Slashdot Mirror
OpenOffice Coder On StarOffice 6.0's Beta Release
"Release 6 also gets rid of the old Star Office desktop of version 5 which was generally disliked for its annoying tendency to cover up all of the other windows you were working with and make it difficult to interact with your X Window Manager.
The application suite has programable APIs for each of the applications, exposed through a custom object request broker named UNO. In an impressive demonstration, Max showed live update of a spreadsheet with real-time stock data, all under the control of a small Java application. Changed data were reflected throughout the spreadsheet table with each update as the sheet recalculated each cell based on the new input.
Max freely admits that there are still weaknesses in the code. He pointed to the ten year lifespan of the mostly C++ code base, and hopes to see the code improved with the use of more modern C++ features. In browsing through the source tree I don't find that the code is in nearly as bad shape as Max portrayed it. Admittedly I've only seen a tiny fraction of the code (at 3.7 million lines, OpenOffice is by far the largest open source project in the world), but my random sampling showed very good coding practises, like preprocessor guards around each header include to reduce compile time due to reopening headers that have already been processed. Even with these measures in place however, the full system takes upwards of 15 hours and 1.5GB of disk to build on currently available hardware.
System load time for the office suite has been significantly reduced (about 20s on Max's 500MHz laptop with 128MB memory) by removing several libraries from the link process and instead loading them on demand. Over the next year or more Max hopes to see more modularization of the code base with the eventual goal of seperating the monolithic program into seperate applications linked together through an object request broker.
Q&A went on until we got kicked out of our room, so there is a lot more that is new about OpenOffice than I've described here. If you are interested you can pick up a copy at OpenOffice.org, or at one of its mirrors around the world."
Does it have "Clippy"? Otherwise I'm not interested.
If it has been, openoffice.org sure doesn't know about it. All that is available for download are some "recent builds" with not "W00t! First Release!" hysteria anywhere. Maybe the title should have been "OpenOffice guy interviewed, betas available". But that might be expecting too much from poor Timothy.. I mean, he'd have to actually follow a link!
How does it stack up against Star Office 6.0 Beta?
A side by side feature comparison would be nice...
My rights don't need management.
The article states that "Release 6 also gets rid of ... its annoying tendency to cover up all of the other windows you were working", but I can't seem to find any screenshots on their website or anywhere else. I have no doubt that the look & feel is similar to Microsoft's Office suite (also Corel's WordPerfect, but I digress) but I'd like to know if they got rid of their start-button oriented interface.
Anybody had this working and would be willing to GIMP a screenshot?
As far as I can tell (and I ran to OpenOffice.org) Open Office 6.0 *HAS NOT* been released. I think someone is mixing up the Star Office 6.0 BETA with Open Office (the SO Beta is based on the last OO build)
Open Office 6 was not released on wednesday. They released a build called Open Office 6 beta 638c. It's more like a milestone release on the way to a proper version 6. Sort of like what mozilla does. The final version isn't scheduled for some time yet, see the roadmap.
I can't believe that 20 seconds on a 500 Mhz machine is a good load time for a word processor!
This is the sort of thing that will be thrown in my face when I try to tell people to give OpenOffice a shot.
Here's an SAT-style analogy:
StarOffice OpenOffice as
Netscape 6.x Mozilla
It's as simple as that.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Does anyone know specifics on the differences between OpenOffice and StarOffice versions 6.0? I think that StarOffice is actually based on the new OpenOffice source code base. (Or, is it the other way around?) Theu look very similar. Are there significant technical or feature differences?
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Here's a hint - THEY DON'T!
You're experiencing the magical "Slashdot effect" in action.
*Check* before posting. Please. Don't tease us like this.
Same applies to you.
My spoon is too big.
Current Mirror Sites
Type URL Login Password Source Binaries Solver Maintainer
FTP ftp://openoffice:@ftp.ists.pwr.wroc.pl/ openoffice 633 (all platforms) 633 (all platforms) Bartek Maruszewski
FTP ftp://borft.student.utwente.nl/ 633, 627, 625, 617 633 (Linux, Win32), in 5 MB parts Michael Niblett*
HTTP http://borft.student.utwente.nl/openoffice/ 633, 627, 625, 617 633 (Linux, Win32), in 5 MB parts Michael Niblett*
HTTP http://sapi.vlsm.org/openoffice/ 633 (ZIP for Win32) Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim
FTP ftp://sapi.vlsm.org/openoffice/ 633 (ZIP for Win32) Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim
FTP ftp://sapi.vlsm.org/openoffice/ 633 (ZIP for Win32) in 1440000 byte parts Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim
HTTP http://sapi.vlsm.org/openoffice/win32split/ 633 (ZIP for Win32) in 1440000 byte parts Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim
HTTP http://office.qkaka.com/ * localized ZIP H.Z.
