Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice sizes

[Martillo1]

Why is LibreOffice's size in disk three times Apache OpenOffice's size? LO is a fork from OO, and AOO is the sucessor of the latter. It puzzles me that their sizes are so different.

% du  -hs /usr/pbi/apacheopenoffice-es-amd64/
1,3G    /usr/pbi/apacheopenoffice-es-amd64/
%
% du -hs /usr/pbi/libreoffice-amd64/
3,8G    /usr/pbi/libreoffice-amd64/

[Beanpole]

It is because there are multiple Openoffice PBI's, one for each localization (you were looking only at the -ES version), while the LibreOffice PBI includes a unified localization scheme (so that one PBI works for all 250+ languages).
Libreoffice just made the change to a unified localization scheme recently, while OpenOffice is still using the old 1-localization per binary scheme (which is why we have about 20 different OpenOffice PBI's). Personally I look forward to when OpenOffice also goes to a unified localization, just so we can have a single PBI that needs to be kept up to date instead of trying to keep track of all 20+ variations and making sure they are all the same except for the localization.

[Martillo1]

Hehe, localization is a heavy load, I see.

We, non-english speakers, appreciate localization efforts. I am fluent in English, so I do not have problems in the technical part, reading man pages or so, but for GUI and apps I really prefer working in my native language.

[Beanpole]

Localization is usually not that heavy, but for a text-heavy office program I guess it gets rather large. My guess would be because it needs to incorporate full-language dictionaries and converters and all the support framework for that setup rather than just the simple translation mechanisms for unchanging text.

Thankfully, the .pbp binary patching process means that you only need to download the full-size PBI once, for updating after that you will just be downloading a small file that only contains what changed between versions. :-)

[Abdul]

Seriously, there's ~100 MB of text per language? A lot...