For those whose tastes tend towards the bleeding edge... Bottom-line is
that OpenOffice.org is looking for beta testers and that 3.0 has a host
of new and pretty fundamental changes.

If you're interested in the upcoming changes, check out
<http://marketing.openoffice.org/3.0/featurelistbeta.html>.

A significant project that's looking to expand its community of testers...

-Craig

=======original message==================
Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 07:05:44 +0100
From: John McCreesh <jpmcc@openoffice.org>
Organization: OpenOffice.org Marketing Project
UTo: announce@openoffice.org

Subject: [ooo-announce] OpenOffice.org 3 beta is ready for testing

The OpenOffice.org Community is pleased to announce that the public beta
release of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is now available. This beta release is
made available to allow a broad user base to test and evaluate the next
major version of OpenOffice.org, but is not recommended for production
use at this stage.

If you are a regular user of OpenOffice.org, here's a great opportunity
to help us make the next release the best ever.


What's new in OpenOffice.org 3.0?

The most immediately visible change to OpenOffice.org 3.0 is the new
"Start Centre", new fresh-looking icons, and a new zoom control in the
status bar. A closer look shows that 3.0 has a myriad of new features.
Notable Calc improvements include a new solver component; support for
spreadsheet collaboration through workbook sharing; and an increase to
1024 columns per sheet. Writer has an improved notes feature and
displays of multiple pages while editing. There are numerous Chart
enhancements, and an improved crop feature in Draw and Impress.

Behind the scenes, OpenOffice.org 3.0 will support the upcoming
OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.2 standard, and is capable of opening files
created with MS-Office 2007 or MS-Office 2008 for Mac OS X (.docx,
..xlsx, .pptx, etc.). This is in addition to read and write support for
the MS-Office binary file formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt, etc.).

OpenOffice.org 3.0 will be the first version to run on Mac OS X without
X11, with the look and feel of any other Aqua application. It introduces
partial VBA support to this platform. In addition, OpenOffice.org 3.0
integrates well with the Mac OS X accessibility APIs, and thus offers
better accessibility support than many other Mac OS X applications.

A more detailed guide to the features can be found at
http://marketing.openoffice.org/3.0/...elistbeta.html

Beta Availability

OpenOffice.org 3 beta is immediately available in US English for
MS-Windows, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and OpenSolaris platforms from
http://download.openoffice.org/3.0beta. This page also contains details
of where to find localized builds and language packs as they become
available. For more details, please consult the appropriate native
language project - see http://projects.openoffice.org/native-lang.html


Help us gathering bugs in May!

In order to help us release OpenOffice.org 3.0 on schedule in September,
users of the beta release are encouraged to report any bugs, issues or
errors at http://qa.openoffice.org.

If you would like to test just the new features, there is a list of test
cases by component at
http://qa.openoffice.org/ooQAReloade...Office.org_3.0

If you are nervous about reporting bugs through the formal bug reporting
system, you can simply email details to the user support mailing lists
http://www.openoffice.org/mail_list.html

The developers look forward to receiving your feedback on this beta
release of OpenOffice.org!

"2008 - the year of 3"

Craig wrote:

Lou

Craig wrote:
Of most interest to me is what I see when I scroll all the way to the
bottom:
__________________________________________________ ______________
PDF Import Extension

The PDF Import Extension allows modifying existing PDF files for which
the original source files do not exist anymore.
__________________________________________________ ______________

http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/...ed?intcmp=1549

YEEHAW!

--
John Corliss BS206. I use nFilter to block all crossposts and all Google
Groups posts because of Googlespam. No ad, cd, commercial, cripple,
demo, dotnet, nag, share, spy, time-limited, trial or web wares OR warez
for me, please.

In article <cqCdnfGVCoblB7zVnZ2dnUVZ_rPinZ2d@posted.ccountryn et>, John
Corliss <jcorliss@fake.invalid> writes
to celebrate this momentous moment, this time of great import ....
--
Roger Hunt

LouB - 07.05.2008 12:47 :

[snipped]

ok. But no reason for always fullquoting again [snipped].

Recommendation please:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanb/documents/quotingguide.html

THX in advance for your kind understanding.

--

by(e) PS

spam will be killfiled

Roger Hunt wrote:
We'll call it "UP YOURS, ADOBE" day.

--
John Corliss BS206. I use nFilter to block all crossposts and all Google
Groups posts because of Googlespam. No ad, cd, commercial, cripple,
demo, dotnet, nag, share, spy, time-limited, trial or web wares OR warez
for me, please.

This might be the feature that gets some businesses to use OO instead of
MS Office.

M.L. wrote:
And from what I've seen, you can install only Writer and the extension
to get that feature. This means you don't have to install the full boat,
including Java I hope, to get that functionality. For example, I don't
have any need for the spreadsheet, math, draw, DB or presentation modules.

--
John Corliss BS206. I use nFilter to block all crossposts and all Google
Groups posts because of Googlespam. No ad, cd, commercial, cripple,
demo, dotnet, nag, share, spy, time-limited, trial or web wares OR warez
for me, please.

On Thu, 08 May 2008 01:25:08 -0700, John Corliss
<jcorliss@fake.invalid> wrote:

Unfortunately it appears the PDF extension is not publically available
yet. I looked around today but couldn't find it.

Ross wrote:
Right, it did say "Available Soon..." above the link I referred to. It
might be available after OOo 3 becomes final. Who knows. They still have
some developing to do on it at this point.

--
John Corliss BS206. I use nFilter to block all crossposts and all Google
Groups posts because of Googlespam. No ad, cd, commercial, cripple,
demo, dotnet, nag, share, spy, time-limited, trial or web wares OR warez
for me, please.

John Corliss wrote:

miskairal wrote:
Well, at least that extension will be when and if it ever gets
perfected. 80)>

--
John Corliss BS206. I use nFilter to block all crossposts and all Google
Groups posts because of Googlespam. No ad, cd, commercial, cripple,
demo, dotnet, nag, share, spy, time-limited, trial or web wares OR warez
for me, please.