Microsoft unwittingly admits OpenOffice.org is a threat • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft unwittingly admits OpenOffice.org is a threat

#71

Post by AndyKelley » Fri, Oct 15, 2010, 10:31 AM UTC

xentronium wrote: post #21

I don't think OpenOffice is a threat, especially considering what Oracle does (virtually everything to kill it).

I've noticed exactly 3 things since Ubuntu's Open Office updated to Oracle's version:

* It's about half as fast as it used to be.

* "Oracle" logo on the splash screen (which remains on the screen for twice as long)

* A message box that says "General error" any time I open a document. I kid you not: http://www.superjoesoftware.com/temp/general-error.png. Note that after I hit OK the document opens fine.

Re: Microsoft unwittingly admits OpenOffice.org is a threat

#72

Post by drinian » Sat, Oct 16, 2010, 1:15 PM UTC

Splines wrote: post #45

drinian wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, my understanding is that different versions of Word will display the same .doc file differently. Also, you should really do that sort of thing as PDF. Quite easy, considering that OO has PDF export built in.

There are back-compat features in Word to render files using old rules, so work has been done to help preserve your visual layout across versions. That said, there's a ton of churn between different versions of Word, so there's no guarantee a bug-fix (or sadly, a regression) won't cause your document to display differently anyway. FWIW, Word has PDF/XPS export built in as well. (I believe Word 2010 has it in the box,…

And, of course, with the free PDFCreator virtual printer on Windows, or the PDF generation builtins on Linux and OS X, there's no reason you can't use PDF from any app...

Not to mention that PDF generation was probably added to word as a response to OO's capability.

Re: Microsoft unwittingly admits OpenOffice.org is a threat

#73

Post by polynomial » Mon, Oct 18, 2010, 3:15 AM UTC

ErrantX wrote: post #15

Create wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Had an issue with this today in a word document with tables Please be kind and file an issue and provide the test-case. thank you.

It has been open for a while: http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=7911 (but looks like it may be fixed soon) EDIT: there seems no need to download Create (at this point he is on 0), it was a fair point!

Fix my software without me having to tell you what's wrong, darn it!