gHacks technology news » sun http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:30:16 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 Open Office PDF Import Extension http://www.ghacks.net/2008/10/25/open-office-pdf-import-extension/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/10/25/open-office-pdf-import-extension/#comments Sat, 25 Oct 2008 09:46:48 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=7857 Sun’s PDF Import Extension for Open Office 3 and Star Office 9 adds pdf support to both office programs. The extension is currently labeled beta meaning that it does not provide full PDF support yet but can very well be used to edit small portions of a pdf document. Native PDF forms are not yet supported.

The PDF document will be imported into Draw and Impress to preserve the layout of the documents. This naturally means that Draw and Impress have to be installed to work with the PDF Import Extension. Plans are to concentrate on editing capabilities in the next development step concentrating on Writer. Just keep in mind that the current version of the PDF Import Extension supports layout and not editing.

PDF documents can be imported using the Open file dialog. Import takes relatively long but the results are surprisingly good for a beta. One interesting feature of the extension is the option to create hybrid documents that consists of a pdf and odf part. Users with Open Office installed will open the ODF version of the document while users without will load the pdf part.

Open Office users that work with PDF documents from time to timeshould pay close attention to the development of the PDF Import Extension.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/10/25/open-office-pdf-import-extension/feed/ 1 Grab the ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office early http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/24/grab-the-odf-plugin-for-microsoft-office-early/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/24/grab-the-odf-plugin-for-microsoft-office-early/#comments Sat, 24 May 2008 21:46:16 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=4255 Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 will officially add support for the Open Document Format ODF which is a free and open file format for electronic office documents. The format is already implemented in Open Office and users of Microsoft Office 2007 who want their product to be compatible can download the ODF plugin for Microsoft Office at Sun.

The current release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 is scheduled for the first half of 2009 which means that it will take about a year before Microsoft is adding the support officially. Common Open Document File extensions are .oft for word processing, .ods for spreadhsheets, .odp for presentations and .odg for graphics.

The Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office gives users of Microsoft Office 2007 the ability to load, save and edit odf files. The plugin is also compatible to previous editions of Microsoft Office including Office XP, Office 2003 and Office 2000. The plugin integrates itself seamlessly into the Save and Load file dialogs and is translated into several languages including English, German, French, Spanish and a dozen more.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/24/grab-the-odf-plugin-for-microsoft-office-early/feed/ 6 Update Java and remove old Java versions from your system http://www.ghacks.net/2008/04/09/update-java-and-remove-old-java-versions-from-your-system/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/04/09/update-java-and-remove-old-java-versions-from-your-system/#comments Wed, 09 Apr 2008 08:09:58 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=3760 JavaRa is a small application for Microsoft Windows that serves two purposes. The first is to check if a Java update is available and if that is the case download and install it on the computer. The second scans the system for previous versions of Java, if any old versions are found on the system they are removed from it. This second option is very handy because Java, more precisely its Java Runtime Environment, tends to install itself in separate directories with each new version that is released.

Four different versions of the Java Runtime Environment were installed on my system and JavaRa removed the three versions of JRE that were the oldest from the system. I started by scanning my system for old versions of Java which were removed, then checked if there was a Java update available. I should have done it the other way round because an update was found and a new version of Java was installed on my system.

Which led to the fact that the previously newest version was not the newest anymore so I had to run the cleanup process again to remove that version. The best way to use the application is therefor to run the Update first and check for old versions once the software has checked for and installed possible updates.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/04/09/update-java-and-remove-old-java-versions-from-your-system/feed/ 10 Open Office Extensions http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/29/open-office-extensions/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/29/open-office-extensions/#comments Sat, 29 Mar 2008 08:03:53 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/29/open-office-extensions/ User generated content is not only popular on the web but becomes increasingly popular in Open Source development. The prime example is of course Firefox which has such an active community that thousands of extensions have been created for that browser. The Open Office development team decided to walk along the same road and add the ability to extend Open Office with user generated extensions.

The Open Office Extension Repository lists the currently available extensions for Open Office. Visitors can use the search function, the tag cloud or one of the six available entries like viewing the most popular or recently updated extensions for Open Office. Some extensions are, contrary to the Firefox add-ons website, not free but the majority of available ones are.

A quick glance at the available extensions brought up already several that I will definitely look closer at. You can grab some free content extensions like professional template packs (free) or graphics from the website and add (advanced) support for online services like Google Docs.

Sun did develop some useful add-ons as well. The two that caught my attention are the Sun Presentation Minimizer which reduces the size of presentations and the Sun Report Builder which can be used to create professional looking database reports.

The Open Office Extensions website is definitely worth taking a look at if you are an Open Office user.

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