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From: Ian Lynch on 18 Feb 2007 15:44
On Sun, 2007-02-18 at 07:12 -0500, Paul C. Ross wrote:
> Dear Sir:
> I am a recent user of Open Office and find it to be a rather excellent
> set of applications. In addition to using the desktop computer with
> WinXP, I use a NEC MobilePro 900C with Win CE4.2 as the OS. The
> writing and spreadsheet tools for this very useful NEC machine are, to
> say the least, awful. Is there any work planned to develop a version
> of Open Office for this environment? The user community is small but
> enthusiastic and the Win CE 4.2 platform on the NEC 900C has many
> advantages over a laptop.

Makes you wonder why MS haven't ported a full version of MS Office or at
least Works to CE. Probably because it would hit the market for Windows
on the desktop where they get many times more for a Windows license than
they would for a CE license. They will probably say the device is not
powerful enough to run MS Office and that is an issue with OOo too
because of the size of the megalithic code that is common to all the
apps. However as PDAs and mobiles get ever more RAM it seems only a
matter of time before full office tools come to handhelds although its
might be more likely on embedded Linux than CE.

> Its instant on, the machine is small but very easy to use and the
> battery charge lasts between 5 and 10 hours. There is a German
> company making a software suite for this system called Softmaker and
> while the writing program is ok, the Spread sheet is almost unusable
> and no companion program exists for doing presentations in this suite
> of applications.
>
> Clearly not all of the Open Office functionality is needed on the CE
> platform.

Its not that easy to separate functions out of OOo. That is why you
can't just download Writer.

> What is needed is support for file interchangeability with the
> desktop applications and support for the formatting options like
> tables in the text processing.

There is mobile office for Symbian that works with ODF so should have
pretty good file exchange with OOo but I don't know of anything on
WinCE.

> In the Spreadsheet, full and well supported functions and the ability
> to edit and modify the sheet or create a new one on the fly is needed.
> In the presentation unit, editing and modifying a presentation and the
> ability to show it on screen and on another device (monitor or
> projector) are key requirements.

Resources are tight in the OOo project so I don't see a port to WinCE as
very likely when its difficult enough to get the resources for a Mac
Port. Probably your best hope is that one of the many developers does
something that supports OpenDocument Format. Snag is that CE is more
likely to be linked with MS who seem very reluctant to support ODF ;-)

> There are several devices using the Win CE OS that are in use today
> that really need the kind of modern application package that Open
> Office provides. These include the HP Jornada, the NEC Mobile Pro and
> DOCOMO Sigmarion III.
>
> And some people in the user community are beginning to apply the Linux
> OS to these devices in order to increase the functionality of them.

I think in the longer term Linux and OOo on such devices is more likely
since OOo is already ported to Linux.

>
Ian
--
www.theINGOTS.org
www.schoolforge.org.uk
www.opendocumentfellowship.org

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