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Rekall, Aethera, Kapital... Oh My
The first application is ReKall. Rekall is TheKompany's answer to MS Access. Lots of people have asked for this kind of application for Linux, and TheKompany in response has issued this Preview Release version. The Upcoming KOffice will include a version of Rekall. Instead of using Visual Basic like Access does, Rekall uses Python, as well as plug-ins for MySQL, Postgre-SQL, and Informix (other plug-ins for the various databases will follow.) Note: Since Rekall is using KDE-DB (also a contribution to KDE by TheKompany) and KDE-DB will be available only with the upcoming KDE 2.2; you'll need to do some simple compilation and installation. All the instructions are available at their web pages.
The next product is Aethera -- a nice PIM manager to manage all your email as well as contact information. You might say it's competing with Evolution, but both of the projects takes different direction of implementation. Aethera is also expandable with Plug-ins. (Debian packages are also available).
While ReKall and Aethera are Open Source, the last one is a commercial product called Kapital, which is an Quicken/MS Money workalike. The product costs money (you can find those prices at the above link) and it has one of the nicest and easiest GUI's I've been played with. You can download the beta to test it and find for yourself. (Debian packages are available for Kapital as well.)
Because if they picked a KDE-based suite the GNOME-ists would cry unholy murder and if they picked a GNOME-based suite the KDEanista's would renew their jihad against all things GNOME.
Good luck waiting for Eazel to make money...
Just email them and ask them for their media kit, and you might want to read it (it's 1 PDF page)..
And what are their business plan? to put AD's on Nautilus. What about 3rd party applications support? (so you can download other stuff then they have) - Maybe in 2002...
You call this a good business plan? I call it the way to chapter 11
Hetz (Heunique)
Wrong
TheKompany is making their products and if they want - they release software to be included with KDE, but that DOESN'T mean that KDE is depending on TheKompany - they are totally independent of each other.
KDE is being developed by mostly volunteers (and some developers who are paid by the various distributions - Caldera, Mandrake, SuSE) - so if TheKompany tommorow goes south it will be a sad day, but KDE development will be continued...
On the GNOME side, Eazel and Ximian are doing lots of work - if Eazel and Ximian will go south, GNOME will continue to be developed, but with much slower pace until they'll get new volunteers to help.
Hetz (Heunique)
Why is it people continue to follow the Microsoft-think of "One World, One Operating System, One Product"? You do not need a single ubiquitous application or suite to solve interoperability problems! What you should promote instead is a single standard for documents themselves. Wait... isn't XML supposed to do this? (Or is that just a hollow promise? I'm not really an XML fan, an I'm not an application fan either, but this is ridiculous.)
Isn't it every other day with "New macro virus!" or "New Outlook security hole!" that we criticize the ubiquity of single applications? "Interoperability" means multiple products working together. Not the MS definition, "one product working with itself on every computer". That is not interoperability.
In fact, not having a standard application encourages interoperability. What would have happened if we'd settled on a single application for mail exchange? File transfer? HTML? (Oh, whoops, we tried that, and now have a horribly fragmented mess that's still being cleaned up.)
One ubiquitous office suite is not the answer.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
There's something that itches me on theKompany.
GNOME has a lot of companies working to improve it. Ximian and Eazel take the front lead, but don't forget RedHat (via RHAD Labs) and Gnumatic and Henzai and others.
KDE has only theKompany. This is bad for KDE - if tomorrow theKompany goes berzerk, KDE is in very trouble. This is way bad.
(said by someone who doesn't run any KDE)
Cesar Cardoso can be found at cesar at zyakannazio dot eti dot br (or at least I believe so)
Of course they do -- that's their business. But locking people into a proprietary document format is making the same mistake that was made in the Windows world.
If the format is open, and accessible to many different apps, then there is a real reason for a vendor to make their application perform better. If the format field is levelled, and one vendor has a word processor app that is faster, more stable, and more portable than their competition - they will get more users.
The problems then come when, in order to have product distinction, companies "extend" the standard - thus making files made by their app incompatible with other apps. This is the situation we have to avoid. It also means that once a particular app is exceedingly fast, stable, and portable, there won't be much call for other apps to do the same job -- so the developers of the "winning" app will be stuck...either move on and make new software, or start "extending".
The business world wants the latter, as it means locking people into a certain program/format, thus ensuring revenue from "upgrades". The former is generally better for users and the "community" as a whole, as it means more quality software.
This is one of those hurdles the linux/open source/free software/whatever community has to clear before free, open standards for this sort of thing will be possible.
So what really needs to happen is the KDE and GNOME people need to get together and decide on UI interoperability standards -- then any apps wishing to become a "de facto standard" would adhere to those, and run perfectly well in a GNOME or KDE environment, or a mix of the two, or neither.
To some extent, this has already occurred - AFAIK, it's possible to drag&drop between the two, and KDE is able to make use of GTK themes (haven't played with it myself though)
Admittedly, the differences in toolkits (qt vs gtk) aren't trivial - and the backend communications are even less so - but it doesn't seem out of the question that an interop standard could be agreed upon - then it's just a matter of porting the current apps to the new standards.
I am, of course, prone to being wrong.
The real win would be a standard and documented file format. Then people could run *any* program on Linux to edit their file. Obviously some will work better than others and there would be preferences. It would also help if the programs would preserve sections of the file that they don't understand and write them unchanged to the output.
The only way I see a standard file format coming out is if a free program is included with distributions that reads and writes it. A free Windows program that does the same will probably be necessary as well.
We still need some documentation that says what \lt;SHRB, size="40 gleems"> does, though.
Slackware-current will work in that setup.
please read some noam chomsky.
especially about what the US did to latin america. it's not a good record.
You could pay $30 for a "preview release", or $40 for a final version. Or you could just run Quicken instead.
Or you could use the just-as-polished, already available, open source product.
