OpenOffice.org 3.2.0 RC4

Open Office.org 3.2 New Features:

General Improvements

Faster start up times

OpenOffice.org 3.2 Calc and Writer have both reduced ‘cold start’ time by 46% since version 3.0 was released just over a year ago (results will vary on different operating systems and hardware).

ODF Support

OpenOffice.org 3.2 is now more compliance with ODF 1.2, including closer conformance to OASIS ODFF/Open Formula specifications.

* As OpenOffice.org 3.2 currently requires a superset of the ODF 1.2 specification, the software now warns users when ODF 1.2 Extended features have been used.

* The document integrity check now proves whether an ODF document conforms to the ODF specification (this mainly affects ODF 1.2 documents). If an inconsistency is found, the document is treated as a broken one, and OpenOffice.org offers to repair the document.

Proprietary File Support

OpenOffice.org 3.2 provides improved support for other common office document types.

* Password protected Microsoft Office XML files (supported document types: MS Word 2007 documents (*.docx, *.docm); MS Word 2007 templates (*.dotx, *.dotm); MS Excel 2007 documents (*.xlsx, *.xlsm); MS Excel 2007 binary documents (*.xlsb); MS Excel 2007 templates (*.xltx, *.xltm); MS Powerpoint 2007 documents (*.pptx, *.pptm); MS Powerpoint 2007 templates (*.potx, *.potm)).

* OLE objects, form controls and pivot tables can now be read from MS Excel 2007 documents (*.xlsx, *.xlsb).

* Encryption support within the Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP filter allows password protected Microsoft Word documents to be saved (using the Microsoft Office standard RC4 algorithm).

* Filters for AportisDoc and PocketWord now support type detection based on DocType. As a result, files in these formats can be loaded without explicitly selecting the document type in the file picker.

* When writing string data to SYLK files, embedded double quotes are no longer escaped by doubling; semicolons are now escaped by doubling. This improves compatibility with files created by other applications.

Support for Postscript based OpenType fonts

There are many high quality commercial and free OpenType fonts that are based on Postscript outlines. They are now supported for formatting, printing, PDF-export and display.

Writer

Mediawiki support moved to an Extension, to avoid conflicts.

Calc

Cell borders now support multiple selection

Previously it was only possible to apply cell borders to a single rectangular cell range. Now borders can be applied to any selection of cells.

Autofill now handles additional cases

If the starting cell for AutoFill contains a number at the start and the end, and there’s no space after the first number, the number at the end is now incremented. This allows easier creation of things like lists of IP addresses (10.0.0.1 is followed by 10.0.0.2).

Improvements to sort

If “Sort” is invoked with a selection that is likely not to be the range the user wants to address, a new dialog will ask if the selection should be extended to contain the additional cells.
When a cell range is sorted using the “Sort Ascending” or “Sort Descending” toolbar button, cell formats are now sorted with the cells.

Better handling of merged cells

Merged cells can now be pasted from the clipboard onto other merged cells.
Inserting or deleting cells, columns or rows into/from the middle of merged cells, which previously caused an error message, is now possible. The merged cell range is enlarged/reduced.

Complex copy and paste

Enhancements to statistical functions

Preservation of newline characters in formulas

Numeric conversion in strings

Additional functionality in filters

Many new factors in CONVERT_ADD
Calc convert_addThe CONVERT_ADD spreadsheet function (known as CONVERT in other applications) has many more conversion factors implemented, as defined in OASIS ODFF/OpenFormula.

New UNICODE and UNICHAR functions

Draw

New style comments

Page Count added to Draw

Impress

New style comments

Page Count added to Impress

Math

Change to Math menus

Base

Customizing the Create Database Wizard

Simpler copying of queries between database documents

Database forms can be zoomed

More intelligent import into Base

Chart

New Chart types

Usability improvements in Chart

Enhancements to data labels

Asian typography page for chart elements

Internationalization and Localizations

New Locale support

OpenOffice.org 3.2 adds locale data for Oromo_Ethiopia [om-ET], Uyghur_China [ug-CN], Ancient Greek [grc-GR], Somali_Somalia [so-SO], Sorbian, Lower [dsb-DE] and Upper [hsb-DE, Asturian_Spain [ast-ES], Yiddish_Israel [yi-IL], Arabic (Oman) [ar-OM], Sardinian_Italy [sc-IT, and Quechua (Ecuador) [qu-EC].

Japanese Name Order

In a Japanese Locale the order of the FirstName / LastName fields in the user data tabpage is reversed.

Support for Graphite font technology

OpenOffice.org now supports Graphite font technology for better support of scripts and variants used by minorities.