OpenOffice.org 1.1 Press Release

2003-10-01

Contents: Press Release Text; New Features; Availability Relevant Quotes; Internationalization; Accessibility; 3rd-Party Innovations; Software Developers Kit; Additional Links; Press Kit; New Feature Highlights; Complete List of Features; Press Contacts

OpenOffice.org is proud to announce the immediate availability for download of the new version of the award-winning office suite, OpenOffice.org 1.1, for Windows (98/ME/NT/2000/XP), Linux (x86 & PowerPC), and Solaris[tm] Operating System (SPARC platform edition) in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Chinese (simplified & traditional), Korean and Japanese.

The suite comes complete with word-processor, spreadsheet, presentation and various other components and provides a revolutionary open, future-proof XML file format. The new release introduces many enhancements and new features including native one-click PDF (Adobe Acrobat) export, Macromedia Flash export for presentations and drawings, faster load-time, enhanced MS Office file compatibility, accessibility support and a smoother look and feel.

The suite, according to the terms of its open source licenses (LGPL & SISSL), is free for all to use, improve, modify, and to redistribute to anyone.

"The release of Version 1.1 of OpenOffice.org is a major achievement for the OpenOffice.org community," said Curtis Sasaki, vice president of desktop solutions at Sun Microsystems, Inc. " With the successful inaugural Openoffice.org conference earlier in the year, the energy in the community drove many corporate and individual contributors to work together with Sun to create the most stable and powerful release of the OpenOffice.org application so far, which is the core of the new StarOffice[tm] 7 Office Suite.

"New features like the native PDF export and the support for assistive technologies will accelerate the fast growing, worldwide adoption of OpenOffice.org, StarOffice as well as more secure, alternative desktop environments. We've seen community members work for days on end to create translated versions. This kind of enthusiasm helped to make OpenOffice.org one of the leading open source projects today," adds Sasaki.

Versions for Mac OS X, FreeBSD and Solaris (x86) will be available later this year. Other platforms continue in development.

The suite and it's source code can be downloaded from our Download Page.

OpenOffice.org is the home of the open source project and its community of developers, users and marketers responsible for the on-going development of the OpenOffice.org product. The mission of OpenOffice.org is 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. The OpenOffice.org office suite runs on FreeBSD, Windows (98/ME/2000/XP), Linux (x86 & PowerPC), Mac OS X and Solaris; while ports for other operating systems and hardware platforms, including IRIX, HP-UX, Tru64, Linux (Alpha), Linux (ARM), Linux (Itanium2) and others, are in various stages of development. OpenOffice.org 1.1 -- soon available across multiple platforms in over 60 native languages -- is written in C++ and has documented API's licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) and Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL) open source licenses. OpenOffice.org has tracked over 20 million downloads in the life of the project. The founder and sponsor of the OpenOffice.org project is Sun Microsystems, Inc. Sun markets an office suite based on the OpenOffice.org code called StarOffice. CollabNet (www.collab.net) hosts and manages the project.

Some of the new features and improvements included in OpenOffice.org 1.1 are:

This feature allows any document, spreadsheet or presentation to be exported directly to Adobe PDF format without the need for additional expensive software.

This feature allows presentations to be exported directly to the Macromedia Flash format, allowing for easy distribution or embedding into web pages, without the need for additional expensive software.

OpenOffice.org developers have streamlined the code to improve upon the time taken to initially load the suite. Also, a progress bar has been added to the splash screen.

Support for languages such as Hindi, Arabic, Thai, Hebrew and Chinese has been enhanced with improved vertical and bi-directional writing technologies.

Support for AportisDoc (Palm), Pocket Word and Pocket Excel has been added for easier transfer of documents to PDA's and Handheld Devices.

Filters have been added to support MS Office 2003 XML Wrapped documents and improvements have been made to the filters for MS Office 95/97/2000/XP documents.

New support for full keyboard navigation and control, tracking system color scheme and theme settings, accessibility in the help system and documents, Assistive Technologies via Java accessibility APIs.

For a more complete list of features please visit the Features page.

OpenOffice.org 1.1 is immediately available for Windows (98/ME/NT/2000/XP), Linux (x86 and PowerPC) and Solaris (SPARC) in English (US and UK), German, French (FR), Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Korean, and Japanese. There are over 60 language localization projects currently ongoing in the worldwide OpenOffice.org development project.

