OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org (OOo) (not "OpenOffice," due to a trademark dispute) is an office applications suite. OpenOffice.org is a community-based project and is based on the open-sourced code from an older version of StarOffice created by Sun Microsystems. 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. Newer releases of StarOffice are based on the OpenOffice.org codebase (similar to the relationship between Netscape Navigator and Mozilla). Although StarOffice is itself a commercial product, OpenOffice.org is released under the LGPL and the SISSL and thus it is free software.

Table of contents

1 Overview 2 Historical background 3 GNOME integration 4 OpenOffice.org extensions 5 External links

Overview

Version 1.1 was released on September 2, 2003 and it includes:

• Writer (word processor)
• Calc (spreadsheet program)
• Draw (graphics program)
• Impress (presentation program)
• HTML editor

• Macro recorder
• StarOffice Basic
• Export as PDF, Macromedia Flash and DocBook XML.

Math has been integrated into other programs and is no longer available as a standalone product.

The first major release, 1.0, came out on the May 2, 2002. It included:

• Writer (word processor)
• Calc (spreadsheet program)
• Draw (graphics program)
• Impress (presentation program)
• HTML editor
• Math (editor for mathematical formulas)
• StarOffice Basic

There are other projects which run as an aide to support the main OpenOffice.org project - including documentation, localisation and the application programming interface. All these projects welcome assistance, according to individuals' skillsets. 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.

With careful configuration, OpenOffice.org will integrate with other databases such as mySQL and postgreSQL, offering the same functionality as the Microsoft Access database.

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 [1].

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.

External links

• OpenOffice.org, the project's homepage
• Ximian's patches to OpenOffice.org (see also [1])
• OpenGroupware.org