OpenOffice Reader for S60 smartphones

officereader - Google Code:

"For the first time ever, it is now possible to read your OpenDocument files from OpenOffice.org, KOffice, AbiWord and Lotus Symphony on your Symbian Smartphone using Open Source software"

So there ... I've downloaded it to my Nokia E71 and managed to open various OpenOffice documents (presentation, spreadsheet & text) and it works quite well so far, especially on text and spreadsheets (presentations don't really make a lot of sense on the small display).

So, if you are an OpenOffice.org user (or you work with OpenDocument documents) and have an S60 phone, go an get it here.

OpenOffice.org 3

I've been playing around with the latest OpenOffice.org 3 builds for a couple of weeks now...
One of the nicest changes in the Writer is the zoom functionality, which (quite frankly) s^h^h ^h was not that good in previous releases.

Now it looks like this:

You can actually zoom by dragging the slider... as expected.

A lot better than in the old dialog:

So lets forget about that.

btw: you can safely run OOo 3 (developer builds) alongside an older version (e.g. StarOffice 8 in my case).

New StarOffice/OOo language feature

Just noticed that OpenOffice 2.4 and (therefore) StarOffice 8 Update 10, have a new faster way to select/change the language for the spell-checker - right down in the status bar (where you actually expect it).

A click on it, and you can change the language.
Fast. Intiutive.

Finally.
Thanks.

StarOffice 8 Update 10

StarOffice 8 Update 10 has finally been released as patch 120187-14 for Windows.

Contrary to previous patches, this one was quite troublesome to install: on both of my Windows machines (both with SO8 U9 already installed) the installation failed quit at the end with a failure to read the source .MSI file (claimed to be a network error, but that was just a crappy error message, all install sources were local). It then removed the whole U9 update, but StarOffice refused to load afterwards (incl reboot) because of missing DLLs and/or DLL entry points.

I had to repair SO8 base, then re-apply U10...

As I said, happened twice for me – cost me 2hrs each time ... so be careful.

StarOffice 8 Update 9

... is finally here.

Get it from SunSolve as 120187-12 (for Winodws).

Sun ODF Plugin 1.1 now fully working with Microsoft Office 2007

For lack of an MS Office installation I cannot verify it, but this is great news reported by Malte Timmermann

Sun Presentation Minimizer for StarOffice and OpenOffice

The Sun Presentation Minimizer is a great OpenOffice.org extension to reduce the file size of an Impress presentation. It does so by

• cropping images according to their visibility

• reducing image quality (e.g. 50% JPEG at 150 dpi)

• removing hidden slides

• removing notes

etc.

And – quite important – it gives you a summary of what it is about to remove or modify and also an estimate on the gain (new vs. old filesize). The default setting is for a copy of the file to be created, which is good, since this is the safe path...

I have tried it on one of my recent presentations, and could reduce it from 7MB to 2.3MB... quite impressive for the default options. And (on screen) the presentation looked exactly the same... which should not be too surprising, since you really do not need 300dpi for some supporting images and graphics.

Great tool. Get it here at the OpenOffice.org extensions repository.

OpenOffice as a Java Update

This just popped up on my computer...



would be even cooler if it detected my (running) StarOffice ...

Excel bug

Boy am I glad that I run StarOffice, not MS Office. A new bug was discovered in Excel that runs like this:

850*77,1 = 100.000

instead of 65535.
Of course I immediately tried in StarCalc, and it does it correctly.

Wonder, if Microsoft users consider this an incompatibility between Calc and Excel...

See the explanation and discussion here, and also the explanation by Joel Spolsky.
So, it is a display bug only... and it is (I fully agree) extremely rare and unlikely...

But still fun ...

Thanks to m³ for the pointer.

StarOffice 8 now includes Google Search

Update 8 of StarOffice 8 - released just this week - now includes what I'd call the 2nd part of the Sun/Google deal around StarOffice:

It comes with google search integrated.


Both Web and Destkop - Cool.

Btw: Sun still kept their branding in, because the web search runs through
http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/search-en.xml

StarOffice 8 Update 8

... just arrived.
Get it from SunSolve.

Google Pack now comes with StarOffice

This is great - google nows includes StarOffice in their Google Pack.
Not just a copy of OpenOffice, but specifically Sun's StarOffice...

Sun ODF Plugin tips

For hints, tips and issues with the Sun ODF Plugin for MS Office, consult Malte Timmermann's Blog.

Sun ODF Plugin 1.0 for Microsoft Office FAQ

to be found on Malte Timmermann's Blog

Microsoft Office users can now import and export to ODF

StarOffice 8:

"The Sun ODF Plug-in for Microsoft Office allows users of Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint the ability to read, edit and save to the ISO-standard Open Document Format. The ODF Plug-in is available as a free download from the Sun Download Center (SDLC). "

Download the ODF Plug-in.

Stylesheet fix for Weblog Publisher

Lately I noticed that the Sun Weblog Publisher uses an “additional” <p...> tag in list items <li>, which usually adds a line break right after the items bullet,

• 
  like this

I played around with the stylesheets of my blogs a bit to turn this off. The secret sauce looks like this:

ul li p {
display:inline;
}

To set the appearance or a paragraph that is nested within a list item of an unordered list to “inline” instead of “block”, so it no longer starts on a new line.

Hope this works now, I hate the manual edit...

Blogging with StarOffice

Finally I got hold of the Sun Weblog Publisher for StarOffice – the one that now works with the new blogger ... This entry is to test this assumption. Seems to work.

StarOffice 8 Update 6

is here.
Get it at the SunSolve server.

Sun Weblog Publisher - waiting, waiting

There is still no news about a Sun Weblog Publisher that works with (the new) blogger, aka blogger2.

Please !!!

TechCrunch: Google PowerPoint Clone Coming

Mike Arrington reports of sightings of a Google presentation application (Powerpoint, Impress, ...).
I am using Google docs & spreadsheets occasionally, but I'm still a bit conservative regarding a presentation package "just online".

Mostly when you present - especially with a customer - you struggle with the most basic settings at their conference or meeting room.
Just yesterday a colleague of mine did not get his notebook (DELL) to work with the video beamers of two different customer's. I managed to back up with my notebook (IBM, and I'm proud of it) at one location without any problems, but not at the other ... it forced me to switch my resolution down to 800... uargh...

Image that in that situation you also have to struggle with network and internet connectivity. Many of my customers are quite paranoid when it comes to having visitor laptops in their network, and they don't usually have Wifi.
So especially when it comes to presentations I still like to have them strictly offline.

Then again, you might use just and PC provided by the customer... and there's no need to have OpenOffice/StarOffice or PowerPoint installed...
Come to think of it, this really might make sense.

So lets wait and see what Google will have to offer.
Maybe they will provide a nice little offline tool to (just) run your presentation, or save/download it as a PDF to take along...