Linux Development Call To Arms

Hell O'World writes "This ZDNet Article points to the direction that Linux developers need to follow. Many people think that Linux needs an Office clone to gain acceptance, but the truth is that monolithic software is not the future. To get all of the functionality that anyone could possibly need in one place, the Office paradigm is to have everything there at once, and that takes a huge amount of resources to load, and years to learn. Linux will not gain converts by giving users the same thing, that they will then have to relearn. The power of UNIX is in connecting small, fleet-footed tools. What we need now is to create an environment, where users can easily create customized tools for the way they work, and developers can easily add new functionality."

Comments

Office is not a big monolithic blob

[dan the person]

FOr years and years, MS have been made it up from small reusable components. Need to display a graph in Word? Well, word doesn't have spreadsheet program built in, it embeds an Excel component.

Need a graph, well it embeds MS graph. Need an organisation chart? Well there's a seperate reusable component for that.

Re:Office is not a big monolithic blob

[dan the person]

Need to display a mathmatical formula? Well there is the small fleet-footed equation editor component that can be embeded into any OLE capable program, none of these components are tied specifically to Office, they are small reusable components(and reusable from the end users perspective too!)

Re:Office is not a big monolithic blob

[jmccay]

You are forgetting the flight simulators and arcade games embeded into MS Office as easter eggs.

Re:Office is not a big monolithic blob

[Anonymous Coward]

Small?
Fleet footed?
Try inserting 50 equations onto a page.
Watch your file size and memory usage.

I tried to write a CS report in word once, rather than TeX, just for kicks, and after 10 equations, the file size was multiple megabytes.

Re:Office is not a big monolithic blob

[BitwizeGHC]

COM != OOP DCOM != OOP

I beg to differ. The COM code I have seen quite remarkably resembles instantiation of and passing messages to objects in an object-oriented paradigm. Let's not forget the giveaway: the acronym itself. Component Object Model. Microsoft has been a big booster of the "object-orientedness" of its component architecture.

Unix "programs" have standard interfaces as well. Data is piped via stdin and returned via stdout. The input data is expected in a certain format. The output data is returned in a predefined format.
Hmmm.. sounds like an interface to me!

Yes, but that interface is both trivially simple and completely transparent. It makes coding and debugging the "components" and the applications which use them much faster and easier. It also allows you to fit the pieces together in new and intriguing ways. You lose a bit of flexibility at the component level (only one simple interface) but gain flexibility when your scope is the overall application.

COM is nothing more than a standard which defines the call stack for any "components" function call.

Most object-oriented paradigms are simply this: they simply associate this chunk of data with that bundle of operations. This is usually veiled very carefully to force the programmer to think in terms of magical function-data aggregates ("objects") instead of seperate data and function calls (which is how computers work, at least those using von Neumann architecture).

This is not necessarily a disadvantage in itself; sometimes it's desirable. Games and GUI widgets are best expressed in object-oriented style, for instance. However, the disadvantages of the COM approach (bloat, complexity hell, vendor lock) make it a mess to deal with.

Those that haven't used COM in a real-world environment shouldn't knock it.

I have used it in a real world environment. And there are times when I would have much rather simply piped my data through a perl script.

Re:Office is not a big monolithic blob

[einhverfr]

The funny thing is by the time I get X & whatever windows manager and some office program running in my old 486, it is already SLOWER than running old office 95 under win95.

Apparently Linux + X windows managers has gone a bit bloated in the last few years.

The funny thing is that by the time I get Windows 2000 and Office XP running on that old Pentium 1 with 64 MB ram, it is much slower than that Linux combination you are talking about.

Yes, I agree it would be nice if we had office applications for those old computers, but nobody, including Microsoft, has made that their priority.

Re:Office is not a big monolithic blob

[jfunk]

it would be nice if you reported the difference between that and your alternative.

I take it you've never used TeX.

I recommend trying out LyX, an advanced frontend. After going through the tutorial, I promise that you will be forever annoyed with all other "word processors."

Unfortunately, due to marketing forces, I had to stop using LyX at work some time ago. Every time I write a document now, I feel like I'm using a frigging hammer-and-chisel.

Sigh.

Re:Office is not a big monolithic blob

[tmark]

As an Emacs user, I have to ask : Do you *really* mean to perpetrate the "C-x, C-c to quit" hell that is Emacs ? For the average user, Emacs is so far from being "ideal" for *anything* that I had to laugh out loud at this post.

Re:Office is not a big monolithic blob

[BitwizeGHC]

Today's advanced Emacsen have toolbars and menus to help the "average" user. Of course I find them cumbersome and end up using the key commands anyway...

I was referring more to an architecture like that of Emacs, not necessarily the same exact interface. :)

Bundled/monolithic software

[syates21]

Microsoft killed all other word processor/spreadsheet vendors by having a more integrated package.

What makes anyone think people don't want bundled software?

Plus what he's talking about has already been done. Office is basically a consistently skinned collection of COM controls.

Re:Bundled/monolithic software

[_Quinn]

It's not /bundled/ software, it's software /that works well together/. Traditionally, the only route to integration was a single (or a few very tightly coupled) binaries. Now there's COM, which MS wrote basically because it was painful to make the office apps work together without it. However, the end-user can't choose what parts of office not to install (changing, with the `don't install until used option'), but certainly don't have the ability to to replace a crappy component that MS supplies with a better one from elsewhere.

The problem is more general than office software, though; the tendency in interfaces with GUIs has been to add complexity to the application and make it nearly impossible to use one part of it over another. KDE and GNOME's object models are working to address this; in fact, KOffice is (or shortly will be) `a skinned collection of KParts'. However, it's still hard -- and requires special tools -- to stitch these components together. There's no GUI equivalent to the command-line pipe/redirect paradigm, except for (rarely) in RAD tools for a specific toolkit/OE (e.g. QtBuilder(?), KDevelop); but these don't really function on the user level.

The most important part is that Linux has succeeded, until now, in replacing UNIX systems, because the cost of migration, especially in skills and time, is low (Linux is-a UNIX, runs basically all your standard UNIX tools, runs on commodity on NT-obsolete boxes, etc). The same is NOT true for migrating desktop boxes; I would argue a substantially lower TCO, but to make people /want/ to switch, you have to do _better_ than MS, not just match it/them (as worked for UNIX, except in price :))

-_Quinn

Re:Bundled/monolithic software

[Merk]

That may be the case, but it seems to me that the way those skinned COM controls work isn't the way tools like "grep" and "sort" work. Word isn't an editor that calls up a spell-checker when needed, pipes things to a printing subsystem later, uses a word-counter-tool when needed, etc. It is a monolithic thing that (seemingly at least) runs all those tools at the same time. Something monolithic must be starting, otherwise why does Word take so long to load, even on the fastest machine?

