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« New: OOo-Dev 3.0... | Main | Numbers about the... »
Thursday, 10 Apr 2008
What's up in OOo 3.0 Beta
Thorsten Ziehm

What's up in OOo 3.0 Beta?

Some weeks ago we reached the due date for Feature Freeze and now we are close to Code Freeze for OOo 3.0 Beta. It is planned to have all new features for OOo 3.0 in the Beta. Perhaps some of them needs some more polishing, but in general all new features should work well.

The Beta is very important for feedback on many of the general changes in OOo. One of the main changes is the 3 layer model. Beside this restructuring of the OOo installation you will find other new features in the applications. I want to highlight only some of them here.

A list of more features and enhancements can be found here : http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Feature_Freeze_Testing_3.0
This list is more technical orientated and includes all information about specifications, test case specifications, CWS names etc. You can use this list for checking or testing the new features. I was asked sometime if these lists should be the release notes. No, the release notes are based on such lists, but they are more polished by the marketing team and are more end user orientated.

The current developer snapshot (DEV300m5) is released and the next milestones will be released in a more regular time frame. Feel free to use these version to give us feedback before or after the Beta is released. Every feedback is welcome on qa@dev.openoffice.org or show-stopper issues can be discussed also on releases@openoffice.org.

The release map for OOo 3.0 can be found here http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OOoRelease30. It is planned to release the Beta end of April.

tags:

Posted by Thorsten Ziehm on 10 Apr 2008  |  PermaLink |  Bookmark to Delicious To Delicious |  Digg this Digg this  |  Comments[9]

Comments:

Does anybody know if the Galaxy icon set is still scheduled for 3.0?

Thanks,
Dave

Posted by Dave on April 10, 2008 at 07:24 PM CEST #

I am disappointed that OOo3 new features are so limited. It is more like version 2.5. Tables in writers are still a major disappointment. They cannot be moved easily, they cannot have text wrapping around them, no formulas except for "the sum", etc. They should have re-implemented it like in the new Impress. There is no mentioning of the bibliographic component that I was so eagerly waiting for. I think the interface needs some serious tweaking to make it look more modern. It looks really dated. (No, I am not suggesting to copy Office 2007 ribbon). I see Lotus Symphony is attempting to do something different. Too bad they are using ancient OOo1.x code.

Posted by RamVal on April 11, 2008 at 02:55 PM CEST #

The first issue link is sun internal only.

Why no cropping in Writer?

Posted by Shaun McDonald on April 12, 2008 at 12:54 AM CEST #

Hi RamVal,

I agree, that these are not enough features for a mayor revision. I suggest to postpone the release and
get more features in.
But as far as I understood, some features like the PDF import for Draw, are implemented as .oxt extensions. They are developed independent from OOo 3.0 product and will be bundled later to the OOo 3.0 install set.

Jörg

Posted by 62.143.197.93 on April 12, 2008 at 10:47 AM CEST #

OOo3 is failure. The much awaited modernizing of the UIs is not appearing. No context sensitivity. Poor workflows still, especially with the styling tools. The discrepancy between manual formating and style based formating is not fixed, causing bad confusion and bad usability. There are no professional looking fonts yet. There are no professional looking templates for new content yet. There is no style themeing, which is fatal for content producing.

In short the Office 2007/2008 will keep their 5-10 year lead in usability at least until OOo4 comes out. I propose new motto for the OpenOffice.org project: "Party like it's 1995! Because for us it is!"

Posted by troll on April 12, 2008 at 11:43 AM CEST #

Hi Shaun,

the first link should read like this:

http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=83933

Kind regards, Joost

Posted by Joost Andrae on April 14, 2008 at 02:08 PM CEST #

The new major version is justified because of ODF 1.2 and all things that will be possible with its enhancements; e.g. the whole meta data thing which is important for the Bibliographic Project (very long-desired, but I think we have to wait unfortunately some more years for OOo 3.x or probably 4.x - too few resources in the developer team?). The other features could also be in a 2.x release.

The other enhancement that justifies the major version jump to 3.0 (for end users) would be a GUI revision. But I fear the "GUI enhancements" passage at http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Features is an input of an end user, not of a developer (an end user who failed to notice that GUI enhancements was intended for extensions, not the whole application). If there are no secret plans at Sun and no finished hidden Galaxy icon packages, the users have to wait a long time until lead developers will accept that a GUI overhaul is a vital marketing feature like a new web site. IBM knows that with Symphony.

P.S.: I have tested OOo-dev m5. Nice enhancements but I miss style features in the new table support in Impress and Draw. Where are cell styles which I can use like in Calc (and until now in Impress/Draws "Calc tables") or like paragraph styles in Writer? Have I overlooked cell styles? BTW the whole table support in OOo needs more attention. Others have mentioned that.

Posted by Thomas on April 15, 2008 at 01:33 AM CEST #

Thomas, we are working hard to get basic support for meta data into OOo3.0. If we succeeded we perhaps could deliver bibliographic enhancements as extensions. That would decouple that from the OOo release cycle. But we definitely will need some help of developers interested in bibliography to do that. If we had to do everything ourselves you might be right with "3.x or 4.x". But let's wait discussing that until the metadata support it in the program.

Posted by Mathias Bauer on April 16, 2008 at 03:58 PM CEST #

I want to test this milestone, but I'm interested in installing Polish locale pack (at least the spellchecker). How to to this?

Yours,
Marcin

Posted by Marcin on April 17, 2008 at 11:12 PM CEST #

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