Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 8:03 am Post subject: oo.ox11 2.0
i am putting this here because it is more of an impression type post than anything else.
i downloaded the rc3 last night and used writer for a bit. it definatly looked better than the x11 1.1 version, and did seem a bit more responsive. (tho Neo/J has completely spoiled me with the aqua menus)
i played with the DB program too, it was ok. i have a general dislike for the gui front end programs, mainly because there always comes a part where it would just be easier for me to write it in PHP. (Or perl) but then, i am a nerd.
i like the .app part too. i'm not sure who did that (i assume it is a next-step type of effort using start openoffice.org) but it is great. that alone will help oo.o x11 reach people who would otherwise be afraid to use it.
i did nothing with fonts, as i was only playing with it.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 8:38 am Post subject:
Some of the responsiveness/load time comes from some ugly UNO hacks that make assumptions about layouts of vtables in memory...it works, and someone has definitely been running a profiler on it, but it definitely doesn't bode well for the xplatf. compatibility aspect (nor clean code).
I've played with it briefly on a Win32 box at work, but it's got nothing that I drastically need over 1.1, or even 1.0 for that matter. Of course there are people who will disagree, but for my purposes there's nothing I drastically *need* in 2.0 for writing my tech specs, bad poetry, and the occasional presentation (for which I tend to prefer slides printed onto transparancies anyway). Since OOo is really just StarOffice (and is really at verison which is a very mature product, I doubt we'll ever see earth shattering changes to the stock office suite paradigm.
Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 9:18 am Post subject: Re: oo.ox11 2.0
jakeOSX wrote:
i like the .app part too. i'm not sure who did that (i assume it is a next-step type of effort using start openoffice.org) but it is great. that alone will help oo.o x11 reach people who would otherwise be afraid to use it.
Careful what you what you wish for. We've travelled this route before and, while this approach works for the more technically savvy users, OOo 1.1.x X11 has proved unsupportable for the average user and there really isn't anything in OOo 2.0 that changes that.
Yes, simple documents work, but only after the user has installed X11 (what's that?) and after Fondu has made (and forced every app on your system to handle) duplicate copies of all your fonts. Printing is fast but doesn't always work. And forget about typing in a non-Western European language and OOo X11 cannot handle most native input methods.
In other words, OOo X11 essentially requires that you make your Mac behave like a Linux machine. This works in most cases, but not all. And when it doesn't work, where do people have to go? Who is going to fix those bugs?
I am not trying to bash OOo X11, but I am trying to point out that what is cool for early adopters can be a royal pain for everyone else and if you foist a product on them that is going to require a lot of support and bug fixing and don't actually have any of that in place, you end up doing more long-term harm than good to the OOo platform.
Look what happened when Eric Bachard announced his intent to do a Cocoa port. Neo/J donations abruptly dropped to a mere fraction of what they were before and the larger potential donors that I had made some contact with stopped answering my e-mails. Eric's intent was noble, but now people are waiting for some magical release that will solve all their problems while, at the same, starving the one solution that actually works.
In my opinion, pushing X11 would be no different. All that I can say is that I will be staying as far away from the inevitable flood of X11 support requests that will slowly find our way to this site.
Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 2:19 pm Post subject: Re: oo.ox11 2.0
pluby wrote:
And forget about typing in a non-Western European language and OOo X11 cannot handle most native input methods.
Terry also put a lot of work into making sure Start OpenOffice.org could handle all sorts of filenames...none of this made it into the new OOo.app. So while I can save a file called ملف.odt, I cannot open it via double-click or drag and drop (and yes, I filed a bug on that, even though I knew it would be ignored because I'm persona non grata). That's going to make the new version pretty painful for non-Roman-language users.
The fact that Neo/J has always handled open/save, drag-drop, double-click transparently is something you take for granted until you try something that fails so miserably (for the longest time in the 1.9.xxx series, you couldn't open or save files with non-ASCII characters in their names!). I wish more people realized the magnitude of the work Patrick and Ed have done in making that program start to look and feel like a real Mac app as Neo and Neo/J.
OOo's a passable piece of software if you can adapt to the X11 paradigm, but it's no Mac app.
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 2:55 pm Post subject: Re: oo.ox11 2.0
sardisson wrote:
Terry also put a lot of work into making sure Start OpenOffice.org could handle all sorts of filenames...none of this made it into the new OOo.app. So while I can save a file called ملف.odt, I cannot open it via double-click or drag and drop (and yes, I filed a bug on that, even though I knew it would be ignored because I'm persona non grata). That's going to make the new version pretty painful for non-Roman-language users.
That is one of the things on the 'to do' list. Don't forget Maho and Tako(sp?) They make things very interesting.
sardisson wrote:
The fact that Neo/J has always handled open/save, drag-drop, double-click transparently is something you take for granted until you try something that fails so miserably (for the longest time in the 1.9.xxx series, you couldn't open or save files with non-ASCII characters in their names!). I wish more people realized the magnitude of the work Patrick and Ed have done in making that program start to look and feel like a real Mac app as Neo and Neo/J.
I agree and maveric is trying to get the Cocoa version started again.
sardisson wrote:
OOo's a passable piece of software if you can adapt to the X11 paradigm, but it's no Mac app.
I agree. It is basically a X11 port from the UNIX world into the Mac world.
James
Last edited by jjmckenzie51 on Thu Oct 20, 2005 8:33 pm; edited 1 time in total
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You cannot download files in this forum
which is a very mature product, I doubt we'll ever see earth shattering changes to the stock office suite paradigm.
