OpenOffice.org is a free, Open Source alternative to Microsoft Office Office with a MS Word compatible word processor, a complete Excel compatible spread sheet program and a Power Point like presentation software and drawing program and also allows to save to PDF file.
What's new in OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 Build 9567:
Productivity Enhancements:
New Custom Properties Handling:
· OpenOffice.org allows users to define any number of custom document properties as name/value pairs in the File > Properties dialog. With version 3.3 it is possible to also define DateTime values and values that contain a duration.
Embedding of Standard PDF Fonts:
· In previous versions, the standard PDF standard fonts (Times, Helvetica, Courier, Symbol and ZapfDingbats) were only embedded into the resulting PDF when the resulting file was of the PDF/A type, since the PDF/A standards requires this. In version 3.3, you can optionally embed these fonts in all PDF documents created by OpenOffice.org to enhance display accuracy in PDF viewers.
New Narrow Font Family:
· Oracle contributed a narrow font family to the free and open source Liberation font families. Being metrically compatible to the Arial Narrow font, widely used on Microsoft Windows systems, this font family now completes the Liberation family and delivers a compatible and free set of fonts available on all platforms.
Increased Document Protection in Writer and Calc:
· OpenOffice.org Writer and Calc now allow two levels of document protection. As before, you can save a document with a password that prevents unauthorized users to read the content. Now you can also set a password to protect a document against unwanted changes.
· This way, you can make the content of a document available for reading to a selected group of people, and for reading and editing to a different group. This behaviour is now compatible with Microsoft Word and Excel file protection.
Automatic Decimals Digits for "General" format in Calc:
· In OpenOffice.org Calc, numbers formatted with the "General" number format will display as many decimal digits as required. In former versions, a maximum of 2 decimal digits were displayed with the "General" number format.
1 Million Rows in a Spreadsheet:
· OpenOffice.org Calc spreadsheets now support 1,048,576 (1 Million) rows instead of 65,536 rows.
New Options for CSV (Comma Separated Value) Import in Calc:
· Two new options are available when importing CSV files that contain data separated by specific characters.
· These options determine whether quoted data will always be imported as text, and whether OpenOffice.org Calc will automatically detect all number formats, including special number formats such as dates, time, and scientific notation. The detection depends on the language settings.
Insert Drawing Objects in Charts:
· The Chart functionality is enhanced and now supports drawing objects. The drawing toolbar allows to insert simple shapes such as lines, rectangles and text objects and even complex shapes such as cubes, symbols, block arrows, flowcharts and stars. The drawing objects can be edited by several dialogs which can be opened via the context menu. Also the font and formatting of text objects can be changed.
Hierarchical Axis Labels for Charts:
· If the categories in charts that get their data from spreadsheet span multiple rows and multiple columns, the direction of the first data series is detected. If the data for the first series comes from rows, the categories are split into multiple rows. Otherwise the categories are split into multiple columns. The split categories are then applied as different hierarchical labels at the x-axis.
· For charts with own data (typically used in Impress or Writer), there is a new icon to add text columns, which then will be used for the different levels in the x-axis labels.
Improved Slide Layout Handling in Impress:
· Handling of slide layouts in presentations is vastly improved. The content type of slide sections is now defined directly on the slide by clicking on one of the four content type icons: table, chart, picture, or movie, or entering text directly.
· This reduces the number of slide layout varieties making the layout selection much clearer. In addition, you can now also assign layouts to slides and create new slides with a specific layout using the toolbar. One new toolbar element is used to add a new slide (or duplicate the currently selected slide).
· A similar toolbar element is used to assign a layout to the currently selected slide, or reset the layout to the assigned layout after making changes.
Manual Setting for Primary Key Support for Databases:
· When connecting to a database via an ODBC, JDBC, or ADO driver, Base used to apply a heuristic method to determine whether the database supports primary keys. In some cases, this heuristic method failed. Therefore, version 3.3 introduces an explicit option to declare primary key support. When this setting is enabled, Base will always assume that the database supports primary keys, regardless of the result of the heuristic analysis.
Support of Read-Only Database Registrations:
· In OpenOffice.org, database registrations are stored in the application configuration files. Therefore, it is possible to deploy additional configuration fragments containing additional registrations. If those configuration fragments are declared as read-only (by using the usual configuration mechanisms for this), OpenOffice.org now blocks modifications (editions, removal) of the corresponding registration entry.
New Math Command 'nospace':
· It will now be possible to explicitly remove the small horizontal space that always gets applied between two elements. The syntax is nospace { el1 el2 ... }
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