Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-14 Thread C
On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 14:44, Gordon Burgess-Parker wrote:
> On 14/02/11 09:42, C wrote:
>>
>> Possibly by tweaking the options.  You can get a significant startup
>> time decrease by adjusting a few things.  For example, go to Tools>
>> Options>  Memory and reduce the Graphics cache and memory per object.
>
> Eh? You get a faster startup time by INCREASING memory per object!


I meant to type "change" in that spot :-)  I'll leave it up to the
user to experiment which way works better for their needs.

C.

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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-14 Thread Gordon Burgess-Parker

On 14/02/11 09:42, C wrote:


Possibly by tweaking the options.  You can get a significant startup
time decrease by adjusting a few things.  For example, go to Tools>
Options>  Memory and reduce the Graphics cache and memory per object.

Eh? You get a faster startup time by INCREASING memory per object!

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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-14 Thread Christophe Strobbe


At 21:46 11/02/2011, David Nelson wrote:

On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 21:03, Christophe Strobbe
 wrote:
> (*) None of these articles mention LibrOffice, although the review says:
> "developers are falling away like pine needles from a Christmas tree and
> competitors are making inroads to its market."

Could you please clarify whether it's from the OOo project or
LibreOffice project that "developers are falling away like pine
needles from a Christmas tree"?


The statement comes from a review of OpenOffice.org 3.3; it is about 
OpenOffice.org. Although the reviewer must be aware of LibreOffice, I 
found it strange that he doesn't mention any of the OOo competitors by name.




You didn't give any link to the article you were referring to, and a
search for "libreoffice" on the Linux Format site returned nothing,
otherwise I would have read for myself.


I simply bought the printed edition.
By the way, the cover DVD contains neither OpenOffice.org nor LibreOffice.

Best regards,

Christophe



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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-14 Thread C
On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 06:22, Kevin Hunter wrote:
> In a mathematical sense of "all" I already believe it is not entirely the
> fault of OOo/LO.  However, I need more information before I will accept this
> particular bit of anecdotal evidence.  For starters, /how/ did the Yoper
> folks get such an increase in speed for OOo?  Why have I -- so far -- been
> unable to recreate these results on my own machines (which range from old to
> fairly new, and run a variety of distros)?

Possibly by tweaking the options.  You can get a significant startup
time decrease by adjusting a few things.  For example, go to Tools >
Options > Memory and reduce the Graphics cache and memory per object.
Then go to Tools > Options > Java and disable JRE.  These two things
make quite a noticeable difference in both the memory footprint, and
the startup time.

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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-14 Thread C
On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 19:22, adept techlists - kazar wrote:
> The per capita GDP in that chart for Ethiopia, for example (there are 15
> countries with lower GDPs) is $1,000. Once you take into account the
> rich/poor divide that is rapidly growing wider in all non-socialized
> countries, the vast majority of Ethiopians live on far less than $1,000 per
> year. Visualize what kind of computer they might have, or might have access
> to in an internet cafe even in Addis Ababa. And if you put yourself in the
> skin of someone living in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe ($400 per-cap GDP), Cambodia
> ($2,000), Kenya ($1,600), India ($3,400)  etc ... you'll see that spending
> $36 on RAM and $40 on a HD and $20 on a burner is truly out of reach for
> most of the world population. (and one must have a fairly recent model of
> computer to take advantage of "cheap" RAM and peripherals, as well)

You can't really use those figures to give you a view of what it's
really like "on the ground" in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda etc
(all places I've been to , and spent significant time in).  Yes there
are computers with only 256MB RAM around - but you're not going to be
running any modern office suite on these machines regardless of who
makes the software.  I also would not consider these computers the
"norm"... just old machines that have been recycled and reused... btu
taht are being replaced there just as they were in the "west".

Things are changing rapidly in Africa.  Take Kenya for example where
10 years ago, no one had a personal computer except the expat
population, and a few of the ultra-rich.  Now it's only the very poor
who are still lagging behind.  The fast growing middle class are all
buying laptops - or diaspora are sending machines "home" to family
there.  This is something I also see happening in Rwanda and Uganda.

The point being... while hardware is relatively expensive in Africa,
it's not as harsh as it appears when you only look at the GDP.

C.

