Anti Aliasing is done for OOo 3.1!
After a long preparation and implementation phase, Anti-Aliasing is available and will be activated for OOo 3.1 in all Applications and on all Systems. This was one of the most voted issues on OOo. Since pictures say more than words, first an example what looks different in OOo 3.1:
You may also take a look at an article on OpenOffice.org Ninja for showing this feature. I want to point out some more, maybe not so obvious points relying on it. One of the most profiting parts of OOo are the Charts:
Also sometimes overseen, Anti-Aliasing is used for all 3D Geometry in OOo 3.1, too. Same here, Charts profit well:
As You may have noticed, the task took 5 years to complete. Why did it take such a long time? The preconditions for Anti-Aliasing had to be created first. The internal geometric representations used before were simply not precise enough. Also, rendering and data were not orthogonal (not divided as in Model/View/Controller paradigm). A new tooling to work with enhanced precision was needed, too. Fast enough methods for Anti-Aliasing on all systems had to be evaluated. All this had to be done in a compatible manner, migrating the ‘living’ office over that time. All in all, about 500.000 lines of code were changed/rewritten. Doesn’t sound like a dead project, does it? If You are interested in more details, You may follow the task’s description and its discussions and links.
I mention this to write about another not so obvious change for OOo 3.1 which is a direct result of those deep changes: better geometric processing. I want to show another example here, subtracting two shapes in Draw:
As You can see, on OOo 3.1, bezier segments stay bezier segments where possible. OOo 3.0 had to convert those to polygons. This will make OOo 3.1 a little bit more useful for enhanced graphics processing.
The extended DrawingLayer starting from OOo 3.1 will allow more graphical enhancements in the future. As an example, Full Object Drag as a feature for OOo 3.1 is realized using the new functionalities. You may also have noticed the enhanced selection visualizations in the Applications, also a result of those internal changes.
