LWN: Comments on "OpenOffice.org 3.1 released"

OpenOffice.org 3.1 released

Darkmere — 2009-05-13T13:46:11+00:00

Most likely it came from the two factors of "Sun has been near the source" and "why the feck does the build require tcsh and java to even function?".

OpenOffice.org 3.1 released

Sho — 2009-05-11T18:58:16+00:00

Dimily remembering a blog post on the anti-aliasing work from a couple of months ago, iirc a lot of the internal calculation work in the applications wasn't done with sufficient precision to allow for a more modern representation involving anti-aliasing, so they had to modernize/improve lots of internals beyond just the drawing code itself.

OpenOffice.org 3.1 released

Kit — 2009-05-09T03:06:39+00:00

That sounds rather familiar... Moving OpenOffice up to the first sentence, and adding Microsoft Office to the second... interesting! But on a serious note, just because KOffice isn't there *yet* doesn't mean it can't get there (especially if it had similar backing to that of OpenOffice!).

OpenOffice.org 3.1 released

rahulsundaram — 2009-05-08T23:17:43+00:00

Koffice is no replacement and not even close. There simply is no replacement for Openoffice.org for many people.

OpenOffice.org 3.1 released

boudewijn — 2009-05-08T19:12:43+00:00

A webkit for office apps? Working on that...

OpenOffice.org 3.1 released

khc — 2009-05-08T17:57:36+00:00

I don't know how this misconception started, but openoffice is _not_ written in Java, except for some optional components.

OpenOffice.org 3.1 released

bangert — 2009-05-08T17:53:29+00:00

well, start coding then...

www.koffice.org

OpenOffice.org 3.1 released

nix — 2009-05-08T17:19:15+00:00

One single thorougly unexciting feature which they'd already have had for
free if they used *anything* approximating a standard toolkit.

This part of the release notes read as 'hey! we reinvent every wheel in a
most grotesque fashion! what a feature' to me.

OpenOffice.org 3.1 released

jordanb — 2009-05-08T17:11:48+00:00

Maybe they swapped out one 500,000 line rendering library for a new one?

Or it's typical Java code, where 40% of it is auto-generated using wizards and another 40% is cut-and-paste with minor changes each time.

OpenOffice.org 3.1 released

mbaldessari — 2009-05-08T17:00:51+00:00

One of my main wishes regarding the future of OO.org is a reduction of code lines in order to replace OO-only libraries and code, with more used libraries (vcl->qt|gtk, dmake->cmake, etc.). It would be easier to hack on it and maybe get some more traction from community developers.

OpenOffice.org 3.1 released

thyrsus — 2009-05-08T16:27:29+00:00

I'm a little worried at that size, myself. As a very casual user of OpenOffice, the only deficiency I've experienced in the last couple years is that it takes a long time to start up - the first time; once it's in memory, it's fine. Since 90% of the point is displaying text, it sounds like there's going to be an new mandatory megabyte or so to page in. We'll see.

My real worries about OpenOffice are outside the control of the OpenOffice authors. I'd like to see the anti-trust judge fine Microsoft $50 billion for that obscenity of a standards proposal on their new format, and another $50 billion for deliberately using an incompatible ODF implementation.

Just enough to remind Microsoft what "abuse of monopoly" means. Not that it would ever happen.

I'm not comforted by the seemingly slow adoption of the new Microsoft formats; it takes a long time for companies to switch, but switch they do: I'm starting to see the dread ...x formats at work in just the last couple months.

OpenOffice.org 3.1 released

jmayer — 2009-05-08T14:20:17+00:00

> The biggest single change (half a million lines of code!) and the most
> visible is the major revamp of OpenOffice.org on-screen graphics.
> Techies call it anti-aliasing

Can anyone please explain how a single feature rework can be 500,000
lines of code in size? That looks a bit huge to me.

OpenOffice.org 3.1 released

engla — 2009-05-08T14:10:54+00:00

This software package needs "a Firefox" to break down the application into pieces and make it useful for normal people.

After that, it needs "a WebKit" to reimplement its feature and make it mean, lean and hackable, standards-compliant and usable.

OpenOffice.org 3.1 released

michaeljt — 2009-05-08T13:05:14+00:00

That could be said of at least every second feature added to any given piece of software. The only people who don't understand it are the developers and the marketing people (speaking as a developer...)

OpenOffice.org 3.1 released

epa — 2009-05-08T09:49:09+00:00

Bah. I remember leaving the machine running overnight to compile a new kernel...

OpenOffice.org 3.1 released

ppedroni — 2009-05-08T06:59:25+00:00

> have you tried compiling openoffice?

I routinely do. Not impossible, just long: more than two hours (maybe
three) on a 2.4 GHz AMD Athlon 64 4600+, with 4 GB of DDR-1 RAM.

> even gentoo ships binaries by default.

Not really. They have both binaries and source: the choice is, as usually,
up to the user.

OpenOffice.org 3.1 released

qg6te2 — 2009-05-08T06:53:09+00:00

The amount of bugs in OO.org Impress is... amazing. If the purpose was to make an office package as frustrating to use as MS Office, it's a job well done. Perhaps the time and effort put into anti-aliased graphics would have been better spent on debugging.

OpenOffice.org 3.1 released

dlang — 2009-05-07T23:22:32+00:00

have you tried compiling openoffice?

even gentoo ships binaries by default.

it makes what compiling Android (at least as described in this week's article) seem straightforward, simple and fast

OpenOffice.org 3.1 released

allesfresser — 2009-05-07T20:39:40+00:00

Oh, I wish I could build from source. But building this beast is beyond the capacity of my machine in the time I have available.

OpenOffice.org 3.1 released

liljencrantz — 2009-05-07T20:09:13+00:00

I remember when people thought a source tarball counted as a release.

OpenOffice.org 3.1 released

allesfresser — 2009-05-07T15:40:52+00:00

Well, the Windows and 32-bit .deb is out anyway... 64-bit .deb and OS X, no dice.