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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-14 Thread Gordon Burgess-Parker

On 12/02/11 01:37, Graham Lauder wrote:


than MSO on XPSP2.
Why are you still on SP"? (Or is that a typo?) If you ARE on SP2 then 
you will have had NO security updates since July last year


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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-13 Thread Ian Lynch
On 13 February 2011 18:22, adept techlists - kazar  wrote:

> On 2/12/11 2:04 PM, Robert Derman wrote:
>
>> Just so you all know, 4 GB of DDR3 RAM can now be purchased for $36. on
>> the internet.  In historical terms, that is indeed dirt cheap.
>>
>
> and how much would it cost to have that RAM shipped to Ethiopia? and how
> many computers around the globe are still in use that have a max of far less
> ram than 4GB, even less than 1024MB?
>
>  Also a 500 GB hard drive can now be purchased for less than $40., and a
>> DVD burner for less than $20.
>>
> Your ISP is in River Falls, Wisconson, U.S.A. The per capita GDP in the
> U.S.A. according to 2010 CIA World Factbook charts was $47,400 USD. (
> https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html
> )
>
> The per capita GDP in that chart for Ethiopia, for example (there are 15
> countries with lower GDPs) is $1,000. Once you take into account the
> rich/poor divide that is rapidly growing wider in all non-socialized
> countries, the vast majority of Ethiopians live on far less than $1,000 per
> year. Visualize what kind of computer they might have, or might have access
> to in an internet cafe even in Addis Ababa. And if you put yourself in the
> skin of someone living in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe ($400 per-cap GDP), Cambodia
> ($2,000), Kenya ($1,600), India ($3,400)  etc ... you'll see that spending
> $36 on RAM and $40 on a HD and $20 on a burner is truly out of reach for
> most of the world population. (and one must have a fairly recent model of
> computer to take advantage of "cheap" RAM and peripherals, as well)
>

If you are living on $1 a day, MS Windows is about 2 months pay with no
discretion at the margins. No wonder that software gets copied illegally.
This also demonstrates the myth that this causes the equivalent lost revenue
of $50-$60 for each illegal copy. The fact is that if it was impossible to
copy many of those doing the copying would not afford to buy it so there
would be no additional sales. (I'm not condoning illegal copying of
software, just pointing out some facts about it :-) ) Open Source is
important to inclusion and so is reducing hardware costs as far as possible
and making education and training as low cost and as freely available as
possible.

>
> kazar
>
>
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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-13 Thread Robert Derman

adept techlists - kazar wrote:

On 2/12/11 2:04 PM, Robert Derman wrote:
Just so you all know, 4 GB of DDR3 RAM can now be purchased for $36. 
on the internet.  In historical terms, that is indeed dirt cheap. 
My point here is that any new computers being built are unlikely to have 
less than 2 gigs, and most will probably have 4.  The memory I quoted 
here is DDR3, which can't be used in older computers anyway, only brand 
new ones.
and how much would it cost to have that RAM shipped to Ethiopia? and 
how many computers around the globe are still in use that have a max 
of far less ram than 4GB, even less than 1024MB?
Since nearly all computer parts today are made in The Peoples Republic 
of China, I doubt that anyone anywhere in Africa would have them shipped 
from California.  There must be retailers in Africa who sell this stuff. 
Also a 500 GB hard drive can now be purchased for less than $40., and 
a DVD burner for less than $20. 
Your ISP is in River Falls, Wisconson, U.S.A. The per capita GDP in 
the U.S.A. according to 2010 CIA World Factbook charts was $47,400 
USD. 
(https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html) 

I am a retired computer system builder and my sole source of income is a 
government pension, so my income is a small fraction of that amount.  
The important thing as I see it is that 30 years ago the least expensive 
computers cost at least $1500.  Today it is less than $300.  Even while 
most everything else costs 2 to 3 times what it did 30 years ago.   

Another thing, and I am not saying that it is a good thing, but I have 
noticed that new software tends to be written for new computers.  Most 
older computers end up running older software because they can't handle 
the requirements of most newer software. 


