Canonical have been forking OO.o for at least 18 months.

Post #333,407 by static 9/30/10 5:39:08 AM Reply	Canonical have been forking OO.o for at least 18 months. I unavoidably needed support for MS's .docx et al formats at work. I'd been more-or-less keeping up with Ubuntu and there was one upgrade where the provided OO.o had considerably better support for .docx et al. I thought nothing of it, but then stumbled across people lamenting OO's poor support... and very shortly afterwards happened to notice that the version of OpenOffice in Ubuntu quietly had a big Canonical patch on it. I don't know any other details, but I have not had any problems any of MS's ....x formats. There's a massive spreadsheet I update about once a month - and the dozen people who read it have no idea I save it with OO. :-) (I just wish MS had decent support for ODF so I can give those out.) Wade. Q:Is it proper to eat cheeseburgers with your fingers? A:No, the fingers should be eaten separately.
Post #333,421 by Another Scott 9/30/10 8:04:24 AM Reply	Thanks. I've been using the Windows version from OO.o. On some documents, like most Excel .xls files I come across, it's nearly perfect. It's very good on .doc too, but it regularly barfs or shows really bad rendering for many .pptx (missing sections, wrong fonts, wrong colors, won't open at all, etc.) and .docx (wrong fonts, wrong flowing of text around figures, etc.). I'll check out the Ubuntu version with more care. Thanks! Cheers, Scott.
Post #333,496 by lincoln 9/30/10 11:18:01 PM Reply	Re: Thanks. My daughter had a problem with OpenOffice on her Macbook doing school work last year. Seems the word processor refused to save documents that were longer than 5 pages. Didn't find any help on the intertubes, so we had no choice but to buy her MS Office for the Mac. Problem solved (but at $129 cost). "Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow
Post #333,530 by malraux 10/1/10 10:42:29 AM Reply	The Mac office suite is much better than OpenOffice Pages, or whatever it's called. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #333,426 by folkert 9/30/10 8:22:36 AM Reply	So... you figured out... one of the whom! and Novell (not related to MS's stuff with them, but probably guided by it) and IBM (Symphony ring a bell?) and a few others. The NIH syndrome was/is/might still be horrible in the new project. But at least it'll be more transparent.

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