:LinuxPlanet: A Hands-On Review of the Open Source OpenOffice
LinuxPlanet: A Hands-On Review of the Open Source OpenOffice Oct 13, 2000, 19 :49 UTC (4 Talkback[s]) (7035 reads) (Other stories by Michael Hall)
"We grabbed the source code and binaries from the OpenOffice.org site to see what the new and improved, Open Source StarOffice would look like.
As you might expect, Sun did more than just release an Open Source product: it also cleaned up the code and made some significant changes to the
software."
"How significant? OpenOffice is still the monolithic, monster program it once was; although it appears to load in a slimmer package, under the hood
you're always running all of OpenOffice, no matter what appears on the screen. But the look and feel of the product is improved, thanks to some
new True Type fonts; and some elements, like email, are still in development...."
"The whole package is not trivial to build in terms of time or resources. Once we worked out the issues with the X libraries on our Debian system, we
set out to complete an entire build, which is still in progress as we write this, almost four hours later. Following the instructions provided, though,
makes the whole thing very simple. Though it's premature to report success, careful reading of the instructions and making sure all the prerequisites
are available before beginning make for a smooth process."