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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-13 Thread adept techlists - kazar

On 2/12/11 2:04 PM, Robert Derman wrote:
Just so you all know, 4 GB of DDR3 RAM can now be purchased for $36. 
on the internet.  In historical terms, that is indeed dirt cheap. 


and how much would it cost to have that RAM shipped to Ethiopia? and how 
many computers around the globe are still in use that have a max of far 
less ram than 4GB, even less than 1024MB?
Also a 500 GB hard drive can now be purchased for less than $40., and 
a DVD burner for less than $20. 
Your ISP is in River Falls, Wisconson, U.S.A. The per capita GDP in the 
U.S.A. according to 2010 CIA World Factbook charts was $47,400 USD. 
(https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html)


The per capita GDP in that chart for Ethiopia, for example (there are 15 
countries with lower GDPs) is $1,000. Once you take into account the 
rich/poor divide that is rapidly growing wider in all non-socialized 
countries, the vast majority of Ethiopians live on far less than $1,000 
per year. Visualize what kind of computer they might have, or might have 
access to in an internet cafe even in Addis Ababa. And if you put 
yourself in the skin of someone living in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe ($400 
per-cap GDP), Cambodia ($2,000), Kenya ($1,600), India ($3,400)  etc ... 
you'll see that spending $36 on RAM and $40 on a HD and $20 on a burner 
is truly out of reach for most of the world population. (and one must 
have a fairly recent model of computer to take advantage of "cheap" RAM 
and peripherals, as well)


kazar

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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-12 Thread Ian Lynch
On 12 February 2011 19:04, Robert Derman wrote:

> Kevin Hunter wrote:
>
>> At 4:09pm -0500 Fri, 11 Feb 2011, Charles Marcus wrote:
>>
>>> On 2011-02-11 3:35 PM, Kevin Hunter wrote:
>>>
 How the quickstarter works is have use gobs of memory effectively
 sitting idle. That doesn't work. Many of us in the computing,
 engineering, physics, and chemical fields *use* our computational
 resources.

>>>
>>> 75MB is not 'gobs' - that or we live in very different realities.
>>>
>>
>> Yes, it is gobs.  If you have 4GB+, perhaps it's not, but not everyone has
>> 4GB+.  Particularly in non-Western countries.  I have just returned from
>> Ethiopia, for example, where owning a computer is rare; for those who do,
>> 256 MB is common.  I suspect that we *do* live in different realities.
>>
>>  RAM is extremely cheap these days.
>>>
>>
>> If $100 bucks is cheap to you, then so be it.  It's not to me, a graduate
>> student.
>>
> Just so you all know, 4 GB of DDR3 RAM can now be purchased for $36. on the
> internet.


Yes, but for people in some places you would have to use older more
expensive RAM or the machine can't be upgraded so they would have to buy
another, etc etc.


> In historical terms, that is indeed dirt cheap.


But in historical terms the majority of people in the world haven't been
able to access computer technology. That changes as prices fall and probably
for every $10 fall another million can enter the market. So even small
changes can have a significant effect on large numbers of people.


> Also a 500 GB hard drive can now be purchased for less than $40., and a DVD
> burner for less than $20.  The fact is, a copy of MS Office can well cost
> more than the entire computer system it is used on.
>

Not if it gets illegally copied. ;-) PS, hard drive space is likely to be
less of an issue than RAM.

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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-12 Thread Robert Derman

Kevin Hunter wrote:

At 4:09pm -0500 Fri, 11 Feb 2011, Charles Marcus wrote:

On 2011-02-11 3:35 PM, Kevin Hunter wrote:

How the quickstarter works is have use gobs of memory effectively
sitting idle. That doesn't work. Many of us in the computing,
engineering, physics, and chemical fields *use* our computational
resources.


75MB is not 'gobs' - that or we live in very different realities.


Yes, it is gobs.  If you have 4GB+, perhaps it's not, but not everyone 
has 4GB+.  Particularly in non-Western countries.  I have just 
returned from Ethiopia, for example, where owning a computer is rare; 
for those who do, 256 MB is common.  I suspect that we *do* live in 
different realities.



RAM is extremely cheap these days.


If $100 bucks is cheap to you, then so be it.  It's not to me, a 
graduate student.
Just so you all know, 4 GB of DDR3 RAM can now be purchased for $36. on 
the internet.  In historical terms, that is indeed dirt cheap.  Also a 
500 GB hard drive can now be purchased for less than $40., and a DVD 
burner for less than $20.  The fact is, a copy of MS Office can well 
cost more than the entire computer system it is used on. 


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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-12 Thread Italo Vignoli

On 02/11/2011 09:46 PM, David Nelson wrote:


Could you please clarify whether it's from the OOo project or
LibreOffice project that "developers are falling away like pine
needles from a Christmas tree"?


