Monday, November 1, 2010

Geek News

OpenOffice FORKING.

Test drive here.

7 comments:

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Don't mock open orifice.
~

mikey said...

Libre Office has already received the support of Google, Novell, Red Hat, Canonical and others. Mark Shuttleworth of Canonical has even said that it might replace Openoffice.org in future Ubuntu releases.

So I probably use Google Docs for nine out of ten pieces. Only when I have to more explicitly control page layout do I use Open Office or Inkscape. If Canonical changes the Open Office Distro in the Repositories, I suspect there will be no real loss of functionality, but the real question is will how quickly Google will improve Docs to the point where a stand-alone local office applications suite becomes unnecessary?

Substance McGravitas said...

I haven't played at all with Google Docs. I do some work for my co-op and can't get on the net while I do it: I use NeoOffice.

Dragon-King Wangchuck said...

NeoOffice knows Kung-FuOffice.

What are you people doing? Even the Macheads have been assimilated. You can not resist the power of SPARKLINES.

Substance McGravitas said...

Open Source Rules!

Djur said...

@mikey: My experience of the recent overhaul of Google Docs is that it has fewer features than before (you're no longer permitted to use custom HTML or CSS to lay out documents, and the new format has no substitute for this). I use Google Docs all the time, but I see no sign of movement toward being a replacement for full-featured word processors for complex documents.

mikey said...

Well, as I said, Djur, if you're right I still have tools available. Even at it's current state of development, Google Docs is life changing. It is the most effective writing/collaberation/indexed storage platform I have ever used, and I not only use it a LOT I continuously find new ways to use it.

But one thing I learned a long time ago about technology development is 'never say never'. I suspect we'll both be amazed at what you can do in a browser in three to five years...