News OpenOffice.org splits from Oracl

Out of interest, why do you think it's "terrible"? I realise that it's sometimes 'too easy' (?) and thus things like manual garbage collection and memory allocation/support aren't available, but at the same time making good and solid multi-OS programs are relatively easy with Java.

 

I don't use it because I'm so used to MSO. My university uses MS on all of their computers (albeit macs, they have MSWord) and I just find it easier to stick to whats common. On my Linux Laptop I've got the freedom to use OO however its quite limited when transferring files between MSWord/OO

I like the .doc format but MS changes it to .docx leaving OO very upset
OO likes to save in .odt however the Mac MSWord doesn't see it on my flashdrive as 'readable.'

If everything could support other stuff.. perhaps life would be a bit easier.
I must say, I really do like the ribbon thing that MSO2007 put out, and in 2010, the interface is quite easy to use.
MSO2003's excel was one of the best though, although I was quite young, the shortcuts were the best thing you could ever memorize.

 

you do realize that OO will open and save as .docx, and that you can set it to save .doc and .docx as default instead of .odt correct?

also, julieb, your title has a typo, "Oracl" needs a "e"

 

Interesting. Thank you for the insight. (Although you could tone down the confrontation a bit - I don't know all that much about OO and FOSS and was just posting my immediate impressions.)

 

I used OpenOffice.org for years, but I could feel its development slowing down. I switched to Office 2007 because my university offered a version which apparently doesn't need any sort of key or authentication. It's better if only for compatibility purposes with everything else, as sometimes I'd run into issues using OpenOffice.org, especially with Apple users.

 

Interesting, I never knew this. I never spent much effort in OO because MSO was always blaring.

 

C# being a fairly new language, does those for you automatically as well (garbage collection, memory allocation). Also, it can be more platform agnostic as it can be compiled to machine code, whereas Java needs to run on the Java runtime environment; supports more data types, and is better designed for parallel programming.

I guess whichever language someone prefers to use is what matters though. My only gripe with Java is that I have to install that danm runtime environment for just one piece of software, because Open Office/Libre Office are the only good open source alternatives to MS Office but they both require JRE.

 

Well it can only be better than OO or what's the point. And that can't be a bad thing.

 

OO is great, how could anyone complain about a free alternative that can read and save in any of the most used formats?

 

I love O and I've used it for some pretty complex layout projects. I wish Writer had a few more of the functions of MS Publisher, but I make it work. It's been so long since I've used MSO that I honestly don't know the relative advantages and disadvantages of the two, but until there comes to be a point where I can't do something I need to in OO, I can't se using anything else.

 

A few corrections

C# is a language, the .NET CLR (or the Mono runtime, etc.) executes CIL code (created by the C# compiler) and performs GC and other memory management tasks.

Both Java and C# need a runtime environment, since they are both compiled to bytecode and executed inside a virtual machine. Pre-JITting using ngen does not remove the need for a .NET runtime.

Only true for primitives types since Java doesn't support unsigned types and Java has non-object oriented primitive types, whereas C# has a unified type system.

Microsoft started working on parallel extensions in 2007, 5+ years after .NET was released. So can you say it was better designed? (maybe more easily extended?) I believe there are also similar extensions for Java, but I'm guessing without the nice syntactic sugar you get thanks to LINQ.

You have to install .NET CLR for .NET apps, even if you run ngen.

Hey, at least you didn't say Java is slow and FWIW I think C# is great (worked with it for the last 5 years), as is most of the BCL and .NET ecosystem