FTP ftp://ftp.3way.com.hk/ All current binaries, solver, and source; files in parts. Nelson Lau
FTP ftp://mirrors.unam.mx/pub/OpenOffice/ All current binaries and source, all platforms. Alfredo Aguayo.
erm... yes... well slashdot apparently doesn't like less than greater than signs, which means the username and passwords for the ftp sites got filtered out... I believe that they are all "anonymous" and a blank password... Sorry for the confusion.
Andrew
"from the another-promising-one dept."
*Groan*. Yup, I actually have a version of a file explorer I'm coming out with. It doesn't open files or perform basic file operations, but the icons are there and they look pretty. I expect to have the "missing features" done, but it's GPL'd. That should mean something, right?
Com'on, it's "promising"!
I've not yet gotten the release but I'd have to say OpenOffice is a big improvement in many ways over StarOffice. Unfortunately, the build I got a month ago didn't allow conversion between html docs and swd (or whatever its called now), which really annoyed me. Its a toss up whether loosing that horrid desktop thing is worth it. (I like to publish everything I document as HTML).
It does seem to load substantially faster and run a tad more stable than Star Office did.
All in all I have pretty good luck converting to and from M$ Word. The changes are usually the same types of things that happen when switching the printer settings around on M$ Word.
Unfortunately, I've less luck with the Spreadsheet piece. It writes XLS files in a really weird format (I looked at it via biff view and via my project sourceforge.net/projects/poi) it doesn't always load properly and sometimes crashes excel.
(long story on the differences, too boring for here)...
So can you ditch Office and use OpenOffice -- not if you're a big spreadsheet user that needs to talk to Excel, but for most people -- definately!
(In open office's defence, they use glibole2 which is some of the nastiest looking C code I've ever seen -- see www.gnome.org. You have to expand about 20 layers of macros to even understand one line of code! Its a miracle they can write anything)
...
// Performance Mods (B.G.; Microsoft Inc.)
// openOffice->launch();
// spin cpu to look busy
int main()
{
unsigned long launch_time = gettimeofday()+20;
while(1)
{
if( gettimeofday() == launch_time )
break;
}
openOffice->launch();
}
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
First, as others have noted, this is just another beta.
Having said that, if you want to get the sources, stop Slashdotting openoffice.org and get it from Akamai. At least they've got the bandwidth to deal with the load.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
Star Office has released version 6.0 beta.
See the banner on Sun's homepage
OpenOffice is currently offering release 638
See www.openoffice.org for details.
Are they related? Yes. Are they the same? Certainly not!
Please try to clarify this point in the posted article!
First of all, excellent to see that OpenOffice is out. The Free software community needs a solid heavyweight office suite with all the bells and whistles, and Open Office is shaping up to be exactly that.
I think we're also seeing the development of two quite distinct niches for Office software, at least on Linux and other Free *nix. Perhaps a little like the split used to be between MS Works and Office:
On the one hand, we have OpenOffice, a big heavyweight that has features pouring out of its ears, but which is not tremendously tightly integrated to any desktop, nor perhaps the most intuitive set of programs to use. It's also heavy on system resources and diskspace, but that's the price you pay for having all the bells and whistles.
On the other hand, there's the younger, lighter suites like KOffice. Leaner, faster, easier, and more tightly integrated with the desktop. At the same time, lacking a few features that may be necessary for some people, but satisfying the needs of an average Joe quite well.
It seems to me there's a place for both of these in the Linux desktop landscape, and frankly, I think this is great.
Or rather, it will be great once they can read each other's file formats ;)
There once was a company, Sun
Star Office, their package, claimed done
MS changed formats
So Sun is their doormat
And the work has only begun!
Hey Mike!
:(
Funny, it works for me. I've got the SO6 early access version 3 too if you are interested in trying that. BTW: I think I'm getting layed off so I don't think I'll be finishing that NLUG page any time soon
Sheldon.
