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Except that KDE is getting the same accessibility support as GNOME, the OO.o KDE integration project is alive and well, WalMart has already been selling KDE systems in the form of Lindows, and many of the articles you link don't even mention GNOME, or don't exist.

http://kde.openoffice.org/ooo-qt/index.html

...The second step in my KDE integration plans was to replace the OOo's VCL layer (GUI toolkit) with its Qt implementation....

...You should have signed Sun's JCA and release your patches both under LGPL and SISSL...

But from TT:

http://www.trolltech.com/developer/faqs/free.html, it gets a lot more complex.

Sun seems to say "DO WHAT YOU WILL IT MUST BE OURS!!!", and Troll Tech is saying "PAY US OR IT IS OPEN!!!"

Which to a shrewd person, maybe the answer simply is OO is dual licensed, so it is both Troll Tech's "open" and Sun's posession.

I need more coffee... or more sleep.

Only the KDE/Qt OpenOffice port link at dot.kde.org was in Google's cache: porting OpenOffice to Qt/KDE

Direct link to kde.openoffice.org

-Mike

Install OpenOffice. It opens that document quite ok (table of contents probably does not look like it was intended, but otherwise the document is ok).

One more thing to add to the "does not work" list. I can't open MS Word password protected files with OO.o. It just says the file is is password protected and quits.

I'm sure you'll be delighted to know that this is an OpenOffice FAQ ;-).

I remember reading about this a while back - essentially, the MSWord "password protection" does absolutely nothing to protect the document files in question - it certainly doesn't encrypt them. It just has a little tag in the file telling MSWord that it's password protected, so don't allow the user to open it unless they supply the correct password.

So of course OpenOffice can open such files without a problem, and in fact used to do so - without asking for the password in question.

I've heard a couple of reasons why the OO developers didn't add the ask-for-password feature (don't know for sure if either are correct): (a) because they didn't want to encourage use of this fake "protection", and (b) because the password itself (stored in the file) was encrypted or hashed and the OO developers couldn't (or just couldn't be bothered trying to) work out the encryption/hashing algorithm so they could do the password-checking routine.

But essentially, they had complaints from people who were worried that a mainstream, easy-to-use application for opening and reading MSWord "password-protected" files could be a problem. So now OO just refuses to open "password-protected" files at all.

Personally, I would have preferred them to keep on opening such files without asking for a password. It could have become a big selling point, while effectively demonstrating what a sham the MS PP "feature" is. ;-)

You do know that OpenOffice.org can communicate with MSAccess databases ? CPH

'The service manager is always the starting point
'If there is no office running then an office is started up
Set objServiceManager= WScript.CreateObject("com.sun.star.ServiceManager" )
'Create the Desktop
Set objDesktop= objServiceManager.createInstance("com.sun.star.fra me.Desktop")
'Open a new empty writer document
Dim args()
Set objDocument= objDesktop.loadComponentFromURL("private:factory/s writer",_
"_blank", 0, args)
'Create a text object
Set objText= objDocument.getText
'Create a cursor object
Set objCursor= objText.createTextCursor
'Inserting some Text
objText.insertString objCursor, "The first line in the newly created text document."&_
vbLf, false

openness of MS Office

'The service manager is always the starting point
'If there is no office running then an office is started up
Set objServiceManager= WScript.CreateObject("com.sun.star.ServiceManager" )
'Create the Desktop
Set objDesktop= objServiceManager.createInstance("com.sun.star.fra me.Desktop")
'Open a new empty writer document
Dim args()
Set objDocument= objDesktop.loadComponentFromURL("private:factory/s writer",_
"_blank", 0, args)
'Create a text object
Set objText= objDocument.getText
'Create a cursor object
Set objCursor= objText.createTextCursor
'Inserting some Text
objText.insertString objCursor, "The first line in the newly created text document."&_
vbLf, false

openness of MS Office

Well, it exists (it's called UNO), but quite obviously it is not the same.

At least it comes with nice bindings for Java, C++, Perl and Python.

A UNO-CORBA bridge was in the works, but I believe there is little interest in this.

See the comment of janderk at the end. Essentially, he tried to convert a Dutch school but because of this bug, he failed.

