NeoOffice 2.2.1 release coming soon

[pluby]

Now that the NeoOffice 2.1 bug list has gotten short and our recent performance improvements appear stable, Ed and I are ready to put out another NeoOffice release.

New Features

We plan to release NeoOffice 2.2.1 Early Access through the Early Access Program on Monday, July 23. NeoOffice 2.2.1 will not only include an upgrade to the OpenOffice.org 2.2.1 and ooo-build 2.2.1 code, but it will also include the following new features:

- Native spellchecking support - Even though this feature didn't get enough funding in the New Features Program, the recently added donation plea on our donation page has helped our finances a bit so Ed and I are using those the increase in donations to fund native spellchecking support. I have already prototyped some of the work while I was at WWDC last week so inclusion in this release will hopefully allow users to avoid download of OOo dictionaries.

- Experimental Excel and PowerPoint 2007 support - The odf-converter project recently released experimental converters for Excel and PowerPoint 2007 files. While their code may still be pre-release, we felt that NeoOffice users will be glad to have the odf-converter project's converters available if someone sends them any Office 2007 files.

Early Access Program Changes

Like previous releases, we really need to test the release before we release this to the hundreds of thousands of NeoOffice users so NeoOffice 2.2.1 Early Access will only be available to Early Access Members on July 23. However, we are making some small changes to make the program more fair to donors. After implementing the New Features program and donation plea on the download page (as well as some enhancements in PayPal's reporting tools), I have figured out how to add users to the Early Access system when their cumulative donations reach the required amounts. So, here is how the NeoOffice 2.2.1 Early Access Program will work:

- Membership based on cumulative donations - Instead of having to purchase an EAP membership, we will automatically grant access to the EAP system based on your regular NeoOffice donations. Once your cumulative donations since the end of the last EAP hits US$25, you will automatically be a NeoOffice 2.2.1 EAP Member. Existing NeoOffice 2.x Early Access subscribers will automatically have access and if your cumulative donations since the end of the last EAP reaches US$50, you will automatically become a NeoOffice 2.x EAP subscriber.

- The EAP will be a bit longer - Previous EAPs lasted only 4 weeks. Since EAPs serve a critical testing function for NeoOffice, we have found that 4 weeks is really not enough time for EAP members to find and for us to fix the most critical bugs. To fix this problem, we will lengthen the NeoOffice 2.2.1 EAP to 5 weeks. This means that we plan to make NeoOffice 2.2.1 available for free download on August 27.

- No drop in price during an EAP - Previously EAPs allowed users to buy a membership for a reduced price for after a couple weeks into the EAP. What we found is that this caused a huge flood of users that keep our EAP system overwhelmed during the last two weeks of an EAP. Since we ended up spending much of our time trying to keep the EAP system running, very little bug fixing was getting done in during this critical time period. While the extra EAP purchases were nice, our hope is that this change will give users a more stable free release by allowing us to focus on bug fixing during the last few weeks of this EAP.

Sometime in the next week I will put the NeoOffice 2.2.1 Early Access details that on the main NeoOffice web site. That reminds me: if any of you have any translation skills, I would be very thankful if you could send me translations for any paragraphs that are still in English on any of the localized pages at http://www.neooffice.org/. Just send me a Private Message with the new text for each paragraph and I will copy and paste them into the web pages.

Patrick

[rays]

Speechless! (Nearly...)

"Wow!" (Go on, Bill G, sue me for breach of copyright!)

Can't wait to get started on 2.2.1 EAP

Thanks Patrick and Ed for all your efforts above and beyond the call...

[jgd]

A lot of good news. Looks like Christmas in summer

Many thanks Ed and Patrick

Jacqueline

[djpimley]

Does this mean an opportunity for some more work on icons and graphics?

[pluby]

[OPENSTEP]

I'm also not sure if you're interested or not, but Patrick & I also figured out how to complete the custom cursors for OOo. For us they're just GIF files, so if there's any OOo cursors that you'd like to tweak it should be feasible to integrate those as well. All I did was migrate in the stock OOo cursors; we haven't done any customizations at this time.

ed

[sardisson]

[LemonAid]

Woo HOO!

Philip ( a man of ... few words? )

[ovvldc]

[pluby]

[Max]

[LemonAid]

Patrick,

I was just wondering if the new build of Neo / OOo 2.2.1 included the new Charting module?
I've seen several references about this over on OOo list and I'm not sure it it's in the development CVS and/or scheduled for OOo 2.3 final.

Just asking to be sure. EAP 2.2.1 looks like a GREAT Christmas in July gift!

I'm looking forward to the native OS X spell check.
I don't think I appreciated how much nicer this will make Neo before!
Now having used SeaMonky 1.1.2 with Spell Checking included,
I find that doing things like fora messages much ... easier!

Thank to our Developers, and Supporters, for ALL their efforts.

Philip ( I'm and sofware enginer and dont need to spell right! )

[pluby]

[pluby]

[Samwise]

I'm working on it. I will send them to you so that you can copy/paste the new text in the existing pages (turns out this is easier for me). Since you seem to have done quite a few updates to the EAP, I think the related page(s) will need some updates, too - which I can translate when they become available.

I was also working on the New Features Program pages, but considering the low impact this program has had I'm going to postpone this until more important pages are ready.