“Since we wrote a yarn about how opening OpenOffice was slower than a Lada full of elephants going uphill, we have had a few tips from our readers as to how to speed it up. The changes are not difficult and do seem to have an effect. We can’t be certain how much this will affect the functionality but we pass these ideas on.”
I saw the switch of java idea on Slashdot. I tried it both on my XP system at work and my Linux box at home. In both cases any improvement was only marginal. On Windows if you have the quickstart in operation, startup is very fast almost as fast as MS Office apps.
I find it terribly disturbing how Mr. Holwerda uses Nick Farrell’s _exact_ words when posting this article to the front page of OSNews.com without any recognition whatsoever.
If OSNews is to be held as a repuable news source in this industry, then it’s about time they start quoting the authors of these articles like anyone else does when using another author’s work.
– Justin
There are QUOTATION MARKS around the text. Are you blind?
Apparently he was…
Let’s look at this from a more non-defensive perspective. Yes, there are quotation marks (point for you), but no reference to what you are quoting (point for justin). I think a combination of these two views can produce a better product. Here is an example:
From the Inquirer, “Since we wrote a yarn about how opening OpenOffice was slower than a Lada full of elephants going uphill, we have had a few tips from our readers as to how to speed it up. The changes are not difficult and do seem to have an effect. We can’t be certain how much this will affect the functionality but we pass these ideas on.”
As always, thanks OSNews for the links and interesting postings.
That would be the Slashdot way of doing it, but pretty much every other news site I visit goes by the same principle as OSNews. And as pointed out by a fellow little lower, OSNews has been doing this way since the very beggining(?). No need to change it now.
Don’t worry about it Thom, I got your back. This is the way OSNews has been doing its stories for years. Since back in the Eugenia days. They always took the first paragraph of the article and put it up.
There are QUOTATION MARKS around the text. Are you blind?
That was unnecessary. Let the post get modded down (or up) as your readers see fit. If it gets modded down, it’ll be invisible to most.
If you want to respond like that, don’t hide behind your editor position. Create an account that people can vote on.
Thom,
What kind of journalist passes off quotation marks as credit to another writer? Hello, anyone home?!
– j
Obviously I know when someone commits plagiarism and when he doesn’t. I’ve been attending university for quite a while now, so, surprise, I know what I’m talking about.
Justin, if you only want to visit websites that ie. use the APA 5th norms for creating and listing references, and that attach EndNote libraries for each newsitem posted– than be my guest.
You’ll have a hard time browsing the web.
You say I should use “The Inq writes…”. In case you don’t know, in the real academic world that’s not a proper reference either– no matter which of the literally hundreds (thousands?) of norms you follow.
HyperText inevitabily introduces a new form of referencing– LINKING. The reference is IN THE LINK and that’s more than a proper way of doing this. Have fun emailing all the involved, and please, see for yourself how the Inq handles references.
And to satisfy your obsession, here is the correct and complete reference for the article I linked to, using the APA norms, from the top of my head (so I may fcuk up spacing/punctuation, and due to the limitations of our commenting engine I cannot properly apply hanging indent either):
Farrel, N. (2005). How to speed up Open Office. Viewed 28-10-2005, http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27292.
You want the EndNote library too? In v7, v8 or v9 format?
Thom,
It shows a lot about someone (or in your case lack there of) who cannot maintain a professional temperment when involved in a discussion. Lay off the sarcasm amnd lighten the tone.
– Justin
And your problem is …
Leave Thom alone.
Thanks Thom for providing news items, when few readers don’t appreciate it.
I wish the Net was a more peaceful place. I kinda of remember it used to be around 1997.
“I wish the Net was a more peaceful place.”
Get a pair and wake up!
The Net is not a peaceful place. Worms, Viruses, Trojans, Spyware, Microsoft and Bloatware are all prevalent every second you are connected to the Internet, due entirely to Microsoft and their swiss cheese OS.
Organizations like OpenOffice and platforms like UNIX and Linux are taking a proactive stance against this computing experience, and always have.
But people like Thom Holwerda don’t care and don’t report this.
Whatever sells advertising it all he cares about.
So, don’t rate OSnews.com as a credible news site, or Thom Holwerda as a credible journalist.
Maybe a “Copy and Paste” journalist, but not a REAL journalist.
What’s with all the constant whining about quoting people recently?
It actually managed to reduce startup time… but it’s a lot less disk-intensive now too! (which disrupts a LOT less other running applications)
I want more… ;]
It is my understanding that OpenOffice uses xml a lot!
The problem is that standard (Java) xml parsers generate a lot of garbage (temporary strings which have to be allocated and then garbage collected).
An easy fix for developers is to use Javolution SAX2 or XPP parsers (http://javolution.org).
