[svlug] Off Topic? A Nice Review

[Karsten M. Self]

on Wed, Oct 10, 2001 at 01:09:41AM -0700, Larry Colen (lrclug at red4est.com) wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 09, 2001 at 10:12:24AM -0700, Margaret Wendall wrote:
> > STAROFFICE 6: FREE ALTERNATIVE TO MS OFFICE
> > 
> > Sun Microsystems Inc.'s StarOffice may not be ready to
> > totally displace Microsoft Office in the enterprise, but
> 
> ..earlier versions of Star Office have all been abysmal pieces of
> shit. First of all, you can't run just the word processor, you have to
> load the whole bloated monstrosity and wait for it to come up. 

Speaking as someone who's had considerable complaints about StarOffice,
that bloated stuck pig of an office suite, this is something of a
strawman.

If the application can be architected such that:

  - It runs in reasonable memory
  - It runs with reasonable performance
  - It has a reasonable startup time

...on relatively modest equipment (and I know people who are still
running PII and PPro systems as desktops), I don't care if it's one
executable or sixty.

There's some progress in this direction -- apprently OO now uses
demand-loaded (or dynamically loaded) libraries.  This is essentially
modularizing some of the functionality.  It may be that there's enough
shared functionality by way of infrastructure and interface, that it
makes more sense to have a central "environment" module that's loaded,
with application functionality coming from relatively small libraries.
A bit backwards from more conventional architecture.

The demonstration at last week's SVLUG meeting was slow and unstable,
there's clearly some work required.

From a completeness and functionality standpoint, OO/SO is a
considerable accomplishment.  As a usable application, I have to agree
that I find Abiword vastly superior, though vim is my first choice.

Peace.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com>        http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
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