Why is OpenOffice slow?

[Loïc Martin]

use_real_email_ulist at ohiggins.ubuntu.com a écrit :
> GNOME is consistently speeding up - dapper features great improvements
> in speed and responsiveness over breezy.
>
> OpenOffice is not an entirely native GTK+ app - it has some hacks to
> make it blend in better, but its slow performance can be blamed on its
> architecture, size, and needless complexity.
>
> I strongly recommend trying AbiWord - it's a light, fast word processor
> with basically all the features you'll need, plus state-of-the-art
> equation editing (based on LaTeX) and OpenDocument import/export for
> interoperation with OpenOffice.
>
> Granted, my viewpoint might be a little biased, but I got involved with
> AbiWord a long time ago because it already met my needs then, and it has
> only gotten more capable...
>
> AbiWord (and/or abiword-gnome) is available in the Ubuntu Apt
> Repository (Synaptic)
>
> --Ryan, AbiWord dev and win32 maintainer
> AbiWord Community Outreach Project
>
>
>   
That's good to know (especialy for the equation editing based on LaTeX, 
and I'll have to try that).

My main concern with switching to another Word Processor is the document 
formating in .odf - I know there's a few problems opening a document 
created in OO with Abiword and vice-versa. Since the people I need to 
send the files are using OO on Windows, I 'd like to know how it's 
addressed, because it's (sadly) a showstopper at the moment.

The documents I don't need to share, I can do them easily in LaTeX - the 
word processor is there for sharing purposes (and sometimes when I've 
got a special way to present a page in mind and no time to learn how to 
do it in LaTeX :) )

I didn't really notice speed and responsiveness improvements from Dapper 
to Breezy. I know there's nice numbers on Gnome developers blogs, but I 
didn't gain even a second for Gnome startup (after login) and for 
individual application startup - and the redrawing of the screen when I 
switch desktop is still painfully slow. I think the main slowdown 
occured when they switched to metacity for their wm - up to now, it 
doesn't feel on par with other wm yet (regarding speed), or even with 
the first versions of Gnome.

And the pango problem (read my previous post for the bug number) doesn't 
help the overall feeling of Dapper's slowness if you're affected by it.

Thanks,
Loïc