Last week, I briefly introduced you to an awesome program known as OpenOffice.org.  I told you that it was an open source (free) office program that incorporates word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, graphics, HTML, and other functions into one very powerful piece of software.  This week on Open Source Spotlight, I would like to focus in more on some of the key features of this free and legal Microsoft compatible office program that meets, and most of the time, beats the competition.



OpenOffice.org now offers a one-click PDF export feature that allows users to quickly and easily create PDF files without the need for any additional (and often expensive) third party software.  In other words, unlike with Microsoft Office, you won’t have to shell out $300 to buy Adobe Acrobat, just to get the PDF button on your menu bar.  PDFs are a great way to send data back and forth, especially to people whose computer set up you are unsure of. Adobe Acrobat Reader is freely available online, and is pre-installed on many computers.  Other PDF readers, like Ghostview are also available for free online.



Along with exporting to PDF, OpenOffice.org can also export presentations and drawings to the Macromedia Flash format (.swf). That means with this free program, users can create complete presentations using OOo Impress and then save them to Flash so anyone with a web-browser and the Flash plug-in can view them.  No need to buy PowerPoint or download a special viewer just to watch a slide show.  OOo does it right on your browser.  This also means no need to buy the very expensive Macromedia MX Studio just to make simple Flash presentations.

So far, OpenOffice.org (along with the Mozilla Web suite which I will review in a few short weeks) has replaced the primary functions of Microsoft Office ($500), Adobe Acrobat ($300), and Macromedia Flash ($500). That’s $1300 worth of software, for $0!  I know I must sound like a salesman on an infomercial, but I really am astounded that so much stuff can be free - and - legal!  Imagine being able to build a computer with over a thousand dollars of legal software on it, and selling it for the cost of parts and labor, and turning a profit.  OpenOffice.org and, in fact, Open source makes this possible.



I’m not alone in being impressed by this program.  From the main OpenOffice.org site, more than 25 million downloads have been tracked since its release in late 2001.  OpenOffice.org is included on many distributions of Linux; so many Linux users don’t need to download the program to use it.  And OpenOffice.org is sold (usually at or near cost) on CD by many people, and it is given away on projects like The Open CD, MozOO.org, and others, so the number of users is potentially much more than 25 million.  OOo clocks over one-hundred thousand downloads a week, making it the fastest growing office software in the world.  That’s fastest growing in *real numbers* not fastest growing for its size.

OOo has all the features you’d expect in an office program suite - spell-check, thesaurus, tables, graphics, templates, hyperlinking, etc.  And it has some some pretty big pluses that many office products do not carry, like the vector graphics mode called Draw, the PDF and Flash export, the complex Math equation editor, and the ability to use the same program on virtually any desktop still in use, regardless of operating system.  But it also has some “little bonuses”.  A few little features that, although not as flashy or exciting as the low-low cost or the ability to make files readable anywhere, are nonetheless cool and something that definitely adds to the character, value, and charm of OpenOffice.org.



One of the features that I love is just such a “little bonus”, and that is the feature of Autocompletion.  In this article, I’ve used the word OpenOffice.org many times.  OOo picks up on that, and suggests the rest of the word once I get to the third or fourth letter.  I just hit Enter and the rest of the word is there.  If a user were to repeat words often, especially long words or hard to spell words, this feature can really be of benefit.  Some people get annoyed by such helpful little writing aids.  Fortunantly, OOo makes it easy to turn such helpers off.  (And they stay off, unlike a little talking paperclip I know and hate.)

That’s all the time I have for this week.  I’ll be back next week with more features of OpenOffice.org.  In the meantime, visit the website and find out more for yourself.  Ask questions, read the product info pages, and grab your own copy at http://www.openoffice.org/.