Slashdot Mirror
How Is GNOME Office Coming?
Clyde has written a nice article over at LinuxOrbit about the state of the GNOME office suite. With all the hubbub surrounding the recent freeing of Sun's StarOffice, this is gonna get more interesting. I'll tell ya the one thing that I miss in AbiWord is anti-aliased text. Staring at that horridly pixelated text is hard on the eyes. Between the Gimp, Gnucash, Eazel, Evolution, AbiWord, Gnucash and the like (no, I'm not forgetting KDE, I just haven't used it recently), the application support under Linux is rapidly making it feasible for a desktop user, but we're just not there yet. And it's the little things that get ya.
These kind of questions amuse me. A lot.
:):
Very simply, you need a word processor for two reasons (aside from the obvious one of reading word processed files
1. To write documentation (any coder worth his/her salt should know how to write at least moderately good docs to any program he/she writes).
2. To read documentation and notes that others in a team have written.
Rami James
Guy in a Box.
--
rJames.org - illustration
The shift in thinking I am talking about has little to do with input/output devices and more to do with the underlying design concept of an idea-based system. Right now everything is built around the notion of fixed documents, which as I stated before are simply proxies for the more basic unit of an idea. What I would love to see is an interface system designed not around documents but around hyperlinks.
Now initially it might work like so: I go to a meeting with a client who suggests a new feature for my product. When I get back to my desk I go and create a new "idea" object. My IdeaOS allows me to keep many such objects around, and at any time I can make one of them the "Active Idea." This might appear as an icon on my desktop.
When you create an idea you can give it all sorts of characteristics. These might be unique things like "Color = Purple" or links such as "Color = Idea #7's Color." Entire idea objects might be simple characteristics of other idea objects.
With an idea object you might have associated "output methods," which could include text, pictures, or other things. Depending on the nature of these things they might be automatically generated and updated, or they may not. But the point, in the short term, is that you at least see the web which ties the whole mess together. Even though you may not be able to say, "if we change the color of the panel our profits will go down," at least the marketing department will know that they need to re-shoot all the pictures for the ad campaign.
From a management perspective this is an ideal way of structuring things. At any point in time the CEO can look at the six (or N) high-level ideas, and perhaps change one slightly. This change will percolate down the chain of ideas, either altering automatically or at least informing everything down the line of the changes that need to be made. Likewise if a person wants to change an idea somewhere down the line, he or she can see the effects this will have on ideas above and lateral to them.
Blah blah. You get the idea...
-cwk.
Microsoft is the master of Embrace, extend and extinguish. You KNOW they'll find some way to make their XML impossible to read/format, at the same time claiming that they're making a great innovation and also claiming to embrace open standards.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What stops them taking Linux/Staroffice - to date - has mostly been the relative difficulty of installing & supporting Linux, in comparison with Windows.
Except that Windows is actually in several ways Harder to install than Linux. With Windows things often have to be installed in exactly the right order also if you want several identical workstations you need hacks like disk imaging. The only reason people think Windows is easy to install is that its possible (through Microsoft's dodgy dealing) to buy machines with it already on. N.B. The first thing likely to happen to preloaded Windows machines in many corporate environments is that the OEM setup gets overwritten buy a "corporate setup", thus the OEM install was a waste of time anyway.
As for support, doing things requires someone who knows what they are doing to be sat at the machine. This is an OS who's error messages consist of a list of the contents of CPU registers. Not user friendly at all.
The moment you look any deeper than the GUI Windows appears a lot "geekier" than any unix like system. Even something like the sendmail config file allows comments and dosn't expect numbers in hex.
They simply don't understand that mainstream desktop users have a serious font fetich, and that setting them up must be automatic. Further, importing a user's favorite fonts, particularly TT fonts from a Windows installation has to be either 100% automatic or nothing more complicated than clicking an option on a dialog. I've used every major and most of the minor distros, and none of them come even close to handling TT fonts this well.
Assuming we are talking about a corporate setup then there is a very elegant solution. That of the font server. Maybe this is another example of the people involved trying to chase Windows rather than improving something unix already did more simply than Windows.