I think what the author is suggesting, and what people would love, is something more unixlike. The main application should be the editor, and it should do only that -- editing. The spell-checker should be a completely different module. If the user wants squigglies underlining mis-spelled words as he/she types then this spell checker could be triggered every time a word is finished to check that new word.

Obviously the pure unix method of truly different applications wouldn't work right for a system like this. Running a spell-checking application every time a word needs to be checked would be too slow and cpu-hogging, but maybe having a spell-checking daemon running waiting to check words would be the way to go.

I think a Linux office suite would need something that could accept word documents, but maybe this could be done with a standalone ms-format-converter program, writing the contents as XML which the main editor can read. I see no need to be able to write word documents directly, though chaining to the ms-format-converter as a convenience might be a nice touch.

A great way to do this would be modules that could be loaded at runtime as needed. Ideally something could even be integrated with 'net access. Say Amy is editing a lab report and wants to add a formula. She goes to a "tools" menu and doesn't see what she wants, so she clicks on "other tools". The system shows her what tools are available on her system. She clicks on "check the web" and a few moments later a list of all tools is displayed by category, she chooses "scientific | formula editor", it seamlessly downloads and installs locally (a la perl / apt get) and a few minutes later she's entering the formula into the editor.

Open source software would have the advantage that a small, basic subset of functionality could be included by default. The software package would be small and the install time would be quick. Then as the user needed additional modules could be downloaded. A university student doing essays would have a spelling, grammar and formatting tools. A chemistry researcher writing papers would have formula editors, grammar, spelling, bibliography, formatting, etc. tools installed. Little girls and script kiddies might have wild fonts, crazy borders, and similar tools installed. But everybody would only have what they need.

There just has to be a way that has a better user experience than the Microsoft Way. I don't want to have to wait 20 seconds to open a ".doc" file that happens to be plain text with a ".doc" extension. I also don't want to have all other programs grind to a halt when I open a word document that contains nested Excel tables, or .AVI movies, or whatever else you can embed in a word document these days.

Is this possible, or am I just dreaming? That's what I want out of an office suite anyhow. Simple tools with numerous plugins/addons. Is that so hard?

Re:Bundled/monolithic software

[brunes69]

I'm not trying to be pro-M$ here, but I'd just like to point out that Word has always loaded VERY fast for me, at least 5x faster than WordPerfect ever did on its best days, and at least as fast as even the slimmed down abiword or Kword, which only have a subset of the features.

Re:Bundled/monolithic software

[micromoog]

Something monolithic must be starting, otherwise why does Word take so long to load, even on the fastest machine?

Word 97 takes 4 seconds to load here at work. That's on a P3-600, 128M, running NT4. I've got loads of applications running, including a long-running SQL Server insert query against a million-row test table (that resides on this machine), taking up 100% of the CPU.

And that's before memory caching kicks in . . . if I close it and open it again, it takes ~1.5 seconds.

Say what you will about Word, but it ain't slow.

Re:Bundled/monolithic software

[uchian]

That may be the case, but it seems to me that the way those skinned COM controls work isn't the way tools like "grep" and "sort" work. Word isn't an editor that calls up a spell-checker when needed, pipes things to a printing subsystem later, uses a word-counter-tool when needed, etc. It is a monolithic thing that (seemingly at least) runs all those tools at the same time. Something monolithic must be starting, otherwise why does Word take so long to load, even on the fastest machine?

More to the point, why does everything need to be built into another layer of abstraction from the operating system? Why can't the spellchecker be used on a text file in notepad? Why can't Word highlight a piece of code automatically since I have Visual Studio on my computer?

Why, in fact, do we need "Yet another GUI" on top of the Desktop GUI that we already have?

Perhaps a real cool solution would be to stop treating the desktop as "Something that's there to be a host to other programs" and more as "something that's there to let me get my job done".

As an example, when you think of the command line, do you think of bash, or do you think of all of those useful utilities is /usr/bin such as grep which can be combined in different ways to do different things?

Re:Bundled/monolithic software

[wishus]

Can we in the Linux realm get to the point where everything is pluggable with the minimum of prayers? Can I install my stupid screen saver by clicking on a button? That's what Average Joe will want. That's what I want!

Tried SuSE 7.2? It's very close.

Aside from an issue I had with the SuSE 2.4 kernel, it's a graphical "wizard" install all the way through to a KDE desktop. The screensaver was already installed and I could switch by clicking a button. It auto-detected all my hardware, including sound and old ISA cards, and auto-configured PPP with dialog boxes.

The only config files I have edited by hand are my .bashrc (setting up my development environment) and my .sircrc.pl (writing a command to let me pipe fortune into irc by typing /fortune).

Of course, I also made a command to pipe in a fortune -o.

Re:Bundled/monolithic software

[micromoog]

Word is smart because it cheats by late-loading components. Sure it pops up in a second or two, but then if you load the Find+Replace dialog box, it grinds for a couple more seconds. And so on for other features.

So you might say . . . it chains together small components as needed?

Re:Bundled/monolithic software

[brunes69]

Ok...

One is on Win2k and one is on Win95??? 95??? Win95 takes way less RAM than even 98, and we all know how much more RAM hungry Win2k is than 98. You're comparing apples to oranges. I am comparing startup times on the SAME MACHINE, which is one I use at school, all the time. Its a P3 something, unsure about ram. MS Office has always performed WP Office / Corel Office in startup times.

Re:Bundled/monolithic software

[nathanm]

which only have a subset of the features.

Right, they don't have all of Word's features. But 90% of users use only 10% of Word's features. Most people just want to write a letter or something similar, Wordpad is more than adequate for their needs.

Re:Bundled/monolithic software

[reverius]

I think the point is that the spellchecker is constantly loaded (you know, underlining all of your misspelled words while you type) and is eating up RAM and CPU time. :)

I could be wrong about the original intent though.

It could make it there...

[purduephotog]

... if the approach was changed from RTFM to a little friendlier attack.

There's alot of stability under Linux, and for that I'm grateful, but when I have 50 collegues and 2 sets of grandparents that I have to keep in contact- it's MS WORD... or Excel... or Power Point.

But maybe a rallying point is all thats needed? I don't know- star Office wasn't too hot... write idea, wrong approach.

This is like OpenDoc

[uglyhead69]

Essentially Apple's OpenDoc was the same paradigm. Unfortunately due to business concerns OpenDoc was canned. The tools that were released were VERY useful though. For the short time it was around a was a great way to get work done. With the addition of the power in unix, this paradigm could be very powerful.

Bullsh*t

[barneyfoo]

Im sure microsoft would love us to stop working on office clones. Linux, coupled with star office, koffice, or whatever, might be the only force capable of dethroning microsoft on the desktop.

It's true our clones will never be as full featured as Word, or as monolithic as office, but that defecit is easy to overcome when you add "FREE" into the mix.

And this little peice is even more BULLSH*T because what the hell does this guy presume? That we are all working to make linux the #1 OS, to make it a Super UNIX? People hack on shit that they want to. Including free word processors and office components. I think it's pretty arrogant to presume you know what's best for people's volunteer time. Keep up the good work office hackers. This kind of shit is pretty worthless.