Developers are falling from OOo, and in fact the community version has 
lost not only LibreOffice developers but also the Oracle developers who 
have been switched to Oracle Cloud Office. It is difficult to know how 
many of them, and I think that the deveopment cycle of OOo 3.4 will tell 
how many.



You didn't give any link to the article you were referring to, and a
search for "libreoffice" on the Linux Format site returned nothing,
otherwise I would have read for myself.


If I remember well, the articles are open to everyone after a couple of 
weeks from the date of publishing.


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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-12 Thread M. Fioretti
On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 22:10:19 PM -0500, Kevin Hunter (kmhun...@ncsu.edu) wrote:

> >75MB is not 'gobs' - that or we live in very different realities.
> 
> Yes, it is gobs.  If you have 4GB+, perhaps it's not, but not
> everyone has 4GB+.  Particularly in non-Western countries.  I have
> just returned from Ethiopia, for example, where owning a computer is
> rare; for those who do, 256 MB is common.  I suspect that we *do*
> live in different realities.
> 
> >RAM is extremely cheap these days.
> 
> If $100 bucks is cheap to you, then so be it.  It's not to me, a
> graduate student.

Very well said, Kevin. Thanks for a reminder that the world is a mix
of very different situations and that "cheap" is a word that should
used in such a general, meaningless way.

Marco

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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-12 Thread David Nelson
Hi, :-)

On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 16:14, Jonathan Aquilina  wrote:
> to read the article you need to be subscribed to the magazine.

Thanks, Jonathan. ;-)

David Nelson

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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-12 Thread Jonathan Aquilina

to read the article you need to be subscribed to the magazine.

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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-11 Thread Kevin Hunter

At 5:03pm -0500 Fri, 11 Feb 2011, Christoph Noack wrote:

Am Freitag, den 11.02.2011, 15:35 -0500 schrieb Kevin Hunter:

The short answer is that the quickstarter doesn't count: I want it to
load as fast or faster than MSO /without/ the quickstarter.  MSO can
do it, from a cold boot, fast.  Why can't LO?


Because we are more or less platform neutral and that requires
(under the given circumstances) to rely on own code that has to be
loaded.


That makes sense.  Thank you for this honest recognition of the 
performance issues with a cogent explanation of cross-platform 
maintainability as the reason.


I hope (and believe) there are gains to be had in this area.

Cheers,

Kevin

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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-11 Thread Kevin Hunter

At 8:37pm -0500 Fri, 11 Feb 2011, Graham Lauder wrote:

On Saturday 12 February 2011 09:35:59 Kevin Hunter wrote:

Because they don't know how to eloquently say that the quickstarter
is a no-go. The name "quickstarter" is a misnomer. It should be
"preloader", because that's what it actually does. (But that
doesn't sound as sexy, I know.) How the quickstarter works is have
use gobs of memory effectively sitting idle. That doesn't work.
Many of us in the computing, engineering, physics, and chemical
fields *use* our computational resources.


Start up time is down to the the OS.


I disagree.  More on that below ...


I used to think the same as you. However this is what I have found.
Start up on Ubuntu Gnome box is slow, slower than XP startup.
OpenSuSE KDE4 box again slowish but like the others not gruesomely
slow. But on my Yoper KDE4 box ,cold start up is almost instant and
certainly faster than MSO on XPSP2. Yoper is a distro optimised for
speed so obviously the problem is not all in the OOo/LibO code


In a mathematical sense of "all" I already believe it is not entirely 
the fault of OOo/LO.  However, I need more information before I will 
accept this particular bit of anecdotal evidence.  For starters, /how/ 
did the Yoper folks get such an increase in speed for OOo?  Why have I 
-- so far -- been unable to recreate these results on my own machines 
(which range from old to fairly new, and run a variety of distros)?


To be clear, I'm not denying that I may be wrong or have out-dated 
information, but at the very least I'm surprised I haven't seen a blog 
or other such advertisement of how they did it.  I would think it a 
matter of pride for whoever pulls it off, others would want to know, and 
I consider myself fairly well informed.



The short answer is that the quickstarter doesn't count: I want it to
load as fast or faster than MSO /without/ the quickstarter.  MSO can do
it, from a cold boot, fast.  Why can't LO?