Regardless of how trivial it is after install time, these things need to be done at install time. Any desktop is going to be measured against windows and the Mac, which will both have usable truetype fonts and word processing at install time. When you install more software that uses fonts, it installs more fonts in a central location and is able to find all the fonts you have.
Except that the default place for Windows to store it's fonts isn't very "central" (except in the case of a stand alone machine.)
I don't understand how the Apple market (which can't possibly be more than 8-10% of the PC market can get Adobe products (and they get them FIRST!) and linux/unix can't even get releases that are one lousy version behind.
Recently I read that SoftImage (the whole shebang, not just the renderer) is being ported to Linux. Now, what about textures for those models?
Don't tell me that the GIMP is ready for that! I know that I have bben using PhotoShop since I was a wee lad, and I know what I like. I am telling you that the GIMP is not ready for that kind of prime time. The UI is too clunky and unintuitive.
(No flames please, this is my opinion and I'll stand by it. I've used both the GIMP and PS extensively, and I just cannot become as comfortable in the GIMP as I am in PS.)
Dammit, ADOBE, why are you not listening to us fans!
Rami James
Frustrated Pixel Pusher.
--
rJames.org - illustration
"X is a network transparent bitmap protocol blah blah blah" ... i.e. it has nothing to do with fonts. Until it does and until sysadmins can drag and drop fonts into /usr/lib/X/fonts/ somewhere and have them instantly appear in all X apps (or users do the same thing in $HOME/lib/fonts linux font support will seriously suck compared to other OSes. Oh yeah with enough wizardry and by stopping/restarting X itself xfs and the application (you might as well since if you do this wrong you might get all your apps to use the fonts
Well there are two obvious ways of doing this. How do you set Windows up so you can add a font to every workstation with out needing to reboot them or wear out your shoes going round to each one?
The situation now is that every single serious X application implements its OWN font server - StarOffice has the WORST and most complex font installation support imaginable. It's *hilarious* to suggest that normal non-X savvy users could possible install a font and get document to print using that font under StarOffice.
This is probably mostly a problem of application developers following the Windows model of big monolithic apps (Indeed Star Office is frequently criticised for this.)
Anyway should end users be expected to perform the task if installing fonts which is more properly that of the sysadmin.
Windows definitly blurrs the distinction such that people actually see unix stopping end users from carrying out system administration tasks as a problem.
It won't *ever* be possible to have fonts "instantly appear to legacy X apps with out restarting the applications but it might be possible to have xfs "poll" it's font directory regularly or to write applications in a way that treats fonts differently.
Unless these "legacy X apps" are available as source code...
If everyone in the team uses the same programs (kind of a basic idea, I think) then everyone can read the docs.
The only reason I need a word processor is to read MS Word docs produced by people who would be happy with the output from a crayon if it had the word "Microsoft" on the side. I've actually seen business letters sent out in Comic Sans!
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I keep seeing people do odd things with their 'office suite' programs.*
I wonder whether there are more business centered ways of doing this stuff.
Take wordprocessing. WP springs from the need to type letters accurately.**
But letters also
But despite all this context and workflow, the wordprocessor only direcly enables word entry and typographical formatting. Now add to this workflow the needs of B2B interaction, and you suddenly see that a company has a heck of a lot of data tied up inside a multitude of proprietary Word files.
I think feature bloat is a symptom of the painful fact that most software doesn't do what is necessary for business. Consider a small business. Consider the data they use. Forget the office formats used to store the data. Is there really any need for 200MB software packages to manage this small data?
Come on guys, you're information experts. What is the key information that a business runs on? How does this information flow around, in and out of an organisation? What are the tools to manipulate the flow, and what are the structures best suited for arranging this data?
Will the business desktop simply become a departmental transaction processing server...??
*Like keep their list of address mailing labels in a spreadsheet, or keep lists of amendments to cad drawings in a separate wp document.
** I don't know it's real history. Perhaps someone can fill us in?
What's wrong with HTML docs? Everybody knows HTML (at least a little), and everybody can view HTML. Plus it's pretty easy to automatically generate shell pages from code. HTML will be around far longer than any version of Word's .doc format.
DocBook SGML (or the XML version) is what you need. It was specifically designed to document code, and you can use it to generate either very nice looking print (ps or pdf), or HTML.
