A National Archive Moves to ODF

Andy Updegrove writes "The National Archives of Australia (NAA) has announced that it will move its digital archives program to OpenOffice 2.0, an open source implementation of ODF. Unlike Massachusetts or the City of Bristol (which announced it would convert to save on total cost of ownership), the NAA will deal almost exclusively with documents created elsewhere in multiple formats. As a result, it provides a "worst possible case" for testing the practicality of using ODF in a still largely non-ODF world. If successful, the NAA example would therefore demonstrate that the use of ODF is reasonable and feasible in more normal situations, where the percentage of documentation that is created and used internally is much larger."

OOo shows how bad Java can be

[jimmyhat3939]

OOo is slow because it's still largely impelemented using a Java VM-based architecture with bytecode and all that entails. I really think these guys should reconsider. MS is moving toward an XML-based file format which shouls be open enough for anyone. And MS Office is a client app written completely in optimized Windows assembler code. That should help with performance hemi-dramatically.

Re:OOo shows how bad Java can be

[iabervon]

The slowness of the XML parser doesn't matter much if you don't save and reload the document with every modification.

Actually, OOo is so slow because they don't use a widget set. The display is hand-drawn by a bunch of monks in Germany, because the project started before Qt or Gtk.

Re:Driver issues; marketing

[swillden]

Or, better, bring a Linux LiveCD & actyually try it.

Oh, that sounds like fun. I'm going to take a Knoppix DVD with me the next time I go to Best Buy. Just imagine how the salespeople will freak out when they think I've reinstalled the OS on one of their display machines -- and then I can watch their heads explode as they try to get their minds around the idea of a LiveCD.