I am a huge supporter of Gnucash, and use it to keep the books for the Victoria Linux Users Group, but it is neither highly polished nor finished.The killer features that I saw in the screenshot of Kapital were a functioning print chequing module and an address book which implies A/R and A/P.
I hope this gives the gnucash folks some impetus to catch up to a Linux based competitor
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
when is their next product, "Avada Kedavra", going to be available?
As soon as the rest of their dev team gets out of Azkaban.
0 1 - just my two bits
Let me get this straight:
You think it's a good thing for a Free Software company to sell things to generate money for development of Free Software, but only if the things they're selling violate the Free Software ethic?
The net effect of them selling t-shirts and stuffed animals instead of Closed software would be more Free software, *AND* better community relations. The net effect of them putting all their monetary eggs into the Closed basket is an eventual slide into releasing more and more closed software.
-
What I want is a Personal PIM Manager that Manages my Personal Information!
I'm glad someone explained that. In my view the system worked in Word 6.0/95, and I created some very long documents that were nearly entirely in outline format using the Bullet/Numbering feature.
Word 97 was broken, and then it got worse for Word 2000 (supposedly necessary so that you could round-trip from HTML.) If I try to open those old Word 6 docs from Word 2000, they show up with no bullets/numbering at all!
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Have you ever used LyX? It's a word processor built on an entirely different premise than Word.
If a Word document relies heavily upon certain macro features, and other formatting features, with liberal use of OLE, how are you going to convert that into LyX or TeX format unless LyX supports equivalent features?
You can strip it all out and keep only what LyX supports. But then it just doesn't look like it's supposed to, and people complain that the converter sucks.
That is simply what I meant when I posted. As for knowing what I am talking about, I might mention that I worked on the WordPerfect team. One of our challenges was that WordPerfect did not support or implement the same features as Word, so those elements of the Word file had to be transformed or eliminated. The converse is also true.
In my post, I was referring to the .doc file format, which is what everyone wants to be able to pass around. I agree that there are other formats which are supposedly "implementation independent," but that isn't what my post was about. Also, most people don't choose to save their Word documents in anything but Word format.
.doc files need. So if you are working on a word processor that seeks to change the face word processing by focusing on semantics rather than mechanics, you'd better be ok with the fact that no converter on the planet is going to make a Word document render properly in your program.
My intent was to show that if you want to support a certain feature called for in a file, then your program has to have that feature. It doesn't matter how proper your file format is; if the format calls for a table, then your program better have that feature available or it won't render as the author intended. There are basic assumptions about the capabilities of the program regardless of the file format. For example, I wouldn't attempt to load my resume into a MIDI sequencer.
You said "describe the document rather than the program that made it." And I agree, which is exactly the premise on which TeX is based. The problem is how you describe the document. If you describe it in some proprietary terms, it is useless. Besides, TeX describes a document semantically, and other formats describe a document visually. Those are two completely different and incompatible paradigms. Who cares if you are storing the files in XML or SGML or TeX.
XML and SGML are all very good, and I agree that they should be used. But we were originally talking about Word documents, which isn't the same thing at all. If someone describes a document in terms of Word, then you have to interpret the the document in terms of Word. Your result is a program functionally equivalent to Word. If you want to translate it into XML, then fine. It still needs to retain the information that made it work.
I still hold by my original proposition. If your main goal is to support the Word file format with your word processing program, then the most important thing you can do is make sure you program all of the features that the
I worked on the Corel team during the development of WordPerfect Suite 8. Mostly I worked on the Dec Alpha port.
The MS file format is specific to features in Word. If the Linux word processor doesn't support those features, then it is pointless to try and be compatible.
Essentially, if you want to be compatible, then you have to treat the document the same way that Word does. Which, one way or another, means putting Word on Linux (by reverse engineering, porting, or parallel development of equivalent code).
To develop a word processor that reads Word documents, your main goal has to be compatibility, not functionality or innovation. You can't say "I think it would be great if my word processor had feature A and changed the concept of feature B". Then when you try to push Word documents into it, you find out that your paradigm doesn't fit Microsofts', and you have to change it all.
Currently, import filters have to eliminate or ignore the parts of the format it doesn't support, and transform the other peices to fit the paradigm. Hence the poor filters.
So when people say, "Linux needs better import filters for Word documents," what they are really saying (but don't know it) is, "Linux needs Word."
The real issue is: why don't they stick to standard file types? Well, maybe there isn't a standard for presentations, spreadsheets, etc.
You can't use a Microsoft standard without your program having Microsoft's features in it. The two are inseparably tied together.
The de facto standard doesn't solve the problem, it just limits the options. A true standard will give a base upon which may be built custom extensions. That way an application may explore the possibilities, yet return to the basics when interoperability is called for.
I have to agree - GnuCash is already great and is getting still better at a rapid pace. Right now many of the big improvements are in the unstable development version, but if you can get all of the dependencies worked out it's really sweet to use.
ObDisclaimer: Gnucash unstable is not for use with your real financial data, although since they've gone to a text-based file format with frequent automatic backups, in practice I do use unstable for my books with very few problems. But don't do it 'cause I said so.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
It is difficult to keep up with. Some of my problems I traced down to:
And I still don't have online help, because I haven't quite figured out how to get the sgml tools setup right. So you're right, it is a big pain to get configured but it's a great app once you've got it working. Hopefully the requirements for building and using it will settle a little with the next big stable release. The gnucash-users and gnucash-devel mailing lists are also a great source of configuration advice since pretty much everyone on the list went through the same problems.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Now if I could just get KDE to run on CygWin, I could switch to using all the same programs on both platforms!
:-)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Yes, but there *are* the:
Gestapo
GRU
Goth (the historical people who attacked and burned the Roman Empire, not the clubkids)
And all sorts of lovely words like:
Genocide
Gangbang
Geisha (depending on your outlook)
Ghetto
Geld
Gladiator (read history)
Germ warfare
Gluttony
Goblin
Grave
Grief
Grotesque
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
KWord opens MS Word 97 and 2000 (unsure about 95) files quite nicely. It has alpha RTF support (which can be saved as .doc files and opened transparantly by all versions of MS Word... that's how even MS Word itself handles backward compatability).