Not to mention the fact that Emacs/PSGML mode eats it for breakfast.
HTML is not such a bad option either if you don't need printed documents. Microsoft will undoubtedly do their darnedest to extend HTML severely, but there is no reason to take advantage of those extensions for simple documentation. After all, with documentation you probably aren't too worried about page layout. You simply need links, headers, bold and italics, and perhaps some basic tables and figures. Most of the documentation I write would probably look acceptable in lynx (you would need an image viewer for the pictures).
Sadly, I echo the original poster's viewpoint - they may have digitized an entire encyclopedia into the Brain of the Paperclip, such as it is, but it sure is tough to get anything out of the little critter. And that's all that matters in the end, isn't it?
I always find the arguments between the LATex folks and the regular word processor people interesting. I'm sort of in between - I write everything in xemacs, put it in HTML, put it into a web page, and - if I have to - print it out.
But I know that's not for everyone, since the learning curve is almost vertical for stuff like that. You pretty much need to be an old computer hand to appreciate the advantages. I can edit text with a speed that awes everyone who sees me, simply because I took the time to learn emacs. I encourage anyone who's up to a technical challenge that improves their abilities enormously in the long run to follow me on that path; but I realize it's simply not something mainstream people care to do.
So we need word processors, and sure as shooting we need something other than those god-awful fonts.
I can't help but wonder if many Linux fans won't cross over to the Macintosh side when MacOS X comes out. I mean, here we have a platform that has the guts of Unix that we love, combined with the brilliance of a designer interface created with panache anyone in open source will have a tough time with.
Yes, I know MacOS X isn't open source, but the underpinnings are, and all the applications mainstream people love are there. I think it's worth a look, simply because it could solve a lot of problems.
I plan to buy a dual-processor Mac as soon as I'm reasonably assured MacOS X is out and functioning well.
D
----
Go to www.microsoft.com/truetype and find your way to the truetype fonts download area.
.sit.hqx) and with their original file name. You must not supply the font outlines in any form that adds value to commercial products, such as CD-ROM or disk based multimedia programs, application software or utilities. See Microsoft's permissions site for more details."
"TrueType core fonts for the Web FAQ
Q What can I do with these fonts?
A For all the rules that govern the use of these fonts please read the end user license agreement.
Anyone can download and install these fonts for their own use. Designers can specify the fonts within their Web pages. Our guide to specifying fonts in Web pages explains how to do this. You can distribute the files from your Web site as long as you complete our Web font registration form. You can only redistribute the fonts in their original form (.exe or
They are available for anyone to download and use, but if you redistribute them you can't repackage them or change the name.
"Microsoft develops some fonts in-house and licenses others from independent font vendors. If you are looking to license a particular font, you should contact the vendor, not Microsoft, regarding licensing issues."
_You_ can "install" the fonts, the distributions just can't bundle them with thier X11 packages.
Lars -
My last bit of a rant here has to do with HTML editors. Why don't we have any decent ones for Linux yet. No, EMACS ain't what I'm talking about either. Most notably over on NT in my mind is Dreamweaver, which aside from being an outstanding GUI for HTML it's also one hell of a site manager. As someone who not only codes the back end of web sites, but also has to do layout and design not having a tool like Dreamweaver around is a serious handicap.
Agreed. 100%. I would love to have DreamWeaver for Linux. Love it to death. It doesn't fux with my code, it understands and can clean up Word (gak!) HTML, it doesn't touch PHP, does all the layers and best of all, it spits out clean HTML. How do we get Macromedia to release this beauty under Linux? I haven't tried it under WINE yet, perhaps I'll give it a shot this afternoon.
There are only a handful of apps I use under Win95/98/NT:
MPLAB/Rice17 are probably the reason I don't give up Win32 totally. I can work around the rest, but my work depends on being able to use the ICE software.
