Reviews – Page 79

What Ails OpenOffice (And Whether Lotus Symphony Is The Cure)

Now there, generally, I’m quite tolerant about what shortcoming any free / open source software might have, but as I said, I’m pretty tolerant about that. This one deserves to be blasted though.

Frankly, I’ve lost all interest in OpenOffice ever since I came across IBM’s Lotus Symphony. Yes, I’m perfectly aware that right now it’s under a proprietary license – but that’s because it modifies an older code-base of OpenOffice (v1.x), which was dual-licensed. Anyway, Symphony 2.0 will also be released, and will have to be open source as the OOo v2.x code-base is under LGPL. Why do I like this new entrant? Here’s why:

Tabbed interface: It’s high time someone did this, given that it has been so popular in the web browser market. Lotus Symphony has a tabbed interface – which means, you can open up a word document, a spreadsheet, and a presentation – all in one window in tabs. Or any combination of the type of documents.
Context-sensitive editing: Many people have said time and again that they find MS Office 2007’s Ribbon-style confusing. Symphony finds an elegant solution to that, by keep the normal formatting bar where it should be; and instead, adding a context-sensitive sidebar. So for example, when you open a presentation, the sidebar shows stuff that you can do on a slide / page; while if you click on an object (like a picture or a text box), it changes to show stuff you can do on that object. Even the formatting bar at the top keeps graying out options which can’t be used at that time.
Better looks!: I wouldn’t have admitted this fact earlier, but since Symphony is out, to hell with OOo. Absolutely childish icons, as if they had been made in TuxPaint. In fact, I’m darn sure they must have been made in TuxPaint. Symphony’s interface is the total opposite, with a nice cool blue shade, and everything else which doesn’t look like a GTK+ program. Put simply, it looks elegant.

And of course the, opening screen. Like Vivek said:

IBM. They get the point across very clearly, don’t they?

That apart, Symphony is still in beta (testing) stage, so I don’t advise people (except geeks, who install software just for the heck of it) to start using this. Indeed, it doesn’t work as desired at all times – especially with images in presentations. Wait on for the final release, which would be in a few months.

Why this sudden tirade against OOo though? I’m fed up. FED UP of Sun Microsystems, and their absolutely we-won’t-bother-to-do-anything except-use-Sun-JRE-put-our-logo-and-let-the-community-do-every other-goddamn-thing-on-their-own-attitude. For the exam coming up this Sunday, I thought of revising from the PPTs that my coaching institute (Career Launcher) makes. Fair enough, except that being a gung-ho FOSS freak, I wanted to convert them to OpenDocument format before proceeding. Saves space too, and is more responsive on OpenOffice. So I decided to use its Document Converter Wizard – which I had used earlier for documents (.DOC) files – since I had quite a few PPTs.

That would seem to be that, except that the final OpenDocument Presentations (ODPs) that it created were horribly mangled: they were missing transitions, images placed haywire, certain characters with their font pitch awry; and it was all selective. Not on every slide, not on every presentation, but randomly and in most of them. Mystified, I used the ‘Save As’ option to recreate some manually from the PPTs, and they came out fine.

So here’s the bottomline – it’s obviously not a fault of the ODP format, but more of OpenOffice itself. And if I’m not wrong, the conversion wizard was Sun’s baby, and uses the Java Runtime Environment. OpenOffice enjoys a lot of free publicity, just because it’s the first thing airhead tech reviewers with no knowledge of open source (other than Ol’ Faithful Wikipedia), know about. And it’s a disgrace that THIS is the face of open source software that people see. It lacks that polish. Full marks to IBM, for Lotus Symphony clearly shows that IBM has made some investment in that project. I still won’t go all-out supporting it, unless a GPL / LGPL version comes out, but Symphony shows that something kick-ass can be made – that from OpenOffice code-base itself.

On the other hand, with Sun Microsystems, I’m clearly pissed after this incident. The document converter is something MANY people might use after switching, and clearly, not enough attention has been paid. I tried it on Linux, then on Windows; and on different versions of OOo – the latest one (v2.4) and the older one (v2.3) – both gave the same error. Sun, it seems, only bothers to associate itself with OOo so that it can take a snapshot of the code, stick an $80 price tag, and sell StarOffice. Of course, and they have to push Java also with it.

That’s not just ‘it’ either. On Linux AND Windows, I’ve seen that OOo is brought down to its knees by MS Office format files, with the problem being more pronounced in Windows. On Linux, it’s a slight delay which you’d only notice if you’ve opened ODF files earlier – the difference is very slight. On Windows, you’re roadkill with an MS Office file on OOo – especially if you haven’t enabled its QuickStarter. No, it’s not about my system. On an HP laptop running Windows Vista Business Edition, with 1 GB RAM and an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, OOo takes longer to open a PPT than my Linux box, with around 256 MB RAM (after one of my RAM chips was blown) and an AMD Athlon 2800+ processor. And I’ve seen that multiple times. What next? Expect people to switch to Linux to be able to open their documents faster? My bet is that people will give Linux a wide berth, especially if they use OpenOffice first.