There are a couple of explanations for that. First of all, Word saves thing in Unicode which could double the size right there if StarOffice does not. Also, Word saves all the style information. I don't know what StarWriter actually saves.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Is there a freedom software distro for Microsoft Windows. Such a thing would be a great boon. They should be everywhere like AOL cd's.
Such a thing should include
OpenOffice, Mozilla, Gimp, Apache(not enabled by default), Perl And so on...
I mean really how many people would buy office XP if they had a shiny "new" cd sitting around with a free compatible equivilent. It is the perfect opportunity to move people to the apps, and then the OS looks much more tempting.
And no most people don't write vbs scripts in word they have enough trouble with fonts and margins.
Could some Linuxish orginiztion pick up the tab for the creation or shipping???
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
I recently had a user with a corrupted MS Excel spreadsheet that would immediately crash Excel every time it was opened. I tried Excel 2000, Excel 97, Excel Viewer, and nothing worked.
So, I tried to open it with the Win32 version of OpenOffice build 638. Hmmm, so far so good - it opened with no problems. I saved it as a native OpenOffice document; reopened it in OpenOffice; and exported it as an Excel document. Finally, I tried to open it with Excel and it worked like a charm!
So if nothing else, OpenOffice makes a nifty file repairer for MS Office documents. ;-)
... sampling showed very good coding practises, like preprocessor guards around each header include to reduce compile time due to reopening headers that have already been processed ...
Um. Like who doesn't do this? Due to the nature of C++, this is required to avoid redefinitions that would otherwise occur on multiple inclusions. Given this, it has little to do with reducing compile time; for that you use pre-compiled headers (support for which isn't expected in GCC until 3.1 or later).To evaluate coding practices, I would look at
Consistent coding conventions: syntax, identifiers, directory layout etc.
Presence of good comments (German ones don't count ;).
Application of good OO principles (which, contrary to a surprising number of people's opinions, apply to all languages, not merely explicitly OO languages like C++), such as encapsulation, modularization, etc.
Application of good OO patterns (GangOfFour-style).
Use of interfaces ("abstract base classes" in Bjarne terminology) to decouple API interfaces from their implementation.
Presence of unit tests.
Presence of assertions and other kinds of code guards that contribute to "self-documenting" and "self-testing" code.
etc.
Just kinda wondering when debian packages will start showing up in unstable. I heard awhile ago that it may be sometime before that occurs, but I havent heard any news recently.
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
(at 3.7 million lines, OpenOffice is by far the largest open source project in the world)
I wasn't sure about this, so I took a look at the linux kernel source:
$ cd
$ find . -name \*.[ch] -exec cat \{\} \; | wc -l
3130679
So OpenOffice is bigger than the Linux kernel, but only by around 15%. I don't know if you can say it's by far the largest.
Yeah, I know I'm being pedantic.
dash dash Chris
I guess MS also includes copy of the last document I scanned, an encrypted list of the last 30 URLS you clicked plus what software was installed. Here is what an SO-6 document looks like (hint: unzip it)
e " xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:chart="http://openoffice.org/2000/chart" xmlns:dr3d="http://openoffice.org/2000/dr3d" xmlns:math="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:form="http://openoffice.org/2000/form" xmlns:script="http://openoffice.org/2000/script" office:class="text" office:version="1.0">
As you can see unicode is used here as well. Also READABLE XML. Looks okay doesn't it?
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE office:document-content PUBLIC "-//OpenOffice.org//DTD OfficeDocument 1.0//EN" "office.dtd">
<office:document-content xmlns:office="http://openoffice.org/2000/office" xmlns:style="http://openoffice.org/2000/style" xmlns:text="http://openoffice.org/2000/text" xmlns:table="http://openoffice.org/2000/table" xmlns:draw="http://openoffice.org/2000/drawing" xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:number="http://openoffice.org/2000/datastyl
<office:script/>
<office:font-decls>
<style:font-decl style:name="Arial Unicode MS" fo:font-family="'Arial Unicode MS'" style:font-pitch="variable"/>
<style:font-decl style:name="HG Mincho Light J" fo:font-family="'HG Mincho Light J'" style:font-pitch="variable"/>
<style:font-decl style:name="Thorndale" fo:font-family="Thorndale" style:font-family-generic="roman" style:font-pitch="variable"/>
<style:font-decl style:name="Albany" fo:font-family="Albany" style:font-family-generic="swiss" style:font-pitch="variable"/>
</office:font-decls>
<office:automatic-styles/>
<office:body>
<text:sequence-decls>
<text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Illustration"/>
<text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Table"/>
<text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Text"/>
<text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Drawing"/>
</text:sequence-decls>
<text:p text:style-name="Heading">This</text:p>
<text:h text:style-name="Heading 1" text:level="1">IS</text:h>
<text:p text:style-name="Text body"/>
<text:h text:style-name="Heading 10" text:level="10">wetzgdfhdfh</text:h>
<text:p text:style-name="Marginalia">TITLE</text:p>
<text:p text:style-name="Marginalia"/>
<text:p text:style-name="Salutation">My FRIEND</text:p>
<text:p text:style-name="List Indent">Klar?</text:p>
<text:p text:style-name="List Indent"/>
<text:p text:style-name="Signature">Testpeter</text:p>
</office:body>
</office:document-content>
Moritz
Does the Windows verison of OpenOffice have an uninstaller?
