Weekly Edition
Return to the Press page
| |||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||
Is OpenOffice.org getting faster?
Andrew Ziem has put together
an analysis of OpenOffice.org performance trends.
"Some complain OpenOffice.org is slow and bloated. With each release there may be dozens of performance improvements, but there are also new features, some of which may slow things down. This the natural balance in software development, but in the end, what is the net effect on performance from one version to the next?
We need a good benchmark to produce good data, but what do we measure? Let's assume the most common operations are starting OpenOffice.org, opening a Writer document, scrolling from top to bottom using the down arrow, exporting the document, and closing both the document and OpenOffice.org."
(Log in to post comments)
Is OpenOffice.org getting faster? Posted May 29, 2008 23:25 UTC (Thu) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] Perhaps we should ask the author to benchmark Mozilla Firefox to see if the version 3 is really going to be much slower than its predecessors. Benchmarking should include start with no .mozilla directory. My experience shows that some Firefox versions are especially slow in that case.
Is OpenOffice.org getting faster? Posted May 30, 2008 0:05 UTC (Fri) by beoba (guest, #16942) [Link] Going by FF3B5 (too lazy to update to RC1), I think you definitely don't have anything to worry about with this release.
Is OpenOffice.org getting faster? Posted Jun 1, 2008 4:23 UTC (Sun) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] I was trying to run Firefox while connected to a wired network in a Hilton hotel today, and it would wait for minutes without showing anything. Apparently, the hotel network requires some kind of authorization using web interface, and Firefox was trying to download something, or maybe check for updates. I had to resort to using lynx to get things done. Maybe it was a plugin, but in any case, it's totally unacceptable for a web browser to wait for something on the network without giving the user any chance to stop that operation other than killall.Unlike me, a testsuite would not resort to lynx, but rather detect a major delay that would totally negate all minor speedups. And that's why testsuites are important. They don't work around problems that advanced users would work around almost without noticing. That's Firefox 3.0b5 shipped by Fedora 9 x86_64 with Adblock Plus, Flashblock and Forecastfox.
Is OpenOffice.org getting faster? Posted May 30, 2008 1:43 UTC (Fri) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] Benchmarking should include start with no .mozilla directory. My experience shows that some Firefox versions are especially slow in that case. It's four or five notches slower than "especially slow" when you don't have a .mozilla directory and your /home directory is on NFS! (Students' Linux lab at University.) Back to the topic of OOo speed: My personal experience says that OOo is not speeding up nor slowing down noticeably between any of the 2.x releases, but I also don't doubt that new features have been added each time. Right now my bigger issue is figuring out how to open .docx files (or tactfully convincing my graduate research advisers to avoid sending me such files). I've discovered an ODFConverter utility (did I download that from Novell's site?), but somehow I feel I'm giving in to the Evil Empire's whims just for using it. P.S. What really bugs me about that ODFConverter is that all the command-line switches are of the old MS-DOS variety. Ugh!
.docx Posted May 30, 2008 10:00 UTC (Fri) by i3839 (subscriber, #31386) [Link] The beauty of .docx files is that only newer MSOffice can create them, so there are lots of people who can't open them, not only the weird Linux people. And the Word version able to create .docx can also export to pdf (finally. It's the only thing I use OO for, when Antiword fails, and opening spreadsheets), so if you get a .docx you can just ask for the pdf version.
.docx Posted May 30, 2008 10:33 UTC (Fri) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989) [Link] The new Office2007 formats for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are just .zip files in drag. Change the extension and unpack for copious .xml.
.docx Posted May 30, 2008 12:27 UTC (Fri) by i3839 (subscriber, #31386) [Link] Just like ODF you mean? Don't know about you, but I don't read XML, it's unreadable. Did you actually tried doing it? I did, and no need to rename the thing, just unzipping it works. But as expected it gives a unreadable big pile of steamy mess.
.docx Posted May 31, 2008 7:04 UTC (Sat) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] This will make some sense of an ODF document: #!/bin/sh unzip -p "$1" content.xml \ | sed -e 's/<\/text:p>/\n/g' -e 's/<[^>]*>//g'
.docx Posted Jun 4, 2008 12:57 UTC (Wed) by i3839 (subscriber, #31386) [Link] Cool, thanks, it sort of works (mostly whitespace damage, but the text is readable).
.docx Posted May 30, 2008 13:07 UTC (Fri) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link] Microsoft provides a nice downconverter pack which allows you to open docx/xlsx/pptx files in Office 2003/2000 (not tried '97 though). While OpenSource/FreeSoftware developers have to read huge specs and do reverse engineering to implement that all.
Is OpenOffice.org getting faster? Posted May 30, 2008 23:10 UTC (Fri) by fritsd (guest, #43411) [Link] (or tactfully convincing my graduate research advisers to avoid sending me such files) Oh dear.. where to begin.. Did you show them this: Microsoft Office dumped by Science and Nature? (from 2007, so may have changed in the meantime). or this? GrokLaw static page on the ODF vs OOXML debâcle Or the most recent news (until next week I guess..) Update: Microsoft to support ODF, PDF in Office next year WARNING: that's just an announcement, so take it with a big grain of salt. I quote: "Support for ODF and PDF will be included in the software through Microsoft Office Service Pack 2, expected to be out in the first half of 2009, according to Microsoft." and, to top it off: "On Wednesday, Microsoft said it will not have support for the current ISO specific for OOXML until it releases the next version of Office, code-named Office 14. The company has not said when that software will be available."