I agree with you totally on the anti-aliased fonts: Something must be done. If it breaks X compatibility, it's gotta happen. I think it could probably be done without breaking X though. Perhaps an alternate font server which, if given 1-bit fonts, fakes an anti-alias, but if presented with truetype-style fonts performes proper antialiasing. Maybe even with subpixel antialising for my laptop. :-)
Is there a wharf app which gives me 9 places where KDE/Gnome "systray" icons get captured? I can't stand the bar along the bottom but a single 64x64 square with 9 possible systray icons (KICQ, etc.) can go would be the cat's meow. I've searched at different times but haven't found anything useful. Tons of launchers but nothing which can replace a systray. WindowMaker has panel/KDM simulation so the apps think they have a systray, I just need to find/make an app that uses it for a wharf icon. :-) Too bad I can't code apps to save my skin. Embedded, sure, but apps? ugh.
Oh yeah, and something needs to be done or a howto written about Motif-style file selection boxes. If I use NS or Moz and want to save a file, I have to remember the filename because if I change directories, it forgets the filename. How stupid is that? And the fact that I can't highlight something (select), move to where I want to replace text (by highlighting the text to remove) and the pasting... is there a way around this without having to select what I want gone, erasing it, then slecting what I want, going to where I want it and pasting?
X is wonderful because it's network transparent and when tunnelled through SSH, secure and pretty snappy. But as you'd mentioned there are a few shortcomings (which are really simplistic compared to some of the things people want) which make it totally unusable.
Maybe if Microsoft would stop screwing around with Clippy and started working toward that level of output quality, I'd have less gripes about their software.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Unfortunately, though gnumeric looks pretty good, it cannot handle large files well. I recently tried to do a simple import of a comma delimited file and it took over 40 minutes just to import the data. Excel pulled it in quickly (~1 minute). I am really pushing for at least a few Linux desktops in my company, but unless I can provide a good word processor, spread sheet, and email client, I won't make much headway. This is one area where the code from StarOffice may help.
Unix was designed for programmers, scientists, and engineers. It works for them rather well. It was not designed for PHBs and their secretaries.
So, the question. Is adapting Unix for this last category of people is the right thing to do?
Well, maybe because what engineers do is produce documentation?
Where the Hell do you think that all of those standards published by outfits like IEEE, JEDEC, EIA, EIAJ, ISO, and other alphabet outfits come from? The stork? Or do you think that the PHBs do all of that stuff and then leave the implemetation details up to grunts like me?
Are you under the charming impression that teams of tens of engineers work out projects like 5 million gate ICs based on whiteboard sketches? Office automation is one of the indispensible tools of engineering, and it's getting harder and harder to get by with the Solaris box at work and the Linux network at home without adding a W2K notebook or some other Redmondian puspocket. At which point the IT crowd and PHBs suggest that we don't need the workstation any more since we can use an X terminal package to connect to The Server from the LoseDoze box.
Damn straight we need office tools, and yesterday wouldn't be too soon.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
This one I haven't tried, thought I was aware of it's existance. There were a couple of things that turned me off to TopPage. Not the least of these is IBM. I have a LOT of respect for the bulk of the stuff that IBM does and all. It's just that when it comes to PC software it's kinda like having a seriously shaggy dog in your house. Oh sure, he seems friendly enough, until you find his hair has gotten into everything.
I really do need to try this out though. I sure don't feel comfortable talking ill about an app I haven't even tried out. Still, just the marketing spin I find a little spooky here...
It allows you to create dazzling Web pages without any HTML knowledge or programming skills.
You can get everything you need to design, personalize and share your site in an easy-to-use all-in-one package.
Okay, everyone who is having FrontPage flashbacks please raise your hand!
Now to get really nit picky... my favorite tag in the whole wide world from a TopPage generated web page on IBM's site.
<META name="GENERATOR" content="IBM NetObjects TopPage V4.0.3 for Windows">
One of the things that keeps me loyal to Dreamweaver is that Macromedia doesn't try and be a one stop shop for all possible web development needs. It's number one selling point is in the fact that it doesn't muck up the HTML at the code level, enabling you to use other apps. No mention of code treatment can be found on IBM's site.
It may sound silly to worry about how the HTML code gets formatted so long as the page looks pretty in the browser. Of course if the GUI layout work is only just the starting point in developing a dynamic site, the code formatting becomes critical. From what I saw of the HTML code on that site, I don't think this is what I'm looking for.
