Am 02/13/2012 08:17 PM, schrieb Rob Weir:
I'd like to write a blog post on the top new things in AOO 3.4, from
the user perspective, compared to OOo 3.3.
What would you put on that list? What are the benefits of upgrading?
I wrote a blog article on GullFOSS with the new things in OOo 3.4 Beta.
However, Oracle has decided to delete this blog account and I cannot
find the content in "http://web.archive.org";.
So, the following is a text version (from 2011-04-05) but I don't know
anymore if I made further changes or not.
Feel free to copy & paste as much as you want.
Marcus
Hello,
the OpenOffice.org 3.4 Beta Release (build OOO340m1) is now available on the
download webpage.
This release was build as developer snapshot - however with 70 different
languages - to you give an impression about the ongoing development of
OpenOffice.org.
If you find severe issues within this build please file them to
OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system BugZilla:
http://qa.openoffice.org/issue_handling/pre_submission.html
Download webpage:
http://download.openoffice.org/all_beta.html
"New Features" overview:
see below
Release notes:
http://development.openoffice.org/releases/OOO340m1_snapshot.html
MD5 checksums:
http://download.openoffice.org/next/md5sums/OOO340m1_md5sums.txt
Best regards
Marcus
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Overview about some highlights in the OOo 3.4 Beta Release (OOO340m1). For
a more technial description please see the Wiki:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Feature_Freeze_Testing_3.4
Highlights
- Writer:
- Improved DOCX Import filter (Microsoft OOXML documents)
- Improved RTF export filter
- Calc:
- DataPilot:
- In the GUI, the term "DataPilot" has been replaced with the term
"Pivot Table". The default name for pivot tables has been changed
from
"DataPilotN" to "PivotTableN" (N being a unique number).
- In the Pivot Table layout dialog, it is now possible to add more
than 8
fields to the "Row Fields", "Column Fields", and "Data Fields"
areas, and
more than 10 fields to the "Page Fields" area.
- Chart:
- The size of a charts legend can be customized now.
- Charts (Column, Bar, Area, Line, Stock and Column&Line) can be created
with a date axis.
- Impress/Draw:
- "Better Defaults" from Renaissance Project. Many default settings for
colors, sizes, text, bullet points and slideshow were changed.
- Graphics export filters (bitmap only) now with DPI resolution setting.
- New SVG import filter.
- Database:
- The Mozilla Address Book support has been removed, in favor of
support for
the SeaMonkey address books.
- Math:
- Store only used symbols instead of all to decrease the document
file size.
- Formulas can be automatically aligned to match the baseline of the
formula
with the one of the surrounding text.
- Printing:
- The CUPS print system that is used on Linux and other Unix operating
systems has switched its file format from PostScript to PDF. As part of
this OpenOffice.org is switching its print output file format to
PDF, too.
- Encryption:
- The document encryption was improved. Now it supports the ODF 1.2
document standard.
- API:
- With the new TabPageContainer (in UNO AWT) it is now possible to create
dialogs with multiple tab pages.
- The Undo feature is now accessible via API
- Improvements for the UI feature "Grid Control".
- Language support:
- Added locale data for the following languages:
- Lojban [jbo]
- Limbu_Nepal [lif-NP]
- Hawaiian [haw-US]
- Kabyle_Algeria [kab-DZ]
- Yiddish (USA) [yi-US]
- Sorbian, Lower [dsb-DE]
- Urdu (Pakistan) [ur-PK]
- Haitian [ht-HT]
More detailed
- Writer:
- DOCX import filter:
Improvements for the import filter for DOCX (Microsoft OOXML documents)
- RTF export filter:
The RTF export filter now supports nested tables, more character
properties, sections, graphics for Wordpad, bookmarks, fields,
drawings,
OLE objects. For more details please see:
"http://openoffice.org/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=70917";
- Calc:
- DataPilot:
- In the Calc GUI, the term "DataPilot" has been replaced with the term
"Pivot Table". The default name for pivot tables has been changed
from
"DataPilotN" to "PivotTableN" (N being a unique number).
- In the Pivot Table layout dialog, it is now possible to add more
than 8
fields to the "Row Fields", "Column Fields", and "Data Fields"
areas, and
more than 10 fields to the "Page Fields" area.
- CSV export:
If checked in the dialog, text of a cell is quoted, regardless if it
contains any delimiter characters.
- Chart:
- The size of a charts legend can be customized now.
- Charts with a date axis. If the ranges that are used for categories do
contain values formatted as dates, the x-axis automatically
displays dates
now by default. This affects the following chart types:
Column, Bar, Area, Line, Stock and Column&Line.
- Impress/Draw:
- "Better Defaults" from Renaissance Project for Impress and Draw:
- Change outline default bullet symbol order from "Oo-" in "O-O-O".
- Menu/Format/Text/Full width is now "on" by default.
- Shortcut for inserting comments changed to [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[C] in
Impress/Draw/Calc and Writer.
- Changed the default pen color to #ff0000 and set a medium pen width.
- New context menu settings during slideshow.
- Pen Mode can be switched during slideshow with context menu entry
"Mouse
pointer as ~pen".
- All user drawings can be erased during slideshow from current slide
using the context menu entry "~Erase All Ink On Slide".
- Pen Color can be changed during slideshow with context menu entry
"~Change Pen Color...".
- Pen Width can be changed during slideshow with context submenu "~Pen
Width".
