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Status
Please check the
status page
on work being done around
OpenOffice
Description
To
create, as a community, the leading international office suite that
will run on all major platforms and provide access to all
functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an
XML-based file format.
StarDivision, the original author of the StarOffice suite of
software, was founded in Germany in the mid-1980s. It was acquired
by Sun Microsystems during the summer of 1999 and StarOffice 5.2 was
released in June of 2000. Future versions of StarOffice software,
beginning with 6.0, have been built using the OpenOffice.org source,
APIs, file formats, and reference implementation.
The
OpenOffice.org source code initially includes the technology which
Sun Microsystems has been developing for the future versions of
StarOffice(TM) software. The source is written in C++ and delivers
language-neutral and scriptable functionality, including Java(TM)
APIs. This source technology introduces the next-stage architecture,
allowing use of the suite as separate applications or as embedded
components in other applications. Numerous other features are also
present including XML-based file formats and other resources.
Foundations of Office Productivity in a Networked Age,
a
white paper from Sun available on this
site, presents a general outline for the technology roadmap. There
you will find outlined the design of the source. However, because of
the nature of open source, the community at large is ultimately
responsible for realizing OpenOffice.org's promises.
OpenOffice.org is both an Open Source product and a project. The
product is a multi-platform office productivity suite. It includes
the key desktop applications, such as a word processor, spreadsheet,
presentation manager, and drawing program, with a user interface and
feature set similar to other office suites. Sophisticated and
flexible, OpenOffice.org also works transparently with a variety of
file formats, including those of Microsoft Office.
Available in 25 languages with more being constantly added by the
community. OpenOffice.org runs stably and natively on Solaris, Linux
(including PPC Linux), and Windows. Additional ports, such as for
FreeBSD, IRIX, and Mac OS X, are in various stages of completion.
Written in C++ and with documented APIs licensed under the LGPL and
SISSL Open Source licenses, OpenOffice.org allows any knowledgeable
developer to benefit from the source. And, because the file format
for OpenOffice.org is XML, interoperability is easy, making future
development and adoption more certain.
Features
What's in OpenOffice.org? What does it do? This page seeks to
provide a brief synopsis of the features of OpenOffice.org.
OpenOffice.org has these components:
·
Writer
·
Calc
·
Draw
·
Impress
The suite covers pretty much everything you
need with a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software,
equation editor and a drawing program. It opens most major formats
such as MS Office almost flawlessly (Macros aren't converted), saves
to PDF*
, has comprehensive help, and spellchecking in 15 languages. Having
said that, let's detail some of the major features:
Interest
for the KhmerOS Initiative
Open Office is the
only Open Source platform that can reallistically compete with
MS Windows. It is a must on a system that wants to be a serious
option to Windows.
Language
support
On Windows, OpenOffice
uses the Microsoft Uniscribe engine to display Khmer. As of May 2004
it officially supports Khmer (among many other languages), but a
small bug does not allow it to display Khmer correctly while typing.
On Linux, Open Office
receives its support from ICU. We do
hope that such support will soon be a reality.
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