Basically, the hard part is done, and now the easy part needs to be cleaned up. Kinda ironic isn't it?
On the other side of the "Big Two Apps", KSpread reads Excel 97 and 2000 files just fine, but only saves to CSV right now.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Whups... I replied to this same message saying that it works well. Which it does - *if* you're talking about the current, i.e., CVS version.
The KWord packaged in the last official release of KOffice is much much more shaky in its MS Word import abilities. I should have clarified.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
This is nearly off-topic, but interesting in the same way:
KDE has a project going to produce a print publication (alongside a web site, of course) that highlights and discusses KDE applications and features articles of interest to KDE users.
The title of the project is KDE-Zine (can anyone in Europe guess where this is going?).
We Americans (particularly us Southern Boys) reflexively connect Kapitalized words that subsitute "s/C/K" with the embarrassing and horrific KKK, but the Europeans in the KDE project don't really realize this, but it goes both ways...
Recently on the KDE-Zine list, some of the Americans had started abbreviating KDE-Zine as "the kz". They would discuss what should go into the kz, what progress was made on the kz, etc. It lasted for a short time until some of the Germans on the list became rather emotional, to the bewilderment of the Americans.
It turns out that "kz" is the designation for the Nazi Concentration Camps in German. It's a *very* touchy and emotion filled subject.
It's interesting how Open Source ties cultures together, and how we are all revealed to have our own little hangups and embarassing cultural legacies.
And then there's the recent nixing of the proposed name for the new standard text editor for KDE - the original author wanted to name it Kant, until it was pointed out that many english speakers (particularly some British ones) had some issues with how that was pronounced. :)
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
No office suite is very good yet. As soon as one pokes its head out from the others with the stablity and features necessary, then it will probably be adopted as more or less "standard" (although it could be that we get more than one, which is probably fine). RedHat should not adopt any office suite as standard, because that would interfere with the evolution and natural selection of the best office suite. Just wait a little bit, and things will sort themselves out. Same is true for the web browser (konqueror really is pretty good, and Mozilla/gecko is getting better all the time). I've seen the cries of "X-windows doesn't do 3-D", and "we don't support USB", and "the kernel doesn't scale well", etc., etc..... the point is we always seem to get there. The same is true of office suites. We have several serious contenders now. Just let them evolve. In a year, we'll have a serious contender to MS Office.
If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Ghandi
The difference between TheKompany and Ximian/Eazel is that theKompany doesn't have any affect on the KDE core team and the KDE core development.
theKompany is just a software company. Don't use their software if you don't want to (and I think many KDE users don't use their software).
But nowadays, if you are a GNOME user, practically, you cannot just ignore the work of Ximian and Eazel (in the way you can ignore theKompany). They have taken over the GNOME development with venture capital. VC, which source now seems to drain.
That's the difference.
Some complete monkeys thought that in London, it would be pronounced cunt.
As a Londoner, I can assure the aforementioned monkeys that no London accent would cause this...
It used to be thought *good* to mess with peoples sensibilities - see fsck - but now its gone so far in the other direction that we've started to make up imaginary cultural issues to avoid.
Duh.
perhaps if the multitude of suites ( choice is a Good Thing(tm) could consolidate around a given set of standards for file formats / protocols then the problem of too much choice wont be a problem. this can be seen to be happening slowly, but im not how sure it is. therein lies the key.
~Darkfell
Eh? their products are either fully commercial, closed source, etc or totally open (gpled, bsded, or what license they use). For the most cases their commercial and open software is separate and have little to do with each other. Some of it is open-source but addons cost money - somewhat more questionable but still ok with me- usually the added features are stuff not that many need.
I just dont see their free projects as their evil plan to lure customers into feeling all warm and fuzzy then totally ripping them off. In my opinion the free stuff is their main thing, and the proprietary stuff is just to keep the food on the table. How else could they spend most of the day writing free stuff?
Now, that's a totally legitimate business plan, of course, but TheKompany isn't a free software company any more than Microsoft is. They're just selling proprietary software for an otherwise Free platform.
But please remember that they've released a lot more Free code than proprietary. Comparing them to microsoft is insulting. It's true though that they're not a *pure* free software company. They mix from both worlds. The "feel" i get is that they are a bunch of guys that wants to write free code, but still eat so they do the best they can.
So don't claim that they "Get it." And why are you knocking Ximian? It's fine to praise TheKompany in this forum, but will you (and TheKompany's prez!) quit it with the "t-shirt and monkey" crap?
I have nothing against Ximian and eazel and i truly hope they make it - but i just cant see how where they'll get the revenue. Hopefully it's just me being stupid.
-henrik
I have absolutly no problems buying products from theKompany - because I know I sponsor their free work by doing so (that their products are excellent may have something to do with it too :)
All people need food on the table, and selling some proprietary applications to be able to develop free stuff seems like a reasonable tradeoff. I'm afraid some linux companies will just disappear once they've burned through the VC money simply because they have no plans on how to make money. :(
Sorry FSF(Free Software Fanatics? :) but i feel that in some cases proprietary software might be a Good Thing. This could be one of them. The net effect of theKompany releasing some closed source products will be *more* Free software, not less.
Also: If you think their products could be useful: *please* buy them! It'll keep the free stuff coming.
Kudos to all @ theKompany.
-henrik (no, i dont work there :)
--Ben
If you want to be well liked, be CANADIAN. Im an American, and have experienced much anti-American sentiment that extended beyond "obligatory but well-meant jokes" in various European countires. In my last trip I put a Canadian flag patch on my backpack and was treated VERY nicely my entire trip. Luckily I lived in Canada for a year so I wasn't completely clueless when asked where I lived and such.