... is the native Plastik theme that comes with KDE 3.2. (Tip of the day: for added prettiness, set Nimbus Sans L as your default font. Then watch people gape and go 'ooooh!'). None of Xandros' doing, although their choosing it certainly sounds like a proof of good taste.

> ... the customized OpenOffice which is one of the key perks of Ximian

Oh is it?

Well, I'm not, so I guess "we all" aren't.

This could accelerate a native Mac port, since Qt has been ported to Mac OS X.

OpenOffice is completely compatible to the word 1997 format, abiword is mostly (or did they just release a fully) compatible with word 1997 format.

If word is your problem, that has been solved... (you can even run openoffice on those 200mhz machines under windows to try it out first)

The Openoffice bibliography project still isn't working well enough to replace Endnote, but it's getting there...

now to show this to my PHB...

If you ever wanted to demonstrate the level of support available, even prior to today, point people to users@openoffice.org

The support is orders of magnitude better than anything I've seen for a proprietry product

news://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.openoffice.* can be used instead of the mailing lists. Take a look at http://www.openoffice.org/mail_list.html for more details.

Because Star Office costs money while OO is a free download.

SO: Retail MSRP $75.95

OO: Download here.

Obviously Sun is going to price OO "support only" much less than what SO costs with support.

Essentially, Sun knows these products are almost identical, OO is everywhere, and they could make some easy money and push SO by supporting OO in the office. Smart move if it works.

So, as I understand it, you should be able to load Sunbird into Thunderbird as an extension.

And that's definitely good enough, as long as the integration is as simple as running a simple setup program. We definitely don't want to force users to hook it together manually.

The sad state of affairs in this area is very disheartening. We do have one complete, polished PIM suite (Evolution) and one that's shaping up to be just as good (Kontakt) but this is one area where we need something cross-platform, because most organizations have multiple desktop OS's around, and they all have to interoperate. What do you do when you want a PIM suite that runs everywhere? Well, there's Glow, but it's only at its beginning stages of development, and it's subject to Sun's stubborn refusal to fontconfig-ize Java so the display will look like crap for a long time. There's a project to connect Outlook to open source, and I hope they manage to pull it off, but this is Microsoft's home turf so it'll be an uphill battle.

Firebird and Sunbird are the free world's best hope for an open source, cross-platform, professional-quality PIM suite. That's the one that we'll hook up the open source groupware servers to. Why aren't IBM, Sun, Novell/Ximian/SuSE, et al pouring resources into this? Outlook must be taken down.

I see too many companies take something that has been in an open-source product (like a Linux window manager) for years, and rewrite it, add a few features, and release it on Windows, for money. Probably the simplest example is popup blocking, even though most of them are free -- Mozilla and Firebird supported popup blocking long before even the first freeware plugin for Internet Explorer.

So the way to do this right is to do your homework. Before you even start planning on a project, make sure it is a unique project, and not something that could be a 3 kilobyte plugin to an existing project. If you want to try to sell 3 kilobyte plugins, it has to really be a killer app -- the only company I've seen do that successfully is CrossOver.

I realize that you could make an entirely new product with one killer feature, but if that feature could be implemented as a plugin to an existing product, it would take much less work for your competitor to do that, and it would annoy customers who don't want to have to use three different programs that do the same thing because each one has its own killer feature.

Next, if you think you can do it right and still make money, release your source code. Namesys has done this right, and though they make less money than they would otherwise, if you believe in good karma, they must be basking in it. A somewhat less successful way is to do what Netscape did with Mozilla and Sun did with StarOffice, which is based on OpenOffice -- create an open project, then make and sell a product based on that, possibly with a few added killer features (Netscape had spell checking before Mozilla did).

Perhaps the best way to do this is to make an open product and give it away, but charge for techsupport. I believe Mozilla has telephone techsupport now.

If you can't do that, at least be open about your development process. Release early and often. Document everything. Allow people to extend your product somehow, even if it's not with source code -- Half-life does this extremely well. Only charge for the really major updates, and charge less for an update. Listen to your community, and make them a community, not just a consumer base. You want a dialog with that community.

And remember that it's software, and that while there are real costs to developing it, the cost of distributing it (and making new copies) can be very close to 0, so charge appropriately.