These parsers do not perform dynamic memory allocation and have no adverse effect on memory footprint and garbage collection.
In practise, it translates in a 3-5x increase in parsing speed and no gc pause. Several projects have done the switch and some even reported a 10x speed improvement in overall execution speed.
Javolution is an open-source project, it also provides a xml marshaller/unmarshaller facility which has been independantly rated (bindmark) the world fastest for large documents (thanks to its xml parsers for that).
don’t forget that only ‘Base’ uses java. others were developped in C++ with some python extensions.
don’t forget that only ‘Base’ uses java. others were developped in C++ with some python extensions.
According to OO.o developer, only 2 (out of 14 if I remember correctly) DB engines use java. If you disable Java you just loose access to those two databases. Base is C++ just as any other part of OO.o
Yep, OOo only uses Java for a few things, and reading XML files isn’t one of them.
Thank god they don’t use java, or we would need to use months as a measure unit in the benchmarks.
Well, even though OOo doesn’t use so much java for xml parsing, I liked this tip! It will help in a project in my work that imports (very large…) xml files! Thank you!
Denis
What’s with all the constant whining about quoting people recently?
This whining is done by people who somehow feel obliged to “defend” the authors of the stories we link to– yet they forget that none of these authors have *ever* complained. The way we link to their stories by using their intros is perfectly normal and accepted in the world of internet. The authors/editors are actually happy when they get linked to!
The thing is, The quoting stuff is just something people can whine about. And as we all know, we all love to whine. Personally, it makes me feel good that people apparently have nothing else, nothing really serious, to whine about about OSNews
.
However, I have been experimenting lately with different quoting styles. Keep an eye on OSNews-meta [ http://www.osnews.com/meta ] for more details on that.
The thing is, The quoting stuff is just something people can whine about. And as we all know, we all love to whine. Personally, it makes me feel good that people apparently have nothing else, nothing really serious, to whine about about OSNews
.
Personally, I think that the above is a prime example of why people take sites like Ars Technica more seriously.
Thom,
I’m not whining about ANYTHING. I’m pointing out the fact that you’ve essentially plagiarized the work of someone else and it’s illegal, as in against the law.
“Accepted in the world of interenet” does not mean you are allowed to side step the law. You know better than this. Is this how you made it through college?
As mentioned earlier, this exactly the reason why other news sites are taken much more seriosuly than OSNews.
I’ll personally contact the author of the story and ask him if he is even aware of this plagiarism and get his comments and opinions.
– Justin
Agreed!
I’m not whining about ANYTHING. I’m pointing out the fact that you’ve essentially plagiarized the work of someone else and it’s illegal, as in against the law.
I am sorry but I just don’t see your point. Plagiarizing someone’s work by definition means that Thom took credit for someone elses work. Which is not the case here.
You have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Thom’s intentio was to pass off this work as his. Every indication on the osnews.com site shows that it wasn’t his intention to do so. The quotes around the text and “Linked by Thom Holwerda on 2005-10-28 11:17:44 UTC” Under the heading clearly show that all Thom did was link the article with a URL to the original article in the quoted text.
TO plagiarize the text he would have to have copied the text and made a submission of the text to OSNews.com as his own article with no reference to the original.
I am sorry you are just whining.
justin, it sucks to be you…
Openoffice 2.0 loads up in 6 seconds on my machine(2seconds reopening) so i’m not complaining. I’m running Slackware-10.2/DroplineGnome-2.12.1
First start dropping all the projects that only exists becuase they started before something better existed. Uno, the widgets lib they use, starbasic, java for small things like help and wizards, and a lot of other crust. Use gtk, qt or wxWidgets for graphics, swig for integrating with other languages, and use python as a script language and for the wizard and help if needed.
The only problem is that all this would be a very hard thing to do, but would make openoffice the faster and more complete office application for sure.
Other good project would be to try to use a bit of the gnome hig or even asking for the gnome ui hackers to clean up a bit of the openoffice interface.
Most of that is GUI stuff. Currently the GUI is about as fast as it need to be. Sure faster would be nice, but on modern hardware it is OK. By the time OpenOffice 3.0 gets out the average computer will be much faster.
A bigger problem would be how OOo handles large datasets. E.g. the spredsheat test from ZDnet a while ago that took several minutes to open. The fact that small and medium size files opens resonably quick but very large is extremely slow indicates that there is something wrong with the algorithms or datastructures used.