MSO has a quickstarter in it's integration with the OS. Compare the
speed of MSO opening in Windows environment as opposed to Apple and
Apple has a very fast GUI


I *hate* using MSO on Mac because it is so egregiously slow (even after 
loading is "finished"!).  However, I'm not convinced that it's not 
"just" an issue with MS libraries.  Reference this article about Windows 
Firefox being faster than Linux Firefox, as run through Wine:


http://www.tuxradar.com/content/browser-benchmarks-2-even-wine-beats-linux-firefox

We're a full two years later at this point, I may have missed an 
intervening few test updates, and things may have improved in this 
particular case, but the point is that it's not a "simple" matter of OS 
integration.


I think OS integration is a red herring, and I would claim a poor tactic 
for the LO community to maintain: "You're only faster because you've 
better OS integration."  More honest, I think, is "You're right, we 
don't start as fast; but give us time, we're working on it."  And, if 
you're following the devel list, we are.


Cheers,

Kevin

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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-11 Thread Kevin Hunter

At 4:09pm -0500 Fri, 11 Feb 2011, Charles Marcus wrote:

On 2011-02-11 3:35 PM, Kevin Hunter wrote:

How the quickstarter works is have use gobs of memory effectively
sitting idle. That doesn't work. Many of us in the computing,
engineering, physics, and chemical fields *use* our computational
resources.


75MB is not 'gobs' - that or we live in very different realities.


Yes, it is gobs.  If you have 4GB+, perhaps it's not, but not everyone 
has 4GB+.  Particularly in non-Western countries.  I have just returned 
from Ethiopia, for example, where owning a computer is rare; for those 
who do, 256 MB is common.  I suspect that we *do* live in different 
realities.



RAM is extremely cheap these days.


If $100 bucks is cheap to you, then so be it.  It's not to me, a 
graduate student.



The short answer is that the quickstarter doesn't count: I want it
to load as fast or faster than MSO /without/ the quickstarter. MSO
can do it, from a cold boot, fast. Why can't LO?


Strawman... MSO *does* have a quickstarter, but it is invisible - hidden
in the OS startup processes...


Please point me to documentation of this hidden quickstarter.  The MS 
version that I'm aware of is this program:


http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290144

It's called Osa, and is an optional component to run at startup.  If you 
want to argue the relative startup times, please try it for yourself, 
both with the Osa running, and without.  If you still get different 
results than these, then all I can say is that we must have dissimilar 
test methodologies; I can confirm this relative speed on at least 6 
boxes of varying age and hardware capabilities.


On one particular 4 year-old machine, with 1G of system RAM, and without 
the OOo Quickstarter or MS' osa program running, rebooting for each 
trial, and opening the same 2003 Word (.doc) document:


MSO 2003:  8s  (average of 3 boots)
OOo 3.3:  17s  (average of 3 boots)

Regards,

Kevin

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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-11 Thread Graham Lauder
On Saturday 12 February 2011 09:35:59 Kevin Hunter wrote:
> At 8:24am -0500 Fri, 11 Feb 2011, Gordon Burgess-parker wrote:
> > On 11/02/11 13:03, Christophe Strobbe wrote:
> >> 1. Improve the loading speed.
> >> 20. Once more: faster loading.
> > 
> > I really don't know how they can say that.
> 
> Because they don't know how to eloquently say that the quickstarter is a
> no-go.  The name "quickstarter" is a misnomer.  It should be
> "preloader", because that's what it actually does.  (But that doesn't
> sound as sexy, I know.)  How the quickstarter works is have use gobs of
> memory effectively sitting idle.  That doesn't work.  Many of us in the
> computing, engineering, physics, and chemical fields *use* our
> computational resources.

Start up time is down to the the OS.  I used to think the same as you.  
However this is what I have found.  Start up on Ubuntu Gnome box is slow, 
slower than XP startup.  OpenSuSE KDE4 box again slowish but like the others 
not gruesomely slow.  
But on my Yoper KDE4 box ,cold start up is almost instant and certainly faster 
than MSO on XPSP2.  Yoper is a distro optimised for speed so obviously the 
problem is not all in the OOo/LibO code  

> 
> > On Windows 7, Open Office 3.3 loads a new Writer document (with
> > Quickstarter enabled) almost INSTANTANEOUSLY,  [...]
> > 
> > How fast do they WANT it to load? Both those times compare VERY
> > favourably with MS Office and in fact on Windows OO is FASTER then MS
> > Office for the above reason.
> 
> The short answer is that the quickstarter doesn't count: I want it to
> load as fast or faster than MSO /without/ the quickstarter.  MSO can do
> it, from a cold boot, fast.  Why can't LO?