Be independent. By that, I mean don't leech off of other companies -- particularly their weaknesses. For example, Symantec and many others sell products that would not exist if Windows was better, and ultimately make a worse experience for the consumer. There's a lot of websites out there that sell products designed to erase your internet history -- do NOT make a product like that. If people really cared so much about their history, they would use a product other than Microsoft Internet Explorer -- a product that deletes your history when you tell it to.

Whatever else your website is, don't just make it a brochure. Make it informative. Even redhat has, as long as I can remember, made their homepage in a way that's designed to hype rather than inform. I should be able to go to your site and click on "about" or "overview" for a description of what your product does -- if not in technical terms, at least not in marketing terms. I don't want to hear about a product that "enhances productivity" but won't say how it "enhances productivity". I should also be able to click on something like "contact" to send you an email.

An open bug database and a forum are also very useful things. Make sure they are open. Don't censor the forum based on content, and for the love of God don't censor the bug database! Good rea

Actually, according to the linked page, "if you write Free software (Open Source software covered by the GPL) you are welcome to download and use the Free Edition of Qt,"...

Actually, if you read what the submitter wrote, he said "free multi-platform" software. OK, I'll grant that X/11 and Mac are "multi-platform", but when those platforms make up ~7% of the market, it's nothing to brag about. Trolltech continues to aggresively deny Qt developers the ability to distribute their works to the vast majority of the computing product. After all, cross-platform Open Source software can't possibly succeed, can it?

...and Trolltech points out that one can buy the current edition of Qt -- seems fair enough.

MSRP of Microsoft Visual C++ .NET Standard Edition: US$109. MSRP of Qt/Windows Professional Edition: US$1550. <sarcasm>Oh, yeah. That's fair.</sarcasm> It's really discriminatory and punitive. And it's still not Open Source. What makes them think that taking the low road like that will convince Windows devlopers to consider Qt?

Yes, but David Byrne loves it and uses it to make art. I suppose we should introduce him to OpenOffice.Org Impress...

I would like it, however, if they included Python & Ruby scripting...preferably using the copies of python & ruby that are in my path

FYI, I've seen that mentioned as a possible upcoming feature; see the the "product concept" document for OpenOfice 2.

Linus Torvalds is not the only one with more resources because of the open source community. Everyone, including Bill Gates, has more resources at their disposal, because of the open source community. We have improved knowledge on all fronts, due to the hobbying of business, as seen from the Open Source community. Hobbies that become replacements for standards, cause positive growth, and better solutions. I think it's because of the love and passion that everyone puts into their hobbies, in hope that they can get somewhere other folks haven't been before. It's like a kind of space exploration, but with the benefit that you can do it in your own basement or home office, den, on a plane or anywhere for that matter. PHP is a great example of how good application of Open Source can make for a much easier and better tool than other, less loved products like ASP.

How many people love ASP? I'm guessing not as many as those who really do love PHP or Perl. :)

You see that because we can all work together to make our products better, the global knowledge is shared and improved upon. Years ago, way before computers, we all had a similar thing to open source. It was called learning and we all did it together. Scholars spent their lives enriching the world with their findings, to better humanity.

Open source is in this same spirit, for mutual benefit based on recognition of participation, not branding, per se. Microsoft spends millions on branding, on marketing, packaging and distrobution. They could easily make loads more money if they focused instead on a model closer to the Open Source model. Who knows, maybe they are counting on it in the future, but likely they are not. Likely Microsoft is going to keep selling us the same regurgitated products they do every year, with new packaging and more "updates". I for one, will keep supporting Open Office.

I already have the ability to save my word processing documents as XML. I already have the ability to transform them into other things I want. So do you. check it out.

I'm sure someone, someplace is already working on the appropriate xslt to transform Microsoft's stuff into this more open format, and I'm sure Microsoft has some ace up their sleeve technically or legally to push it into a 'gray' area...

But I just cannot imagine anyone having the gaul to say that my data is only available to me in a format that they control the terms and conditions on. how successful would a paper company be if they put 'terms and conditions' on the use of their wood pulp?

It's highly likely that OO is scriptable.

A CEO which tells its audience RedHat Linux or Fedora is not viable for the PC desktop should be fired in a splitsecond. The fact he's still there is even worse.