Re:Bullsh*t

[barneyfoo]

Well, Kword is pretty simple, as is abiword. It would be nice to pull out the Editor component from the GUI. It's probably hard wired right now.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

There is a need for Office et al

[Lxy]

If I read this stuff right, it's saying that Linux is playing catch up to MS and in order to be accepted it needs to excel before MS can catch up. In a lot of ways it already has. If users need something revolutionary as a reason to switch, why have so many dumped Windows for Linux? It's free, it's lightweight, it's stable, it's secure. Want to become a Windows developer? Better make sure your tools are licensed for distribution. Want to be a linux developer? Go ahead, you already have your tools installed and you can do whatever you want with the code you write. The infrastructure is already in place. Linux is superior to to Windows in every angle except the interface. Some will argue that, but IMHO I think the UI needs work before Joe Schmoe starts using it. Joe also needs some apps like Office before he can say with confidence "this will replace Windows". The truth is, Linux is stronger than ever. MS is running scared, so you know it's doing something right!

Re:There is a need for Office et al

[MissMyNewton]

> Linux is superior to to Windows in every angle except the interface

This is the kind of statement that needs to be explained to the business types who make purchases. But...

The dollar cost argument is easy to make; the free speech argument often is harder for them to get. And the notion of GPL usually scare the vinegar out of them.

But something like a solid MS-like (yes, it DOES have to be) Office suite, coupled with the free beer argument is something they can comprehend.

Include the User

[jjr]

That is a novel idea. The fact about linux/unix the "User" tends to be more knowledge able so he can get around things the "avereage user" might not. The way to Linux more mainstream is for people to start studies on the features the user really need and want. The GUI designs that really work. What is needed input back from users on what works and how things can be improved. We are doing some of these things now. I hope this research continues

The *real* call to arms

[rknop]

Just a few weeks ago I used to think that it was important to figure out how to get Linux to compete with Microsoft, so that Microsoft's dominance might be broken, so that those of us who use Linux wouldn't be stuck with people sending us things in proprietary Microsoft formats, and telling us to boot into Windows to configure this or that piece of hardware. I would have thought that strategic questions of what sort of office aps free software developers were working on was very important.

And they are important. But that's not the primary call to arms any more. The issue is no longer whether Linux can compete with Microsoft. The issue is how long those of us in the USA will still be able to legally use Linux at all. The front has changed. It's not dominance; it's survival.

See the article on slashdot a few days back about the SSSCA. See this week's Linux Weekly News (September 13). There's a law out there about to be proposed which would make it illegal for those of us in the USA to continue to use Linux (at least connected to the internet) or any other free software as we know it.

To heck with the Microsoft monopoloy. It's a terrible thing, but at least we can use Linux now. We have to make sure we don't lose that. This is the call to arms that every Linux, BSD, Perl, Apache, or other free software has to heed. Write your congressmen. Write your senators. Don't sit back and let apathy win the day, as it did three years ago with the DMCA. We have to fight this fight, and we have to fight it now, or soon we won't have the luxury of debating what sort of office software will be best to strategically position Linux.

-Rob

Re:The *real* call to arms

[xtal]

If your country is so messed up that they're going to ban you from using linux.. maybe you have worse things to worry about than the dominance of the microsoft empire. Move someplace with sane politicians, and fight those laws before they go into place. Unless you go see your elected reprentatives in person, take some time out of your day to stop these things, then they'll happen. Politicians cater to those who want change, and if nobody objects, or not enough people object, things become law. It's not a dictatorship you live in.

It's not that bad to immigrate to Canada, or even countries in Europe where software patents aren't applicable. If running linux and "free" software ever actually became illegal and people were arrested for it, then I would hazard a guess the American claim to be a "Free" nation went down the drain, too.

Re:The *real* call to arms

[einhverfr]

After reading about this, and reading the text of the law, I have some thoughts.

The law is, as a whole, not a "bad" law-- it could be worse. The real problem is that security measures have to be certified, and this would undoubtedly require an expensive application. OTOH, I think that having a certification process in place could be a good thing.

The real questions become-- who will pay for this certification? IBM? The NSA? Red Hat? When the next version of the kernel comes out and the system changes a bit, what then? I argue that the licensing clause is the only "bad" part of the law. The rest can stand.

Furthermore, how does the Secretary of Commerce know he hasn't been sold Snake Oil?

Re:The *real* call to arms

[rknop]

The law is, as a whole, not a "bad" law-- it could be worse. The real problem is that security measures have to be certified, and this would undoubtedly require an expensive application. OTOH, I think that having a certification process in place could be a good thing.

Are you nuts? Think about how free software works. You write it. You put it out there under the BSD or GPL license. Other people modify it, send patches back to you, or publish their versions. It gets bigger, it gets better. Somebody else writes something else small compatable with it.

Done by individuals. Companies can have Government Compliance deapartments to get official certification and approval of their products before they're released. But individuals writing free software will not be able to; it will be too cumbersome for words.

What's more, do you really believe that these security certifications will allow for operating systems where anybody can modify the source code (and, say, remove the security measures) and recompile their own version? At the very worst, all but closed software would be outlawed. At the very best, it would just be illegal to connect your own modified version to the net. It would seriously hamper a lot of people who like to "play" with Linux by modifying it and running their own version. We're not just talkign hackers-- how many people run Alan Cox kernels? How many people have patched the kernel for this or that hardware driver? If they have to get certification before even plugging that modified version into the internet.... Well, it kills free software as we know it in the USA. It is no less than that, and if you think it is, you're either an industry shill, a rose-glassesed blind optimist, or completely and totally deluded.

Requiring certified security protocols be in any piece of software, simply because somebody somewhere might use a computer to commit copyright violation, makes about as much sense as requiring that anybody driving must have a police officer in the back seat, simply because somebody somewhere might drive a car to a bank and rob it.

Requiring government certification of everything we run on our computer would be a very, serious sacrifice of our freedom of action. It's about one step, if that, from requiring government certification of anything we write or say, even within the privacy of our own home. If you think this sounds like a good idea, then you scare me.

-Rob

Re:The *real* call to arms

[tim_maroney]

The law doesn't say anything about banning free software or open source. Here's what LWN adds to try to construe this as a law against free software:

The "security standards" mentioned are to be developed in the future; one can, without too much trouble, imagine that these standards to not specify "source available so that the security systems can be changed." [errors in original]

Good imagination, guys, especially given that the consensus in the security community is that open systems are more secure rather than less. This bizarre, paranoid speculation is as much FUD as anything that Microsoft has promulgated.

Tim

Is this a battle Linux needs to fight?

[Infonaut]

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here. I like the idea of small, lightweight software components for desktop computing, but this has been tried before. Here's the only link I could find to OpenDoc.