Java gets used quite a bit in OpenOffice.org. In OpenOffice.org 1.1.4 Java was used for the following:
1. The Report Autopilot
2. JDBC driver support for Java-based databases
3. XSLT filters
4. BeanShell, the Netbeans scripting language, and the Java UNO bridge
5. Export filters to the Aportis.doc (.pdb) format for the Palm or Pocket Word (.psw) format for the Pocket PC
In OpenOffice.org 2.0 Java is additionally used in
1. Many parts of Base, the new Access-like database application; in particular the file-format which is a HSQLDB database
2. The media player, which adds movie and sound clips to documents
3. Mail merges to e-mail, which also require Java Mail
4. All document wizards in Writer
The problem people have is that quite a bit can mean very different things to different people. I would say that Java really isn’t used that much because of the above items you aren’t going to be using them all the time. It would be different if the UI was written in Java – but it’s just a few features that a lot of people don’t even use. (With the exception of Base, the HSQLDB backend there counts as quite a bit for me)
I get your point, but imagine how repetitive OSN would look if I were to do that. The link *in itself* states the source.
Just watch out for whatever I have to say about this on OSN-Meta [ http://www.osnews.com/meta ].
i never setup OO to use java and have not felt crippled or missed any features… maybe you cant miss what you never have….?
also forgot, i set mine up differently and get great results…
undo steps – 5
use for OO – 32
per object – 1
number of objects – 1
and I also stop the logo from coming up since it makes me feel like I am watching it for a while!
I dont know the mechanics behind any of this but my machine is a 400mhz with 256megs of ram and OO starts in a few seconds….
The other is to go to Java options and disable them.
i can’t find those ‘java options’ (OOo 1.1.3) is that for OOo 2?
This DEFINITELY worked for me! Anyone got any more tips?
Edited 2005-10-28 17:16
Mozillaquest.com gives OOo2 an overall endorsement “. . . our first glimpse at OpenOffice 2 is favorable — so far, we like it! . . . OpenOffice is free, it does not require registration, and there is no product activation requirement . . . it gives lots more bang for the buck than does Microsoft office. OpenOffice is a better choice than is Microsoft Office.” But on the other hand they report problems with OOo2 file handling “if this issue remains unresolved, we likely will modify if not withdraw our statements that OpenOffice can read MS Office files and write MS Office files.” http://www.mozillaquest.com/OpenSource05/OpenOffice-2-release_Story…
Sure seems OOo2 could use some polishing
Federico Mena Quintero wrote a blog entry about Calc performance: http://primates.ximian.com/~federico/news-2005-10.html#oocalc-perfo…
NeoOffice/J is fine as a port of OOo, but it’s just so bloody slow. I know it’s because much of it has been written in Java to make it run “better” on the Mac in a native fashion. I could use the standard OOo but it would run under X11, which is ugly on the Mac.
I’m curious to know if these hints will make a difference w/ NeoOffice. Guess I’ll find out tonight when I check.
In all honesty I think OpenOffice is going to be absolutely amazing. I love the way this story has been posted. Fills me with confidence about the future. Nevermind the issue, its the community. No doubt Openoffice 3.0 will be probably run like greased lightning.
Me, I’m depressed that so many people still seem bent on denying that a speed/memory issue even exists (see comments re: the previous OOo newspost). At this rate, improvement is gonna take a while…
…as for Lancer (the SSE aotuv optimization -> http://homepage3.nifty.com/blacksword/index_e.htm) the code must be rewritten to be better optimized.
For the moment Moox-like builds (http://www.moox.ws/tech/mozilla/mdefs.htm) would be great.
Marco Ravich
Isnt OOo a C++ app? With some Java sprinkled in? Thats what I thought it was…I dont know the inner working of OOo so this comment maybe totally wrong but I think a rewrite from scratch would be required to get rid of the slowness…and the quickstarter.
removing open office and installing abiword helps speed things up.
🙂
f–k You OSnews.com!
Your first mistake was comparing apples to oranges.
Now you are trying to solidify your reports on this event by posting an article entitled…
“How To Speed up OpenOffice”
OpenOffice is faster than MS Office on 99% of it’s functions. PERIOD!
You guys are SHIT and you know it.
f–k YOU!
How about you quite whinging about something which you clearly have no right/clue.
Why not make your own comparison if this is unfair?
Oh yeh, because your 12.
To speed up OO.o gui I always switch off:
1. Icons in menus = “Tools->Options->View->Show icons in menu”
2. Fonts Antialiasing = “Tools->Options->View->Antialias fonts”
and with memory tweaks OO.o is fast enough to day by day work.
I’m using Arch Linux/XFCE4/OO.o UX Polish version 1.1.4/2.0.0
Best regards.
Skyscraper
I turned off Java and increased the cache sizes and OO really is faster now. It only takes about 6 seconds to load on my system which is an older Thunderbird Athlon chip with 515MB RAM. Java is funny thing. Everytime someone adds it to a desktop application it dramatically slows down the startup time. When Java is compiled and running on a server for JSP and servlets it runs great since you don’t see how long it took to turn on the server once it is up and running. Maybe developers for open source projects should consider dropping Java from any desktop application project. This would seem like a good solution, no?
