Apache OpenOffice is an open source office productivity suite, designed by professionals for both consumer use, providing users with sophisticated tools for processing word documents, create spreadsheets, presentations, graphics and databases.
Derived from IBM Lotus Symphony
It is derived from the IBM Lotus Symphony suite of applications, and features extensions, templates, commercial support, interoperability with the OOXML file format, enhanced conversion to Bitmap graphics, enhanced copy and paste functions, enhanced drag & drop support, SVG import and export, picture crop mode previews, and much more.
Includes Word, Spreadsheet, Impress, Database and Math components
The application comprised of a word processor (Writer), a drawing tool (Draw), a spreadsheet utility (Calc), a formula editor (Math), a database management tool (Base), and a presentation app (Impress).
It’s compatible with Microsoft Office and LibreOffice
It is compatible with Microsoft Word and WordPerfect documents, Microsoft Excel and Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets, as well as Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple Keynote presentations. It’s main file format is OpenDocument Format (ODF), which is also used on the LibreOffice software.
Under the hood and supported OSes
Being written in the C++ and Java programming languages, Apache OpenOffice is a platform-independent application that supports Linux, Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, running on both 64-bit and 32-bit architectures. It was also successfully ported to FreeBSD, Solaris (x86/SPARC), OS/2 and Mac OS X PowerPC.
Under the hood, Apache OpenOffice is translated in over 170 languages, provides support for system C++ STL, unified menu API, and the Python programming language. It is also very important to mention here that the well known LibreOffice open source office suite is based on the source code of this application.
Conclusion
Ever since the Oracle Corporation acquired the Sun Microsystems company, work on Apache OpenOffice ceased, and various developers who worked on the project decided to create a new project, named LibreOffice.
Because of this, LibreOffice is now the main choice for any Linux distribution developer who wants to pre-install a complete and open source office suite application in their operating system(s).