Gotta love the Canadians...
.sig wanted: Must be concise, funny, and display my cleverness.
What is up with all the 'kays'... Jeez, be more Kreative.... Jim
I hate to sound like a whiner. But damn, I can't get the stupid thing to work. I've tried source for two or three of the 1.4 releases, two of the 1.5 releases. I tried a couple of times with rpm's. It is the most difficult program to install I've ever seen. I've installed lots of other kludgy things, but this one defeated me.
I'd love to install it, but it seems like it's got so many 1337 libraries it needs I can't get the damn thing to install. I finally got all the libraries installed it wanted (including libgal), and the damn configure script refused to see the libgal library, I ran ldconfig, I checked my ld.conf, I tried adding it my shell environment paths, it no worky - AGGGHHHH!!!!!
Moneydance worked though, sigh.
Suse 7.1 if anyone cares...
It does, I installed that and all it's dependencies, and it promptly crashed on start-up. I think I might put a different (more gnome biased) distro on one of my other boxen and see if I can get it to work...
For home users stamping out a document or two I don't think it matters much, so let them install whatever they like.
For a small or medium size company thinking of going over to Linux I really think Star Office on a nice box is good enough. I've had great success with both MS Word documents and powerpoint presentations. It's a matter of trying how it works with a bunch of typical documents. Of course, you need to keep a windows installation around just in case, but it shouldn't be a showstopper for a many people wanting to switch to linux. YMMV.
You need to check out SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Langugae).. it's the w3c's powerpoint killing standard (and, combined with motion SVG it'll kill flash too). Version 2 even has support for transitions so you can be just as cheezy as you were with powerpoint.
And then there's the recent nixing of the proposed name for the new standard text editor for KDE - the original author wanted to name it Kant, until it was pointed out that many english speakers (particularly some British ones) had some issues with how that was pronounced. :)
Presumably it would be pronounced the same way as in Immanuel Kant. I've never heard anyone object to the name or consider it unsuitable for polite conversation. Okay, Kantian philosophy isn't mainstream daily conversational material in Britain but it comes up from time to time. I think the people objecting to it must have some weird hang ups.
Come to think of it, "cant" and "can't" are both prefectly acceptable words throughout the UK, at least in my experience, and I can't see why the "K" would make a difference.
Proprietary data files (and interfaces to those files) are the limiting factor between different 'suites' of applications, and not the suites themselves. Microsoft, for example, has deliberately hoarded the specifications of their file formats ... which results in a lack of easy operability outside of their binaries. The result of this is the requirement for Microsoft's proprietary embeddable COMponents or binary viewers, as viewing /editing /access of those files requires a proprietary binary to be used.
... where there could be any number of viewers/interfaces/tools - which solve for different uses of the files (like a command line viewer, text mode viewer, browser viewer, summary viewer, etc., etc.). Things like embedded COM (for the purpose of displaying a proprietary document) become less important as the source for many viewers would be available. The choice to COMponentize would be a separate issue, and a system would not *have* to rely on COMponents or even a COMponent system for that purpose. COMponent systems can be a good thing, but access to data should *never* be limited to one platform/vendor/library/etc. That is just evil.
... and does not serve the users well.
... but from that point the competition is obstructed. The obstruction of competition not only results in fewer user choices, but also the lasting future of the data encloesd in the propietary formats ... and use of that data in as many ways as could be useful.
... and not in a way that comprimises the freedoms of the user. The key is to provide the users with the greatest freedoms possible.
Imagine an open format for the hoarded MS office suite formats (or any suite)
The best case, in my opinion, are strong standards in the data formats and simple, open data access libraries and/or COMponents. Viewing, editing, reporting, or otherwise can have as many implementations, platforms, paradigms as a user base will support. Limiting the high level functionality to one group, vendor or open 'suite' is not far from proprietary
In the end, leaders in an open system are naturally selected - and can change over time, whether sources are open or not. In a closed standards system (a la microslop or otherwise) leaders are selected naturally initially (and even then sometimes selected by oem agreements and similar)
Propietary standards are evil. Closed data interface libraries, or user access to that data (via 'suites') is evil as well. The data needs to be free, access to the data needs to be free, extending the possible uses of the data needs to be free as well. There may be room for propietary extensions of use, but not in exclusion
mx
You could pay $30 for a "preview release", or $40 for a final version. Or you could just run Quicken instead.
Or you could use the just-as-polished, already available, open source product.
I bet you'd like some screenshots
An aside:
People always whine about KDE vs Gnome and relative freedom, GPL, FSF, blahblahblah. But it is interesting to note that Ximian and Eazel release ALL their products under Free licenses. TheKompany says "We will be offering Kapital under a closed-source license. However, we are considering a limited open-source license, under whose terms purchasers of the software also receive source code. We are exploring other options for making the software as open as possible."
Actions speak louder than words.
The thing that I don't like about kivio is that the stencil set format is proprietary. At least that is what I gather from their website and in other reviews. I know they have to make money, but I need to be able to make my own stencils. I can't hardly stand the idea of being locked into product that depends on something proprietary in order to have functionality. As far as I'm concerned this is a non-FREE product. It's not so much the money ($5.00 per stencil set), it's the freedom that I hate to give up.
although the idea of RedHat, et al. fixing on a de facto standard is viable and a Good idea, still i have nits to pick. besides, would KDE's (and, therefore, Mandrake's) apparent adoption of these packages not imply said standard?
s20451 : so you can edit/display/transmit your files to virtually any Windows user.
emphasis mine.
the fact that virtually any Windows user can use the stuff i used Windows to produce != interoperability.
also, the 'virtually any' piece of your argument appears to me to have a couple of holes, itself. i have, in the past, had major, major hassles trying to coax M$APP9x to deal with the output of M$APP2000.
interoperability, this does not make.
interoperability is more (to my thinking) a cross-platform issue. ex: MySQL will work on just about any platform out there, AFAIK... never messed with the M$ versions thereof, but you get the idea...