- Pen Color and Pen Width are not stored persistent in the
configuration
- Setting default shadow distance for shapes to 0.2 cm.
- Default colors of drawing objects are changed to fill color
#CFE7F5 and
line color #808080. Name of new color is "Blue 9".
- Adding an animation to an outline shape in Impress now animates all
paragraphs by 1st level paragraph as default.
- Bullet point lists got more space between the bullet point and
the text
and indentation for the second line of text under a bullet point.
- Spacing vs. Points: grid subdivision (menu "Tools - Option -
Impress -
Grid") changes from point to space. Spaces starting from 1 (0 is not
allowed). Wording changed from "point(s)" to "space(s)". More
fine Grid,
Impress (1 inch/10 spaces & 2 cm/10 spaces) Draw (0.5 inch/10
spaces and
1 cm/10 spaces).
- Changed default of "Copy when moving" to "on".
- The following options are now "on" by default: "Snap to Guides",
"Snap to Object Border", "Large Handles". The keyboard shortcut
to toggle
snap has changed to "alt".
- Multimedia support:
The currently used Java Media Framework (JMF) which provides
support for
audio and video files needs to be replaced by a GStreamer based
implementation to allow playing *all* kinds of currently available
multimedia files in a competitive way. Currently this is for Linux
only.
- Graphics export filters:
- It's now possible to export graphics (bitmap orientated) using
different
DPI resolution settings.
- Official Vanilla OOo implementation for SVG graphic import support
(embedding and rasterizing). The framework is a general
framework, that
can also be used to support other rasterizers and graphic mime
types as a
component, if needed.
- Database:
- With a CSV database the "MaxRowScan" setting allows to define how many
rows should be scanned to find the correct type of a column. In the
past
only the first row was scanned.
- The Mozilla Address Book support has been removed, in favor of
support for
the SeaMonkey address books.
- Math:
- In order to decrease the document file size (namely in Writer documents
with many formulas) there is now a new option to save only those
symbols
that are used and not all that are possible. By default the option
will be
active.
- New option "Math baseline alignment" (on the "Formatting Aids"
tabpage of Writer and WriterWeb options). When this option gets checked
*all* Math OLE objects already existing in the Writer document and that
are anchored "As character" (only with this anchor type!) will be
automatically aligned to match the baseline of the formula with the
one of
the surrounding text. Also new Math objects inserted later on will be
automatically aligned as well.
As long as this option is active manually movement of Math objects that
are anchored "As character" is not possible, and thus vertical
alignment
in the Object's context menu is now disabled as well.
- The symbol catalog now supports UTF-32 characters. The code position of
the symbol is now used as a default name for the symbol. With this it's
much easier to browse for a specific Unicode character.
- All applications:
- Printing:
- The CUPS print system that is used on Linux and other Unix operating
systems is switching its file format from PostScript to PDF. As
part of
this OpenOffice.org is switching its print output file format to
PDF, too.
Ideally this change should be transparent for the user, that is print
the documents just as before. The only visible change is that
"Print to
file" would now produce PDF instead of PostScript. It's possible
to switch
back to PostScript:
- In the Print dialog open "Properties..." , go to the "Device"
TabPage
and change the "Printer Language type" to either PDF or the desired
PostScript Level. This is done per print job.
- Or the (not well known) spadmin utility.
- PDF export:
- The password entry (for the "open" and "permission" password) was
changed,
so that the two passwords can now be entered in the same dialog.
- Keyboard:
- The tree lists in the application's Navigator, Stylist ("Styles and
Formattings"), and in the options dialog, now support selecting
entries by
typing their name, e.g.:
- Typing some letters will select the entry which starts with those
letters.
- Entering the same letter repeatedly will cycle through the
entries that
start with this letter, assuming there is no single entry which
starts
with multiple occurrences of it.
- The internal search string, assembled by the characters typed,
is reset
after a few seconds of inactivity. Also when entries were directly
selected by keyboard or mouse.
- Encryption:
- The ODF1.2 specification allows to use W3C-specified algorithms
to encrypt
ODF1.2 documents. The new implementation let the following
algorithms be
used in case ODF1.2 encrypted document is stored:
- Start key generation: SHA256
- Derived key generation: PBKDF2
- Encryption algorithm: AES-256
- Checksum generation: SAH256_1K
It is possible to let start key and checksum generation use
SHA1/SHA1_1K
algorithms during storing of ODF1.2 encrypted document by setting the
configuration entry
"org.openoffice.Office.Common/Save/ODF/UseSHA1InODF12"
to "true". It is also possible to let Blowfish algorithm be used
in this
case by setting the entry
"org.openoffice.Office.Common/Save/ODF/UseBlowfishInODF12" to "true".
The storing of encrypted ODF1.1/ODF1.0 documents is not affected.
Please
see the following webpage for details:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.2/csprd03/OpenDocument-v1.2-csprd03-part3.html
- API:
- With the new TabPageContainer (in UNO AWT) it is now possible to create
dialogs with multiple tab pages.
- The Undo feature is now accessible via API
- Improvements for the UI feature "Grid Control".
- Language support:
- Added more locale data for the following languages:
- Lojban [jbo]
- Limbu_Nepal [lif-NP]
- Hawaiian [haw-US]
- Kabyle_Algeria [kab-DZ]
- Yiddish (USA) [yi-US]
- Sorbian, Lower [dsb-DE]
- Urdu (Pakistan) [ur-PK]
- Haitian [ht-HT]
