OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org logo
OpenOffice.org (OOo) (not "OpenOffice," due to a trademark dispute) is an office applications suite. OpenOffice.org is and is based on the open-sourced code from an older version of StarOffice that was acquired and made open source by Sun Microsystems. OpenOffice.org is released under the LGPL and the SISSL and thus it is free software.
The project aims to compete with Microsoft Office, and emulates Microsoft Office's look and feel to some degree. It is compatible with the file formats of Microsoft Office, but also implements its own XML-based file formats. By using file compression after the XML generation, the XML-based OpenOffice.org files are generally smaller than the equivalent binary Microsoft Office files.
There are OpenOffice.org versions for Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X. (The current Mac OS X version of OOo requires the use of X11.)
OpenOffice.org Version 1.1 was released on September 2, 2003 and it includes:
- Writer (word processor)
- Calc (spreadsheet program)
- Draw (graphics program)
- Impress (presentation program)
- visual HTML editor
- Macro recorder
- StarOffice Basic
- Export and import Microsoft Word, PDF, Macromedia Flash and DocBook XML.
Math has been integrated into the other modules and is no longer available standalone.
With careful configuration, OpenOffice.org will integrate with other databases such as mySQL and postgreSQL, thus offering the same functionality as the Microsoft Access database.
The OpenOffice.org 2.0 beta and release candidate is called Pelican.
Other projects run alongside the main OpenOffice.org project - including documentation, localisation and the application programming interface. There is also a scripting project which aims to be a repository for distributing macros.
Historical background
In August of 1999 Sun Microsystems purchased StarDivision, a German software company who produced an office suite known as StarOffice. Sun's strategy at the time was to provide an alternative office suite to the dominant Microsoft Office. They opened up the source code in 2000 and the OpenOffice.org project started. This allowed Sun to access rapid development with little cost. It also allowed the general public a version of StarOffice, which is totally free, including the source code.
Releases of StarOffice since StarOffice 6.0 have been based on the OpenOffice.org codebase (similar to the relationship between Netscape Navigator and Mozilla), with some proprietary components included.
OpenOffice.org in the marketplace
OpenOffice.org has emerged as the most prominent alternative to the dominant Microsoft Office application suite. The ability to import from and export to Microsoft Office file formats is an important feature of OOo for many of its users.
Microsoft has denounced the usefulness of OOo. When the Israeli employment agency announced plans to switch from using Microsoft Office to OOo, an unnamed Microsoft representative was quoted ([1]) as saying "The employment agency has selected an immature and unproven software package and its functionality is at best close to Office 97."
Development
The OpenOffice.org API is based on the OpenOffice.org component technology and consists of a wide range of interfaces defined in a CORBA-like Interface description language.
The document file format used by OpenOffice.org is based on XML and several export- and import-filters. All external formats read and written by OpenOffice.org is converted back and forth from the internal XML-representation.
OpenOffice.org uses a modified version of mozilla.org's BugZilla, called IssueZilla, to track issues.
GNOME integration
Sun Microsystems, Inc. is integrating OpenOffice.org with GNOME, which means that the applications of OpenOffice.org will become part of GNOME office. Ximian is attempting to speed the integration with GNOME and is developing software patches against the main release which let OpenOffice.org use the GTK widget toolkit used by GNOME applications. On systems that run GNOME, this will give OpenOffice.org the same look and feel as the other GNOME applications running on that system. Ximian includes OpenOffice.org in their product Ximian Desktop [2].
OpenOffice.org extensions
- OpenGroupware.org (OGo) is a set of OpenOffice.org extension programs released under either the GNU General Public License or the GNU Lesser General Public License to share OpenOffice.org files. Using open Internet standards, the user can share calendars, addressbooks, emails, instant messaging, blackboards, and browse the web and access other groupware applications.