I do intend to give this a fair try though. I'm just going in a LOT less hopeful than when I downloaded Quanta.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Unix was designed for programmers, scientists, and engineers. It works for them rather well. It was not designed for PHBs and their secretaries.
So, the question. Is adapting Unix for this last category of people is the right thing to do?
--
Actually, it's a good question.
Unix was designed for programmers, scientists and engineers back when PHBs and secretaries didn't use computers. So should non-scientists remain in the grip of Bill, or should they have alternatives? That's really the question.
Unix ain't great for everybody. I've long complained that the design of the shells, not to mention a lot of other details, imply a "boy's club" mentality, wherein shared secrets (non-obvious commands, for instance) are the requisites of membership. The Linux programmers are, of course, upper-level members of the society. Geek pride and all that. So I don't think that Unix in anything resembling its raw form is what the Rest Of Us need.
But give Apple credit (and btw I'm not a Mac fan) where due: In MacOS X, they're merging a Unix kernel with a Mac API and GUI and it looks like they'll pull it off. The robustness of the Unix kernel keeps it running, the Unix API helps programmers add capabilities, and the Mac layers make it palatable to mere muggles.
I think KDE and to a lesser extent GNOME are doing something similar, but they're far from ready for prime time. Frankly the font rendering on KDE sucks (well, it's based on antiquated X11 technology, after all). Until such core display issues are fixed, Linux will simply be too ugly for widespread use.
Give Bill credit where due: Win98 does a fantastic job of displaying text. The open source community needs to learn from them.
BTW I'd be very open to a non-Unix non-Bill OS too. As Miguel pointed out in his recent essay, Unix sucks. It was a great experiment but we're stuck with some obsolete ideas. I wish somebody would really rethink things and build an OS that takes advantage of what we've learned since Ritchie et al started their important work 30+ years ago.
But an application can anti-alias the fonts in it's own display... Look at the gimp.
A good, fast, dynamic anti-aliasing canvas library that existing apps could easily link against is a possible solution.
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
People have already pointed you to lyx/klyx.
You can annotate latex documents. Just put a comment in the source code, using % .
That works for me when I'm writing a paper with others. I just insert something like
% JOE: Fill in the above numbers once you rerun the simulation.
It's easily identifiable, can be searched for, and directed to who I want. What more could you want?
Some people I know also use footnotes for this purpose.
Seems like the other thing you could also do here is write a small download application to pull this in at the time of install if so requested. Like it says, your free to download and install it. There aren't any restrictions to automating this process.
Of course this would have to be a two step process. Step 1 querying a site that a Linux friendly webmaster controls that contains the location of the fonts. Step 2 would be the downloading and installing. If you don't kick step 1 in there, all MS would have to do is change the directory they sit in. If the location is centralized, one update will update all.
Another option may be to get in contact with BitStream, as I believe they are the actual developers of the TT fonts for Windows. If they still own Arial and all them other ones it may play out nicely for them to pass them along to the open source world. Gobs of free advertising for their newer fancier fonts for unloading some of their older ones. Also, they've got server software to push as well, which might also make them friendlier to a Linux kind of approach.
Whatever happens, it sure would be nice to be able to read what I was writing in any of them Linux word processors. Ack!
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
The step up from PHB to power user isn't that big, as I think I've pointed out.
So, you believe a PHB can become a PHPU (Pointed-Hair Power User)?
As soon as Microsoft get their thumbs out of their arses and start saving word/excel/etc documents in XML, with open schemas that everybody has access to, the world will be a better place.
.NET strategy will do?
Maybe that's what their
You never know - They may make it nice and easy for the open source community to at last easily provide MS-compatible apps.
If I understand you correctly you need to expose the same bits of information in a number of different ways. Is it possible that XML might be able to solve these problems? You just write your information once and use differents XSL style sheets to expose the data in different ways (I know it's never that simple but..). If your data changes then any changes will automatically be reflected in your documents by re-generating them with XSL. That kind of changes the problem from being "how do I manage this information" to "what is an easy, flexible and quick way of writing XSL". I know XML is still a bit too close to the bleeding edge for commercial development, but I believe it holds a lot of promise.
