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gbh
Councilperson
Joined: Jul 28, 2007
Posts: 172
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 Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 2:04 pm Post subject: Differences in 3 versus 2.2.5? |
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| Is there some one place where we can see what the differences are in functionality, etc? |
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Samwise
Captain Naiobi
Joined: Apr 25, 2006
Posts: 2315
Location: Montpellier, France
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| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 2:24 pm Post subject: |
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There is this page:
https://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/earlyaccessfeatures.php
which highlights the usual differences between NeoOffice and OpenOffice.org. However, there doesn't seem to be a place detailing the differences between NeoOffice 2.2.5 and 3.0 directly. Perhaps we should compile a list of the most important and/or visible new features? |
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pluby
The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949
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| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 3:40 pm Post subject: |
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| Samwise wrote: | | which highlights the usual differences between NeoOffice and OpenOffice.org. However, there doesn't seem to be a place detailing the differences between NeoOffice 2.2.5 and 3.0 directly. Perhaps we should compile a list of the most important and/or visible new features? |
Overall, this release really is only an upgrade in the version of NeoOffice's underlying OpenOffice.org code. The amount of work that was required to replace Sun's Mac OS X code with our code precluded adding any new features in this release.
So, the differences between NeoOffice 2.2.5 and 3.0 Early Access are essentially all changes in features made by OpenOffice.org in all versions after OpenOffice.org 2.2.1 minus their new Mac OS X Universal Access support plus the following three Sun Microsystems extensions:
- PDF Importer
- Presenter Console
-Presentation Minimizer
Patrick |
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Samwise
Captain Naiobi
Joined: Apr 25, 2006
Posts: 2315
Location: Montpellier, France
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| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 3:48 pm Post subject: |
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| Let's not forget the new Chart module, better (or at least faster) Office OpenXML import filters, and probably others we forget… |
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pluby
The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949
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| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 3:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Samwise wrote: | | Let's not forget the new Chart module, better (or at least faster) Office OpenXML import filters, and probably others we forget… |
I admit that I really have not kept track of all the changes that OpenOffice.org has done since OpenOffice.org 2.2.1. IIRC, there was was list on the OpenOffice.org site when they released OpenOffice.org 3.0, but that list included everything that had changed since OpenOffice.org 2.0.
Patrick |
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sardisson
Town Crier
Joined: Feb 01, 2004
Posts: 4588
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| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 5:20 pm Post subject: |
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We should add some of these things to the release notes in the wiki, as sub-points under "OOo3 codebase"....
Smokey[/url]
_________________
"[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki |
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gbh
Councilperson
Joined: Jul 28, 2007
Posts: 172
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| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 5:50 pm Post subject: |
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Hmm. So, since NeoOffice is now built on top of OO 3, at the end of the day (and I mean no offense by the question, because I know this was tremendous work on your part):
1. What makes NeoOffice 3 better than 2.2.5? Is it that the OO foundation on which is built is now better in some way, or more stable or what?
2. What advantage does NeoOffice 3 have being built on OpenOffice 3 versus just using OpenOffice 3 directly?
I really like NeoOffice and use it daily, but I am not a programmer so I am curious. |
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pluby
The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949
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| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 5:57 pm Post subject: |
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| gbh wrote: | Hmm. So, since NeoOffice is now built on top of OO 3, at the end of the day (and I mean no offense by the question, because I know this was tremendous work on your part):
1. What makes NeoOffice 3 better than 2.2.5? Is it that the OO foundation on which is built is now better in some way, or more stable or what?
2. What advantage does NeoOffice 3 have being built on OpenOffice 3 versus just using OpenOffice 3 directly?
I really like NeoOffice and use it daily, but I am not a programmer so I am curious. |
I think you have it backwards. Using OpenOffice.org 3.0 does not improve the stability of NeoOffice's Mac OS X code at all. Instead, the main point of NeoOfifice 3.0 Early Access is that it brings NeoOffice's more stable and faster Mac OS X native code and extra features to OpenOffice.org 3.0.