Don't ask. Go see.
(sarcasm) But if I do, how can I justify my continued wailing & gnashing of teeth about what "free" means / open vs. closed source / FSF vs. everyone ? (/sarcasm)
Thanks for interjecting a bit of common sense :)
Get yer KDE-logo goodies at http://www.cafepress.com/kde. All profits donated to kde.org.
"Come to think of it, "cant" and "can't" are both prefectly acceptable words throughout the UK, at least in my experience, and I can't see why the "K" would make a difference."
Perhaps because people didn't want the name of the text editor being a homonym for "Can't"?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
You talk about substance.
I say, show me the substance Ximian and Eazel have produced so far (you know stuff other than beta's and stuff like that)
Johan V.
Well it doesn't matter wether you are Canadian of an American when you visit Europe. What matter is if you behave like a clueless shitass American or not.
Maybe that Canadian flag reminded you to stay polite, instead of echoing a aura of superiority.
I'm from the Netherlands, and somehow Germans are not the most favourite foreigners. But when a German car pull over to ask for directions, they usually ask if any of us speak English/German. Americans usualy just ask for directions, and if they are not understood immediatly they just drive off and call you a moron. Attitude, politeness and Adaptability can get you a long way, even when you're from the states.
Johan V.
Linux settle on the Word 95 or 97 .doc format as a standard.
Surely this has been examined enough to provide a reference implementation. And several open source tools and filters already exist. Not to mention that the rest of the (Windows and Mac) world will be already be compatible.
What would be the disadvantages or drawbacks to something like this happening (apart from natural MS negative sentiments) ??
Actually there is a good bit of totally free, fully functional software, just look at the web site.
Actually the format isn't proprietary, it is just copywritten to mean that you cannot freely distribute them. We've had several people submit stencils that they built by just examing the default that was included.
Aethera as a fully functional mail client with address book, sticky notes, calendar and newsgroups will always be free. We are making money by selling plug ins (again) that provide extended functionality and features. This isn't to enhance the basic feature set, those will be full featured, it is to add new options to the framework. There is also the groupware server aspect that we will make money on and vertical market applications that can make use of the groupware aspect. So people can choose to use as much or as little as possible.
While we are a bit behind schedule, you should start to see the first commercial plug ins in May.
We have extensive support for multiple currencies. As a matter of fact when you set up an account, you get a combo box of pretty much every currency on the planet. There is a bit of fine tuning left to do like having the right symbol and word for the currency appear in the check writer, and we are still working on the currency calculator for support of the Euro specifically, but those will be coming shortly. Since our main Kapital developers are in Europe, this topic is dear to their hearts.
That was the beauty of the name. Python is named after Monty Python, and is also a snake, and BlackAdder was also a british comedy series, and a snake. It started as an internal joke, but we ended up liking it.
Why multiple package formats when it could just use something like Setup to accomplish the same goals for everyone, while not being attached to a particular distro-specific format?
Check out ioquake3.org for a great, free, First-Person Shooter engine!
Q: GNOME: "nome" or "guh-nome"?
A: In English, the word "gnome" is pronounced with a silent "g". However, GNOME itself is generally pronounced as "guh-nome", just as GNU is pronounced "guh-noo" when referring to the GNU Project.
'nuff said. next time research before you post a dumbass comment!
E.
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This Post has been brought to you by the letter "E".
I have to agree, it was kind of cool at first but now it's getting extremely old.
I mean, let's look at the OSen and find out what they're good at:
- MacOS: Incredible graphics processing, mainly due to hardware
- BeOS: Great graphics, again, and a tight package
- *BSD/*nix: Incredible network applications
- Windows: Games, games, games.
But what does Linux have to offer? Not a whole lot. Sure, they have ports of networking applications, and a few games that have been (poorly) ported by Loki. But come on... Linux will never be able to compete for a share of the game market. It's just too tough to upgrade a video card when it takes you 3 hours to track down the latest 0.01 BETA source code for the driver.New business applications can help migrate Linux over to the business desktop; let's hope it stays there.
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That's just the way it is
Yes, it's good to see companies undertaking real, useful projects - and actually throwing money and resources at it.
Yet I can't help thinking about how all of this will only be helpful for KDE users.
Of course, GNOME users (or even people who don't use desktop environments at all - personally I use X and the BlackBox window manager, period) can actually use KDE software - if you've got a few tens of megabytes of RAM to waste. I'm afraid I don't.
I know, competition is good, but... Damn the desktop war. Really.
Thomas Miconi
The people of Jugoslavia thank you America!
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
I wonder what Karl Marx would think about this. Das Kapital, Marx's magnum opus talks about the inner workings of the capital system. Very interesting stuff. I don't know if they had any intention for the names being similar. Obviously, Kapital is the german version of capital. Nevertheless, has anyone ever come across any recent communist literature that would correlate with the whole gnu/linux movement? Is Linus the "New Soviet Man" ? Shit, i could probably write my final paper on something like that for my Marx class. :)
But look at the saying that goes something like give what you can, take what you need and the open source movement seems to follow that. I know this is horribly off topic, but when i saw "Kapital", i had to comment, because I am reading it at the moment
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
FWIW, I have installed Mandrake 7.2 and 8.0b3 on my laptop with the Rage Mobility chipset - with no video problems. Mandrake 7.2 has a few other problems with my machine (sound, usb wheel mouse), and Mandrake 8.0b3 is, of course, beta... RedSavina Acer TM602TER
And like "NIC Card" = "Network Interface Card Card"
--
Free Mac Mini
I'm obviously not the only one excited... :-)
El riesgo vive siempre!
...my last reason to reboot into Windows on my home box. FINALLY freedom from Microsoft Money! Hopefully, if decently imports Microsoft's crappy .QIF implementation, or better yet, maybe someone reverse-engineered the .MNY format. Regardless, this is all I need. Oh, happy happy day!
