Proposed F19 Feature: Apache OpenOffice

[James Hogarth]

On 4 February 2013 12:39, Andrea Pescetti <pescetti at apache.org> wrote:

> Kevin Kofler wrote:
>
>> * What benefit does this package have over LibreOffice, to justify
>> carrying
>>    2 packages doing essentially the same thing?
>>
>
> They are indeed two productivity suites, but they are evolving in
> different directions. There's a "Features" link in the proposal
> https://fedoraproject.org/**wiki/Features/ApacheOpenOffice<https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/ApacheOpenOffice>
> that lists unique features of OpenOffice 4.0, including the new user
> interface (sidebar), the new accessibility support (a key factor for
> adoption by institutions), interoperability enhancements and performance
> improvements. Again, the proposal is not saying or implying in any way
> which of the two is better, and this might vary by user, or even by single
> task.


When this hit the fedora-devel mailing list it actually spurred me to look
at the AOO mailing list and compare features between OO.org/AOO and LO...

The first problem here is that the "rough target for release"  as it has
been named is in April... the branch from rawhide is currently estimated to
be end of February - AOO isn't even packaged and in rawhide yet - forget
the main release - and for such a large package with the issues pointed out
about conflicting names in soffice, oocalc, oowriter and so on (which has a
knock on effect on LO packaging) is up for question - assuming AOO gets
packaged at all.

We all know how releases can get delayed as well and as this is the first
*major* release of AOO with the IBM Symphony code being merged in (with the
new look and so on) it would seem logical to have a higher chance of delay
or have a higher level of bugs or kinks to be worked out due to the
Symphony merge ongoing rather than the older (but stable) oo.org code/UI.

So it would seem advisable to take the 4.0 release out of scope and focus
on whether 3.4.1 (current) can be packaged given the issues already raised
and then look at 4.0 as and when AOO complete their work.

I followed the links from your fedora proposal page to look at features...

The release planning link for 4.0 has no details as to when a beta might
be available and everything is 'in progress' or 'proposed'  with not much
detail and fairly vague descriptions.

The 'code' link is to the branches directory of the openoffice code - but
it's not clear what you intend to build/package/release from that which is
perhaps not that surprising given that 4.0 doesn't even exist yet in alpha
much less beta state.

The 'document fidelity' and 'sidebar' links are for proposals/work for 4.0
and given the high likelihood of not making F19 (even the proposal page
acknowledges this and suggests falling back to the stable 3.4.1 code) I
submit should not be used in evaluating this proposal at this time... the
4.0 page doesn't even have any test details, and the release notes are very
empty:

Now taking the assumption of AOO 3.4 (which I b
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