Basically, Apple's idea was to build small software components that could talk to each other and be loaded as necessary to accomplish specific tasks.

It was a great idea, and still is. I think the problem isn't so much the technology implementation as it is getting developers to see the benefits of such an approach.

Yes, developers. If you're running a software company, creating small components allows you less room to innovate on features. This in turn makes it more difficult to market your products.

I know your suggestion was that Linux adopt such a component-based approach for productivity apps, and it wouldn't seem that the limitations of the commercial world would apply. But the dominant paradigm in office computing is still the monolithic app, because that's what commercial developers are providing.

So for now at least, Linux developers will probably have to fight this fight alone. In order to convince users to make the shift away from MS Office, et. al., Linux apps have to offer a solution that's easier to use and faster by a factor of at least two. It's been shown time and time again that in order to overthrow a paradigm, the resulting benefits have to be not just incrementally better, but exponentially better.

Finally, is it even worth the effort? See the October issue of Wired, for an article by former Red Hatter Russ Mitchell, about why going after the desktop is a bad idea.

Huh?

[Reality Master 101]

Two things to say about this. First of all, the "unix model" of streams of data is absurd when talking about interactive applications. Do I need to set up a filter to insert a table into my document? Now, I know that that there are those of you who use LaTeX with a stream model to spell-check, etc, but I'm sorry -- you are living a crude, stone-age world. I like having my mispelled words underlined. The green-screen luddites need to get a clue.

Second of all, apparently this guy has no clue how Office works. Office is not a monolithic application. It's a big collection of COM components. That's why you can embed a spreadsheet into Word, or the Equation editor anywhere, or a Visio sheet into Powerpoint.

I'm fundamentally a command-line guy. I use Unix streams all day long, and hardly ever use debuggers. But this is just stupid.

I don't think so

[elmegil]

What we need now is to create an environment, where users can easily create customized tools for the way they work

No. Not any more than we need to create an environment where users can easily create customized furniture, cars, or whatnot. The mass users you need to attract to make Linux *really* popular want these things built for them and delivered to them--they are not do-it-yourselfers like most of us who read Slashdot are. That is why, despite all their bugs, Microsoft continues to sell.

Re:I don't think so

[elmegil]

There's the problem. You can have customizable, or you can have mass produced. I've never seen anything that was both in the realm of furniture or anything else that wasn't legos. (I think it's something similar to the adage "fast cheap safe, pick two" regarding computer storage)

Nothing stops anyone from learning how to use a handful of tools to build their own custom furniture. I'm a relative novice at any kind of woodwork, but with the help of a friend, I've built a custom radiator cover for about 1/4 the cost of having it built for me, and I've gone on to do a lot of other stuff.

But I'm a geek, and I like to do things for myself and am not afraid to learn how. The average windows user isn't a geek, doesn't want to learn this stuff, and is afraid of screwing it up. The same thing applies to computers.

I don't understand..

[roka]

.. why Linux needs all those desktop users? They won't develope anything, they just complain about things that aren't as usual. We don't have to fight M$ because we are free and don't depend on money.

Universal Canvas: "holy grail of User Experience"

[yesman]

Microsoft's Universal Canvas

MS didn't have the balls to upgrade office with something that was revolutionary instead of evolutionary.

MS comes up with a lot of great ideas, but, as a publicly traded company, doesn't have the nuts to execute on them.

About the Topic

[rjamestaylor]

It is inappropriately worded. Period.

You are right!!

[Tofu]

"The power of UNIX is in connecting small, fleet-footed tools. What we need now is to create an environment, where users can easily create customized tools for the way they work, and developers can easily add new functionality."

Here at MUSC, the IT Lab is trying to do exactly that. We are trying to use the web as a way to string together tools and make it as easy as possible for the user. Check out the toolbox for some of the attempts. We are just a small group and any ideas to better our tools would be great!

Make it usable for my mom

[Dog and Pony]

No matter what wizardry i can possibly do, or whatever I could make my mom do during supervising, she will not ever choose Linux. And I can not recommend it to her, either - my honest recommendation Is MS, for the average user.

Linux users and developers usually focus on things nerds can do, not what the average user can do. Before this is corrected, Linux will not make it out of the server closets (where it does a good job though).

Well, anyways, my mother wants to put in a CD, then start the OS that installed itself, and then she wants to surf some portals (sigh) and read her email without having to wonder what the h*ll a partition is on the way. Is that so hard?

And really, this would be possible without me losing the command line capability, right?

Wither Corel?

[steevo.com]

Corel tried it commercially, and it failed.

Say what you want about it, but the WordPerfect office suite for Linux was fairly complete, and a worthy competitor for similar tasks usually accomlished by MS Office.

The future of Linux as a desktop does not rest soley on this "Killer App". The widespread use of Linux as a desktop needs buy-off from management that is not ready for change, some inprovement in UI and in system management for maintainability by low to mid level IT staff, hardware vendors that fully support and endorse Linux desktop machines, IT management willing to make a major, major change, and other software packages that replace already installed propritery software.

Yeah, a good Office clone will help, but the rest isn't quite there yet. I have faith that the day may come, but there is far more to the equation than Office.

The "I Just Want to Type a Damn Letter" test

[mikosullivan]

While Soegaard provides some interesting ideas for tools that may be useful, his analysis of What Users Want is sadly off target. He seems to assume that users want lots of nifty features and inter-functionality. My experience providing tech support and teaching computers indicates something quite different: users mostly want a few basic functionalities, and they want them Right Now.

I call it the I Just Want to Type a Damn Letter test: can the user turn on the computer for the first time, understand the basics of how to operate in a few minutes, then get to work on things they want to do? If not, we'll meet with resistance at every step.

Soegaard provides some nice ideas on how to structure the back-end, but the front-end needs to Give the People What They Want: an interface to do word processing, another to do email, another for web browsing, and a few others for other less-common tasks. That is what is going to help open source win the battle of the desktop.

Re:The "I Just Want to Type a Damn Letter" test

[BitwizeGHC]

I'm reminded of a cartoon wherein a businessman is revealing a "New Approach" to sending mail. He yanks off the veil and reveals... a typewriter (the old Underwood variety), an envelope, and a stamp.

If all you want to do is type a damn letter, there's your solution. I find it shameful that so many interesting machines are conscripted into doing nothing but boring tasks.

Re:The "I Just Want to Type a Damn Letter" test

[BitwizeGHC]

Yes, this is true. Perhaps I should have said "it's a waste". You need a far more powerful computer today to do the same damned things you did with a computer 20 years ago! Why? It makes no sense.

I think Microsoft is trying to have its cake and eat it too: it's trying to create a powerful extensible architecture while still keeping the end user (commonly abstracted as "Joe User", "Joe Six-Pack" or "my grandma") in his little sandbox.

On the one hand you have power, and on the other you have a drool-proof interface. You can't really have both at the same time. If you want to take advantage of the power, you're going to have to steepen the learning curve a bit. If you want a drool-proof interface, you may as well use a typewriter instead.