Patrick |
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gbh
Councilperson
Joined: Jul 28, 2007
Posts: 172
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| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 6:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Oh. Okay. So that does not mean that NeoOffice's native code is not built on OpenOffice native Mac code, but their windows or some other kind of code? |
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gbh
Councilperson
Joined: Jul 28, 2007
Posts: 172
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| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 6:28 pm Post subject: |
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| By the way, it seems very fast. Faster than OpenOffice and faster than 2.2.5. One thing I really like is not going up into the intro screen that they have with OpenOffice, that is slow and clunky. |
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pluby
The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949
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| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 6:49 pm Post subject: |
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| gbh wrote: | | Oh. Okay. So that does not mean that NeoOffice's native code is not built on OpenOffice native Mac code, but their windows or some other kind of code? |
That is exactly right. We have invested nearly 6 years in our native Mac OS X code and switching to their brand new code would be very risky. With software, the old known code is usually far more stable than the brand new code. Plus, we know our code inside and out whereas the OpenOffice.org native Mac OS X is unknown to us so trying to provide our rapid bug fixing to such a large, brand new set of code is not something we ever had any plans to do.
Patrick |
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gbh
Councilperson
Joined: Jul 28, 2007
Posts: 172
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| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 6:56 pm Post subject: |
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I really appreciate your forgiving my ignorance on software. Your product is already far superior to OpenOffice 3 and already in one day of use it is far more reliable and stable. It is creating a lot of confusion, though, because everybody and their brother is take the OpenOffice product, slapping their brand name on it (StarOffice, Symphony, etc.). Symphony, though, is really unreliable. Somehow they modified in a way that makes it awful.
I'm sticking with NeoOffice for sure, but this really gave me a better appreciation. |
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pluby
The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949
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| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 7:41 pm Post subject: |
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| gbh wrote: | | I really appreciate your forgiving my ignorance on software. Your product is already far superior to OpenOffice 3 and already in one day of use it is far more reliable and stable. It is creating a lot of confusion, though, because everybody and their brother is take the OpenOffice product, slapping their brand name on it (StarOffice, Symphony, etc.). Symphony, though, is really unreliable. Somehow they modified in a way that makes it awful. |
No worries. It is good to explain what is really in NeoOffice 3.0 Early Access as you are right about the sudden proliferation of variants of the OpenOffice 3.0 product on Mac.
I am also glad to hear that you find it stable. During our slow process of replacing the OOo native Mac OS X code with our own code, we ran into lots of bugs in OOo and made sure that they did not propagate to our code. Nevertheless, OOo has changed lots of their non-native code between OpenOffice.org 2.2.1 and 3.0 so we expect that Early Access members and subscribers will find more bugs that we missed during development.
Patrick |
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OPENSTEP
The One
Joined: May 25, 2003
Posts: 4752
Location: Santa Barbara, CA
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| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 9:19 pm Post subject: |
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As an aside, one thing to note is that Patrick has spent a lot of time focusing specifically on PowerPC performance, and we do consider severe PowerPC performance issues our users have as bugs, not as things to shrug off (like some other large vendors have done  ). Horrid PowerPC performance was a primary motivator for postponing our EAP. We've spent a lot of time over the years making Neo fast on older computers...and we'll continue to do so as long as feasible or possible.
Yes, at some point we need to cut off support for slower computers, but fact of the matter is...by making things better on slower computers, we make the application all that more responsive on faster computers. Mentally, people do respond to actions in tenths and hundreths of seconds. Sometimes being faster by just a few hundredths of a second makes a much more significant "apparent" speed difference to the human mind.
An example of the importance of speed that small is "VR sickness". Just by lagging video from a tenth or a second or less from head movement it's easy to induce nausea (eww).
Offtopic, but it's my logic for continuing to develop on and test on machines that are 5+ years old...if it works well there, chances are it'll shine even more on newer hardware 
ed |
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rpatrick
Councilperson
Joined: Aug 29, 2007
Posts: 108
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| Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 1:43 pm Post subject: |
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Talking about performance, I too have notice NO 3.0EA is sooo much faster than 2.2.5. Not that I ever had any real problem with the speed in the first place, it was already lots faster than OOo 3 anyway!
So far so good, not problems at all.
Excellent!
Rich |
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