MSO  has a quickstarter in it's integration with the OS.  Compare the speed of 
MSO opening in Windows environment as opposed to Apple and Apple has a very 
fast GUI

> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Kevin

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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-11 Thread Christoph Noack
Hi Kevin!

Am Freitag, den 11.02.2011, 15:35 -0500 schrieb Kevin Hunter:
> > How fast do they WANT it to load? Both those times compare VERY
> > favourably with MS Office and in fact on Windows OO is FASTER then
> MS
> > Office for the above reason.
> 
> The short answer is that the quickstarter doesn't count: I want it to 
> load as fast or faster than MSO /without/ the quickstarter.  MSO can
> do it, from a cold boot, fast.  Why can't LO?

Because we are more or less platform neutral and that requires (under
the given circumstances) to rely on own code that has to be loaded.
Microsoft Office can share many of the components with the operating
system - that's a bit easier. Consequently, it will be hard to be fast
as Microsoft Office, but there is potential - for sure :-)

And for those who are interested to dig a bit deeper:
http://uxopenofficeorg.blogspot.com/2009/04/openoffice-user-survey-2009-performance.html

And:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Performance

Cheers,
Christoph


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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-11 Thread Charles Marcus
On 2011-02-11 3:35 PM, Kevin Hunter wrote:
> How the quickstarter works is have use gobs of
> memory effectively sitting idle.  That doesn't work.  Many of us in the
> computing, engineering, physics, and chemical fields *use* our
> computational resources.

75MB is not 'gobs' - that or we live in very different realities.

RAM is extremely cheap these days.

> The short answer is that the quickstarter doesn't count: I want it to
> load as fast or faster than MSO /without/ the quickstarter.  MSO can do
> it, from a cold boot, fast.  Why can't LO?

Strawman... MSO *does* have a quickstarter, but it is invisible - hidden
in the OS startup processes...

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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-11 Thread toki
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 11/02/2011 13:03, Christophe Strobbe wrote:

> 3. Implement grammar checking.

This is one of the most requested features for OOo.
It also has been available since OOo 1.1.3, for half a dozen languages.

In all instances, you are better off using _The King's English_, or
equivalent, for the language that is being grammatically checked.

If users are willing to have a database that consumes 50GB per language,
then grammar checking that will pass an A Level exam can be included in
LibO. Granted, a lot of grunt work needs to be done, but no fundamental
changes need to be made to any of the currently existing grammar
checkers for LibO, or OOo.

jonathon
- -- 
If Bing copied Google, there wouldn't be anything new worth requesting.

If Bing did not copy Google, there wouldn't be anything relevant worth
requesting.

   DaveJakeman 20110207 Groklaw.
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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-11 Thread David Nelson
Hi, :-)

On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 21:03, Christophe Strobbe
 wrote:
> (*) None of these articles mention LibrOffice, although the review says:
> "developers are falling away like pine needles from a Christmas tree and
> competitors are making inroads to its market."

Could you please clarify whether it's from the OOo project or
LibreOffice project that "developers are falling away like pine
needles from a Christmas tree"?

You didn't give any link to the article you were referring to, and a
search for "libreoffice" on the Linux Format site returned nothing,
otherwise I would have read for myself.

David Nelson

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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-11 Thread Kevin Hunter

At 8:24am -0500 Fri, 11 Feb 2011, Gordon Burgess-parker wrote:

On 11/02/11 13:03, Christophe Strobbe wrote:

1. Improve the loading speed.
20. Once more: faster loading.


I really don't know how they can say that.


Because they don't know how to eloquently say that the quickstarter is a 
no-go.  The name "quickstarter" is a misnomer.  It should be 
"preloader", because that's what it actually does.  (But that doesn't 
sound as sexy, I know.)  How the quickstarter works is have use gobs of 
memory effectively sitting idle.  That doesn't work.  Many of us in the 
computing, engineering, physics, and chemical fields *use* our 
computational resources.



On Windows 7, Open Office 3.3 loads a new Writer document (with
Quickstarter enabled) almost INSTANTANEOUSLY,  [...]



How fast do they WANT it to load? Both those times compare VERY
favourably with MS Office and in fact on Windows OO is FASTER then MS
Office for the above reason.