Which is not to say that the software needs to be abstruse and inaccessible except by a cabal of experts. I'm saying that the "sit down and start working" modality is an unattainable goal with most sophisticated application software. (No, Office doesn't achieve it either. As someone who's had to train and retrain his mother and sister in Microsoft Word, I know what I'm talking about.) What should be done instead of focusing single-mindedly on asymptotically approaching this holy grail of ease of use is to make the learning process as painless as possible. It may even be fun.

This is where projects like Squeak come into play. Squeak is basically a laboratory for new ideas in application design. I think that it will eventually lead to some commercial-grade applications for various operating systems that offer all users a degree of flexibility and control that wasn't thought possible in the Microsoft/Apple paradigm.

Oh, and Squeak is hella fun to play with, even if you're not a programming superstar. :)

Re:The "I Just Want to Type a Damn Letter" test

[swordgeek]

"I find it shameful that so many interesting machines are conscripted into doing nothing but boring tasks."

Why exactly is this shameful?

Our lives consist primarily of "boring tasks." Many of them are required, at least within the constraints of how we choose to live. (Is your job boring? If it's too boring, then you change jobs.) The ability to do the same old boring tasks in a new and (possibly) better way is nothing to be bothered by. A letter typed out on a wordprocessor will be professional and polished as compared to one on a typewriter (proportional fonts? Try auto-kerning!), and can make someone pleased with the results. (as well as being faster)

But the key is this: there are more interesting machines than there are interesting tasks. At least, the interesting tasks aren't getting neglected because the "boring" ones are hogging all of the resources.

Re:The "I Just Want to Type a Damn Letter" test

[FFFish]

I'm reminded of a cartoon wherein an artisan is revealing a "New Approach" to cleaning the gunk out from under your fingernails. He yanks off the veil and reveals... a nail clipper (the one with the nail file).

If all you want to do is clean the damn gunk out from under your nails, there's your solution.

I find it dreadfully shameful that so many people own pocketknives, yet few of them can carve worth a damn.

Re:The "I Just Want to Type a Damn Letter" test

[BitwizeGHC]

So do I. :)

Of course we're living in an age where butter knives mean weapons charges... such is the path of ignorance of the tools we use.

I can see the tech support call now...

[chinton]

From some typist somewhere...

"I have to pipe the what to where? What's a pipe?"

...

"Yes, I see the thing above the return key..."

...

"Said what?"

...

"Oh, sed. What's that?"

...

"Come on, all I want to do is spellcheck..."

Distributed framework

[dgp]

We need a framework for distributed code. There are many systems out there. It would be great if the open source community could get behind one standard. Java does so many things right. We need an open source virtual machine - maybe Parrot will fill this need - plus a distributed object model - like EJBs - with service discovery - like JINI. Components that can move and replicate from VM to VM like a virus. Intelligent Agents. Id love to see more of that stuff.

OpenDoc, NextStep -- GNUStep?

[Blitter]

As others have mentioned, the failed OpenDoc initiative was very much in this vein. NextStep (the "new" Apple initiative, now renamed Cocoa) has long had a reputation of allowing one to quickly string together custom applications from preexisting object classes, making it very popular in businesses that custom made in house applications. It is also worth noting that this framework allows for what are called "Services". Applications can "export" functionality to other applications. So for example you can hilite text in a text editor, then go to the mail services submenu in the system menu and from there tell the mail program to open a new message window with the hilighted item pasted inside. This also enables generalized filters, etc, in some ways like Unix shell pipes.

Of course, it's not open source, but what is GNUStep doing these days?

Re:Does that really solve the problem?

[wishus]

if you need to send a document to someone you will have to save it as msword file and some features you used might be left out.

Nah, just send them the document in its native form. If they complain that they can't open it, just tell them they will have to get OpenOffice.

It's what the Word users did to me for years. In college, I had to go to a computer lab to type my resume, instead of using ApplixWare, because dumb companies wanted it in Word format.

If that's acceptable behavior for MS Office users, it's acceptable behavior for you. Word format isn't the standard. Standards aren't owned.

Re:False. Wrong. Nope.

[NutscrapeSucks]

"under free OSen its called CORBA"

OK -- where is CORBA used (directly) for component development?

Instead Free Unixes have developed umpteen replacements for COM -- KDE's got (at least) one. Gnome's got one. Star Office has another. So does Mozilla. I've heard Motif has one too. Anyone else?

Great! 4+ competing specs which means what? Your interoperability is in the toilet. On Windows, I can embed 1-2-3 graphs in Word, or Excel graphs in WordPerfect. On Unix, I get single-vendor lock-in. (This is far worse than having your widgets look differently, BTW.)

Re:False. Wrong. Nope.

[dgp]

Linux needs more GUI innovation. We should not try to be a windows work-alike. That would be a mistake.

I see the basis of change happening in a replacement for X windows. A new graphical layer that makes it easy to create a whole new paradigm of graphical computing. The idea that a screen is equal to a hardwood desktop and applications are pieces of paper that are shuffed around the desktop worked well. Linux can be the foundation for a whole new paradigm. Hopefully something that is always in '3d' mode. Something where visual programming is always part of the UI. UIs have always needed a visual scripting language. I think even 'novices' and 'daily users' will be greatly stimulated and entertained by making small functional changes to their apps as they use them.

At the same time, we need to get behind a distributed object system. You gave some great examples like CORBA and XML RPC. Add to this the 'mobile code' idea. A virtual machine - hopefully Parrot will fill this gap. Then a framework or at least coding standards for distributed objects, like EJB. Then service discovery, like JINI. God, Java does so many things right :).

I think this is where .net is going, a VM with a standard for object interfaces plus SOAP calls. I think its where Linux needs to go, too.

Want Office? Use MS.

[TeknoHog]

I agree. If people want something like MS Office, let them use Windows. If they want something like UNIX, let them use Linux or some other UNIX they find right for the job.

I believe a lot of the open source movement's resources are wasted on efforts to duplicate the MS desktop idea. UNIX is IMHO better because it's not based on the same idea. I don't see the point about 'Linux trying to catch up with Windows' while I thought the whole point of what us geeks are doing is about alternatives.

Another thing I've already said a number of times before: You can't expect to be able to harness the power of *nix via a Windowsish interface. Power tools require a power interface. Would you let someone pilot a 757 via a bicycle's interface? Oh, I think someone already did...

Re:False. Wrong. Nope.

[iabervon]

For novices, Linux is more than sufficient already. There are a number of email clients that work, basic documents are easy in LaTeX, HTML, or plain text, and web surfing is about equally broken on all platforms; I'm not clear that spreadsheets are actually useful to novices. What novices need isn't software with any particular features, but software that is understood by the more experienced people they get help from.

Daily users are similar, but instead need the same software they used the day before. Daily users would use Linux software is that were what they found on their machine and they could figure out how to use it.

What a lot of software could really use is the ability to detect that the user has just done the same thing six times and ask if the user would like to create a macro. Of course, this would depend on a sensible scheme of detecting repeated
actions and a way of not getting in the way of users who actually don't want to do the same thing again.

Seems Pretty Strait Forward to me

[cyberlync]

Much of the arguments to date seem to stem from the fact that most users will not be willing to string together the tools into a coherent custom whole. I think this is a non-issue, will users do this? no not at all. But this does leave a gap open for other companies/inidivuals to easily pack of the inidividual peaces and produce custom works based on the client/targets area of need. I can see this being a big seller in certain areas. If nothing else it would make development of large systems much simpler

Just my 2cts

Ziff Davis said WHAT? WHO CARES!

[PD]

I remember the days when Ziff Davis was constantly slamming Linux, publishing stories about how Linux was a toy operating system, and it would never make it in business.

Now they publish an article telling Linux developers what direction they need to be heading? I don't know why we even bother.

Nice call, wrong modal

[Lumpy]

we do not need 1 app that does it all. Staroffice did that and everyone hated it. we need interworking apps, lots of smaller programs that chained together to get the final result... wait Unix is based on that modal, Linux is too, so we should take up doing things the microsoft way? No.. let me re-iterate that.... N O !

yes we need the business apps in a useable fashon, no our wordprocessor doesn't need a visual basic interpeter... how about a plugin to use perl. we need the ability for my spreadsheet to read my GNUcash files (or better yet export from GNUcash to XML, spreadsheet uses XML natively as well as the Wordprocessor, Presentation software, etc....

database connectivity? Use standard SQL database connectivity.

WE have everything in our hands. the hard part has been finished for years. we need people to clean it up, slap a pretty face on it and develop a decent installer. Linux fails miserably not because the software isnt there, it is there. it's because the developers are brain dead when it comes to managing decisions and getting the product installable for the average moron.

Abiword, the best wordprocessor Linux has. hands down.

Installer and problems installing? too many to count.
Installing abiword on Redhat 7.1 requires downloading libs, editing the Xf86config file.. something that no-one other than a guru will do. GNUcash, needs a gob of new libs installed.

both of these apps are the pinnacle apps for linux. and the developers couldn't care less if they were useable/installable because of their desire to use bleeding edge libs. and you know what.... it's not their jobs. that's the job of the project manager. and in both cases, either there is no real project manager, or the project manager has no interest in doing the job.

Linux could take over now. if joe-schmoe could actually install a program package (including loki games) without having the equivilant of a PHD in computer science. (in the eyes of a user that is.)

First, make software install easier

[DrLarry]

Well, this might be a little bit off topic.
I tend to think that to make people use Linux, an office application is not at the top of the list.
All they need is being able to install any application without the hassle of grabbing gazillion of obscure libraries and rpm's. Not to mention that most will have version number incompatible with the one used by your window manager/web browser/mail client.
They also want to use their usb digital camera without any command line tool.
Once you get that, and you manage to carry out all operations without opening a single shell and logging in as root, think of an office application as a priority.
Sorry, I consider myself as an advanced user, and I tried to use Linux on a daily basis. This is simply too inconvenient. Now I'm back to windows 2000.

Re:False. Wrong. Nope.

[j7953]

Do A & B style users plan on chaining tools together to form coherent systems? No.

But they already do. What do you think MS Office is, one giant .exe? It's a suite of COM modules, chained together to form a coherent system. Whoever said that the chaining needs to be done by the user exclusively? (Ok, so I didn't read the article, maybe it did say that, I don't know.) Just like with Linux, this can be done by distributors.

The problem with MS Office is that while it has a modular architecture, that architecture is not open. You can use the components, but the ways in which the included components interact are not very customizable. You cannot replace builtin functionality, you can only write add-ons (and even that isn't a simple thing given the amount of programming you need).

Make no mistake - most users, on the order of 75% or more, will never ever want to customize their productivity tools beyond arranging a button or two, or perhaps defining a macro.

Only because they have no option of changing anything beyond that. There are some places where you might want to change the way builtin features work, if it were possible. For example, I would like to make Outlook receive emails first, then send outgoing mails, because my provider blocks SMTP (to avoid spam) until I logged in with POP3 once. This is not possible with Outlook.

If the Free Software movement could produce a set of Office components that are built in a way that allows you to create your own office suite (without hacking the source for each modification), but also offers a reasonable default setup, that might be a reason for network administrators to think about Linux on the desktop. Right now it's not a serious option if there are a lot of non-technical users -- yes, there is StarOffice, but why would you want to do more training (for both users and admins), receive more support calls (at the beginning) and reduce compatibility with MS Office files, when what you really get is just the same features?

For the rest of us, there are plenty of tools - command line tools like grep, sed, awk, and hundreds of others do just great.

Uhh, do they? Last time I checked, things like plain text files were not mentioned in any "corporate standard."

Re:False. Wrong. Nope.

[Greyfox]

What A and B do which prevents a lot of them from leading happy lives on Linux is play games. My roommate's usual MO is to buy a game, install it, bitch about it running too slow, take the advice of some amateur and try to update her video drivers, fuck up her computer beyond belief and then ask me to deal with that goddamn Windows box. If I were billing her for my time, she could have bought a Playstation 2 the first time this happened. Fortunately I finally managed to convince her that I don't do Windows and she mostly leaves me alone now.

Its already been done

[extrasolar]

As you type in emacs and have it in the right mode, it runs ispell on the previous word everytime you press the space bar.

Emacs is quite different from most software we all know--mostly because it forked independently from the rest of the software world long ago. It has evolved, almost separately, for a long time.

I say we adapt emacs conventions to look for real innovation.

New GUI paradigm needed

[Anonymous Coward]

All that is in this article and in most comments is just scratching the surface.
We need a new task/object-oriented GUI paradigm. For the average desktop user, the biggest problem is not about customizability, nor is it flexibility. We need something that has everything in place to give a good starting point for every unexperienced user to do what he/she wants without fiddling with files, applications, folders or the like. Customization should be done during the working process.
The notion of files, for example, that reside in a certain folder in a fixed position on disk has its limitations. We should rather have arbitrary groupability of objects, always ordered and grouped appropriately for the task currently at hand.In fact, there is no difference between searching for objects that meet certain criteria and drilling down a tree-like structure like the filesystem to locate an object.
The existence of "applications" is another dead end. An inexperienced user wants to create, edit and deploy documents without first deciding which application to use.
Most modern GUI systems have already gone steps in the right direction, but the nature of proprietary software as it comes today, prevents real progress. As for the "application" example: A software package that has to be sold needs a unique name and a USP, and is somewhat isolated from its environment, mostly for the reason to not expose any internal details of its creation process. Such a thing cannot be integrated into a system to the extent that it appears transparent, as a simple component of the whole environment.
IMHO this is the real potential for innovation that free software has. A commercial software company never can achieve total integration other than in the MS way: Kick competitors out and try to deliver the whole system from ground up, which then, in fact, is integrated, but puts users into the role of drug-addicts and the software vendor being the pusher.