To the poster who was asking why you needed such a huge code base for a text editor, try loading a complex MS Word doc and then save it using StarOffice 6's native file format, 'sxw'. The sxw format is actually a pkzip file which contains a bunch of XML files and the associated image resources.
If you look at the content.xml file, you'll get an idea of the vast amount of formatting and structural information that is retained in an MS Word style file.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
I did a little write-up a few weeks ago when I installed it - this page has a small screenshot that shows the button layout and a document that uses anti-aliased, truetype fonts.
(Yes this is the Linux version, running Gnome...)
http://mmdc.net/linux/office.shtml
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
If you do a 'zipinfo' on the .sxw file, you'll see that it is a pkzip file with all of the data contained in xml files and attendant graphics files.
The file format isn't so terribly space efficient, it's just compressed. Getting to actually see the contents of the file and understand what the structure of the file really looks like is pretty neat-o.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Is there a freedom software distro for Microsoft Windows. Such a thing would be a great boon. They should be everywhere like AOL cd's.
There exists such a distribution of GNU software compiled for Win32, available in the UK. Too bad cheapbytes doesn't seem to sell anything similar. However, cheapbytes does sell this CD containing DJGPP (a 32-bit DOS C compiler) and "LLC" (LCC?) for Win32.
What you're really missing is a business model. AOL's model is to give away the bisks and sell the connection.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Not saying that your concern wasn't valid at all (it still kind of is, office suites are hogs), but...
Thing is, OpenOffice being based on open sourced Star Office code base (after Sun acquired the company that created it) was aimed at "full-featured" Office Suite market. Kind of like SUVs of "productivity" applications (ie. bloated, powerful, ugly). Thus, it wasn't started out from scratch. There are more light-weight word processors (and office suites) around, such as AbiWord, but they might (still) not be as mature as, say, Star/OpenOffice. So, having all the bloat already built-in it's much more difficult to trim the fat, than building a leaner application from scratch. But on the other hand, you do have a usable finished application to work with.
One thing I'm wondering though is the compilation time. The company I used to work for had a similarly-sized (ie. couple of millions of lines of C++/C-code) application, and it compiled in 5 - 10 minutes on Visual C++ (back then on 350 mhz machines). Much of the code was straight-forward C (not C++), and even C++-code didn't make heavy use of many of C++'s slow-compilable features (templates)... And VC++ has a good compiler plus pre-compiles headers nicely. Still, more than an order of magnitude slower compilation sounds weird; it shouldn't take hours to compile that thing. Fortunately end users need not worry about that. The reason I would worry (as a developer) is that slow compilation is often caused by too many dependencies between classes that shouldn't be dependant on each other, which is usually a sign of problems at architectural level. Encapsulation and insulation should be used to reduce physical dependencies, not just logical ones (book "Large-scale C++ - projects" is a good one for reading more about the problems and solutions).
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Visual C++ compile speed is really, really fast. Also, GCC doesn't support precompiled headers, and tries to be correct rather than fast WRT templates. So its quite plausiple that VC++ is that much faster.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
From Microspeak Universal Translator at www.OS2HQ.com
Dead
Microspeak: disappeared; no longer in use.
Real Meaning: a product that does not have monopoly market share.
Usage: "It's only a matter of time before Netscape Navigator is *dead*."
Agenda: To make everyone think that as soon as a Microsoft product is leveraged into a high market share, all the alternatives instantly vaporize.
