Here at last OpenOffice 2.0

Short Description
Figure 2: The latest version of OpenOffice Writer looks even more like …. Figure 6: The new Base database tool at last gives OpenOffice a desktop database …

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Content
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The OpenOffice codebase is the
foundation for two products:
StarOffice is a commercial product
by Sun [1], and OpenOffice is the
free software package available from [2].
There are no differences between the actual
office packages; instead, Sun provides
a collection of colorful add-ons,
such as fonts, templates, and clipart
with StarOffice. OpenOffice has most of
the core functionality users expect from
an office suite. The OpenOffice suite
comes with almost all Linux distributions
and is a major reason for the recent
rise of desktop Linux. When OpenOffice
2.0 arrived after many months of preliminaries,
we took a look to see if the final
version was truly worth the wait.
File Formats
The most significant change in Open-
Office 2.0 may be the new file formats
based on OASIS OpenDocument [3].
These formats are standardized and documented
in minute detail, and what’s
more, software vendors are allowed to
implement them without restriction.
The idea behind OpenDocument - a
standardized set of file formats supported
by all programs on the market -
is to provide genuine support for the
global exchange of data. The EU has already
decided to adopt open document
formats, and the…