Just pray that Symphony comes out in a free / open source licensed version soon. For your own sake (if you use open source software), and for the image of our community on the whole.

Foo Fighters’ Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace Album Review

Got my hands on the latest Grammy-winning (for Best Rock Album) album Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace from the Foo Fighters; courtesy Jimi Hendrix (do check out his nice post on bird watching at JNU). Thought it’d be a nice idea to take a bit of a break in between the school exams to check this out.

I’m most certainly not a hardcore Foo Fighters fan. Damn, I’m not even a ‘lightcore’ fan of them. I do happen to like a few of their songs – like Learn To Fly! By far one of my most favourite songs till now. Even got featured (ahem, on a lot of insistence by me) in the Code Wars 2007 video. I can listen to that again and again again…and yet not get bored. That’s ONE groovy track.

With only that much of a background of an interest in them, I got down to reviewing their album. Trackwise review follows.

Artist: Foo Fighters (Official website / Wikipedia)
Album: Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace
My rating of Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace: 6.7 / 10

The Pretender (rating – 4.9 / 5): At first thought, I didn’t like the way they switched from a very slow start to something quite fast; but somewhere down the line, I loved it – because it gels in with the title, The Pretender. And I’m not being sarcastic here. Got some pretty slick music mixing towards the end of the track. The first track is the best out in the whole album. BTW, this was the same song that they played at the Grammy’s. Also won a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance.
Let It Die (rating – 3.1 / 5): A song which is confused about the message it wants to get across. With a VERY abrupt ending too. Soothing in the beginning, it switches track midway to go into a punk rock rant, and ends as abruptly as it switched. As if the singers decided, “Um, just let’s end the song here”.
Erase Replace (rating – 2.4 / 5): People like Apoorv who seem to have discovered the phenomenon of beats only recently (bit odd, that) will love this track. Apart from that, nothing much makes this track stand out. You can safely erase and replace this song from your hard drive.
Long Road To Ruin (rating – 3.8 / 5): Misses the point again. Too cheerful for something titled such – almost as if looking forward to the ruin. Catchy, in a twisted sort of way, if you can forgive them for that. Especially when you consider the fact that reviewing albums amidst school exams (like I’m doing) IS a long road to ruin. 😉
Come Alive (rating – 4.2 / 5): One of the best tracks in the album. Predominantly slow paced, this one’s the sort of stuff you want in a Grammy-winning album.
Stranger Things Have Happened (rating – 3.6 / 5): The longest track in the album. Comes closest to old school rock, at least to people like me on this side of the new millenium. Long stretches of instrumental in it.
Cheer Up Boys, Your Makeup Is Running (rating – 2.3 / 5): Frankly, I still haven’t figured out what this song is all about; and that is something I don’t like – when a song isn’t clear about what it’s talking about. It’s a very good reason for why I hate ‘that rap shit’ so many people happen to like these days. This song had nothing to do with highly athletic cosmetic products, as far as I can figure out.
Summer’s End (rating – 3.0 / 5): Not a bad song, as such, but it didn’t get me excited about it. Weird feeling. Sounds nice, but doesn’t generate excitement.
The Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners (rating – 4.3 / 5): Wasn’t looking forward to such an oddly-titled song. It’s completely instrumental. Being a sentient carbohydrate based life-form, even I can look beyond punk rock at times. Liked it.
Statues (rating – 3.8 / 5): Idyllic song. Seems like if the track above this one had lyrics, this would be it.
But Honestly (rating – 3.5 / 5): But honestly, I’d not have given this song even this much rating, if it wasn’t for the good accompanying instruments. The beginning simply murders the interest of the listener, but the song does try to redeem itself towards the end. Once again, I give it this rating ONLY because of the instrumental bits.
Home (rating – 3.9 / 5): Pretty ‘feel good’ note song. Note my cuppa of tea, but I understand that many people will like this sort of stuff. Nice instrumentals too.

Overall, I’d say it’s not a album that I’d wait hours for at a store to buy, nor is it an album which I’ll throw away in disgust the moment I get it. Maybe most of the songs are simply not…my preferred genre. Yes, there were 1-2 brilliant tracks, but that’s hardly redeeming for me. By no means though am I saying it didn’t deserve the Grammy – it did, because it IS good music – just simply that it’s not my type.
Having listened to a whole album now (in its completeness) by the Foo Fighters, I can say now that for me, liking their song is a hit-or-miss affair. Most of their songs comprise a lot of ‘mood swings’ and / or changes in pace. Sometimes it works for me, and wows me. Most of the time, it doesn’t. When it does wow me though, it turns me into an addict of that song. At times, I’ve spent whole days listening to nothing but Learn To Fly in continuous loop.

Not an album to miss if you like the Foo Fighters, or like alternative / soft rock. People more heavier stuff are better off staying away for this one – you won’t hate it, but you won’t like it either.