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Google Hiring Programmers to Work on OpenOffice
massysett writes "Google is hiring programmers to work on OpenOffice.org. "We use a fair amount of open-source software at Google. We want to make sure that's a healthy community. And we want to make sure open source preserves competitiveness within the industry," said Google's manager for open-source software. Perhaps Google's work will address an oft-heard complaint about OO.o: "Google believes it can help OpenOffice--perhaps working to pare down the software's memory requirements or its mammoth 80MB download size.""
> I like Evolution but would like to see a cross-platform PIM
> in the suite as an alternative.
Tor Lillqvist was hired by Novell to help get Evolution running on Windows. While I was working on Revolution and was subscribed to evolution-hackers I remember that he'd occasionally post progress notes there.
I'm not sure how far that effort is along at this point, although Tor certainly seemed to be making excellent progress and was patching all sorts of Gnome/Win32 bugs in various projects.
The Army reading list
Yah, 80MB isn't that bad. What is bad, though, is how much memory OpenOffice takes up, and how slow it is to load. I hope they make those issues a priority.
Of course, if history teaches us anything, their programmers will spend a year looking through the code, decide it's impossible to deal with, and start from scratch. We should expect Moz^H^H^HGoogle Office to be ready for prime time in about 5 years.
You've got to be kidding me.
I work in the software industry, and every product ships with bugs. That's just how it works. Most companies put a severity level on bugs. Severity 1: ship blocker. Severity 2: really should fix it. Severity 3: we *might* get around to it.
The bug databases don't necessarily contain just bugs - there can be feature enhancements, documentation errors, etc.
Looking through the link you posted, I see 5603 defects in the "new", "started" or "reopened" categories. Of those, 7 are "P1" (aka Severity 1) defects, 144 are "P2", 4083 are "P3", 1160 are "P4", and 209 are "P5".
I didn't look at exact specifics, but some are probably localization errors - not functionality bugs.
Please learn a little more about the software development life cycle before making a comment like yours. Educating your employer about this would probably be a wonderful idea also.
So, for the bugs that would stop you from getting your job done, I see 151. It looks like it's time for you to evaluate OOo in your organization.
So, the Word Processor component is only ~5MB.
Yet OOo is:
Word Processor
SpreadSheet
Presentation
Drawing App
Math App
Database App w/Database
Using the same 5MB per calculation, I get 30MB (6x5MB). Now add in a boatload more features, all with cool icons, plus some snazzy templates and clipart, and you can get it up there in no time flat.
Which isn't to say that there isn't still bloat in OOo. But it's not so significant that it should matter.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
To be recoded in C/C++.
OOo is coded in C++, for the most part. A few plugins use Java. I don't know about 2.0, but 1.1 was perfectly usable without a JRE installed.
As pointed out many times, turn off Java in the OOo options. It will start a *lot* faster.
Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
I believe parts of Base (the DB in OO.o 2) is partially written in Java, but since I only use Writer and Calc, I was happy to save ~20MB RAM and ~10 seconds off the load time.
... And so it comes to this.
Apple's customers are like no others -- a rich blend of the most sociologically elite with those seeking elegant, simple computing. ... Unlike users of Intel/Windows computers, a significant portion of Apple's users are active, exploratory, avant-garde and early adopters. The activities they enjoy are unique in the the way that they more often incorporate rich media such as video and music as well as more active prosumer behavior than many more passive Windows users.
With above-average household income and education levels, the Mac population [is] very attractive [intellectually as well as physically.]
Thanks for asking. I went back and checked again, and it turns out that I was fooled by a bug: If you turn off Java, and then choose "Tools->Macros->Run macro..", you're greeted with the dialog box that says: "OpenOffice.org requires a Java runtime environment (JRE) to perform this task. However, use of a JRE has been disabled. Do you want to enable the use of a JRE now? [Yes] [No] [Cancel]". But if you choose "No" or "Cancel", you still get to run your macros! So the dialog box is completely wrong. (Macros linked to menus or keys work without any stupid lying dialog boxes.)
So, I have to correct myself: If you disable Java in OpenOffice.org 2.0 you have to put up with stupid dialog boxes that bug you to turn on Java again.
You mean like open-sourcing their Darwin base OS code? Or contributing their improvements to GCC to the world? Or providing the world with a free open source streaming server system? Or making Zeroconf an open standard and releasing a free reference implementation? Or contributing improvements to CUPS? Or to KDE's HTML renderer? Or releasing their unified replacement for cron, init and rc as an open source project?
Right now you are making a fool of yourself in public. Either that or you're trolling.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak