I've een using OO on windows XP for about a year and a half now and it's working
flawlessly so far. I use writer alot for papers and the 'record changes',
'note/comments', and the 'properties' options are great for editing (if the
other person has Open Office). Although the entire suite has the ability to
insert sound, it doesn't seem to support Speex, Vorbis and Flac. Perhaps a
future release will allow embedded sound files as well as these sound formats
into OO documents (and possibly allowing the option to them play back
automatically with an integrated opensource audio player).
Such a feature would be great in Writer and in Impress, especially as an
accessibilty tool or for media rich documents. Writer could have the option to
highlight text and playback a speex audio file (since it's speech only) with a
user defined synchronization setting (similar to Karaoke video text). This could
make Writer documents more accessible for the visually impaired and gives
authors more room for creative and personalized audio-visual documents (which
could be an alternative to PDFs). Since speex generates generally small files
(depending on its setting - can be 100kb per min), audio content can be embedded
into Openoffice files and emailed as one package and played back on an
integrated standalone player (ie. browser friendly ones like Flash, Acrobat
Reader and Shockwave) or within the Suite. Comments and Notes could be added by
those who review documents or edit.
For Impress both Vorbis or Speex can be integrated so that presentations contain
auto dictation and even music (ogg vorbis). If Flac is used then presentations
can be given on CD. The audio codec support could even be embedded into self
contained playback executables (cross platform maybe?), packages or something
along the lines of shockwave or flash. This would be a great way to promote
opensource codecs and more open formats .
Well those are just my two cents on possible features for an already great
office suite. Looking forward to seeing continual developments and progress from
this great application and community. PEACE.