Well, speaking just for the antialiased font problem, I think Linux is going to see some really good news over the next few months. I've been hacking on high performance aa font rendering using Freetype2, and I've got some working code in the Nautilus CVS, as part of librsvg. All of the font integration code is going to get released as LGPL (librsvg is GPL) and I hope and expect lots of other projects to pick up on it.
Not only that, but the XFree86 render project has all of a sudden picked up some momentum. I have confidence that the designs floating by on that mailing list will lead to nice, clean hardware accelerated aa text soon. While we're at it, we'll fix the XLFD mess and problems like client and server fonts not always matching.
This is a hell of an exciting time for advanced 2D graphics under Linux. Gambai!
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs
...right click your image, then click the dotted line at the top of the main menu. This gives you a somewhat traditional (if rotated) menu bar.
<O
( \
X Adopt a bird today!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Oh boy, I can feel the flames licking at this post. Even still, there's a couple of things I've got to say here.
First off, I've tried several times to use both AbiWord and StarOffice to write a simple document. I never could get past a single paragraph. The fonts are just so horribly unreadable as to make using the end product painful. I know it's neither one of those app's fault. Something simply has to be done about how X deal with fonts before Linux is viable for the desktop.
Oh, and I do enjoy reading the "All I want is a text editor", "EMACS is all you ever need", and "TeX rules". I'll give those folks this much credit, the fonts are at least readable there. When it comes right down to it, I fully darn well expect to have tool bars, formatting functions, and all the wiz bangs without having to read some 300 page O'Reily* book. Ack!
(* no offence meant to O'Reily. I've got me a library of them books here)
Moving along here, I've been wondering a little something about the graphical environment in Linux ever since I first got to playing with it. Why are all the icons and window borders so big? Granted, this isn't really a usability thing, but it sure makes those apps look and feel kinda hokey. A good example of this is Gnumeric. Here we've got this pretty darn nice little spreadsheet program that looks like it was put together with children's blocks. Mind you, I only mean to point out Gnumeric as an example. Almost every app running on Gnome, and to a lesser extent KDE, seem to make horrible use of the screen space. It just has a feel of being very blocky. Folks I've shown my Linux setup to have made similar comments as well.
My last bit of a rant here has to do with HTML editors. Why don't we have any decent ones for Linux yet. No, EMACS ain't what I'm talking about either. Most notably over on NT in my mind is Dreamweaver, which aside from being an outstanding GUI for HTML it's also one hell of a site manager. As someone who not only codes the back end of web sites, but also has to do layout and design not having a tool like Dreamweaver around is a serious handicap.
I also have yet to run across anything that approaches the functionality of HomeSite for getting in at the text level. Again, just being a cool text editor doesn't even begin to replace all the stuff that HomeSite has built into it geared specifically for web technologies. Heck, nothing I've seen on Linux even comes close to HS's PHP hi-liting which in and of itself isn't perfect.
I could probably get by for a long while with a less than stellar office suite. What I can't live without is a less than stellar HTML editing suite. There appear to be some interesting prospects on the horizon in development. Maybe some day someone will get enough of this right to actually get me to go closer to full time to Linux. I am watching for it!
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
This is not a problem of kernels, or CPU cycles, or the lack of effective 3D displays. It is really so much more basic, and yet, more challenging.
Even though I have not used a typewriter in a year, and the filing cabinet in my office lays there unused, those two objects are the basis of my computer's design.
We may talk about the paperless office oday, but it is meaningless. We are still document-driven rather than knowledge-driven.
Businesses are fighting this, but it is an expensive war. My company uses a system called Onyx for Customer Relations Management. It is a very complicated and clunky client/server system that cost over $500,000 to acquire, and probably that much again per year to train people and keep it running. Look at ERP systems like SAP or BAAN, these are equally moribund, and yet companies still throw billions at them annually, because they are still the best (only?) option.
People do not think in documents, they think in ideas, but you cannot capture the pulses of neurons and transmit them directly. A document is merely a way to capture this stuff so that it can be stored, retrieved, and transmitted to others.
I work as a product manager, and do everything from talk with clients and users to writing specs and drawing mockups for our developers. Most of what I do revolves around collections of ideas of how a feature should work- "The sort button should be on the right side, and all items should sort in ascneding order..." I spend probably 1/3 of my time just maintaining concurrency between specs for development, marketing docs, training manuals, and management summaries.
