OpenOffice: Features dependant upon Java

[Gesslar]

As many of you are aware, Java is neither free nor open (free not referring to cost, but rather freedom)

http://software.newsforge.com/softwa...4.shtml?tid=93

The latest version of OpenOffice (v2.0) has many features that have java as a requisite component in order to function. If taken in the spirit of FOSS, this does does go against the whole spirit, but being previously a Sun suite, is it really all that surprising?

"And sometimes," Schönheit adds, "this simply means that there is a Java developer who can spend time on a project, and no C++ developer who can."

WHAT!!! Who's he kidding? I bet if OpenOffice.org had even put out a request for coders I'm sure such a request would have been met with great enthusiasm. I mean, who wouldn't want to work on a project of this magnitude if they could and were given the choice. The fact that they even -have- components already written in Java tells a lot. I can't speak for the Gnome project or its application set, but the KDE project doesn't have any java software that I can find.

To address a common prejudice, Java isn't slow by definition, but Java makes it easy to develop poorly performing code, so developers perhaps need more self-discipline when writing Java code. However, this isn't per se a point against Java.

Ok, THAT made me giggle. On my beautifully fast machine, I have a small java app that's written by Sun. All it provides is a java console. It takes almost a MINUTE TO LOAD. Java might not be slow, but its applications sure are!

[Rosuav]

Java isn't slow by definition. Nor is raytracing inherently slow. It just takes a 42 picahertz processor to do in real time... they're coming to desktops soon aren't they?

[Aristotle]

Open Office is like ATI for me.

I am really, really glad they are out there.

I hope they succeeed.

But I wouldn't use either one because they are both painful.

I tried really, really hard to switch to Open Office, but they lack a very critical feature in their "Word" type application: Normal View.

Yes, that's right. Open Office does not allow you to use the DEFAULT, standard view you might very well be used to if you use Word.

I visited a bunch of Open Office forums and apparently this is an extremely desired feature, but the people in charge of Open Office have decided to be stubborn about not implementing it.

That is the kind of crap that really hinders Open Office's ability to severely cut into the MS Office stranglehold. The first thing they need to do is make sure they have EVERY basic/standard interface feature that Word/Excel have, and then build from there the most important advanced features.

It is idiotic not to have all the basic and standard things that are very likely CORE functionality that people are comfortable with.

Anyway, this use of java and refusal to even LOOK for other coders seems like the same kind of arrogance. As Karahd said, I bet they would have had a plethora of extremely talented coders who would have gleefully volunteered.

I hope that this Open Office effort will at least encourage someone else to take up a similar project but shed the self centered arrogance.

[Khirmint]

In all fairness, I have seen some amazingly complex Java applications that ran just as fast as any binary windows app. And yes, that was with using Swing. Mind you, those are few and far between but it does show that properly written, Java does pretty good. That said, how they do it.. I have no idea. And apparently 99% of the people out there don't know either, which implies to me that the fault is in Java. And the explanations that I can find have always been vague suggestions of what may or may not work.

I've used a Java library written by IBM called Eclipse.. basically an alternative to Swing. It was fast (admittedly, it cheated by using native system calls, something Java didn't because it limited systems it would run on), looked like the OS in question, and it was easy and fast to develop with. To boot, the documentation was easy to read and made sense.

I'm hoping that the rest of Java catches up with that. That or Eclipse finishes catching up with Swing's feature set and I can drop Swing

[Pyrosama]

Originally posted by Khirmint
I've used a Java library written by IBM called Eclipse.. basically an alternative to Swing. It was fast (admittedly, it cheated by using native system calls, something Java didn't because it limited systems it would run on), looked like the OS in question, and it was easy and fast to develop with.

My shop is moving in the direction of Eclipse/Websphere being the primary development environment and I just finished a course using Websphere for application development. I like it alot. With respect to the java servlets that I worked with (fairly small and not at all complex), I didn't encounter a problem with running the servlets, just a huge time difference in comparison with initial load time. After initial load, subsequent calls to java servlets are pretty quick.