August 2005 Archives
Tue Aug 30 19:48:41 CEST 2005
openoffice-ximian has got to die!
So is the title provocative enough to
get your attention? Good - then let's go on. No kidding, there
won't be any further new versions of openoffice-ximian beyond the
current 1.3.x-series (based on OOo 1.1.x). Though the reason is not
that I've lost interest in providing a better version of
OpenOffice.org for all of you, quite the contrary as you will
see.
The big differences between openoffice and openoffice-ximian are mostly history now (=the 2.0pre-series). What once started as Ximians special edition of OOo has now evolved into a multi-distribution and -desktop project called ooo-build. It's purpose is to provide a sane build environment for OOo, and that's what it achieves. So future versions of the openoffice-ebuild are going to be based on ooo-build, which not only solves some common problems, but also cuts down the size and complexity of the ebuild considerably. If you dare to, try out the beta-ebuild from my overlay, but please consider this is still totally unsupported and not finished stuff, so don't even think about filing bugs for it ;) After scaring you away: It generally should work fine, especially if you are on x86.
But back to the main question: Why not just keep both? To be honest: It's lots of work with little to no gain - there simply is no sane reason to provide two ebuilds for OOo. Nearly all other distributions are already basing there packages on ooo-build, and since a few days we now have official Gentoo-support in ooo-build, which further helps sanitizing the build. Some of you, who haven't checked out openoffice-ximian for some time, might now think: "So do we all now have to pull in GNOME just for getting OpenOffice.org?". The answer: No you don't, both GNOME and KDE-integration are totally optional, if you want you still can still kill your senses with the default look of OOo ;)
In other news for all of you: When is there going to be a Beta2-based ebuild of openoffice-bin? Answer: When - and if - the still missing language packs are released. Still, the current m122 is quite close (beta2 is actually m125), so check that out in the meantime (if you really want to take a look at a beta-version, also note, that this is package.masked).
The big differences between openoffice and openoffice-ximian are mostly history now (=the 2.0pre-series). What once started as Ximians special edition of OOo has now evolved into a multi-distribution and -desktop project called ooo-build. It's purpose is to provide a sane build environment for OOo, and that's what it achieves. So future versions of the openoffice-ebuild are going to be based on ooo-build, which not only solves some common problems, but also cuts down the size and complexity of the ebuild considerably. If you dare to, try out the beta-ebuild from my overlay, but please consider this is still totally unsupported and not finished stuff, so don't even think about filing bugs for it ;) After scaring you away: It generally should work fine, especially if you are on x86.
But back to the main question: Why not just keep both? To be honest: It's lots of work with little to no gain - there simply is no sane reason to provide two ebuilds for OOo. Nearly all other distributions are already basing there packages on ooo-build, and since a few days we now have official Gentoo-support in ooo-build, which further helps sanitizing the build. Some of you, who haven't checked out openoffice-ximian for some time, might now think: "So do we all now have to pull in GNOME just for getting OpenOffice.org?". The answer: No you don't, both GNOME and KDE-integration are totally optional, if you want you still can still kill your senses with the default look of OOo ;)
In other news for all of you: When is there going to be a Beta2-based ebuild of openoffice-bin? Answer: When - and if - the still missing language packs are released. Still, the current m122 is quite close (beta2 is actually m125), so check that out in the meantime (if you really want to take a look at a beta-version, also note, that this is package.masked).
Mon Aug 1 21:59:45 CEST 2005
GNOME, Life and OOo
Long time no blogging mostly just to
lazy and not too much happening, but if I'm honest I got a little
bit addicted to playing Guild Wars ;)
I'm quite surprised to the lots of positive reactions to the upcoming GNOME 2.12-release, even on Slashdot and OSNews the flame-level seems to be really low compared to the last releases. Personally I'm really looking forward to this so let's hope some proper ebuilds make it to Gentoo asap, so here is some friendly poking at the awesome Gentoo GNOME Herd, even if I know how much additional work pre-releases can result in, lot's of bugzilla-noise...
OpenOffice.org 2.0 is coming along really nicely, upstream development still going fast. Some of the higlights of the last weeks: Michael Meeks of Novell fame has been poking at improving the startup time, cairo integration coming along, Red Hat working at integrating OOo with the GNOME printing dialog. One of the more visible new additions to OOo is an UI to switch between different icon sets. So if you want to have KDE icons under GNOME or vice versa: No problem anymore.
I'm quite surprised to the lots of positive reactions to the upcoming GNOME 2.12-release, even on Slashdot and OSNews the flame-level seems to be really low compared to the last releases. Personally I'm really looking forward to this so let's hope some proper ebuilds make it to Gentoo asap, so here is some friendly poking at the awesome Gentoo GNOME Herd, even if I know how much additional work pre-releases can result in, lot's of bugzilla-noise...
OpenOffice.org 2.0 is coming along really nicely, upstream development still going fast. Some of the higlights of the last weeks: Michael Meeks of Novell fame has been poking at improving the startup time, cairo integration coming along, Red Hat working at integrating OOo with the GNOME printing dialog. One of the more visible new additions to OOo is an UI to switch between different icon sets. So if you want to have KDE icons under GNOME or vice versa: No problem anymore.