Is OpenOffice.org getting faster? Posted Jun 1, 2008 23:54 UTC (Sun) by cleary (guest, #41669) [Link] OpenOffice 2.4 on debian (lenny/sid) can view these files. In my experience it's quite rudimentary support, but it's better than nothing. For some reason, this support is not included in all OOo2.4 releases so I'm not sure what's happened there.
Is OpenOffice.org getting faster? Posted Jun 12, 2008 8:23 UTC (Thu) by gerv (subscriber, #3376) [Link] Benchmarking should include start with no .mozilla directory. You mean no profile? Why would you want to benchmark something that only is true once, the very first time you run the software?
Is OpenOffice.org getting faster? Posted May 29, 2008 23:52 UTC (Thu) by vmole (guest, #111) [Link] Let's assume the most common operations are ... scrolling from top to bottom using the down arrow... Yeah, that's what I do every time! Okay, I know he's got to pick *something*, but maybe something someone would actually do, like a search and replace, or a spellcheck, or change a style and reformat, or ...
Is OpenOffice.org getting faster? Posted May 30, 2008 10:08 UTC (Fri) by johnny (subscriber, #10110) [Link] Scrolling down using the keyboard sounds reasonable to me. Searching would also traverse the whole document, I suppose, but it wouldn't force the app to display everything. The first thing I do when I receive a document is usually to slowly scroll all the way down to get a feel for what it's about and how long it is (though usually I do that with the scroll bar, since I intuitively expect that to be faster than using the down key).
Is OpenOffice.org getting faster? Posted May 30, 2008 0:43 UTC (Fri) by jabby (guest, #2648) [Link] I find that paging down with the PageDn key is more taxing than just arrowing down, presumably because it forces OOo to render the document more quickly. I'd be interested in stats for paging through a large, complex document with lots of images and tables and embedded spreadsheets and such. Also, I just submitted a 30-page manuscript for publication. I used OOo and my advisor and co-author used the ubiquitous proprietary thing. After multiple rounds of editing between three authors with 'Track changes' turned on, performance degraded to a snail's pace with 'Show changes' turned off, especially when deleting anything. To be fair, OOo actually warns you when you're about to edit a document with 'Track changes' on and 'Show changes' off and suggests turning on 'Show changes' to avoid delays. But, still it would be interesting to see if there's any improvement in this use case. Just my $0.02. Thanks for listening! Jason
Is OpenOffice.org getting faster? Posted May 30, 2008 8:29 UTC (Fri) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link] The major problem with current OpenOffice (all the way back down to Staroffice) is that it needlessy redraws portions of the screen, especially icons and menus as you hover over/in them with your mouse, which is especially visible when you run it over a slower link (40kbyte/s; or bandwidth limit yourself to see) and VNC (used tightvnc).
Is OpenOffice.org getting faster? Posted Jun 5, 2008 0:15 UTC (Thu) by AndrewZ (guest, #52393) [Link] As a VNC/RDP user, I know your pain. This should be fixed since OOo version 2.3.0. http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/good_usability_is_lik...
Automatic formating Posted May 30, 2008 19:59 UTC (Fri) by boog (subscriber, #30882) [Link] A much more important feature than incremental speed-ups is missing: a single big red button to switch off all automatic formating. The word-style "we're sure this is what you mean" behaviour drives me absolutely nuts when I have to use openoffice.
Choice of benchmarks Posted May 30, 2008 23:30 UTC (Fri) by dark (✭ supporter ✭, #8483) [Link] Are opening and closing really among the most common operations? They're only done once per session, so I'd expect them to be swamped by the actual editing.
Choice of benchmarks Posted May 31, 2008 0:39 UTC (Sat) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link] One of OOo's main use cases is as a document *viewer*. (In fact, that's the only way I use it. But even in general, most people read more documents than they write.)
Choice of benchmarks Posted May 31, 2008 9:12 UTC (Sat) by alecs1 (subscriber, #46699) [Link] I can confirm this type of usage, I usualy read documents.. Curently I use an extremely slow computer, but editing is as fast as my brain can do it. The problem is with the slow startup, with the HDD swapping as OOO uses quite some memory, and the most important, seen also on faster computers, opening more documents one after the other will make OOO freeze until the last document has been opened.
Choice of benchmarks Posted Jun 5, 2008 16:04 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link] I improved OOo startup time by magnitudes by switching off its Java support in the preferences dialog. From 10s seconds or even minutes (depending on the computer) to 2-3 seconds. And I have yet to recognize what I miss by switching that stuff off; I didn't meet any problems yet. (I'm not a heavy user, though; I use TeX for my own documents.)
Choice of benchmarks Posted May 31, 2008 9:55 UTC (Sat) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] less have a key (v) to run $EDITOR on the file that is currently viewed.
Choice of benchmarks Posted Jun 2, 2008 12:46 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link] >less have a key (v) to run $EDITOR on the file that is currently viewed Thank you so much for pointing that out! What an incredibly useful feature.
|
|
||||||||||||