Re:Does that really solve the problem?

[Tachys]

Nah, just send them the document in its native form. If they complain that they can't open it, just tell them they will have to get OpenOffice.

A 35MB download!! are you nuts?

If you want to do this use Abiword and ask them to download that

Only a 3.4MB download

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

More of the same

[einhverfr]

And this little peice is even more BULLSH*T because what the hell does this guy presume? That we are all working to make linux the #1 OS, to make it a Super UNIX? People hack on shit that they want to. Including free word processors and office components. I think it's pretty arrogant to presume you know what's best for people's volunteer time. Keep up the good work office hackers. This kind of shit is pretty worthless.

I recently read a Wired article (dead tree copy) which argued that Linux could never take over the desktop market and we should quit trying. My response looked pretty similar to yours.

Why is it that people are making a concerted effort to look as many gift-horses as they can in the mouth? If I didn't know better, I would point the finger at Microsoft, but I think the truth is simply a reaction to all the hype concerning Linux of late (the guy who wrote the Wired article was a former Red-Hat employee).

The glory of the OSS movement is that so many things can be developed simultaniously. People want a word clone? they can make a word clone. People want something like what this guy is suggesting? They can work on that-- WYSIWIG Emacs anyone? OSS is organic and follows needs, but does not need to manufacture need like the proprietary market.

Re:Two words: Java and Desktop

[BitwizeGHC]

My Mac-using boss:

"I saw this KDE thing and it looks just like a Mac. Can we use it on our linux box?"

I obliged him then, but these days we're running OpenBSD GUI-less. I think it's safer to keep X off a server.

Still, I think KDE is still a few steps ahead of GNOME, and headed in a better direction overall. But give me command prompts, pipes, and Scheme hacks any day. :)

Office is not the problem

[Registered Coward v2]

The problem is not whether Office is a bloated collection of tools, but the whole approach towards documents taken by office suites.

We should look at it from a single document standpoint, rather piecing together a Frankenstein's monster of a document from component parts. for example:

Look at the differences in document handling between Word and Powerpoint - each has different formating abilities and styles, even though both basicly do the same thing - layout text and graphics. Which means turning a Word document into a Powerpoint presentation is a nightmare (not to mention trying to go the other way.) What IO'm saying is we shouldn't even have the words document and presentation as seperate terms in our lexicon. I should be able to define document characteristics and then chose how and when to display them. One file, multiple views, so to speak. Ideally, you could send someone the document and, depending on what they wanted to do, use it as a presentation or document.

That gets rid of all the formating quirks that Office has and provides a consistent set of editing options across the document - whether your creating a srpeadsheet, table, presentation, flow chart or document.

Finally, since the document contains the info needed for displaying it in different manners, you could have portability between diffrent devices - such as a desktop, PDA or phone. Create once, view many (with apologies to Java).

Following MS lead and trying to develop similar products is a long term losing proposition - primarily because of MS overwhelming dominance on the desktop, which makes them the "safe" choice.

The trouble is too many people burn out their clutches trying to do a paradigm shift.

Re:Office is not the problem

[Graymalkin]

What in the holiest of holy fucks are you smoking? Word and Powerpoint since like Office 97 have been built out of COM objects. Recurring functions are just object methods that get reused by all of the Office apps. As for the document formatting, Office 2k and XP already handle this by saving content as XML and then attaching stylesheets and whatnot to the content data in order to give it context. A word document with a numbered list can easily be stuck onto a PowerPoint presentation, a change to the word document changes the PP doc. Where you get that it is a painful process I have no idea. You probably don't know how to fucking use Office so you're blaming your problems on the program.

Re:Office is not the problem

[Registered Coward v2]

It isn't about how Office integrates its programs, but how Office's approach to documents impacts the user. XML is a step in the right direction.

If all you're going to do is move simple bulleted lists from Word to PP, then yea, it does that reasonably well, but that's not my point.

First of all, I shouldn't have to stick anything from Word to PP - instead of the text becoming a Word object in PP, you'd use style sheets to control what part of the document is used and how it's viewed. For example, a section of text might be a header in a document, the title of a presentation page, and not be viewed at all in a spreadsheet. Similarly, text in a specific column in a document would become the text within Visio elements on a diagram. And it wouldn't matter where you first created the data - since it just data with different sytles attached. I realize that much of this can be done in Office today by embeding parts of documents into others, but it is neither easy nor intuative.

Something as simple as embedding a spreadsheet into PP can be frustrating as you try to adjust column widths and font point size. Or copying a PP slide from one presentation to another w/o losing all the attributes of the original master template. In fact, when it comes to integrating and displaying data across Office programs, Office sucks.

Copying a bad example of how to treat data is not good for Linux, because you provide no compelling reason for people to switch from Office. A Linux Office suite will be viewed as little more than a knock off of Office, and people's unwillingness to change will limit its adoption. However, if you have a better way, that clearly makes it easier for people to do what they want, then you've got a good reason for them to change.

Re:Office is not the problem

[Graymalkin]

You don't have to embed anything into a PowerPoint document. PP will merely use the XML generated from Word as its input and will change its appearance any way you want without changing the actual data from the XML file. It's pretty damn easy to do with a little bit of training. Talk to anyone who even halfway knows what they're doing in Office and they can tell you how easy it is to do whatever you want with any bit of data. DOn't go ranting about how Office sucks just because you have no idea what you're doing. That doesn't make it counter intuitive it just makes you hard headed.

Re:Universal File Types?

[Graymalkin]

Back in the day we called these "text files", in fact everything from memos to emails to configuration files were all just "text files". You could write an app in a couple of lines that would create and edit these "text file" things. Most command shells even have support for that stuff. Wierd.

Re:False. Wrong. Nope.

[MtViewGuy]

AMEN.

I think the suggestion of building what the customer wants by stringing together a bunch of small utilities is the equivalent of trying to cook a meal from scratch ingredients--way too many people don't have the knowledge or experience to do it.

What something like Office XP does is integrate all the tools you need so it is available easily. Besides, given Microsoft's excellent Usability Lab, the whole program has a consistent interface, which makes learning the program that much easier.

This is dwarf invasion!

[Graymalkin]

What the fuck. Microsoft builds Office entirely out of COM objects and makes its documents linkable to all of the apps in the suite. THey also let you embed the functional portion of a suite app into a fucking document. They get bashed ad infinitum on slashdot. Now people realize THEY GOT IT FUCKING RIGHT and now need to fucking copy them. Admittedly ZDNet is populated by the low end of the computer using spectrum and caters to its ilk but seeing the discussions here is just ridiculous. Microsoft's whole ActiveX paradigm has been attacked countless times and now people are wishing Linux had the same capabilities. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I guess people who develop open source software aren't the same people using it. Because it seems all the people using it couldn't think their way out of a fucking paper bag.