IBM pull more profit from OS/2 then RedHat makes revenue. It is better supported, and was the original inspiration that made Linux possible. I mean, TeamOS2 was the first grass-roots movement that showed that people could move an OS by themselves.
Sure, Linux is based on bits and peices from free UNIX stuff, but there's a lot of OS/2 and TeamOS2 mentality in it.
OS/2 is the future now. If OS/2 dies now, maybe the whole industry dies in five year's time.
And, by the way, it's a pretty narrow-minded person who can only spell a word one way.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Ok - I know that was flamebait and pretty weak at that, but you are wrong. (On two points.) I am only answering because I hate when people spread misinformation and FUD.
1 - Open Office Does Run On Windows. Check the web page. It works great on Windows.
2 - Linux can do screen captures: See below.
3 - OS coders have big fingers? - probably true, but you know what they say about people with big hands...
Screen captures:
I had no trouble at all getting a screen capture of the Linux desktop. The Gimp has a simple utility for doing it that works much like "SnagIT" for capturing screens in windows. I could map it to the 'Print Screen' button if I cared that much...
You spend an awful lot of time and energy bashing Linux - (221 posts is quite a lot) Unfortunately, they seem to always get modded down to -1, so, as is the case for most readers, they are filtered out and I never see them. (Pity - I love a good flamewar...)
You seem to have used Linux in the past - did it make you feel inadequate? Go get yourself a copy of Mandrake or another 'Newbie' distros and have someone help you install it. Then at least you can bash Linux with up-to-date information.
When you complain about the lack of features that were added like 3 years ago, you tend to sound like an idiot. Trust me there are plenty of things in the current versions to bash.
Don't worry, even if you get to like it, you can still flame people for using Emacs...
Cheers,
Jim
-- My Weblog.
Spelling came before spelling rules. Truely is not incorrect, it is just not the "correct" spelling. But it has only one meaning, and you truly parsed it, sister.
I suppose you are an MSCE, who is lockstepped into believing what Redmond tells you. If you don't see what's going on, how else will you see what's coming. I saw all this coming in OS/2 five or six years ago. Like I said, OS/2 is the future now, then as now.
Proof: IBM supports OS/2 to paying customers and ignores the home user. Isn't that where MS is heading.... Windows NT is just a downgraded version of OS/2 v 1.3.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
- HPFS and NTFS are both partition type 07
- NT and OS/2 both write "EA DATA. SF" files in the root directory of FAT partitions on floppies.
- MS reccomends deleting the OS/2 subsystem to make the system secure, but not the DOS system. This would only be meaningful if OS/2 bypasses the file system.
- The WinNT 3.x boot sector and the OS/2 1.3 boot sector are IDENTICAL, including the OS/2 messages.
- Technet has no articles on how to add VMS commands to NT. They do describe how to add OS/2 commands, how to get OS/2 rexx &c to run under NT. These work under Win2K as well. I have run OS/2 commands under NT.
- The original working name for Windows NT was OS/2 NT.
- Windows NT help, the resource kit &c all speak of a product MS OS/2. There really was a product of this name, it was absorbed into Windows NT, and there were plugins that support the OS/2 1.x PM programs.
- The size of the "OS/2" subsystem is mysteriously small, compared even to the DOS one, but this is easily accounted for, if you assume it passes many calls down to the kernel: that is, the kernel is based on OS/2.
On the other hand, there is relatively little going for the arguement that it is based on VMS, apart from some wishful thinking, or because OS/2 might also be so based.I mean, the NAME might be, but then one can make a program "user friendly" by so stamping it.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
GCC performs that optimization.
GCC recognizes the construct, and doesn't open the file the second time.
Emacs 21 is 359801 lines of C code, and 795987 lines of Lisp code. So it is only about a third the size of OpenOffice or Linux, even though it does so much more.
Since you asked.
One more thing about VC++ is that it really makes difference how you design your precompiled headers; usage is not quite as automatic as one would hope, so it's (too) easy not to get anything precompiled/cached.
... and of course Mac-heads could start talking about Metrowerks CodeWarrior. It supposedly has even faster compiler (on MacOS, anyways), and it certainly seemed to be able to do partial recompilation much better than VC++ (which sometimes partially compiled project and produced broken binary... ie. failed to really re-compile all it needs to, but nothing more).
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
On the other hand, you offer me a MEGO ad.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.