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An hour makes sense to me. Here's what I can think of off the bat: - Handling fonts. A whole world of hurt. Not all of this can be offloaded to OS libraries.

An hour makes sense to me. Here's what I can think of off the bat: - Handling fonts. A whole world of hurt. Not all of this can be offloaded to OS libraries. - Handling layout. Another world of hurt. Especially given that many formats have their own quirks. - Handling complicated things like math and svg. - Understanding HTML (for formatted paste and save-as-html to work) - Understanding PDF - Canvas for the shapes and stuff - Codecs and stuff for images and video - General rendering/compositing code - Accessibility code There's a LOT that goes into building software like this. I worked on Microsoft Office as an intern once. The codebase is huge. Build times would be forever without artifact builds. I currently work on browsers, which are in the same situation with a lot of not-immediately-obvious costs.

banachtarski 10y ago
Graphics engines handle fonts. Even more so than a word processor. They have to AA correctly at all viewing angles, textured, upscale, downscale, animate, etc. Layout is in every modern game engine as UI and is even more powerful. See scaleform for example. Math... isn't in a game engine? HTML/PDF and other formats? Please how about DXT1-N texture formats, crunched textures, scene descriptions, meshes, animation rigging, etc. HTML and PDF are small in comparison. Yea I'm not going to continue. What you may not have realized as a MSFT Office intern is that just because it was slow and awful, it might not have necessarily needed to be.
- Manishearth 10y ago
  > What you may not have realized as a MSFT Office intern is that just because it was slow and awful, it might not have necessarily needed to be. It's not just Office. It's also the two browsers I have worked on (a word processor in particular has a lot in common with a web browser, but it also needs to deal with authoring). There are many things that need to be done that aren't immediately obvious. Sure, a graphics engine has such costs too but it's hard to compare unless you're well acquainted with both sides.
- sanxiyn 10y ago
  Math here means typesetting mathematical formula, which is in word processor and browser, but not in game engine. It's also quite complex.

banachtarski 10y ago

Graphics engines handle fonts. Even more so than a word processor. They have to AA correctly at all viewing angles, textured, upscale, downscale, animate, etc. Layout is in every modern game engine as UI and is even more powerful. See scaleform for example. Math... isn't in a game engine? HTML/PDF and other formats? Please how about DXT1-N texture formats, crunched textures, scene descriptions, meshes, animation rigging, etc. HTML and PDF are small in comparison. Yea I'm not going to continue. What you may not have realized as a MSFT Office intern is that just because it was slow and awful, it might not have necessarily needed to be.

Manishearth 10y ago
> What you may not have realized as a MSFT Office intern is that just because it was slow and awful, it might not have necessarily needed to be. It's not just Office. It's also the two browsers I have worked on (a word processor in particular has a lot in common with a web browser, but it also needs to deal with authoring). There are many things that need to be done that aren't immediately obvious. Sure, a graphics engine has such costs too but it's hard to compare unless you're well acquainted with both sides.
sanxiyn 10y ago
Math here means typesetting mathematical formula, which is in word processor and browser, but not in game engine. It's also quite complex.