Office Productivity Suite

OpenOffice.org 2 Novell Edition

Features
Statement of Support for Open Document Format
Novell's Contribution to OpenOffice
Using OpenOffice

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 includes the Novell edition of OpenOffice.org, a suite of office productivity applications, providing a word processor, presentation and spreadsheet applications, an HTML editor and a drawing tool. This version of OpenOffice.org has extensive file-format compatibility with Microsoft Office, allowing users to better share files between platforms. SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop includes fonts that are geometrically compatible with Microsoft fonts to provide better format fidelity when reading native Microsoft Office files. OpenOffice.org also exports documents in Adobe portable document format (PDF) with no additional software required.

While not an exact feature-for-feature match to Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org provides the majority of capabilities for creating, processing, reviewing, and revising the documents required in daily business. The user interface requires little retraining for current Windows and Microsoft Office users and the file-import and export tools ensure that users never have to worry about file formats when collaborating with Microsoft Office users.

Features

Integration with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop

The Novell Edition of OpenOffice.org features redesigned menus and tool bars for maximum consistency with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, including support for desktop appearance or theme changes. These features provide users with a consistent interface across the Linux desktop, which enhances overall usability and helps minimize enterprise training and support requirements.

Enhanced Support for Microsoft Office File Formats

OpenOffice.org supports import and export of established Microsoft Office file formats, even taking advantage of geometrically compatible fonts to match document length. In addition, OpenOffice.org Novell Edition ensures compatibility between the Open Document Format (ODF) and Open XML, Microsoft's new document format for Office 2007. Transparent document sharing makes OpenOffice.org the best choice for customers who are deploying Linux desktops in a mixed Linux/Windows environment.

Improved Software Quality

The Novell Edition of OpenOffice.org also includes a number of back-ported fixes for improved Microsoft Office file sharing, including full conversion of embedded objects and improved compatibility with Microsoft Excel functions.

Enhanced Fonts

For the Novell Edition of OpenOffice.org, Novell licensed fonts from AGFA that contain the same or similar names to those available in Microsoft Office and which are geometrically similar to those used by Microsoft. This allows OpenOffice.org to match fonts when opening documents originally composed in Microsoft Office and very closely match pagination and page formatting.

Integration with Novell Evolution™

The Novell Edition of OpenOffice.org is tightly integrated with Novell Evolution, allowing users to send documents as e-mail and to perform mail merges using the Evolution address book as a datasource.

Export to Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF)

OpenOffice.org exports documents in Adobe portable document format (PDF) with no additional software required.

Performance Improvements

Novell has done extensive research to improve the linking performance on Linux, which results in significantly reduced start-up time of the operating system. In addition, memory savings are achieved through memory profiling and optimization for lower-memory systems.

Other Improvements in Novell Edition

Unlike the standard edition of OpenOffice.org, which strips out Microsoft Office macros, the Novell Edition of OpenOffice.org preserves these macros. This ensures that users who collaborate with Microsoft Office users maintain the integrity of documents, and it allows for the possibility that these features will be supported in future versions of the product.
We've also integrated the File selection dialog so that it uses the native desktop dialogs rather than standard OpenOffice.org dialogs.
Printers configured for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop are available in OpenOffice.org in a more user-friendly format than the more cryptic "/usr/bin/lpr"
We've also improved file access so that files are available from any source available to the computer (so network files open and save seamlessly, as you would expect).