You can download the suite at your convenience from the OpenOffice.org Web site or order a CD-ROM from a community distributor near you.

"The release of Version 1.1 of OpenOffice.org is a major achievement for the OpenOffice.org community. With the successful inaugural Openoffice.org conference earlier in the year, the energy in the community drove many corporate and individual contributors to work together with Sun to create the most stable and powerful release of the OpenOffice.org application so far, which is the core of the new StarOffice 7 Office Suite."

"OpenOffice.org is a crucial component of the Free software desktop, with innumerable improvements in 1.1. The GNOME integration in 1.1 and beyond makes OpenOffice.org even more usable and powerful. Personally it's been a pleasure working with the OpenOffice.org team - get involved if you can."

"OpenOffice.org is, in addition to Mozilla, THE open source application that will be deployed on all workstations. It will be used on both the remaining Windows PC's as well as the Linux desktop systems. Due to the fact that OpenOffice.org is open source, we also recommend OpenOffice.org for use at home to all our employees. Everybody receives an OpenOffice.org CD as part of our migration training or upfront on demand. In case of installation problems, we support users with our own competency center. We decided to go with OpenOffice.org due to it's future-proof XML file format."

"OpenOffice.org is one of the most important software packages on SuSE Linux, because it lowers the transition hurdles for Linux novices coming from Windows (where MS Office is one of the most important applications), and it provides an important daily work tool for professional users and developers. File exchange between friends, companies and authorities is very easy between OpenOffice.org and MS Office, and OpenOffice.org's compatibility with MS Office file formats is the best on Linux."

"For a country like Colombia – which some call "third world" -- to get state-of-the-art technology means big money and enormous dependence upon a single entity. So when you can get such technology for "free" -- and your people can collaborate directly with its developers -- it is really important to you.

I am referring to OpenOffice.org and StarOffice, the open source project and products founded by Sun Microsystems.

Since August 1999, when Sun first made StarOffice 5.1 available as a free download, a lot of Colombians have used both the StarOffice and OpenOffice.org suites with much success. Because the products are a crucial component of the Free software desktop, we see more and more private and government agencies deploying or evaluating OpenOffice.org/SO for partial or full replacement of MS Office.

In Colombia, OpenOffice.org/SO have reached significant penetration (between 30 and 50 percent) in the small office home office ("SOHO") and education (both public and private), including K-12 and Universities.

OpenOffice.org and StarOffice -- with their future-proof XML file format and excellent price and performance – give my people confidence when we look toward the future."

"The new features are nice; I've been using Export to PDF much more than I expected," said Ed Buck, consultant and project contributor, "but to me the best part is what's under the hood. OpenOffice.org 1.1's native XML file format supercedes any single new or old feature. This open, standard and universally accepted file format today allows users to escape file format lock-in and companies to bring their IT software AND hardware budgets back under their own control. In the enterprise context, open XML undeniably adds shareholder value; for individuals, it makes for happy work."

Remarks Anthony Long, contributor to the OpenOffice.org Marketing Project: "Well, we'd just like to emphasize that OpenOffice.org 1.1 runs on Windows. Although about 63% of our users run the OpenOffice.org suite on Windows, many other people are still unaware that some open source software does run on Windows. So, if your computer's operating system is any version of Windows, then OpenOffice.org 1.1 will run smoothly and offer a very stable and productive experience. Plus, you never have to worry about your software vendor discontinuing your file format."

Christopher Null, PC World

"The Best Software You're Not Using"

Once you get familiar with OpenOffice.org's slightly geeky interface, this free office suite can be a reasonable alternative to the old standbys of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The similarities are often uncanny, from spreadsheet currency formatting to autocorrecting typos; plus, you can build PowerPoint-like presentations just as you would with the real deal. You shouldn't run into compatibility problems with Microsoft Office applications: Opening Word and even complicated Excel files works fine--tables and formulas come through intact. (free)

http://four.pcworld.shopping.yahoo.com/yahoo/article/0,aid,112028,00.asp

David Pogue, The New York Times

"The world waited for a contender that was so compelling...Now there is one. It's called OpenOffice, and it has a killer feature: it's free... Every now and then, you get what you don't pay for."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10D15F63C5B0C738EDDAF0894DA404482

Rob Pegoraro, The Washington Post

OpenOffice.org 1.0 "either matches or beats Microsoft Office... It's hardly perfect, but somebody in Redmond ought to be worried about this program... The OpenOffice suite opened every Word, Excel and PowerPoint file I tried. Most looked identical or nearly so. One even looked better than in Word -- OpenOffice showed an embedded author's note without my having to turn on the revision-tracking option."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A4246-2002May11&notFound=true

Chuck Hunnefield, Technology Coordinator, Linden Hall School for Girls (Lititz, PA, USA), explains, "We are a boarding school. Almost every student this year either brought a computer or leased one from us. We are also an international school with students from all over the world. The computers they bring have all sorts of different software installed, different (and often incompatible) versions of [the leading office suite and], WordPerfect, Lotus, DOS-based apps, etc. Some don't even have any office software installed at all!" OpenOffice.org "allowed us to finally be able to standardize what we use on computer lab computers, student computers, teacher computers, and even the teacher's home computers if they wish. All this at minimal cost to the school or its students."

There are 14 active Native-Lang Web sites representing as many communities where development and marketing of the OpenOffice.org software take place in the local language:

Basque**, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (US), French (FR), Finnish, German, Hindi, Italian, Laotian**, Portuguese (Brazilian), Romanian, Slovak**, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese**

** in formation

OpenOffice.org software is the primary office suite for a growing number of people around the world who have never before accessed the desktop in their 1st language:

Arabic*, Basque, Bulgarian*, Bosnian*, Catalan*, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Corsican*, Croatian*, Croatian*, Czech*, Danish*, Dutch*, English (US), English (British), Esperanto*, Finnish*, French (FR), Galician*, German, German (Austrian), German (Swiss), Greek*, Hungarian*, Icelandic*, Hindi, Tamil, Devanagari (Konkani, Marathi, Sanskrit), Gujarati, Gurmukhi (Punjabi), Oriya, Bengali, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bahasa Malaysia*, Malaysian Chinese*, Malaysian Tamil*, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian*, Lithuanian*, Norwegian (Nyorsk, Bokmal)*, Polish*, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (Iberian)*, Romanian*, Russian, Kinyarwanda (Rwanda)*, Serbian*, Slovak, Slovenian*, Zulu*, Sesotho*, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukranian*, Vietnamese*, Welsh*, Yiddish*

* in development

OpenOffice.org release 1.1 includes additional Assistive Technology components. Of particular interest is the availability and integration (via separate download) of Sun's Java access bridge available from http://www.sun.com/access/.

This new Java component promises an exciting future for both StarOffice and OpenOffice.org as it allows for integration of such popular programs as Freedom Scientific's JAWS and Ai Squared's ZoomText. While not 100% complete at this time Sun's Accessibility Program continues to provide and promote equality of access in accordance with US Federal Regulation 508. Parties interested in participating in this project component are invited to review http://www.sun.com/access and http://ui.openoffice.org/accessibility/index.html.

A WordPerfect filter application, developed by William Lachance and Marc Maurer, is now available to assist users migrating from WordPerfect to OpenOffice.org or Sun's StarOffice.

An OpenOffice.org Writer-to-Latex conversion tool, developed by Henrik Just, is now available to allow users to produce pre-production output.

Combined, these two tools (available as applications separate from OpenOffice.org1.1) serve to position the OpenOffice.org and Sun StarOffice wordprocessors as a premier tool for cross platform document processing.

The OpenOffice.org SDK is an add-on for the OpenOffice.org office suite. It provides the necessary tools and documentation for programming the OpenOffice.org API's and creating own extensions (UNO components) for OpenOffice.org.

Using the OpenOffice.org SDK developers can generate, modify, export and print different document types. New add-ons for OpenOffice.org can be built and easily deployed using the C++ or Java technologies. The SDK also provides a Java component that allows to embed OpenOffice.org into Java GUI applications.

Developers who are new to OpenOffice.org will also find the OpenOffice.org developer page useful. It can be found at:

http://development.openoffice.org

OpenOffice.org 1.1 download

//dev_docs/source/1.1.0/index.html

OpenOffice.org CD-ROM (Community Distributor links)

http://distribution.openoffice.org/cdrom/#cdrom

OpenOffice.org1.1's open, standard XML file format

http://www.w3.org/XML/

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office

OpenOffice.org Native-Lang Projects

http://native-lang.openoffice.org/

OpenOffice.org Localization (l10n) Project