The short answer is that the quickstarter doesn't count: I want it to 
load as fast or faster than MSO /without/ the quickstarter.  MSO can do 
it, from a cold boot, fast.  Why can't LO?


Cheers,

Kevin

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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-11 Thread Gordon Burgess-Parker

On 11/02/11 13:24, Gordon Burgess-Parker wrote:

On 11/02/11 13:03, Christophe Strobbe wrote:

1. Improve the loading speed.
20. Once more: faster loading.



I really don't know how they can say that.
On Windows 7, Open Office 3.3 loads a new Writer document (with 
Quickstarter enabled) almost INSTANTANEOUSLY, on Ubuntu 10.04 it's 
just under 4 seconds - only because unlike Windows there's a bug with 
the quickstarter.
How fast do they WANT it to load? Both those times compare VERY 
favourably with MS Office and in fact on Windows OO is FASTER then MS 
Office for the above reason.
Of course ANY document in ANY Office suite will load in longer times 
depending on the size and complexity...


Forgot to mention - it's a dual-boot machine so the hardware is identical...

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Re: [tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-11 Thread Gordon Burgess-Parker

On 11/02/11 13:03, Christophe Strobbe wrote:

1. Improve the loading speed.
20. Once more: faster loading.



I really don't know how they can say that.
On Windows 7, Open Office 3.3 loads a new Writer document (with 
Quickstarter enabled) almost INSTANTANEOUSLY, on Ubuntu 10.04 it's just 
under 4 seconds - only because unlike Windows there's a bug with the 
quickstarter.
How fast do they WANT it to load? Both those times compare VERY 
favourably with MS Office and in fact on Windows OO is FASTER then MS 
Office for the above reason.
Of course ANY document in ANY Office suite will load in longer times 
depending on the size and complexity...


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[tdf-discuss] OpenOffice.org articles in Linux Format March 2011

2011-02-11 Thread Christophe Strobbe

Hi,

I thought someone was going to summarize the articles on 
OpenOffice.org 3.3 in the current issues of Linux Format (March 2011).

There are two articles: a review (page 27) and one about things to improve.

The review mentions significant improvements in Calc (one million 
rows of cells instead of 65536, better CVS import, ...) and points 
out that: "Importing DOCX continues to be problematic and there's no 
option to export the format, which is surprising after four years of 
mainstream usage." The reviewer also regrets that the developers 
"don't take time to integrate a decent set of document templates into 
the software."


The other article is: "20 things we'd change about OpenOffice.org" 
(pages 50-51):

1. Improve the loading speed.
2. Learn/dare to be different instead of imitating the look and feel 
of MS Office.

3. Implement grammar checking.
4. OOo tries to load too much when starting; more modular loading 
could improve this.

5. Find a better name.
6. OOo needs stronger competition to help developers focus on 
improving the product. (*)
7. Current PDF import isn't useful; even simple editing and 
re-exporting as PDF would be a step forward.
8. OOo should be perceived as a powerful office suite in its own 
right, not as a cheap alternative for people who can't afford a 
"proper" office suite from Microsoft.
9. Loading time should be faster. A built-from-source installation on 
Gentoo loads faster, so it should be possible.

10. OOo should look like a native application on the main desktops.
11. We should be able to compile it from source; the build process is 
too fragile.
12. Improve cross-application cut and paste, e.g. copying table cells 
from Calc to Writer.
13. If there are two ways of doing something, OOos seems to go for 
the most complex one. This is often the most flexible method, but not 
the most productive one. People should at least have a choice.
14. A greater set of useful extensions. OOo comes with only 3 
extensions, the project site has less than 150 extensions.

15. Macro recording should be easier and less error prone.
16. Fix some of the 14.500 bugs/"issues" and implement some of the 
9.500 feature and enhancement requests.
17. Pop-up help. True productivity is not possible without an 
irritating animated character like Clippy. (What were the editors 
drinking when they wrote this?)
18. The extension manager should not simply be a dialogue that asks 
for an extension file; users should be able to browse and search extensions.

19. OOo is basically good and this amplifies the annoyances.
20. Once more: faster loading.

(*) None of these articles mention LibrOffice, although the review 
says: "developers are falling away like pine needles from a Christmas 
tree and competitors are making inroads to its market."


Best regards,

Christophe


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