Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

OpenOffice.org 2.4, Novell Edition e-Media Kit
http://download.novell.com/Download?buildid=4Jpg4UWTg8s~

Key Features of OpenOffice.org 2.4

The Novell® Edition of OpenOffice.org contains enhancements and bug fixes that are not available in the standard edition. These include:
General Features

* Enhanced Support for Microsoft Office File Formats: OpenOffice.org supports import and export of Microsoft Office file formats, even taking advantage of compatible fonts to match document length. Transparent document sharing makes OpenOffice.org the best choice if you are deploying it in a mixed Linux/Windows environment.
* ODMA Integration: The Novell Edition of OpenOffice.org for Windows includes improved integration with ODMA (Open Document Management Architecture) services, for example for GroupWise. If you have the GroupWise client installed on the machine, OpenOffice.org will offer to open documents from GroupWise, or save documents in GroupWise. If you want to open or save documents using the normal Windows file dialog instead, click Use Application Dialog when offered to select a document from GroupWise or to save a document into GroupWise. To avoid the GroupWise dialogs altogether, toggle the corresponding button in the Tools > Options > General dialog.
* Enhanced Fonts: For the Novell Edition of OpenOffice.org, Novell licensed fonts from Agfa Monotype which are metrically identical and visually compatible with some of the key Microsoft fonts. This allows OpenOffice.org to match fonts when opening documents originally composed in Microsoft Office, and very closely match pagination and page formatting. The fonts have different names, but are transparently mapped on export and import to their equivalents.
* Enhanced Fields Support

Calc

* Excel Compatibility: Improved Excel compatibility for certain built-in functions (e.g. CELL, INFO, INDIRECT), hyperlinks and filters, improved ergonomics, 'merge and center' fix. Adds support for 'R1C1' style addresses. Performance enhancement on certain text functions such as SEARCH. Natural sorting option in cell range sorting.
* Excel VBA Macro Interoperability: The Novell Edition of OpenOffice.org eases the migration of many macros from Microsoft Excel. Although not all macros can be successfully migrated, this interoperability offers more than the standard edition, which does not support migration of macros.
* Data Pilots: Data Pilots are interoperable with MS Pivot Tables™. The Novell edition substantially improves the Data Pilot feature, making it possible to edit pilots after creation.
* Solver: The Novell Edition of OpenOffice.org has a linear optimization solver to optimize a cell value based on arbitrary constraints, built into Calc.

Writer

The Writer navigator allows a tree view of the document structure, giving a slicker navigation experience. We also have improved change-tracking interoperability, better HTML export, and improved printing of fonts. For CJK locales we auto-generate bold and italic fonts where they are (commonly) missing.

Impress

The Novell Edition of OpenOffice.org improves the visual appearance of some graphical elements in Impress presentation slide shows.

Maybe I'm just being naive but if these Novell enhancements are all right, why aren't they in the main release? Why would anyone want to install any other different version if Novell's is better?

Just wondering.

Aleve Sicofante wrote:Maybe I'm just being naive but if these Novell enhancements are all right, why aren't they in the main release? Why would anyone want to install any other different version if Novell's is better?

Just wondering.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that the reason why many of the Novell enhancements are not in the main release are because of licencing issues. From my understanding, Sun apparently has very strict licencing terms for anyone contributing code to OpenOffice.org and I believe that Novell is frustrated by that.

So otherwise the Novell Edition is just better, right?

(However, I've just installed it and it looks too much too foreign in a Windows environment, with those Tango icons, but I'll try it later inside Ubuntu and will see if it fits better).

I prefer the vanilla edition because it is tested by more people, so it theoretically has less bugs. Even though I've used Fedora for years at home and previously at work, I would always remove the Fedora-modified OpenOffice.org and replace it with the vanilla edition. At least at the time, Fedora's OOo was buggy.

That said, OOo derivatives include their own bug fixes too, so it's a mixed bag.

Aleve Sicofante wrote:So otherwise the Novell Edition is just better, right?

(However, I've just installed it and it looks too much too foreign in a Windows environment, with those Tango icons, but I'll try it later inside Ubuntu and will see if it fits better).

More features, yes. Better performance, yes. But as AndrewZ said, it is likely not tested quite as thoroughly and could potentially have more stability issues because of that.

You can always change the Tango icons, which is the first thing that I do. The Galaxy icons will be coming out pretty soon anyways which should look nice in Windows.

Pardon my ignorance, but I am new to Open Office and am trying to come up to speed. I downloaded Open Office v 2.4 bu Sun Microsystems. Now I see this announcement regarding the Novell e-Media kit. Is this an add-on, or enhancement to what I already have, or is this a different program altogether. In other words, does this modify and hopefully improve what I have, or by downloading do I get another complete program so that I will then have two different versions of Open Office on my computer?

Gene

When I installed it in Windows I had to uninstall the standard version first (or it wouldn't install at all). It's not an add-on, it's a full version.

I've been using OOo, Novell Edition since 2.1....

The original naming convention was OOo x.x, Novell Edition.

What is with the e-Media Kit add-on to the name? Is this just a pre-release for press, or is this the full release version?

Rick

Aleve Sicofante wrote:Maybe I'm just being naive but if these Novell enhancements are all right, why aren't they in the main release?

Lots of reasons.... possible licensing issues, possible quality issues, enhancements not yet 100% to OpenOffice.org standards, new enhancements possibly not as throughly tested, and so on. These things all need to be worked out... Where possible the enhancements are fed into the main OpenOffice.org releases. This takes time to pass through OpenOffice.org Quality Assurance etc. Novell releases their enhancements early in the Novell edition.

Novell works close with OpenOffice.org and Sun and does a lot of work to improve things. An example (among many) is the VBA project: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/VBA

eugenesanderson wrote:Is this an add-on, or enhancement to what I already have, or is this a different program altogether.

It is Novell's repackaged full release of OpenOffice.org, not an add-on... it is still OOo2.4, but with extra functionality that may or may not end up in a future "official" OOo release.

There are others who do similar things.. NeoOffice do a repackaged release for OSX, OxygenOffice repackage OpenOffice.org with enhancements etc etc. (ie, it's not just Novell who release a repackaged OpenOffice.org with enhancements to the main OpenOffice.org build.. that's the beauty of Open Source )

i4support wrote:What is with the e-Media Kit add-on to the name? Is this just a pre-release for press, or is this the full release version?

To be honest with you, I haven't found anything different about this version that would warrant adding "e-Media Kit" to the name. It almost sounds like a mistake. I have also been using the Novell Edition for Windows since 2.1 and have never had any issues along the way.