Oh sure, Skulicz has to tell some nice things to his investors. The thing that scares me the most is that apparently a large chunk from RedHat's Investors Cash must be coming from people who want Windows on the desktop PC's. I really wonder who these investors might be.

The only conclusion i can come up with, after reading this : Microsoft Loses to Linux in Thailand Struggle is that certain people want to prevent at all costs that a normal priced Linux Desktop Distro, of decent quality, hits the stores for say $50,= to $90,= , which includes the current KillerApp for Linux : OpenOffice 1.1

Robert

Nice troll, but Open Office supply Linux binaries. Installation instructions are here. Shouldn't be too difficult for a computer literate chap like yourself.

It will be a cold day in hell before I ever use Red Hat again, for enterprise or anything else. They have betrayed their base and mendaciously and cynically undermined Linux to justify this shame faced betrayal.

I have a different perspective, I think the opening up of the development of the Red Hat disto via the Fedora Project is a good thing.

The exchange value of a Fedora CD set (or any other Linux distro) is basically the cost of producing and shipping them, there is some money to be made there but not much.

I think this is why Red Hat are concentrating on selling services to businesses.

Fedora is called Fedora in part because of the merger with the Fedora Linux Project, a group who were producing 3rd party RPMs for machines running Red Hat and also to enable the free as in free beer distribution to be reproduced en mass by anyone without having the hassle of removing the Red Hat logo before burning the ISOs.

However Red Hat could do what Mozilla does, sell cheap Mozilla CDs or what OpenOffice.org does, link to people selling OpenOffice.org CDs. After all Red Hat still sells hats, stickers, t-shirts and posters!

I have been lurking and sometimes reading mail on the new Fedora lists and lots of cool stuff has been happening, PPC ports, offers to help on internationalisation, the inclusion of more packages, support for other updaters like apt and yum and even a legacy project to support old Red Hat versions is being started.

What is essentially happening here is that the free software mode of production is asserting its nature and getting more into the driving seat -- free software works best when it is developed in an open and free manner.

The spreadsheet I used for my computations and graphs can be downloaded here. It's in OpenOffice format.

Nice to see people use opensource software, he could of released the data in excel.

OpenOffice is free, but StarOffice is not.

What makes you think that there are enough people out there who would spend that time and money to keep this thing alive that don't care about Freedom? What on earth would be their motivation?

Well, I have no idea. Maybe they don't have girlfriends and are trying to fill the gaping void.

On that note, the StarOffice and OpenOffice SDK now has support for Python development.

StarOffice and OpenOffice also support StarBASIC (built-in VBA syntax compatible), C++, Java, as well as Python.

Adding Python, though, has shown that the base API needs to be cleaned up to make it simpler. I expect interesting things to happen on this end between now and the next release, though it's usable right now.

On that note, the StarOffice and OpenOffice SDK now has support for Python development.

StarOffice and OpenOffice also support StarBASIC (built-in VBA syntax compatible), C++, Java, as well as Python.

Adding Python, though, has shown that the base API needs to be cleaned up to make it simpler. I expect interesting things to happen on this end between now and the next release, though it's usable right now.

On that note, the StarOffice and OpenOffice SDK now has support for Python development.

StarOffice and OpenOffice also support StarBASIC (built-in VBA syntax compatible), C++, Java, as well as Python.

Adding Python, though, has shown that the base API needs to be cleaned up to make it simpler. I expect interesting things to happen on this end between now and the next release, though it's usable right now.

Is a lot faster

Bill Gates just made the Adam Osborne mistake. He announced "WinFX", whatever that is, as the improvement to .NET. Now a significant number of people will wait for WinFX, and Microsoft will lose the profits it would have had from those who wait.

Adam Osborne's company made an early personal computer. Adam announced a new model long before it was ready. Sales stopped because everyone wanted to wait for the new model. Adam's company went bankrupt.

It was amazing watching the bankrupting of the company on TV at the time. Osborne's company went from being one of the fastest growing to having insufficient money for operations in about two months.

It was a sobering lesson. Computer companies sometimes die extremely fast. Novell, WordPerfect, Corel, Fifth Generation Systems, and Central Point are examples. There are many others.

Microsoft has not been managed well. The company survives and profits because of having a virtual monopoly on operating systems and on office suite file formats. Think about it, suppose someone had a monopoly on water. That person could soon be much richer than Bill Gates.