P.S.-->Hrm. Guess I'll have to switch to KDE...is it worth it? I happen to like Window Maker....
El riesgo vive siempre!
> Also: If you think their products could be
> useful: *please* buy them! It'll keep the free
> stuff coming.
In other words, TheKompany sells shareware/crippleware/demoware. Now, that's a totally legitimate business plan, of course, but TheKompany isn't a free software company any more than Microsoft is. They're just selling proprietary software for an otherwise Free platform.
So don't claim that they "Get it." And why are you knocking Ximian? It's fine to praise TheKompany in this forum, but will you (and TheKompany's prez!) quit it with the "t-shirt and monkey" crap?
a.
Kivio is maybe not a recent addition, but Yet Another Tool From TheKompany That Looks Like Something We Know From Windows (YATFTKTLLSWKFW)
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If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
+1 Funny
KdenLive/PIAVE - non-linear video editing
you of all of the Donkey Kong games? You know, klumps, the Kremlins, and King K. Rool... On the other hand, the g* naming scheme doesn't remind me of anything. I don't know, I spent all of high school playing those wonderful Rare games and now I'm permanently biased away from KDE.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
The obstacle to interoperability is NOT the amount of Office suits (including all the betas...) Linux has, but the lack of one good standard file format. And it's not really a lack of a file format either, it's the lack of co-operation between the programmers / companies. If we'd agree (fat change) on one format, it wouldn't matter what software you were using.
Unfortunately, I'm just dreaming.
Conversely, the (perhaps only?) good thing about MS Office is that any computer with Windows is likely to also have Office
I work for a huge global company which doesn't use Office, at all (ok, so we happen to use something inferior which I hate and won't name *cough*Lotus*cough). My girfriend uses Windows every day for all her work - yet she refuses to install ANY browser plugins (no, she doesn't even have Flash). And she only uses Office97 (even thou she's a professional secretary). The fact is, you can't rely on people having "the standard applications" even if they're using Windows.
The most compelling example of this that I can think of is PowerPoint [...] I can borrow someone else's [laptop], as long as they have Office
I used to do support for a small company. They used PPT quite a lot for presentations, and I didn't object. I thought too that it was the best program for the job. Until I started hearing problems - the client had a different version of PPT, or the version was the same but it refused to load the show.... The fact is, the only computer that can show your PPT presentation right is your own. That's exactly why you see people carrying their own laptops to presentations.
Anyway, we just need to agree on file formats and Linux office world will be heaven. We already have proven standars for these so why not use them? Like Postscript for documents, HTML for presentations (works like a wonder after fighting with PPT's) etc. I can't be that hard.
Uh.... must.... resist... writing... more... and... get.... back.... coding....
I think they now ship koffice and several of the gnome apps (gnumeric and such). They also ship klyx and abiword for word processing
How many software houses out there are offering for-fee customization of the code? It seems to me the people who wrote the stuff would be particularly good at tuning it to your needs, whether by installation or reprogramming. The reprogrammed versions would also be released for Free, but not necessarily integrated into the main code tree (since they're customizations, ie. not everyone needs those features) except by popular demand.
This seems to me to be a good combination. I think RMS or ESR or somebody discussed this in one of their utopian-future-of-software treatises, didn't they?
-Erf C.
-Erf C.
Cthulu always calls collect...
on a related topik our lokal (Kambridge MA) maoist-stalinist nuts refer to USA as Amerikka. doesn't seem like they endorse it though.
you are obviously not aware all this wonderful GNU staff comes on a separate CD as a part of Solaris distribution.
Total ReKall has already been filmed, you should be hearing from their lawyers soon if they use the same ones as MasterCard.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
Here's the real deal, folks: The open source community needs to develop new apps that do things that no Windows app can do, and that Windows users look at and realize they can't live without. Give them a reason to use a Linux app and they'll use Linux.
Otherwise, why would they bother unless they're driven by the same ideological ardor that drives much open source activity.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
My point was simply that, regardless of the obvious advantages of Linux, or most any other Unix-derived OS, over Windows, that only matters for people to whom the OS is important. That isn't very many people. Most folks don't care one way or the other. Improving the quality of the OS is no guarantee that more people will use that OS.
The Linux camp is a bit schizophrenic, it seems to me: Is the goal to defeat Microsoft as the mainstream desktop OS? Make the best OS and damn the market penetration? Or, forget about anything but the server market? In a world of infinite options, all 3 would be possible. In the real world, they probably aren't.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
This was the pre-Microsoft Visio. I still miss it (8 years later!). Unfortunately, I couldn't compile Kvisio when I tried a few weeks ago. So I used Tgif instead, and it did everything that I wanted.
The middle mind speaks!
Swarming through the generations like lokusts...
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
I switched from gnome to KDE soon after 2.0 came out. I've loved the switch (no hard feelings toward the Gnomish among you, its a good desktop too) but the one thing I miss is the intergration of the address book, the mail client, and the palm pilot. In KDE you have kpilot, which just basically works as a backup for your palm. I hope this Aethera program can intergrate better with my palm pilot than the current batch of kde programs can.
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
Take a look for yourself, check out the mailing lists, read the docs;
http://www.openoffice.org
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
The answer is not to eliminate all Linux suites but one. What we really need is a simple convention for all these different products to share their documents, spreadsheets, etc. If such a standard existed and were supported by a lot of Linux vendors, that would do a lot to defragment the Linux marketplace.
Best of all, if such a standard were at all successful, it would inevitably spread to other platforms, including Windows. Eventually somebody would write adapters for Office. The ability to move data between Windows/Office and its Linux competitors would do a lot to hasten acceptance of Linux.
__
I think this is a huge step forward for the linux/*bsd/unix community. The existance of another office suite makes *nix operating environments not only usable as a desktop, but realistic as a desktop. StarOffice is a great set of programs, but it was basically alone.
