OpenOffice 2.0 preview released

THE SUN-SPONSORED OpenOffice.org project based on open sourced StarOffice code has released a preview of the upcoming OpenOffice 2.0 product. This version touts better MS-Office loading and parsing, strict XML compliant output, a new database program that mimics Microsoft's Access, and much more. It's available for 32-bit Windows, Linux (x86), Sun Solaris x86, and the traditional Solaris for Sparc. We used this opportunity to take this pre-release "version 1.9.65", which will end up being 2.0, for a quick spin.

The splash screen in the 2.0 pre-release

Installation was idiot proof and took 3 minutes on the 2.0 Ghz AMD Athlon based test system with 512MB RAM. Load speed is one area worth noting because of the improvements over previous releases. Launching the Office Suite installed on winXP Home SP2, with the program's "Quick Starter" feature disabled, produced the following results: OpenOffice Writer loaded in 10 seconds. The Spreadsheet (OO Calc) in 11 seconds. The Powerpoint-like presentations module (Impress): 9 seconds. OO Base (a new database program): 5 seconds. With Quick Starter enabled: OO Write: 3 seconds. OO Calc: 7.5 seconds. OO Impress: 6 seconds. OO Base: 2 seconds. As a StarOffice 7 user, I quickly noticed that the program names are used in each icon in this version: "OpenOffice.org Draw, OpenOffice.org Calc, OpenOffice.org Writer, etc", instead of the more familiar "Presentation", "SpreadSheet", "Text Document", used in SO 7. Whether that is good or bad depends on the eye of beer holder.

Continuing with the tradition of offering very good Microsoft Office compatibility, the OO 2.0 preview opened with no errors a few random Microsoft Office files downloaded from the net, preserving the complete presentation format and content. The files used for these quick tests were searched by using Google and entering search strings like ".doc 2004 site:microsoft.com", ".xls 2004 site:hp.com" etc. For the curious, the files are: this Powerpoint PPS presentation, this .DOC from Microsoft.com, and this Excel spreadsheet from HP, all dated 2004. As always, the more testing a given program gets before release, the more chances of getting bugs squashed, so if you want to help them polish their MS-Office load filters, here's your chance. You can also file bugs online using the project's issue-tracking web interface.

Editing .DOC file from Microsoft's site

.PPS Powerpoint file loaded in Impress

OpenOffice Calc editing a .XLS Excel file from HP's web site

One noteworthy addition to this upcoming 2.0 OO.o release is the HSQL Embedded database engine a fast Java-based embedded database engine that once surprised everyone by beating IBM's Cloudscape (now also open sourced) and even C++ databases. Also included is a user friendly database application dubbed "OpenOffice Base" which allows you to effortlessly create both databases, queries and reports using helpful "wizards". Current 1.x versions of OpenOffice lack an embedded database and only the commercial StarOffice product includes one in the form of the bundled "Adabas D" licensed from Software AG, but even then such a friendly database front-end is missing from SO7. µ

OpenOffice Base - the open source suite's Access

Entering data into a database

A commercial StarOffice release is expected to be available soon after the final OpenOffice.org 2.0 is released, likely to be named "StarOffice 8" and including the usual additions of clip art, fonts, a commercial spell checker and thesaurus, and technical support. We're not giving this program any score since it's a pre-release version, but I'm personally happy to see the Sun folks and the OpenOffice.org contributors making this popular open source office suite even better. In the meantime, if you are of the impatient type and can't wait for OpenOffice 2.0 and StarOffice 8.0, feel free to give these pre-release builds a try. The windows version is a 79MB download, and the Linux one 94MB. Still much less than McNealy's infamous quote of "a 250 MB hairball" when referring to Microsoft's Office. Caveat Emptor: this is a work in progress so consider this beta software. µ

L'INQS
Download OpenOffice.org 2.0 pre-release builds
Guide to new features in OpenOffice.org 2.0
Sun StarOffice 7 preloaded in AOL PCs
HSQLDB, an embedded Java database
IBM open sources Cloudscape Java Database