For most businesses, the free Open Office is all they need. There are significant benefits to Open Office. It is much less quirky than Microsoft Office, for example. Most people are not very observant about the software they use, and they hardly notice the difference between Microsoft Word and the Open Office word processor.

Right now, many businesses use software that runs only under Microsoft Windows. However, there are many desktops that only need software that is already available for Linux. Those can benefit from the increased stability of Linux.

People don't care about the cost of Windows. The cost is only a few dollars of the cost of the computers they buy. The biggest issue against Microsoft is its adversarial behavior toward its customers. Using Linux means never having to say "My operating system company is partly my enemy."

Microsoft is on the way down. Most people don't realize that yet, however. Microsoft is one of the biggest management failures the world has ever seen. If the company could make a few changes in its behavior, it could stay profitable. However, it seems that abusiveness is more important to Microsoft than money.

Note that WinFX is someone else's trademark. WinFX is the most cracked and cheated program I have ever seen. There are 50 times as many links to cheats as there are to the product!

Microsoft has scheduled an MSDN TV program about "WinFX" for November 6 (Subject to change by Microsoft, of course.)

Microsoft claims that WinFX is their trademark. (The link is to a Google conversion of a .DOC file to HTML.)

Microsoft has a history of picking inappropriate trademarks. "X" means unknown. It was inappropriate to use the letter X in conjunction with "Xbox" and "ActiveX". Aside from being someone else's trademark, WinFX sounds too trivial for use with an extensive programming product. Traditionally, "FX" has been used to signify "effects".

So why not combine open XML document formats and rtfd-style bundles!

You mean like the native openoffice formats, which are essentially zip archives?

That's when you know the concept of bundles has been implemented well, when people don't even realise they're using bundles.

Agreed.
A nice example of how this probably should be handled is the OpenOffice project's 'media kit', including product flyer, FAQ, logos, and even CD labels and slip covers for the various versions.

Does anyone know where I can get document templates for OOO and the like?

The easiest way is to just buy StarOffice for $79 USD (I believe the license still allows 5 users to use a single "network install"). It comes with lots of clip art, doc templates, presentation templates, etc. Buy it here.

If you want less stuff, but for free, I believe you can find files here and here.

Cool, know we know what we're going to see in the next version of OpenOffice.

Why have cotton when you can have silk?

Of course the clunkiest feature of Office is the part where you have pay several hundred dollars for it. I wish they'd get that bug ironed out already.

---------
The dyslexic Gzip Christ is user number 571386

I understand that OpenOffice has its own object / component model, with bindings to various langauges, including Java and Python.
See OpenOffice.org

Of course, the Windows OS provides COM as a standard for applications to use, and on Unix, each application provides its own incompatible object model. KDE has KParts, GNOME has Bonobo, Open Office has UNO and maybe Mozilla has its own too.

Yup, you can script Open Office using Python.

This is a just plain silly argument. If your job is to make a document and a PDF, OpenOffice.org is going to win out. Seriously, several hundred dollars per seat for Word+Acrobat or $0 per seat for OpenOffice.org? No contest.

Now if you have an investment in heavily Word-macroed .doc files or some of the more obscure Word features, I can see the scales tipping. That's not to say the scales can't be tipped back by considering a one-time investment in converting away from Word...

Early versions were awful. Remember the "StarOffice Desktop"? But it is getting better.

One major weak point typifies what's wrong with open source software. The document templates are sparse and aesthetically poor. What makes PowerPoint successful are all those canned presentations busy executives can modify. OpenOffice Impress has nothing like that.

Usability testing remains weak. Sun did a small usability test of StarOffice in 2000, but activity since then has been sparse.

Don't forget to check out the recently released OpenOffice.org 1.1. Unlike previous versions of OpenOffice.org, it has wonderful font handling, looks like a native application, improved office file formats support, and most importantly, it's FAST. Now it only takes about 4 seconds to load on my machine, compared to around 30 for 1.0. Download it now.

Windows Version
Linux version
Other versions

Why?

When Projects like open office.org exists, what's the real need for MS to do extra porting?
Especially when open office.org do such a good job as it stands.

Why?

When Projects like open office.org exists, what's the real need for MS to do extra porting?
Especially when open office.org do such a good job as it stands.