What excites me the most, however, is that it's available in Debian packages. Hopefully, this will start a precedent for software developers who want their product widely used: Make it available in at least three forms: rpm/tar.gz/deb, although a FreeBSD port would also be nice. I personally think that if more companies were willing to package their software in these easy to code, easy to use packages, more people would be willing to use them, thus advancing not only the company, but the linux community in general.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
It's a troll. Why do all the GNU programs have to begin with a G? Gnome, Gnutella, Gunzip...
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Also, anyone have a distro of Linux that installs KDE2 and its associated applications correctly on a laptop with the ATI Rage Mobility chipset? The best I could get is KDE 1 compatibility with RedHat 7.0.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Now if only I could compile Qt on my XFree/Cygwin setup I could get these working with KDE on my Windows box.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
> The open source community needs to develop
> new apps that do things that no Windows app
> can do, and that Windows users look at
> and realize they can't live without.
> Give them a reason to use a Linux app
> and they'll use Linux.
Better switch to RiscOS, then.
It is IMHO the most astonishing environment ever.
Just ask sombody who uses it about !Compo, or Messenger Pro, for example...
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
I have used and developed with Foxpro / Visual Foxpro for many years and was wondering if something like it would be available on Linux. I had figured I would have to combine a number of different products (Python, PostgreSQL etc ) but also really liked FoxPro's development environment.
From the blurb it sounds like this is eerily similar to FoxPro - dbf format, SQL queries, usable with a different back-end etc.
I hope they have deb's Real Soon....
I think The Kompany has given considerably more to the Open Source community than it has taken. Check out the list of Free, free, GPL'ed software they have developed:
Aethera
KDB
kamera
KDE Studio
Kivio
Korelib
Kugar
PyQT/PyKDE
Rekall
VeePee
Now compare that to their commercial products:
Blackadder
Kapital
KDE Studio Gold
Powerplant
Three of those are merely souped up versions of Free products where you pay for extra features, packaging and support. Only Kapital doesn't (yet) have a Free version. And for those of us who care about keeping track of our finances, it's worth the $30.
Seems to me the community is winning here.
Which I think is a great business idea.
Kivio for example was written around the idea of pluggable stencil sets. The Kompany plans on selling a closed source(i.e. for money) GUI stencil builder and stencil sets as well as other utilites. One in the works for Kivio is a network scanner and diagram generator.
I think Kapital is completely closed source money make is 'cause well, there isn't really a way to sell add-on's to that type of thing.
Now KDE Studio Gold is an easy one. Take working GPL projects, throw it in one easy to open and install box after some testing and offer support ala Redhat.
The real wild card is the PIM/E-mail client. AFAIK its a GPL'd project, but I can't fihure out thier money making plan.
The rest of thier contributions have been faily strategic if you ask me. They needed a solid scripting langauge for thier money makers so they threw money (er, people) at python and made VeePee. The work they've given to KOffice will hopefully sell thier stencils.
Or is that just me?
"If we'd agree (fat change) on one format, it wouldn't matter what software you were using. "
Yeah, nice idea except that will never work in commercial world precisely because vendors WANT you to care which application you are using.
Problem is, people didn't like it.
Point: let the market decide. "De facto" standards usually emerge in the open marketplace, not when dictated by corporations. There just aren't any office suites, e-mail/PIM applications, etc. in the Linux world that are good enough yet to really get people going.
But it will happen. And when it does, Red Hat won't be causing it, but they will be making sure they include it because it's what the users want and it will sell units!
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Gee, gyou gnow, gyou're gright. Gthose gkde gtypes gjust gdon't ghave gmuch gcreativity gwhen git gcomes gto gnaming gtheir gapplications. Glet's gpoint gthat gout gat gevery gopportunity. Goh, gand gby gthe gway, gwould gyou glike gto gbuy ga gmonkey gtshirt?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
Being based on the Internet and composed of developers from around the world, the Kompany has most likely already thought of this. The close association between the Kompany and the KDE community also suggests that internationalization issues have been a concern from the beginning; the KDE community are very proud of their support for some pretty obscure (globally) language and national communities.
If there is no i18n support currently, it will have to be offered relatively soon in order to satisfy the core values of the KDE project. There is also the fact that lack of decent i18n will make Kapital's closed-source license a real problem, both for the Kompany and for the KDE.
Given all of this, I think you're probably mistaken when you say that only big, all-closed-source-all-the-time US-based software companies can support non-US currencies in their financial products. Not everyone outside the US has internalized US-centrism to the extent some Canadians have.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
and be stuck with shitty userland tools like Solaris tar grep and sed..a shitty vi, no emacs, and also with *gasp* CDE?! Do what I did and prepare to load LOTS of GNU software on that Sun box and put /usr/local first into your $PATH to make it as usuable as a GNU/Linux system is.
"I keep looking in the want-ads under 'revolutionary' but there don't seem to be any listings.. "
Then in order to generate revenue, they could charge the same amount per month for the service of downloading transactions as Quicken does (US$3/month), along with whatever Quicken charges for e-payments.
To generate more necessary revenue, they could also tack on a one-time (or 5-year renewable)'membership-fee' of 40-80 bucks too. That way, the people over at theKompany can eat, and the Stallmamites would hopefully be satisfied with the GPL licsensing.
So, if you didn't care about online banking at all, then you would still be able to use Kapital in all its glory for free. And since it would be GPL'd then it might find its way into every distribution. That would benefit the LInux community by providing a truely useable, KDE integrated finanacial program. And it would benefit theKompany because its soon to be flagship product (and major money maker) would be installed across the Linux /BSD world.
But anyway.... I am the last person to dictate how someone should license the fruits of their coding efforts. Kapital belongs to theKompany and what I have written is simply a suggestion on how to make its product that much better.