MSoffice is a bit flakey, in Word anyway – pictures move about in a random and unpredictable manner – on the other hand I’m getting old and have usually nodded off before OpenOffice.org has got around to opening a file.
Abiword and Gnumeric, anyone? (Or on my KDE box Koffice, I know that’s flakey too – less so in 1.4 – but it’s flakiness is more lovable than MSoffice’s)
But at least since the sparkly wonder magic of *o*p*e*n*
s*o*u*r*c*e we can choose…
I am sorry but I just don’t see your point. Plagiarizing someone’s work by definition means that Thom took credit for someone elses work. Which is not the case here.
This seems to be flying over your head, and you clearly do not understand the point. This is also not a trial, and proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” is thrown right out the window here. This is plagiarism.
By merely posting the article on OSNews.com without making a reference (read REFERENCE) Thom has implicitly taken credit for the original author’s work. The “Linked by” and quotation marks are not references (neither is the link to the article) and do nothing to give credit (read CREDIT) to the author as the originating creator of the article. A simple blurb such as (theinquirer.net) is all that could be added, so as to not mislead the reader into thinking that OSNews.com composed the article, which happens often here. Passing quotation marks off as credit is cheap and not complete.
You can say I’m whining all you want, however I am making a very critical and important point here. The actions of the article “linkers” make OSNews come across as a second rate news site when credit is not given accordingly.
Later,
– j
Justin said: “This seems to be flying over your head, and you clearly do not understand the point. This is also not a trial, and proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” is thrown right out the window here. This is plagiarism.
“By merely posting the article on OSNews.com without making a reference (read REFERENCE) Thom has implicitly taken credit for the original author’s work. The “Linked by” and quotation marks are not references (neither is the link to the article) and do nothing to give credit (read CREDIT) to the author as the originating creator of the article.”
A mountain out of a molehill, this is. Justin, this isn’t plagiarizing, it’s just referencing that happens to be poor or just enough depending on your values. I think it is clear to everyone that the internet doesn’t have a formal standard for referencing other works. Everyone who’s used the net, however, knows that a hyperlink is a reference to a different page or site. A hyperlink might be adequate to reference a work since everyone knows that they can dig deeper into a piece of writing by clicking on a link. It might be even better to add the original author to the quotation, but I don’t think it’s necessary.
Another example of a common practice of quoting is to put the quote in italics which seems to work almost all the time to designate a quotation and no one seems to think that the author is claiming someone else’s writing as their own. As you can see above I’ve gone to extra efforts to quote and put the original author – perhaps a bit over the top.
This seems to be flying over your head, and you clearly do not understand the point. This is also not a trial, and proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” is thrown right out the window here. This is plagiarism.
Didn’t you claim plagiarism was illegal and against the law? In court you have to prove “beyond resonable doubt” that Thom was passing someone elses work as his.
I think you just started attending college and took your first writing class and are parroting the lesson here. Or atleast that is what you are coming off looking like. You might want to wait till the end of term till they teach not all writing is equal and all rules don’t apply uniformly every where.
Arun,
You’ve got balls to turn this interesting conversation into a personal attack against me with your various assumptions in regards to my education.
Furthermore. how dare you try and play this off against me as some childish “parroting” of newly learned or aquired knowledge.
You and Thom have both turned this forum from a pleasant, mature conversation into an immature, sarcastic play ground.
Both of you, grow up.
– Justin
You can say I’m whining all you want, however I am making a very critical and important point here.
It might appear critical in your eyes but not in mine. I could care less whether people are quoted properly. Also, did you remember to quote the people involved in creating the alphabet we use to write? Did you quote the creator of HTML every time you type in a textbox? Why not? How far do you want to take it. Me thinks you would be good in a government job with lots of paperwork. Just a hunch.
Justin, you come barging in here falsely accusing me of plagiarism, with no obvious evidence to back that accusation up. You fail to convey a point. And knowing the Inquirer, you failed to get a for you satisfying response from them.
When I get ridiculous accusation thrown at me, I reply with biting sarcasm. That’s who I am. The fact that you fail to see the light side of my comments, and take everything I say as a personal insult speaks volumes about you.
You have shown to lack any serious knowledge about HyperText, internet linking protocols, academic referencing, and plagiarism. Clearly shown in the fact that you thought you’d gain a serious foothold about this at the Inq.
Now, I suggest you loosen up, and deal with the fact that “us” editors (of newssites) link to eachother the way we do. OSNews does it. eWeek does it like this. The Inq does it like this. The Reg does it like this. CNet does it like this. osV (ugh) does it like this (oh wait– scrap osV, they *did* copy one of my original teasers without linking to it), etc.
Lay off the sarcasm amnd lighten the tone.
Sarcasm almost implies a light tone.