On 7/3/06, Dark Magician <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I fail to see how installing X is very difficult, its in the installation cd. It took me less than 15 minutes to install everything all together.
You fail to see how it is difficult? Well, good for you. There are many people (as evidenced by OOo's own site) that have problems with it. Heck, the "Mini How-To for Installing OpenOffice.org 2.0 X11 Version for Mac OS X" is 17 pages long! It's a "mini-howto" and it's, I'll repeat that - SEVENTEEN PAGES LONG. Yeah, it's no problem to install at all! The Mac OS X download page points users here: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/x11/ - to get X11. The problem is - there is no download anywhere on that page. It just gives some basic information about X11 - not how to install it - or where to get it. The link *should* go to this page: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/x11formacosx.html - except that *that* page is only X11 for Panther - which is several years old now. There is no where that I've found (and I've looked) to download X11 for Tiger. You *have to* install that off the OS X DVD. If you lost the DVD that came with your MacBook - you cannot install OpenOffice.org - not without buying another copy of Tiger. So you're out $129 plus tax to get this "free" office suite. Or you could just download NeoOffice. It runs "out of the box". BTW, Microsoft Office for Mac only cost $149 - plus you get a $50 mail in rebate between now and September - and you can legally install it on 3 Macs. I'm not adovacating buying MS Office - I'm just saying it would be cheaper to do that than to buy Tiger again to install OOo X11. Now, is it all OpenOffice.org's fault that finding and installing X11 is this complicated and confusing? No, it's not. In anything, it's Apple's fault for not putting a download for Tiger's X11 on their website. However, it *is* OpenOffice.org's fault for requiring X11. If two guys in their spare time can figure out how to make OOo work on Mac without X11 - then surely the combined efforts of Sun Microsystems paid staff and the " OpenOffice.org Community" could figure it out at some point in the last 3 years. But they haven't. Now why haven't they? (And I say "they" because some have suggested that by promoting NeoOffice *at all* I fail to qualify as a member of the OpenOffice.org Community - and am merely a "user" - despite my financial contributions, self-directed, self-paid-for promotion of OOo, contribution of code to Windows installers for OOo, submitting bug reports, contributing art and screenshots, etc..) Why haven't Sun and/or the OOo community been able to match what 2 guys did in the past 3 years? Are the two NeoOffice guys super geniuses? Are they in league with the Devil and have unholy skills of programming? Is the OpenOffice.org community unable to code? I don't think any of these are the case (although, I'm sure Patrick and Ed are very smart - I don't think their intelligence is superhuman). No, I think there are other reasons that OOo still needs X11, while Neo hasn't for years. Some political, Patrick and Ed don't want their efforts to get swallowed up by the OOo project - a little vain, perhaps - but they've been able to do it on their own, and the community hasn't come close - so they have some right to be prideful. Patrick and Ed don't want to submit their code. That's their right. So, let's stop blaming them. Let's focus on why a community of thousands and a major software company can't port an office suite to one of the top three, if not top two, desktop operating systems in the world. Very simple, really - they haven't tried. For whatever reason, Sun Microsystems don't want to use Java (owned by Sun Microsystems) to make OOo (and consequently, StarOffice) run on Macs. It could have something to do with Sun's own Solaris operating system - or perhaps their fondness for Linux. By merely porting StarOffice to Mac, it may, in some way, be construde as validating Mac OS X. I don't know. But what about the OOo community. They have no agenda against Mac, right? I mean - the OpenOffice.org community is cross-platform, Solaris peoople working with Windows people working with Linux people working with BSD people working with OS/2 Warp people - all in one big happy utopian wonderland of free code and software. Except for the Mac people. They don't even get to sit with the grown ups at the big download page. They have to load some weird foreign windowing system to get a slower, older version of OpenOffice.org to even try to run on their computers. Or, they could just install Linux, right? The problem has been the people who can code don't care about Macs. They are either wanting to get it to Windows - to reach the most users - or get it to *n*x - so their FOSS buddies can use it. Mac people have money, right, I mean, they bought a Mac - so they must have tons of cash falling from the rafters. They'll just buy MS Office. Or heck - if they really want it - they can port it themselves! Besides, we gave them an X11 port, and a few links to something - they can figure it out. What else do they want? Gesh! Oh, but wait - I'm ignoring the current effort to port it natively. Like I've said - I've been waiting for 3 years for someone to match NeoOffice's ease of install, Aqua-fied look and feel, and lack of dependancies. It hasn't happened yet. I am sorry if you believe that I am contributing to the problem by having the 15 people who have visited my site in the last 6 months try NeoOffice instead of OpenOffice.org. I mean, they are just end users - like me - they don't actually matter. I know I sure as hell don't. -- - Chad Smith http://www.gimpshop.net/ http://www.whatisopenoffice.org/ http://www.chadwsmith.com/
