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List:       linux-ppc
Subject:    Re: KOffice
From:       "Andrew B. Arthur" <arthur99 () global2000 ! net>
Date:       1999-11-20 7:31:17
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>>From: Nelson Abramson <pogtal@erols.com>

> Mike Moran wrote:

>> I'm not sure if this is the place to ask but ...
>>
>> Is there anyone working on KOffice for LinuxPPC?
>>
>> Does anyone have any RPMs for the port of KOffice?

It compiles (some things MAY require to be disabled from the makefile or
reordered in the makefile -- in KOffice especially these tend to have bugs).
kdelibs, kdebase and kdesupport compile here without a problem.

>> I downloaded the latest source snap-shots from koffice.kde.org
>> and began compiling them, but this required me to upgrade
>> to the latest readline library from gnu.org and frankly, I'm
>> a little nervous about installing them, fearing incompatibility
>> going from 2.2 to 4.0.

That must be a new dependency, that didn't exist the last time I compiled
it.

My biggest problem with KDE 2 (especially KOffice) was it's compile speed
and run speed. For one, Mico takes forever + 24 hours to compile (at least
on a PowerMac 4400/200/32RAM/64SWAP). Obviously on a supercharged box used
normally for PowerPC Linux development, it is much faster. Everything else
compiled faster. KOffice seemed slow to start up, sometimes taking longer
then Word 98 on this machine, but I think that also Mico's fault.

This has become less of an issue, since KDE 2 has become less dependent on
Cobra (and the slow but powerful cobra interpreter) for inter-application
communication, and is instead using the UNIX standard libICE, which should
make things feel much faster.

I haven't had the time or effort to compile a modern version of KDE 2,
although I have used both an ancient March-qt-1.4 version and
July-qt-2-cobra version. The improvements were quite obvious -- and it looks
like there are more in the November version.

>> Any experiences, help, pointers, or warnings are appreciated.

> I would be VERY careful with koffice.  I have had a lot of bad
> experiences on a variety of linux platforms (debian on ix86, linuxppc,
> etc) where it just never works :)

> It has a lot of wierd system
> requirements, wanting old versions of the libc libraries but new ones of
> python and a few others.

Again, newer versions demand less, since their configure scripts have been
improved so that if you don't have something, you just lose it's
functionality, but it still compiles. For example, if you don't have jdk
installed, it won't require it and won't enable Java support in the KDE web
browser or lack mesa, you won't get opengl screensavers or if you lack mico
you won't get special scripting/cobra support in some apps (and some will be
skipped since they still depend on mico).

I can't comment on it wanting old libc libraries to compile -- that seems
rather strange to me.

> kIllustrator is in rpm form on the ftp site though.

KIllustrator has seemed stable and feels solid to me, however you can tell
it is lacking of features still.

>I would recomend a blend of gimp, abiword, killustrator, kpaint,
> etc (and maybe even latex if you are REALLY serious about documents :) ).

And I would just suggest rebooting in the Mac OS and using Microsoft Word 98
and PageMaker 4.0. Most of the office apps for Linux are still _immature_,
even if they are rapidly growing up.

At any rate, Krash freeze is taking place right now (pre-1.89 preview
release of KDE) in which all major parts should be at least somewhat usable
and compilable -- and talking to some KDE developers I know (such as
mosfet00) they claim that it has become relatively complete and stable --
and similar to what shipped (in stability and completeness) in GNOME 1.0
(which I am not sure if that is meant in a good way or a bad way :).

Go and try it. By the time KDE 2.0 comes out, there will be stable usable
packages, within hours of the official release (hopefully, assuming franzo
and slice_ race again with this like KDE 1.1.2).


Thanks,

Andrew B. Arthur
arthur99@global2000.net
(G)AIM: AArthur PPC


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