LibreOffice 3.3.1

LibreOffice 3.3.1 has a much improved startup performance, compared to both LibreOffice 3.3 and OpenOffice. This improvement has real significance for an ordinary user.

LibreOffice

As the first stable version of LibreOffice got out today, I immediately uninstall the old OpenOffice and replace with the new LibreOffice following the procedures described here.

The reason... I think this post summarized really well.

Document Foundation

LibreOffice, a new OpenOffice branch. People have learned their lesson from what happened to OpenSolaris, I guess.

By the way, by carefully reading the "natbib" package manual, I think I figure out how to change the default in-text citation from "...(Caldwell, 1979)" to "..(Caldwell 1979)".

Math in OpenOffice

OpenOffice Wiki has a section showing all the math commands.

Literate programming, etc.

http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/wiki/Main/StatReport

Endnote and Openoffice

The new Endnote (X3) supports Openoffice. This is a positive development.

Upgrading to OpenOffice 3.1

http://news.softpedia.com/news/How-to-Install-OpenOffice-org-3-1-on-Ubuntu-9-04-111105.shtml

OpenOffice 3 on Ubuntu

The broken Ubuntu repository for OO3 has been fixed. Now it is possible to follow the instruction to upgrade from OO 2.4 to OO 3: http://news.softpedia.com/news/How-To-Install-OpenOffice-org-3-0-in-Ubuntu-8-10-96449.shtml

Here is an interesting review of different open source office suites: http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/enterpriseapps/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212201932

odfWeave

The idea underlying Sweave is very appealing: you can compose a complete research paper with equations, tables, figures without manual intervention (copy, paste, adjust margin, etc.).

The package "odfWeave" extends this idea from LaTeX to OpenOffice. I just gave it a test-drive, and it rocks!