regarded as being more difficult than with other high-profile free software projects, even for the project’s other corporate sponsors.
[23]
Native desktop integration
OpenOffice.org 1.0 was criticized for not having the
look and feel of applications developed natively for the platforms it runs on. Starting with version 2.0, OpenOffice.org uses native
widget toolkit, icons, and font-rendering libraries across a variety of platforms, to better match native applications and provide a smoother experience for the user. There are projects underway to further improve this integration on both
GNOME[24] and
KDE.
[25]
This issue has been particularly pronounced on Mac OS X, whose standard user interface looks noticeably different from either Windows or
X11-based desktop environments and requires the use of programming toolkits unfamiliar to most OpenOffice.org developers. There are two implementations of OpenOffice.org available for OS X:
;OpenOffice.org Mac OS X (X11): This official implementation requires the installation of
X11.app or
XDarwin, and is a close port of the well-tested Unix version. It is functionally equivalent to the Unix version, and its user interface resembles the
look and feel of that version; for example, the application uses it own
menu bar instead of the OS X menu at the top of the screen. It also requires system fonts to be converted to X11 format for OpenOffice to use them (which can be done during application installation).
;
NeoOffice: This independent
port integrates with OS X’s
Aqua user interface using
Java,
Carbon and (increasingly)
Cocoa toolkits. NeoOffice adheres fairly closely to OS X UI standards (for example, using native pull-down menus), and has direct access to OS X’s installed fonts and printers. Its releases lag behind the official OpenOffice.org X11 releases, due to its small development team and the concurrent development of the technology used to port the user interface.
[26]
An Aqua version is also being developed under the aegis of OpenOffice.org, with an Alpha version currently available.
[27] Sun Microsystems is collaborating with OOo to further developement of the Aqua version of OpenOffice for Mac.
Other projects
Other projects run alongside the main OpenOffice.org project and are easier to contribute to. These include documentation,
internationalization and localization and the API.
OpenGroupware.org is a set of extension programs to allow the sharing of OpenOffice.org documents, calendars, address books,
e-mails,
instant messaging and blackboards, and provide access to other
groupware applications.
There is also an effort to create and share assorted document templates and other useful additions at OOExtras.
[28]
A set of
Perl extensions is available through the
CPAN in order to allow OpenOffice.org document processing by external programs.
[29] These libraries do not use the OpenOffice.org API. They directly read or write the OpenOffice.org files using Perl standard file
compression/decompression, XML access and
UTF-8 encoding modules.
A distribution of OpenOffice.org called "Portable OpenOffice.org" is designed to run the suite from a
USB flash drive.
[30]
OxygenOffice Professional
[1] is an enhancement of OpenOffice.org, providing:
★ Possibility to run Visual Basic for Application (VBA) macros in Calc (for testing)
★ Multiple monitor support for Impress
★ Improved Calc HTML export
★ Enhanced Access support for Base
★ Security fixes
★ Enhanced performance
★ Enhanced color-palette
★ Enhanced help menu, additional User’s Manual, and extended tips for beginners
Optionally it provides, free for personal and professional use:
★ More than 3,200 graphics, both clip art and photos.
★ Several templates and sample documents
★ Over 90 free fonts.
★ Additional tools like OOoWikipedia
Since version 2.0.4, OpenOffice.org has supported extensions in a similar manner to
Mozilla Firefox.
[31]
The OpenOffice.org Bibliographic Project aims to incorporate a powerful
reference management software into the suite. The new major addition is slated for inclusion with the standard OpenOffice.org release on late-2007 to mid-2008, or possibly later depending upon the availability of programmers.
[2]
Security
Although OpenOffice.org does include a security team, as of
March 16 2006, the security site
Secunia reports no known unpatched security flaws for the software.
[2] Kaspersky Lab has shown a
proof of concept virus for OpenOffice.org.
[2] This shows OOo viruses are possible, but there is no known virus "in the wild".
In a private meeting of the French Ministry of Defense, macro-related security issues were raised.
[2] OpenOffice.org developers have responded and noted that the supposed vulnerability had not been announced through "well defined
procedures" for disclosure and that the ministry had revealed nothing specific. However, the developers have been in talks with the researcher concerning the supposed vulnerability.
[2]
Reactions
Market share
Although Microsoft Office retains 95% of the general market, OpenOffice.org and StarOffice have secured 14% of the large enterprise market as of 2004
[36] and 19% of the small to midsize business market in 2005.
[37] The OpenOffice.org web site reports more than 62.5 million downloads.
[38]
OpenOffice.org is the office suite used on the British Army’s
Bowman deployable tactical communications system. Other large scale users of OpenOffice.org include
Singapore’s Ministry of Defence, and
Bristol City Council in the UK. In
France, OpenOffice.org has attracted the attention of both local and national government administrations who wish to rationalize their software procurement, as well as have stable, standard file formats for archival purposes. It is now the official office suite for the
French Gendarmerie.
[39] Several government organizations in India, such as
IIT Bombay - a reputed technical institute, the
Supreme Court of India, the
Allahabad High Court[40], which use Linux, completely rely on OpenOffice.org for their administration.
On
October 4 2005, Sun and
Google announced a strategic partnership. As part of this agreement, Sun will add a Google search bar to OpenOffice.org, Sun and Google will engage in joint marketing activities as well as joint research and development, and Google will help distribute OpenOffice.org.
[41]
Besides StarOffice, there are still a number of OpenOffice.org derived commercial products. Most of them are developed under
SISSL license (which is valid up to OpenOffice.org 2.0 Beta 2). In general they are targeted at local or niche market, with proprietary add-ons such as speech recognition module, automatic database connection, or better
CJK support.