NOTE: The GPL would allow anyone to replicate the program, but this replication and use of code does not form the types of financial institution agrements necessary to set up a network -- also, small closed-sourced parts of Kapital would have to be downloaded and installed into the program upon service activation, so that Kapital can talk with theKompanies network (that's where the business-friendly dual-licensing comes in).
One other thing: the name of the product, "Kapital" should become a registered trademark of theKompany. In that way, they can exert their influence on anything that is called "Kapital" if the need arrises (Linus reserves this same right with his trademarking of "LInux")
I'm not usually a troll-biter, but there is a valid point there. There's a long tradition in the US for the Ku Klux Klan to use "K" spelling as a code-word for something they endorse. (Posters for "Kalvin Kooledge" used to be fairly common, for example. Check eBay for more.).
However, since the KDE folks are european, I wouldn't expect them to know this.
I don't think it's that important, but there should be some sensitivty there. Just as with folks who insist on using the word "cracker", which is a very common racial slur in parts of the US.
It has one of the nicest and easiest GUI's I've been played with.
In mid sentence it seems as if you've drifted off to the new Yahoo pr0n. Damnit, stay focused!
Of course KDE does not have KKK agenda. If you look at kde developers photo gallery you'll see one of the core KDE developers is named Sirtaj Singh Kang and is from India. Obviously, the KKK hates all non-caucasians including Indians, and one of the KDE developers is an Indian.
I agree. Linux has needed a decent answer to MS Access for a long time (so has the Mac for that matter), and this looks like it will have the good points of MS Access without the bad (ActiveX controls, dealing with the Windows registry, bloat, etc.) The ability to plug in various back end databases (which Access could also do, using ODBC)is a big plus. I'm really looking forward to using this, although I don't count myself a big fan of KDE.
This simply isn't true. The Red Carpet service itself will always be free, as will updates to your distribution and Ximian GNOME. The revenue in Red Carpet will be in offering for pay subscriptions to channels or for sale downloads.
You are right about one thing, however. Ximian isn't built on a totally free model. We're a for-profit company, so we need to generate revenue from somewhere. All of our software is free, however.
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dude, assbarn it.
Btw, I use KDE as my desktop of choice in Solaris.
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First, there are free alternatives out for all their products already; it's only a question of time until the free stuff gets good enough to kill off their market. Only Microsoft has been able to insulate themselves a little bit from free software, through an intricate web of proprietary standards, and even Microsoft has to be scared. The fact is that free software kills off proprietary software because it's the economically rational choice for customers.
Second, their software model is antiquated. Big do-everything C++ applications, the kind that made Bill Gates rich and famous, are not the way to go anymore. They were needed in the 1980's and 1990's because all you could do is distribute software on floppy and CD-ROM, and you better made sure that what you distributed addressed everybody's needs. With the Internet, you can now deliver small, targeted, light-weigh applications.
There is money to be made in software, but in the long run, not in proprietary, closed-source packages. It's nice if you want to support TheKompany. But don't kid yourself: from an economic and free market perspective, enterprises like TheKompany are irrational and an anachronism. Your $30 is more rationally put into a large pot that enhances GNUcash than TheKompany.
Did the Tooth Fairy magically drop Office onto your computer? She didn't on mine. Getting Office would have been several hundred dollars more. I consider it rather rude when people send me content in a format that would force me to buy a product that I don't want to buy. But perhaps you are the kind of person that gives somebody a birthday present of a vacation somewhere and expects them to buy the flight to go with it?
The most compelling example of this that I can think of is PowerPoint; if I need show someone my presentation at short notice and don't have my laptop handy, I can borrow someone else's, as long as they have Office.
I don't have a problem with that: I save my presentations in PDF or HTML format, and I can display them on just about every computer, not just those running overpriced Microsoft software.
Why doesn't a major Linux distribution provider (like RedHat) specifically embrace an application suite, and ship it with their bundle?
Probably because there is no need for it. It's only Windows users that think it's OK to send around documents in proprietary formats. On Linux, people use a wide variety of open, well-documented, non-proprietary formats that are understood by many different kinds of software.
A few Windows vendors like Corel have tried to bring bad Windows habits to the Linux platform, but they seem to have failed, fortunately.
i thizink its guh-nome but i could be miztaken.
Now don't you feel like a *biiiig* idjit? :)
Enjoying my brand new troll account
Pointing out opportunities for anal rape since nineteen 'aught six.
The problem with Linux suites is that there's no lack of them in the marketplace, and none of them is in any danger of becoming a standard; users just install whatever suite they think is neat, which is an obstacle to interoperability.
Conversely, the (perhaps only?) good thing about MS Office is that any computer with Windows is likely to also have Office, so you can edit/display/transmit your files to virtually any Windows user. The most compelling example of this that I can think of is PowerPoint; if I need show someone my presentation at short notice and don't have my laptop handy, I can borrow someone else's, as long as they have Office. I had high hopes that Corel's suite for Linux would address this when it came out, but that seems to have died the death.
Why doesn't a major Linux distribution provider (like RedHat) specifically embrace an application suite, and ship it with their bundle? By creating such a de facto standard, much would be accomplished for interoperability and document sharing.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
If you are outside the US, companies like Microsft and Intuit may support your currency, stock exchange and the infinitesimal nuances of your system.... but how can this company possibly compete? or offer anything of value to nonUS customers?
For example Quicken Canadian edition and MS Money Canadian edition are two great products... and should run just fine on VMWare.
===> An eye for an eye makes everyone blind - MG
when is their next product, "Avada Kedavra", going to be available?
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Linux has really come a long way (bsd too, anything that runs KDE... don't wanna offend anyone)... to the point where it is becoming almost indistinguishable from windows. Until recently, what was it that made windows superior (frankly people, we can go on forever about linux being better than windows but more people still use windows) was the fact that it played games and contained home/office application packages that squashed damn near everything else. Now with these new packages, it seems that maybe KDE/Linux may finally be able to put linux a step closer from become THE superior operating system of the future.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
thanx :-)
can't sleep slashdot will eat me