OpenOffice 2.2 available for download

The OpenOffice.org Community on March 29 announced the release of a major upgrade to OpenOffice: version 2.2. The group claims that with upgrades to its word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and database software, the free office suite provides a real alternative to Microsoft's recently-released Office 2007 product.

Current users of older versions of Microsoft Office will find OpenOffice 2.2 to be an easier upgrade path than Office 2007, the group suggests.

Overall, version 2.2 should appear better to users thanks to its support for kerning, a technique that improves the appearance of text written in proportional fonts; kerning is now enabled by default. OpenOffice's PDF (Portable Document Format) export function has also been enhanced with the addition of the optional creation of bookmarks feature, and with support for user-definable export of form fields.

A quick look at the release notes also reveals that many minor bugs have been repaired in this new version. Most of these appear to relate to the Calc spreadsheet and Base database programs.

OpenOffice 2.2 also has enhancements to its individual components, according to the group. For example, the Calc spreadsheet has improved support for Microsoft file formats, including enhanced support for Pivot Tables and some specialized trigonometric functions.

Base, the database component, has improved SQL editing functionality as well as a new "Queries within Queries" feature. Compatibility options for some database drivers, such as Oracle ODBC (Open Database Connect), have also been improved. Impress, the presentations component, offers improvements in the handling of hidden slides -- this function has been made more intuitive, according to the release announcement.

The group also claims that while OpenOffice 2.1 functioned well on Microsoft's Windows Vista, version 2.2 makes better use of some of the new cosmetic changes available in Vista.

Apple Mac users will notice a smaller download and a smaller installed size. The Apple Mac Intel version has many stability improvements, and bug fixes ranging from .PPT (PowerPoint) export to improved UNO connections, according to the release announcement. Version 2.2 now requires Mac OS X 10.4.x running X11.

In addition to improvements to the OpenOffice software in version 2.2, there have also been enhancements to OpenOffice.org as a development and user community, the release announcement noted. For example, third-party extensions to the software suite can now be more tightly integrated, and features have been added that "dramatically simplify" their installation and updating. In addition, features have been added to assist those participating in the translation and localization of the software suite.

In addition to being immediately available for download from OpenOffice.org's download servers and mirrors, OpenOffice 2.2 is also available via BitTorrent. At this time, there are no distribution-specific versions of version 2.2 available.

For Linux, OpenOffice 2.2 is available as a compressed RPM. For both better performance and Java integration, OpenOffice.org recommends that you have the latest JRE (Java Runtime Environment) installed. It should be at least JRE 1.4. The latest JRE, Version 5.0 Update 11, is available for download in RPM format, here.