Joined: Jan 04, 2005 Posts: 36 Location: Planet Earth
Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 8:25 am Post subject:
Congrats on the official release. Great job! Your development roadmap looks pretty exciting--and ambitious. Wish I were a programmer so I could help out "under the hood". But I will continue to acting as an advocate, singing NeoOfficeJ's praises and passing along copies to all my Mac using friends. Those using Windows get OOo.
Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 1:07 pm Post subject: Perhaps there is another way.....
First a disclaimer, I haven't looked at the OOO code in a long time, but....
If you have done enough to pull off the GUI and render it in Java, then maybe it would be possible to pull in a lot of the rest of it. Converting more of the C code to java might help to smooth things over, and if one day the whole thing could be pulled into java, then you would entirely circumvent the problems caused by the mac move to intel.
Of course this would be an enormous task, though I imagine that most of the nastiness comes from the GUI, printing, and file system access. Any pure, raw C code should be much easier to convert. If you've already pulled off the nasty edges, then perhaps it would be more productive to convert the rest than to try to struggle forward with a hybrid approach.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 7:42 pm Post subject:
Go on the OOo site and search for UNO...it's essentially a clone of COM and lies underneath the entire application. It's a language independent component glue layer. Because we need to map calling conventions, parameter passing, exceptions, etc. across multiple languages this requires some really hairy work in assembly. Each language and most times each compiler has its own concept of how such low-level things work.
Due to similar logic, we can't just reuse the x86 code since Apple x86 gcc calling conventions (ABI) are not necessarily the same as on Linux or Windows. In fact, their documentation still states the ABI hasn't been finalized, which also makes things a bit dicey.
The big limitation is developer time. The OOo code has some hairy assembler code [...]
Out of curiosity, why does OOo has any assember code?
Also couldn't you use the x86 OOo assembler code for the Mactel version?
As a long time programmer, I can answer this very simply:
It makes things fly and can do things that cannot be done in a high level language (c, C++, Java, COBOL, etc.) However, its use should only be when and if the higher level languages cannot support what you are trying to do. And if you want to look at what assembler can do, take a look at some early virus code (and their derivatives.) There is a major hurdle to overcome with assembler code, it is very machine specific. Thus code written for the PPC platform will not work (usually) on X86 systems and vice versa. Thus code has to be written for the machine type (be it Intel or MacIntosh) for each supported computer system. With the introduction of the MacIntel, assembler code will have to be written for it. Yes, elimination of assembler code should be a goal of the OOo team, but it has to be there for some functions of the program.
Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 5:54 am Post subject: Thank you !!!
Thank you for all the work you do for us. I am a Law student and NeoOffice helps me a lot because I cannot write with my own hands and a good word processor is esssential for me to take note and pass my exams. I do not have iWork and will continue to use NeoOffice as I know it has improved much since I started with OOo before switching definitely to your application.
Thank you.
As a now NeOffice well, I will contribute as a tester.
Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2005 11:04 pm Post subject: Re: Thank you !!!
biquette wrote:
Thank you for all the work you do for us. I am a Law student and NeoOffice helps me a lot because I cannot write with my own hands and a good word processor is esssential for me to take note and pass my exams.
Sounds hard. Good luck with that and take heart: A friend of mine has very reduced eyesight and she recently graduated and then got accepted into the training program for judges. _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2005 7:31 am Post subject: Thank you for supporting me !
ovvldc wrote:
biquette wrote:
Thank you for all the work you do for us. I am a Law student and NeoOffice helps me a lot because I cannot write with my own hands and a good word processor is esssential for me to take note and pass my exams.
Sounds hard. Good luck with that and take heart: A friend of mine has very reduced eyesight and she recently graduated and then got accepted into the training program for judges.
Thank you very much for this nice message. I don't know if it's a coincidence but I also want to become a magistrate.
Sorry if this is redundant, but have NO/J developement plans changed any because of the announcement of OO.org's switch to LGPL? I ask because I understand that part of the contention was over licensing, and was thus unsure what if any changes there would be in the plans.
Sorry if this is redundant, but have NO/J developement plans changed any because of the announcement of OO.org's switch to LGPL? I ask because I understand that part of the contention was over licensing, and was thus unsure what if any changes there would be in the plans.
This does not change anything for Neo/J as OOo has always been available under the LGPL. The announcement wasn't that OOo is switching to LGPL but that they are dropping the SISSL license.
It's been three months since the initial roadmap was published. From what I've read, the following has been accomplished:
Building on 10.4 - Yes
Building on GCC 4 - Yes (as of today)
Moving to new VM - Yes (also as of today, but needs testing)
Excellent work! I just was curious if things are moving on schedule in the developers minds, are you ahead, behind, has it been more or less challenging to get to this point?
And who among you (Patrick, Ed or James) will be first in line for the Intel Mac Mini when they appear next June?
From what I've read, the following has been accomplished:
Building on 10.4 - Yes
Building on GCC 4 - Yes (as of today)
Moving to new VM - Yes (also as of today, but needs testing)
Just a note, in case it's not clear...points 1 and 2 happened in parallel, and in a vacuum, so to speak, from point 3, so Neo/J does not yet build on 10.4 with GCC 4 and use the 1.4.2 JVM all in one.... The two "branches" still need to be integrated, and Ed might have to patch Neo/J-specific code for GCC 4, too.
Or at least that's what I understand. Maybe I'm the one who's not clear
At any rate, this is indeed impressive!--and much further along than I expected, FWIW (And look, Neo/J 1.1 was out for three months before OOo 1.1.5 finally shipped. I'm glad we didn't wait on that for 1.1 final! )
Thanks to Patrick and Ed for all their hard work and sacrifices and also to all the Neo/J donors for helping make the work possible.
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
From what I've read, the following has been accomplished:
Building on 10.4 - Yes
Building on GCC 4 - Yes (as of today)
Moving to new VM - Yes (also as of today, but needs testing)
Just a note, in case it's not clear...points 1 and 2 happened in parallel, and in a vacuum, so to speak, from point 3, so Neo/J does not yet build on 10.4 with GCC 4 and use the 1.4.2 JVM all in one.... The two "branches" still need to be integrated, and Ed might have to patch Neo/J-specific code for GCC 4, too.
Or at least that's what I understand. Maybe I'm the one who's not clear
Yes, very true. Hopfully all the branches will play well together.
Just a note, in case it's not clear...points 1 and 2 happened in parallel, and in a vacuum, so to speak, from point 3, so Neo/J does not yet build on 10.4 with GCC 4 and use the 1.4.2 JVM all in one.... The two "branches" still need to be integrated, and Ed might have to patch Neo/J-specific code for GCC 4, too.
Yes, the two branches need to be merged, but that should be simpler than the work that it took to get the OO code to compile under GCC4 and the Java 1.4 work that Patrick did on the MacOSX front end.
I hope to see both in and 1.1.5 as the baseline OOo in the very near future. Maybe Neo/J 1.2 is not that far away.
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