Office 2.02CE with the SHS font improvements

[Sit Heel Speak]

http://www.puppylinux.ca/tpp/SitHeelSpe ... lpha-1.iso
http://www.puppylinux.ca/tpp/SitHeelSpe ... so.md5.txt

md5sum:
8b2c4e395543dff11cc0fa0adf704943 office-2.02CE-SHS-alpha-1.iso

(current revision is alpha-1)

(runs best if Puppy Universal Installer is used to install it as a coexist (frugal) install to an ext3 hard disk partition (created using GPartEd, Partition Magic, or what-have-you) in the lowest 8 GB (or less --1 GB is plenty if you just surf and text-edit) of your disk, with a 256 MB swap partition). Also works well on a vfat partition alongside Win98 if you know how to install Grub4DOS into config.sys and/or autoexec.bat. Also can reside on a flash key.

(if you find yourself at a # prompt after the XOrgWizard runs, just enter "xwin") (only required the first boot)

This is an oldie-but-goodie, a classic retro Puplet, Office-2.02CE, originally introduced by Vietnamese contributor Hacao in August 2006. I have improved the fonting per my "How I Do Fonts In Puppy" thread on the Puppy Linux Discussion Forum.

It runs on a 256MB Intel P2 or AMD K6 machine even with no swap (tested). With a 128 or 256 MB swap partition (not swap file) it will run better and may be able to run with only 128 MB of memory (not tested). On a P3-800 with 256 MB of PC-133 SDRAM, no swap, Writer and Calc start in about three seconds. On a P4-2.66GHz with 1 gig of DDR2-333 RAM, the second start, nothing else running, Open Office Writer and Calc appear in under one second.

Here is how I made this, beginning with the original 2.02CE:

1. Added a selection of True Type fonts (mostly from Sabayon Linux 1.1 PE).
2. Upgraded the libfreetype fonting engine.
3. Adjusted the freetype config files for optimized font rendering.
4. Made all Open Office apps use the Gnome interface, for legible menus.
5. Made all the new fonts available to Open Office.
6. Pre-set the fonts in Seamonkey the way I like them.
7. Gave Seamonkey the ability to middle-button smooth-scroll.
8. Switched the default text editor from Geany to Leafpad (for reliability).
9. Improved the contrast on the desktop icon labels.
10. Included the 'monica' monitor gamma calibration program.
11. Changed the Seamonkey home page to Google.
12. And nothing else. In all other respects this is the original 2.02CE.

User comments "pro" and "con" are invited. I was only a very new Puppy user when 2.02CE was introduced, so I do not know all its good and bad points.

Known pros, cons, and things I've found to fix in the alpha-2 revision:

PROS:
1. The smallest, fastest Puplet I know of with both full Open Office and Seamonkey.
2. Can also be booted from a small USB flash key, not sure exactly how small. I'm running it right now from a 1 GB key formatted FAT16, booted with WakePup 2.0.2.

CONS (this was an _early_ Puplet! Newer ones are much more capable!)
...........(also, in many cases, much less stable!):
1. No support for sata drives, limited support for scsi, dangerous to use with ntfs.
2. Early Puppies and Puplets did not do dhcp well. You'll probably need static IP.
3. You want wireless? Forget it, this is too early of a Puppy.
4. xorgwizard from liveCD takes ~ 60 seconds to probe. A long time, a dark screen. This delay is eliminated once installed to disk or flash key and a savefile created.
5. If you use xorgconfig and fail, try /dev/psaux not /dev/mouse as mouse mountpoint.
6. I have not tried the media player(s) and printing.
7. PMount starts quicker than this very early version of Media Utility Tool (MUT).
8. No Flash, no Java. Many would not consider this a bad thing...
9. Aside from Puppy's inherent security features, it is not "spy grade".
10. It was introduced too early to have the PetGet package manager of new Puppies.
11. On monitors higher-res than 1024x768 it needs the dpi tweaks to look best.
12. But I did not give it any dpi tweaks. Many machines don't need them.
13. I did not adjust gamma. Again, many machines don't need it.
14. The savefile is pup_save.3fs, not renameable. It must be in the topmost directory.

THINGS FOUND SO FAR, WHICH I WILL FIX IN THE NEXT VERSION:
1. wish should be symlinked to wish8.4 (included) not 8.5. Fixes partview.
----(the proper command is '/bin/wish8.4 /usr/sbin/partview')
2. I inadvertently downgraded bash to 3.0. Next version will carry 3.1.
3. In Seamonkey I'll probably change default Proportional and Monospace font sizes to 12, minimum font size to 11. It looks better on my Thinkpad screen at these sizes. You can of course change these values yourself. Tell me any particularly good combinations you find.

I offer this Puplet for those who believe that older hardware can still be useful, and yet for one reason or another cannot use the newer kernels and libraries in more recent Puppies.

May this benefit all children. --SHS February 25, 2008