[Smc-discuss] openoffice.org 1.1 shows malayalam

[Mahesh T. Pai]

Whee!!! Finally, OpenOffice.org 1.1 shows  malayalam!!!

Before you jump up in joy, and  rush to your favourite CD vendor for a
CD, I said SHOWS, not supports.

This version is however, a MUST have for all people.

There  are reports  that Tamil  unicode too  is working,  even  on the
ancientest  operating system  (if  you can  call  it an  OS, that  is)
currently available.

Dunno what  mileage OOo gives on  other distros; but this  one is real
faaaaast and light when compared to all its earlier versions, in fact,
it starts  up faster  than mozilla. I  have loaded 400+  *GPL'd* fonts
and earlier  versions used to  take 5 minutes  (5 * 60 =  300 seconds)
and more for loading with all these fonts. 

I  got  it  working  on  debian  woody/testing  (custom  selection  of
packages)  using the  binaries  from debian  testing.  Reordering  and
substitution sort of works, but  rendering is very poor.  Cursor still
moves fixed distances.  So, if you  type 'ko', you get a glyph shaped
like "nka", and the cursor is in the middle of the glyph.

If  I recall  correct, debian  people have  cut out  about 10  MB from
download sizes - the basic files  are now 60.6 MB to download; earlier
versions used to be 70MB+.

I recollect reading somewhere that  OOo uses ICU for rendering CJK and
other non-latin characters.  If correct, this is puzzling, because ICU
comes with a BSD-sort of license from IBM, the arch-rivals of Sun, the
sire of the OOo project.

PS:- Is the list alive???

-- 
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+
                                          
  Mahesh T. Pai, LL.M.,                   
  'NANDINI', S. R. M. Road,               
  Ernakulam, Cochin-682018,               
  Kerala, India.                          
                                          
  http://in.geocities.com/paivakil         
                                          
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+