OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 Packages Available for FreeBSD

I learned from this post that packages of OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 are available. I intend to upgrade via package since building OOo using the ports tree takes forever.

I also learned a few lessons about document management this past weekend while creating slides for my USENIX talk. I found that I could create and save a presentation in .sxi format, only to have OOo not able to open it. I lost several hours worth of work due to this flaw. I was unable to open several .sxi files built with OOo 1.1.1 on FreeBSD, and was unable to get OOo 1.1.1 on Fedora Core 2 or OOo 1.1.2 on Windows 2000 to read the problematic .sxi either.

I dealt with this in two ways. First, I chopped up my presentation into eight smaller files. This limited the damage in the event some slide became corrupt and prevented access to the rest of the presentation. Second, I saved every presentation in .sxi and .ppt formats. That way I could try opening the presentation in PowerPoint if OOo decided not to read the file it just saved.

I made use of the built-in bug reporting on OOo on FC2 to send a message to the OOo team.