Alexandro wrote: > Their software has been discontinued, that is why I wanted to express > the feeling that SO 5.2 was a much diverse solution. And that 'looking > back' it was a better application than what now is SO7. > > AFAIK OOo drop many things on the deal between Star(Media?) and Sun > for OOo. But it seems it droped also for StarOffice 6. The end result > is what many know today as OOo lacks (email client, calendar, Browser, > Chart Engine, Bitmap Editor, database etc).
Some of the components have been removed mainly because of missing development resources: mail/news client, formula design application, calendar application. You can't use development resources twice. So if you don't have enough resources for all parts you have to decide which are more important even if that means you have to drop something that you would like to keep. An additional problem with the mail client was that it was damn slow and technically broken. To stay in the product it had to be rewritten from scratch, something that all the more so wasn't doable with the available resources. You get a much better application BTW by using Thunderbird (or in former times Mozilla). Why reinventing the wheel? The Chart engine is still there, I don't know what you are talking about. The difference in SO5 was that you could create a Chart as a standalone document, but who needs that? It's much more convenient to edit the chart data in Calc and embed the chart. The Image Editor also is still there, but it's more integrated. Only one function was removed: the pixel editor. I used StarOffice for several years and I never feeled the need to change single pixels in my embedded graphics or photos. But YMMV. The database application we have in OOo today is far better than the one we had in SO5, but OK, it took two versions of OOo to reach there. The OOo "browser" was nothing else than "WriterWeb", with the only difference that documents where loaded from the web asynchronously and loaded as "read only" by default. It was hopelessly outdated (HTML 3 subset only) and so not really usable for browsing the web today. It was decided to keep it as a simple HTML editor (and without the asynchronous loading because for editing you need the whole file before you can start). I would have preferred to remove it completely and instead improve the (X)HTML export of Writer. The desktop was one of the most criticized elements of SO5, it got on the nerves of the majority of users though a very small minority really loved it though the OS desktops at that time already where faster and had more features. It's absolutely sure that it was the major obstacle for a wider adoption of StarOffice and would have been a big problem for OOo also. > Funny enough, asking for those products will produce a massive amount > of traffic yelling out the bloatness of OOo making it a 200Mb > download, however SO 5.2 packed all this tools with a 76Mb download > for windows. I think this comparison doesn't work. OOo today has a lot of functionality that SO5 didn't have: UniCode support, support for Asian Languages and Complex Text Layout, Accessibility, XML file format etc., not counting all the other new features that where added in the last six years. You don't get this for nothing. SO5 is just a completely different program that serves different user needs. You are right that it is a good choice for some people (as is AbiWord or even WordPad - not all users need the same applications!), maybe for them even better than OOo, but overall OOo beats it hands down. Best regards, Mathias -- Mathias Bauer - OpenOffice.org Application Framework Project Lead Please reply to the list only, [EMAIL PROTECTED] is a spam sink. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
