December 14th is here. Is OpenOffice 3.2?

Yes, and at the same time, no.

As we’ve been counting down to this date with the new

features that will be a part of all the programs that make up OOo 3.2, in anticipation of this day, December 14th, in which, according to the OpenOffice Wiki page.

But, since the holidays are upon us, the development team decided that perhaps this wasn’t the best time to release a new version. So, the wiki has been updated to read that OpenOffice 3.2 is pushed to a January release.

Meanwhile, as it has been for several months, a beta version of OOo 3.2 is available for those brave enough to check it out.

For this week, though, we can look for a Release Candidate version of OpenOffice 3.2 that will be ready on December 17th. For those scoring at home, the Release Candidate isn’t a beta, but not quite the finished product, as there are, as with any software, some remaining bugs that need to be worked out before being ready for public consumption.

While a definite release date is looming (though not concrete at the moment), we will, for our part, be switching back over to our regularly-scheduled OpenOffice Wednesday next week, but will certainly get into any news that we can find regarding the release of OOo 3.2.

Hopefully, we will see 3.2 in January, mostly because it looks as if the development team is already setting up to get OpenOffice 3.3 out the door next June.

Note: This is the second in a multi-part series on OpenOffice Wednesday that will focus on some of the new and upgraded features that will appear in OpenOffice.org 3.2.

Part One – The Countdown Begins

First, a little housekeeping. As we mentioned at the start of the Countdown, OpenOffice.org 3.2 will be publicly available sometime in December. According to the OOo Wiki page, that date will be December 14, 2009. That should give us plenty of time to get through all the OOo components.

This week, of course, we start with the Writer program, which, of course, is the OpenOffice counterpart to Microsoft Word.
Much of the enhancements to Writer, unlike many of the other programs, are for the more advanced users of the word processor. Nonetheless, the changes for OOo 3.2 should prove to be very useful.

• Word Correct-Auto Complete - In previous versions of Writer, there was a checkbox that read, “When closing a document, save the list for later use in other documents.” However, users found this to be misleading, as it was not about saving the list but to remove those words collected for the document.As a result, the feature has been changed, with the checkbox now reading, “When closing a document, remove the words collected from it from the list” and its function has been changed so that when users start a new document, the word list has been deleted so that no auto-completion shall occur.
• Alternative Text for Writer Objects – One of the features of the Open Document Format (ODF) was that objects embedded into OOo documents would have alternative text, including titles and descriptions. Until now, Writer did not have this capabilities. OpenOffice 3.2 changes this, and now support for alternative text has now been implemented.
• Apply Style Shortcut – Traditionally, the Apply Style function required the user to root through the Menu items either through the keyboard or a mouse. With OOo 3.2, users will now only have to press Ctrl-F11, and the Apply Style combo box will appear.

Next week: We will take a look at the new features in Calc.