[Lias] OpenOffice.org charting questions

[Leon Brooks]

On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 10:05, Jonathon Coombes wrote:
> This can be done partly by a combination of two steps:

> a. Create the chart in a seperate sheet (see below).
> b. Turn off the grid lines (Tools->Options->Spreadsheet->View)

Alternately, embed the chart in something else (e.g. Impress, Draw).

>> Much as it pains me to say this, Excel 97 runs rings around OOo in
>> the charting department.

Agree. The spreadsheet in general and charting in particular haven't 
ever been OOo's strong points. For me, this hasn't been an issue as the 
Writer/HTML editor component(s) have been ever more brilliant - they're 
the bits I use most - and Impress has been if not stunning then more 
than adequate.

But... while I agree that charting sucks: not for long. Quoting Marlin: 
"Are you hungry...?" OOo is clearly progressing at several times the 
rate of MS-Office, and I expect that trend to improve even more with 
time as more and more groups (gummints and corporate in particular) see 
the benefit in investing it its development.

On top of this, as the OOo and KOffice teams start sharing their common 
workload a bit more - since I'm sure their cooperation will sooner or 
later extend beyond document formats - the rate of steady improvements 
will ramp up amazingly.

On the gripping hand, KDE now takes up most of an ISO by itself, even 
only as binaries and KOffice ain't getting tinier by the day either.

>> Any suggestions?  I'm using OOo 1.0.2 on Red Hat Linux 9.

Upgrade to OOo 1.1 - I did, and never looked back (mind you, Mandrake 
9.2 shipped with it, I didn't need to tinker with anyone else's RPMs or 
tweak anything to make it all shiny).

From what I hear around the traps, 1.1.1 has also fixed a bucketload of 
compatibility issues, is faster, and is generally continuing the OOo 
tradition of high-quality incremental improvement.

Cheers; Leon

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