[42]
In July 2007 Everex, a division of First International Computer and the 9th largest PC supplier in the US, began shipping systems preloaded with OpenOffice.org 2.2 into Wal-Mart and Sam's Club throughout North America.
Java controversy
In the past OpenOffice.org was criticized for an increasing dependency on the
Java Runtime Environment which was not
free software. The fact that Sun Microsystems is both the creator of Java and the chief supporter of OpenOffice.org drew accusations of ulterior motives for this technology choice.
Version 1 depended on the
Java Runtime Environment (JRE) being present on the user’s computer for some auxiliary functions, but version 2 increased the suite’s use of Java requiring a JRE. In response,
Red Hat increased their efforts to improve
free Java implementations. Red Hat’s
Fedora Core 4 (released on
June 13 2005) included a beta version of OpenOffice.org version 2, running on
GCJ and
GNU Classpath.
The issue of OpenOffice.org’s use of Java came to the fore in May 2005, when
Richard Stallman appeared to call for a
fork of the application in a posting on the
Free Software Foundation website.
[43] This led to discussions within the OpenOffice.org community and between Sun staff and developers involved in
GNU Classpath, a free replacement for Sun’s Java implementation. Later that year, the OpenOffice.org developers also placed into their development guidelines various requirements to ensure that future versions of OpenOffice.org could be run on free implementations of Java and fixed the issues which previously prevented OpenOffice.org 2.0 from using free software Java implementations.
[2]
In an attempt to end the issue, on
November 13 2006, Sun committed to releasing Java under the
GNU General Public License in the near future.
[45]
Between November 2006 and May 2007, Sun Microsystems made available most of their Java technologies under the GNU General Public License, in compliance with the specifications of the Java Community Process, thus making almost all of Sun's Java also free software.
The following areas of OpenOffice.org 2.0 depend
[46] on the JRE being present:
★ The
media player on Unix-like systems
★ All document wizards in Writer
★ Accessibility tools
★ Report Autopilot
★
JDBC driver support
★
HSQL database engine, which is used in OpenOffice.org Base
★
XSLT filters
★
BeanShell, the
NetBeans scripting language and the Java UNO bridge
★ Export filters to the Aportis.doc (.pdb) format for the
Palm OS or
Pocket Word (.psw) format for the
Pocket PC
★ Export filter to
LaTeX
A common point of confusion is that
mail merge to generate emails requires the Java API JavaMail in
StarOffice; however, as of version 2.0.1, OpenOffice.org uses a
Python-component instead.
[47]
See also
★
List of office suites
★
Comparison of office suites
★
Open format
★
Hunspell, the default spellchecker for OpenOffice.org.
References
1. porting: The OpenOffice.org Porting Project: home
2.
3. OPENOFFICE.ORG COMMUNITY ANNOUNCES OPENOFFICE.ORG 1.O: FREE OFFICE PRODUCTIVITY SOFTWARE
4. OpenOffice.org Saves my Day, Again
5. Can't open Word for Mac 5 file
6. porting: The OpenOffice.org Porting Project: home
7.
8.
9. Caludio's personal hideout: Templates for Openoffice Impress
10. Presentation templates at OpenOffice.org
11. Impress Templates - User/Template
12. Novell announces VBA macro support
13. NewsForge
14. Download OpenOffice.org–OpenXML translator
15. Sun ODF Plugin 1.0 for Microsoft Office
16. OpenXML/ODF Translator Add-ins for Office
17. Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats (Version 3)
18. New OpenOffice version includes security upgrades Tom Espiner
19.
20.
21. OpenOffice.org 2.0 Is Here (OpenOffice.org 2.0 Announcement), by OpenOffice.org, October 20, 2005
22. OpenOffice aims to boost lagging performance, URL accessed on 20 April, 2006.
23. Ooo-build: non-responsiveness, lack of leadership (OOo wiki, revision as of 05:51, 26 May 2006)
24. GNOME/OpenOffice.org integration
25. KDE Integration Project
26. Information about NeoOffice
27. Download OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X Aqua
28. The OOExtras site, URL accessed on 20 April 2006.
29. CPAN OpenOffice Perl extensions
30. the Portable Office site, URL accessed on 20 April 2006.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36. Desktop apps ripe turf for open source Jack Loftus, October 4 2004, SearchEnterpriseLinux.com. URL accessed on September 4 2005.
37. OpenOffice.org 2.0 Release Delayed Jay Wrolstad, October 13 2005, Top Tech News. URL accessed on February 23, 2007
38. The OpenOffice.org statistics page, URL accessed on 20 April 2006
39. Market Share Analysis, URL accessed on 20 April 2006.
40. FAQ: Why are Linux, Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org softwares selected for use by the High Court?
41. FAQ: The Sun-Google partnership by Stephen Shankland, Staff Writer, CNET News.com, October 4 2005.
42. OpenOffice.org derived work
43. Free Software Foundation and OpenOffice.org team up to escape Java trap Bruce Byfield
44.
45. Sun Opens Java
46. Java and OpenOffice.org
47. How To Email Mailmerge using mailmerge.py
Further reading
★
OpenOffice.org Market Share Analysis
★
EU report in favor of adopting open source software and OpenOffice.org
External links
★
The OpenOffice.org homepage
★
OpenOffice.org Documentation
★
OpenOffice.org official wiki
★
Wikipedia plugin for OpenOffice.org
★
★
How to install OpenOffice.org in Windows XP
★
Google offering StarOffice for free (premium version of OpenOffice)
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