Let's say I decide the sort button should be on the left instead- that could mean that dozens of documents need to be altered, even though only one concept has changed. Now think- what if I could simply create a "Sort Order" object, and instantiate it in multiple places: word documents, development specs, and page mockups. If I change it, I change it in just one place, and it either updates automatically or at least tells me what needs to be updated by hand. This would not only save me time, it would prevent bugs and many misunderstandings.
I swear I am learning to code now just so that I can take a stab at this problem. I support Linux because it provides a sized canvas on which many ideas can be painted. Gnome is doing a lot of yeoman work, and I am sure it will be useful, but I would love to see more truly speculative design being done. This is where Linux (or some other free OS) could really revolutionize things, because you do not necessarily have to consider the short-term business imperatives that MS and Apple do. Even if either one of them could deliver a system like the one I have described, I believe it would be a failure, because people are not generally ready for such a thing. A small subset would be, and they will adopt it, and in a short time businesses will realize how much more productive those people can be.
-cwk.
If you want to know that you are writing standards-compliant html and you want to know exactly how it is supposed to look, then Amaya is a pretty good choice.
Unfortunately it stresses compliance over everything else. (Heck, by definition how it looks actually *IS* the standard...)
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
You're running Nautilus? Is there a place to download that, in binary form? The website only mentions CVS which is rediculous - cause then I have to download and compile a hundred million libraries (gnome, gnome-libs, gtk...).
Joseph Elwell.
Seems to me that in a lot of ways, Microsoft just out paced the rest of the Office field. I recall how Quattro Pro introduced the world to multiple sheets within a single file, and seperating them with tabs at the bottom. The very next version of Excel had that, a ton of other goodies, and ever increasing integration with it's good buddy Word. I seem to recall a similar fate falling on AmiPro as well.
Looking back on it now I remember the day the war of the Office suites was over. It was Word 6.0 and Excel 5.0, just a little while prior to Windows 95 coming out. For the first time these two apps shared more than data, they now looked very similar to each other. Similar tool bars, menus that were obviously put in sync to eachother. Prior to that point the Office market was very much up for grabs, but afterwards nobody was even talking about any of the other players. MS hit those two outta the park.
As to the rest of your post, it seems that KDE is focusing on the kinds of issues that you're talking about when it comes to interoperability. Just 6 weeks away (as sela has already posted) from seeing how they got their implementation to all play out.
Personally, I think this Gnome office suite is going to go another production cycle before we start seeing any real integration there. At this point it seems we've got seperate applications being bundled together and referred to as a suite. Not a bad thing by any means, but not anything that's going to keep the folks in Redmond up late at night for the moment.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
I think a lot of people would write better documents with greater ease than they could do with M$ Word.
There's a very interesting read about the possible division of StarOffice's word processing module, StarOffice Writer, up here at linuxtoday.com.au. It poses an opinion about the possible future of StarOffice now that Sun has GPL'ed the StarOffice source code.
People interested in GNOME Office might also find this interesting.
Digital Philosopher. Looking for work.
KDE 2.0 is already in feature freeze, and in 6 weeks they plan the official release of 2.0, including Koffice.
Some time ago I downloaded the 1.91 release, and was quite impressed.
On the negative side it still had several annoying bugs (which are quite expected at this phaze of the development), is not as feature reach as Star Office, and what hurts the most is the lack of filters.
On the positive side, it has most features users would probably need, is nicely integrated (I was quite impressed with the KOshell), and has original design that does not try to be MS-office clone.
Sela
The author seemed to be lauding the features, such as scheduling, of Outlook + Exchange. Sure, those features are nice, but they reduce choice. To synchronize many people across a project using MS Lookout, it is necessary to be running Exchange server with it. Similarly, all users must be using Outlook as their mail client to schedule projects together. So what happens to those people that wish to use a different e-mail client? They get left out of the loop. And what happens to those offices that wish not to use Exchange, either due to its broken imap implementations, to its inability to function with non-outlook clients, or to its reliance on NT servers? These businesses cannot use Outlook's scheduling features. This is yet another example of how bundling unlike components (mail, schedule) together inherently leads to lack of choice.