Ummm, no.

[Kasreyn]

"...Linux will not gain converts by giving users the same thing, that they will then have to relearn. The power of UNIX is in connecting small, fleet-footed tools. What we need now is to create an environment, where users can easily create customized tools for the way they work, and developers can easily add new functionality."

This is approximately 100% backwards.

When some drone is already using Windows and it's "good enough" (which is WHY people use it), you need to tell them WHY TO SWITCH. Inertia, my friends, inertia - if people don't have a compelling reason to switch, they'll stick with the BSOD's to avoid an evening of fiddling and installing and configuring, every time. Linux already HAS "small, fleet-footed tools", and "an environment, where users can easily create customized tools for the way they work, and developers can easily add new functionality". Neither is winning Linux many converts, because 95%+ of users will never want to create customized tools or add new functionality!

This is once again an example of how thoroughly wrong we can be when we look at Linux from the techie viewpoint and then try to extend that to non-techies. Non techies DON'T WANT TO MESS WITH IT!! They want the computer to be easy to use and do what they need so they can do their job, which is likely completely unrelated to computers! Telling them they can put together their own toys is not going to work when Microsoft is spending millions to push OfficeXP.

I don't know what the article means by "monolithic" either. As far as I can tell that's a techie curse word that has been so overused it has lost all meaning. What Linux needs are: Number one, more user friendliness and ease of install. Techies need to get off their arrogant high horses and make distros for the lusers, or else GUESS WHAT, they will keep going to MS. Our own self-serving software designs are keeping Linux down. Secondly, we need killer apps. The GIMP is a great example. If it could be made a bit easier to install and a lot easier to use, then it would be a true photoshop killer. After that, we need an office suite or set of programs so business drones can make their presentation slides and timesheets and status reports. If they can't do it in Linux they won't run Linux at all. Thirdly, we need much better hardware support, MS is kicking Linux's ass there. Put these three together (user friendliness, killer apps, hardware support), and you'll have an OS people will actually WANT to switch to. I won't even address networking and marketing issues, which are a whole other ball game...

As for Linux as it currently stands, I've been able to convince a few Windoze users to switch. But every one of them was a techie or wannabe techie, and every one of them switched for fun and to try it out. Not ONE of them seriously believed it would be more useful than Windoze; some of them still don't. That perception has to change before MS's dominance among non-techies ends.

Just my $0.02... If you agree/disagree, reply, don't moderate! =)

-Kasreyn

About COM and OOP

[vrt3]

COM != OOP DCOM != OOP

I beg to differ. The COM code I have seen quite remarkably resembles instantiation of and passing messages to objects in an object-oriented paradigm. Let's not forget the giveaway: the acronym itself. Component Object Model. Microsoft has been a big booster of the "object-orientedness" of its component architecture

You're right in a certain sense: COM (and DCOM) supports objects, no doubt about that. And it supports interfaces, and data hiding and encapsulation.

But it does not support an important feature of object oriented programming (as opposed to object based programming): inheritance. True, you can create a new COM object which uses the same interface as another one and thus offers the same functionality; but you have to code all the functions again for every new object. Granted, often it can be as simple as a forwarding wrapper, but it's a major pain in the ass in a large object hierarchy. Trust me, I've been there.

Moving the Unix Stream Paradigm to WYSIWYG

[webbunny]

Many people have already mentioned NeXT/Open/GnuStep, and OpenDoc as fine examples of 'the right way' to do things, and Open Source developers are in a unique position that they are not (usually) hamstrung from shareholders demanding profits, marketoids or backwards compatability that tends to stop 'the right way' from being developed elsewhere.

But one comment struck me, because I have had thoughts on this point for a while:
> There's no GUI equivalent to the command-line pipe/redirect paradigm

To me, this is one of the most elegant things about how Unix works for the user, even if the command line switches make things very cryptic for 'Joe Schmoe'.

The reason it all hangs together it that all the CLI tools use PLAIN TEXT for input and output, and these text streams are not contaminated by error reporting. Plain text is a very simple data format, and therefore the tools are small and simple. The GoodEasy environment detailed on Wired and mentioned on /. a few days ago runs with this idea in a GUI setting.

But the way it does this is to throw away WYSIWYG, on the assumption that 'what you get' only refers to 'when you hit the print button', and in an increasingly paperless world, there's no need for 'rich media'.

But I like rich media, and I bet a lot of you do too. I think HTML email allows for far more expressive messages, and therefore better communication.

So how do we get this 'plug in' idea of tools to work? Well, my thought is a kind of 'live import/export filter'. If you think of possibly the most complex doc type there is, DTP, it has many layers of structure. Chapters, pages, layout boxes, graphics, columns, paragraphs, fonts and formating, right down to the 'plain text'. What if you could 'live export' just the plain text? All a spellchecker needs is plain text, so the spellcheck component would hook into a 'live filter' component, that exposed just the plain text on the spellcheck side, but was exposed to the full DTP dataset on the other. The spellchecker replaces text in what it thinks is just plain text, and the filter passes the changes to the plain text components in the DTP data. Another filter could expose just the layout components of the DTP data to a drawing tool, and so on.

The base document type could change to be a spreadsheet, and a different 'live filter' would again export the plain text components to the very same spellchecker, and so you get code reuse, and consistancy of interface for the user.

Effectively, these filters give our complex rich media formats multiple personalities, they pretend to be a file format that they are not, so that common tools can be used to edit them.

Add this to the component document ideas started with OpenDoc and its 'part handlers', and continuing with Bonobo, and we could have a true 'Unix way' WYSIWYG productivity system.

-- Andy the Webbunny

Re:I fear the consequences

[BitwizeGHC]

The DMCA was passed to bring the US into compliance with WIPO regulations. It wasn't really just our idea. It WILL happen worldwide unless we can win the battle here.

Microsoft Office is built that way

[Animats]

Microsoft Office isn't monolithic software. It's a large collection of components that play well together. The user doesn't see it that way, but inside, it's a large group of COM objects.

For example, the spell checker is a component, used by multiple Microsoft products. So is Jet, the little database engine used for most user-stored data. There are various mail components. And, of course, there's Internet Explorer's display engine.
Microsoft exposes the APIs for some, but not all, of these components.

Note that all this middleware is at a completely different layer from GUI management. (After all, there's Office for Mac.)

The UNIX/Linux world has never been able to get its act together on component software. Yes, there's CORBA, but most UNIX systems don't even have a CORBA ORB installed.

Apple was on the right track with OpenDoc, but after Jobs killed that, few developers would touch any Apple successor to it.

Re: unix users have choice, win users get big blob

[einhverfr]

Yes, but the office apps are lacking. Unless you want to use vi or emacs...

Otherwise you can use your fast WM's and run your apps as X-clients