Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2005 3:02 am Post subject: healing the rift - OOo vs. NeoOffice
Hi there,
Well, as Ed has already noticed, the rift between OOo developers and NeoOffice is healign along nicely. I quote the following from Eric Hoch:
Quote:
I absolutly agree with Eric B. Because of a lack of information I
had in mind that NeoOffice/J and his Developers work kind of
against us the X11 Devs. O.K after reading some forum threads on
trinity.neooffice.org and ooodevs I now know that this isn't so and
that we both work on reaching the same goal but still people
sometimes ask if there's a fork in OOo for Mac OS X and that there
is no longer any communication between us and the NeoOffice/J
developers and in some parts I must say that I too have this
feeling and here is were I agree with Eric B.
We, Eric B, Kevin, me, you Terry and others document everythink we do here on this list. The NeoOffice/J Developers do this using
their forums. Two "worlds", one goal, but slightly exchange of
informations.
To make it a bit more complicated. NeoOffice/J is GPL and our X11
OOo is LGPL/SISSL.
> How can we improve this ? (I have absolutly nothing against
> others projects ..)
I really would be interested in this too. After seeing the latest
NeoOffice/J and his progresses I can imagine that this is one
possible way to go and get a native OOo for Mac OS X, even if it is
not called so at first or never will.
He goes on to express there is little in the way of formal information exchange and would like to know more about what was done for NeoOffice/J. I also found that some other people are doing QA of the pre-2.0 builds.
Maybe one day this can all come together again. If the licensing issue is resolved..
I personally now see the Mac development as a three stage rocket:
-Sun completes the *nix build (which doesn't clear the atmosphere by itself)
-The Mac X11 version is evolved by volunteers on the dev@porting list (this is like getting into low orbit for a mac user)
-NeoOffice code is added by people here (equivalent to geosynchronous orbit)
All in all, it gets us into space . From what I can tell, this has evolved to a fairly regular, if haphazard and bumpy process. But I am happy enough if everyone's contribution to that Mac native spaceship is understood, recognized and (hopefully) supported by the public at large who will flock to these projects in great numbers.... _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2005 9:05 pm Post subject:
I personally have illustrated the need for X11 based development of OOo to continue in the past and always shall be doing so. There are a number of major factors including:
1) It's quicker to get to a stable X11 release with the OOo code then a native release (heck, we haven't had a single native release on OS X yet anywhere!)
2) Having a known functional X11 version is a crucial tool for debugging native porting work.
3) A large class of users exists who want OOo to function exactly as it does on other platforms for either the need of their own macros or for cross-platform deployment needs (think contractors using OOo as middleware).
What saddens me is that the powers that be in OOo and Sun have decided to not let us 'officially' link NeoOffice and OOo or try to direct newbie OS X users to Neo as a better OS X oriented experience. I've refrained from doing so out of courtesy for Sun to whom we all owe so much.
I can see their point as Sun marketing has really commandeered OpenOffice.org as their brand. After all, it's Sun's logo that's in all of the splashscreens on other platforms. But that's not something entity-neutral and I definitely would never stand for slapping the Sun logo on something that's done by volunteers, both testers, developers, and evangelizers.
May Sun propser and all the power to them. Still, I'm not about to help float their boat if they won't help float ours (no pun intended). It's still unfortunate that users and interested developers are caught in the middle have to wind up "discovering" NeoOffice on a regular basis instead of being able to spell it all out on the OOo website.
What saddens me is that the powers that be in OOo and Sun have decided to not let us 'officially' link NeoOffice and OOo or try to direct newbie OS X users to Neo as a better OS X oriented experience. I've refrained from doing so out of courtesy for Sun to whom we all owe so much.
Actually, I recently saw that users writing to the dev@porting list do get pointed towards Neo by the native crowd. I found that encouraging already. Suns won't stand for it now, of course, but that may yet change, in time. _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2005 9:08 am Post subject:
I hope it does change in time too. Part of it is that I don't want to push things too hard on OOo because it is after all paid for by Sun and without them there really wouldn't be any OOo project at all! Since they pay for the main OOo hosting, it really is only fair that I respect their wishes and the wishes of the non-Mac OOo community where there's a fair amount of vitriol against Neo.
Comments welcome. My hope is to be able to publicly emphasize the importance of continued X11 work while dispelling the impression that OOo 2.0 will come out for Windows and "poof" native Mac OS X OOo 2.0 falls out of the sky.
Comments welcome. My hope is to be able to publicly emphasize the importance of continued X11 work while dispelling the impression that OOo 2.0 will come out for Windows and "poof" native Mac OS X OOo 2.0 falls out of the sky.
Looks good, but I wasn't sure what GM meant (first bullet) and it focuses only on the need for X11 and not on the delivery schedule. If there isn't such a thing (which I believe to be the case in a formal sense), it should explain why and point to Trinity and dev@porting as places for updates. _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
To second Oscar, I know what GM means, but I think "final release/version" or "official release/version" will be a better term for the wider population that will eventually be reading the roadmap.
I'd also point the link specifically to dev@porting, but that's just me
If, in the next /. cycle or whatever, we continue to hear the "2.0 and <poof>, native" theory, then you might want to more explicitly address that issue with something like:
Quote:
While the changes in 2.0 have made it *easier* to achieve a native "look," significant programming effort is still required to implement the native "look", not to mention a native "feel" and even the most rudimentary AHIG compliance.
That topic/status is clear if people read the dev@porting thread/posts, but how many folks will?
Other than those minor things and Oscar's, I think it's great, and about time the roadmap was updated to tell the ugly actual truth as nicely as possible.
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2005 7:56 pm Post subject:
Ah, yes. I hadn't thought that "GM" would really be that obscure. I'll update that to "final "gold master" releases" to make it more readable.
I really wasn't sure about the best way to point people to the mailing list since that mailing list page is where you'd subscribe to the list, but the subscription isn't active until you create an account on OOo. I'll update that text to read "dev@porting" mailing list.
I really wasn't sure about the best way to point people to the mailing list since that mailing list page is where you'd subscribe to the list, but the subscription isn't active until you create an account on OOo.
Really? I subscribed to dev@wp before I even opened an OOo account (through the normal commands listed in the footer of the messages in the archive, rather than clicking the button).
OPENSTEP wrote:
I'll update that text to read "dev@porting" mailing list.
Sounds good.
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Fri Jan 14, 2005 12:05 am Post subject:
sardisson wrote:
Really? I subscribed to dev@wp before I even opened an OOo account
This may be a misunderstanding...
While it's possible to subscribe via e-mail, the subscription via browser from links on the main mailing list pages seems to not be available w/o an OOo registration. The links I had to the old pages for "subscribe/unsubscribe" seem to not be present on the servers any longer
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