--
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
I know it sounds like a really small thing, but it's one of those showstoppers for the desktop crowd.
Achtung is vaporware at this point. Linux is making very few inroads on the laptop. The most robust slide presentation software is MagicPoint. Another relatively stable piece of slide presentation software is Kpresenter . Staroffice is the only version to allow Powerpoint imports.
Of course, you could do all the slidemaking in postscript and use just about anything to present it.
Does Gnome Office just sound like a collection of unrelated gtk/gnome software they're trying to group together to compete with kde's koffice?
It just seems to me that koffice is attempting to be a consistent group of interacting programs; Similiar look, feel, interaction, etc and the gnome people are playing the catch up game all over again. I just hope this isn't the 1.0 fiasco all over again.
Personally, I'm wondering what some talented soul might be able to do with Konqueror in the way of HTML editing under KDE. Seems like all the components are there to make a first class HTML editor.
Quanta does appear to be heading in the right direction. I'm guessing we'll have a pretty good idea how well it plays out in another 6 months or so.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Everyone in my department uses LaTeX. If you have lots of equations, it's really a great thing. And besides, many of the journals accept electronic submissions in LaTeX, but nothing else. Once you get used to it, it's no big deal. Kind of like ls, rm, cd, mkdir, etc..
Between the Gimp, Gnucash, Eazel, Evolution, AbiWord, Gnucash and the like
Damn. I didn't know he made so much money from Slashdot!
X with an alpha channel and antialiased fonts, with full compatibility with existing clients would be yummy...
I thought that was done by all the companies who adopted Office over other solutions, companies desparate for thousands of interoperable work stations that Got Work Done at minimal total cost. As far as I can tell (from living through it), Microsoft just listened really well to what those companies who actually use general office applications actually wanted.
I'd include these attributes in "what they actually wanted":
- one release and deployment cycle for the desktop instead of one per application,
- one training and familiarization cycle for the desktop instead of one per application,
- one partner company for the desktop instead of one per application,
- you get the drift.
WordPerfect and Lotus had viable office software right up to the day Microsoft got this right - and even though Microsoft had to invest in building the Windows platform layer to get that integration, it turned out to be a worthwhile investment for them. (Heck, they even passed Windows off as an operating system, even though it manifestly was not at the time...)A Linux-based successor to MS Office won't have to build an integrated platform - few would argue that Windows 3.x had anything on either Gnome or KDE. And there are obvious cost advantages available to whoever can use either platform to solve the real issues of office software.
Could someone focus on these issues of simplifying things for large organizations with a Linux-based office suite? Yep. Certainly all the wounded corporate support types out there have some ideas about what sucks about supporting Office - if someone found those things and fixed them, that would be a start.
Would a product that did this capture the relevant mind-share? Quite possibly, though one would have to withstand the full competitive force of Microsoft. We know that Microsoft will trade off anything up to and including the laws of the United States of America to keep large organizations on their customer list - I'm sure they'd try to compete on "not sucking" if someone made them do it.
Is anyone focusing on this yet? Not that I've heard - and I'd be surprised if any open source development project looked up from scratching its own itch enough to try to scratch the generic large organization's itch. To my mind, that's what will be absolutely required to change the office desktop world.
"Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer." - Linux Advocac
I am a PHB, I admit it. I can do the basics of UNIX, but GNOME makes my computing experience a lot easier while working in the enviroment I've chosen to use. I'm currently using FreeBSD 3.4. I made the descision to use it based on what I read on the Internet about the stability and speed of the system, as well as the philosophy behind it. I am currently running Mozilla M15, GNOME, StarOffice for Linux 5.2, Sun JDK 1.2 for Linux, and Mutt mail client. I was a user that didn't know anything about computers at all 3 months ago, I started learning on Windosw 98, but realized that it wasn't for me. Now I am coming to grips with the FreeBSD ports collection and the GNU C Compiler, as well as the /etc/rc.x startup scripts, and many other fascinating things. As a PHB, all I can say is that you shouldn't underestimate any computer user, be they PHBs, power users, or technicians. The step up from PHB to power user isn't that big, as I think I've pointed out.