Is 3.5.4 ready for business users?

users
#61

Whoa! You posted concerns re exporting LO 3.5 to PDF w zotero entries? Sorry, but never saw the post and it's news to me as my install of 3.5.3.2 works perfectly with export of zotero cites and works cited to PDF -AND I would be very put out if it stopped working. Could someone point me to the current bug on this? Not to say a bug will be addressed (the quicklook issue has not been touched though the solution appeared to be available) but it's nice to keep an eye on such.....

#62

why? further complicate the issue, Aoo works

#63

Ditto.

I have never seen your posts on Zotero or PDF. I require both and all versions of LO have supported this functionality since it forked from OO.

#64

I was curious as to whether Lotus Symphony was identical to Aoo, or if there were things that were better or worse in that release.

#65

check the archives

#66

it's been some months since I tried it; I think there are supposed to be some "added extras", but they're all "much the same", depends on what features one wants / needs, and most importantly, "what works" for you, which as someone said, one can only determine subjectively, after trying it out for oneself

#67

Lotus Symphony is different from LibreOffice (all versions) and Apache OpenOffice 3.4. It forked much farther back than OO.o 3.x, as well as I can tell. Although it has unique features, it does not appear to have kept up with OpenOffice.org and its descendants in other respects.

I just started a fresh Text document in Lotus Symphony 3.0.1 and tried a Save As ... . The only Microsoft Office formats I am offered are Microsoft Word 97-2003 (*.doc), Microsoft Word 97-2003 Template (*.dot), and Microsoft Rich Text Format (*.rtf). The only other formats are .txt, .sxw, .ott, and .odt. (There is an Export as PDF ... ).

The only file formats I can make the default for Save are "Open Document Format" (no version), and "Microsoft Office 97-2003". There are some other options for automatically converting from one to another on load and save.

Lotus Symphony is going to end-of-life, with replacement by a Lotus packaging/customization of Apache OpenOffice in the future.

The contribution of the non-Java Symphony-unique code to Apache OpenOffice is now under review. My personal prediction (FWiW) is that not much of that will be seen until Apache OpenOffice 4.0. There will be a 3.4.1 and perhaps progression to an AOO 3.5 before that.

- Dennis

#68

I followed up on Lotus Symphony 3.0.1 already. For additional comparison, here are the corresponding details for Apache OpenOffice 3.4.0.

The Microsoft Office Save As ... format cases are
Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP (*.doc)
Microsoft Word 95 (*.doc)
Microsoft Word 6.0 (*.doc)
Rich Text Format (*.rtf)
Microsoft Word 2003 XML (*.xml)

The only other formats are .odt, .ott, .sxw, .stw, .txt (two flavors), and .html

Some folks notice the loss of WordPerfect conversions. I haven't seen much on the inability to export OOXML formats.

I suppose an elephant in the room, at least for Windows platforms, is the possibility that the next version of Office (currently known as Office 15) might provide better interoperability with ODF formats than the *Office clan provide for OOXML. I have no reason to believe that will be the case, despite the opportunity that appears to exist for tipping the equation around business use even farther.

Also interesting is the fact that Windows Live SkyDrive now supports native (and free) web-based upload, editing, and download of ODF documents at something around the current ODF 1.1 support from Microsoft. It will be interesting to see how that evolves along with the arrival of Office 15 too. This is a way to extend support for Office documents to non-Windows platforms using browsers and the cloud.

[On my WindowsPhone 7.5, the Microsoft Office applications are still only for Microsoft Office documents, although OneNote is being provided as an App on other mobile platforms. If I attempt to edit an ODF document that I've uploaded to Skydrive, my phone switches to the browser access for editing the document. That could change too.]

- Dennis

#69

check the archives

Actually did a complete web search and only came up with an ancient bug.

#70

search again, I didn't keep, but nor did I dream up, the half dozen responses I got,  you might be skipping over the responses because I originally alluded to the thought it might have something to do with a Java problem, because Zotero was producung error  mesages mentioning Java -- no one at all addressed the problem when I sent a report to the Zotero Troubleshooting forum though

#71

There seems to be differenting opinions on how business ready 3.5.3 was

So now that LO 3.5.4 is out,

I ask the users, is it ready to be deployed to my/our business users?

Study the bug reports.

So I am asking LO users the question.
Is 3.5.4 ready for our business and/or enterprise users?

To achieve high quality software, testing must be performed. See:
http://www.mail-archive.com/users@global.libreoffice.org/msg17418.html
and http://www.mail-archive.com/users@global.libreoffice.org/msg17418.html.

Those that want good quality software should contribute towards
testing and continually pressurise LO organisers to release software
only when quality control tests are surpassed. The current procedure
of releasing software at a regular time, regardless of software
quality is fundamentally weak and will always result in poor quality
products. No other quality-conscious industry uses such a dubious
production procedure.

The fundamental weakness of LO programmers is their obsession with new
features (then ask users to test bugs!) instead of higher quality (and
not ask as enthusiastically users to test the quality of the software:
compare the ease of finding new features with finding quality test
procedures!!). This needs to stop, especially for FLOSS.

As for the so-called 'guerilla marketing' strategy, that is flawed
also. This is proven by a simple observation of the m$ web sites:
until m$ users start to write in significant numbers "how to open this
odt file that I received from someone using this high quality odf LO
product...", the utopian dream that using LO as an m$ clone will lead
to a decline in the quality of m$ documents being distributed, will
remain a dream.

Apple made a business decision not to tolerate the terrible format
that is adobe fla$h. The result was a contribution to the growth of
html5 (see http://www.youtube.com/html5); apple did not choose to
accept fla$h and html5, then hope for html5 to become dominant!
Instead, they took a risk in rejecting fla$h and will reap the
benefits in the long term.

#72

Sorry, the last hyperlink above should have been:
http://www.mail-archive.com/users@global.libreoffice.org/msg20498.html

#73

Hi :slight_smile:
This does sound vaguely familiar.  I find that searches in the archives don't always show all the relevant posts.  I don't know if GMane is better than Nabble.

Anyway, i am sorry to hear the Zotero forums produced no responses.  Perhaps the few people that have responded to the question this time might be able to help push through whatever is creating the problem?
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile: