OSNews on the LinuxWorld Exhibition Floor

Expo writes "OSNews reports on the second day of the LinuxWorld Expo. Highlights of the article is CodeWeaver's CrossOver Photoshop effort and the fact that OpenOffice.org is collaborating with _all_ the other major Linux office suites and word processors towards the creation of a new, open XML-based, file format. NewsForge also has a report."

Comments

Slashdot Beatitudes

[Anonymous Coward]

And seeing the multitudes, He went up unto the mountain: and when He was set, his disciples came unto him: And He opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,

"Blessed are the poor in threshold: for theirs is the Kingdom of the Page-Lengthening and Page-Widening Posts.

"Blessed are they that mourn the death of *BSD: for they shall be comforted with an ultradense Linux server from VA Linux, now sold by California Digital Corporation.

"Blessed are the posters of smug one-liners: for they shall inherit an Account Capped at 50.

"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after The First Post: for they shall have the Third or Fourth Post.

"Blessed are the karma whores: for they shall obtain "Score: 5, Insightful".

"Blessed are those who dismiss out-of-hand: for they shall fail to see the Point of the Original Post.

"Blessed are those who seek to associate themselves with the latest techno-fad: for they shall be called 3L33T for at least Another Half Hour.

"Blessed are they which are persecuted for their own self-righteousness' sake: for theirs is the Kingdom of "Ask Slashdot".

"Blessed are the over-eager, who believe that Open Source is a social movement heralding the rise of a new generation: for they shall not realize that There Are No Sacred Cows.

"Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for the sake of your Favorite Operating System.

"Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in Heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

THIS IS THE WORD OF THE LORD

did i get it?

[Anonymous Coward]

the first post that is?

First

[CmdrTaco (troll)]

Post?

OS News Here

[Anonymous Coward]

Read it and weep!!!

Same old, same old...

[Quasar1999]

But what about GAMES??? When are they going to have GAMES at one of these linux expos???

Re:Same old, same old...

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the article. They are reporting that no desktop apps were presented there. Only embedded and server stuff. :(

Re:Same old, same old...

[Quasar1999]

I did read the article.

There are games for WINCE, why the hell aren't there embedded games being developed for Linux? Take a look at http://infosync.no, they have news on the latest apps for the embedded world, including games... NOTHING for Linux... what gives?

Re:Same old, same old...

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably around the same time that people start writing games for Linux. (:

First post

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, maybe

What is Linux?

[SpanishInquisition]

I keep hearing about it but I don't know what it does, does it run on AOL?

Re:What is Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

oh dear. please tell me your joking? if not get out of slashdot and never come back. ever.
its an operating system, like windows (but less evil) for running webservers.

Re:What is Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is the study of the universe after the big bang. Some people believe in creationism, but many believe the source should be free.

Re:What is Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he's a troll and was doing what trolls do best. For more information on trolls, please check out this web site.

Question....

[JoeLinux]

Is this the convention that MS got a booth in? If so, how is THAT going? Any bomb threats or anything?

Joe

Re:Question....

[Anonymous Coward]

You should read the article. Everything is there about it.

Re:Question....

[Anonymous Coward]

did you bother to read?

MS had three technologies for display

Re:Question....

[JoeLinux]

I did read the article. They had the technologies listed, but they didn't tell whether or not people were openly mocking the poor saps who were supposed to man the booths.

Why would you sign up for something like this?

"Ok..we need two people to go to a linux convention"

"You're kidding, right?"

"Nope"

"We better get combat pay"

"Damn straight"

"Ok, let's go"

Just another peak into my perverse mind.

JoeLinux

How do you make a cat go "woof" ? Soak it in gasoline and throw a match at it.

Re:Question....

[ArsonSmith]

read the freaking article:

Just a few meters away, Microsoft's booth was packed. Lots of people, were looking at the three products Microsoft was presenting there: WebMatrix, a 1.3 MB free ASP.NET IDE, WindowsCE with its shared source code and Windows Services for Unix 3.0. Everything was normal and smooth at their booth, lots of people interested or simply curious.

Re:Question....

[armyofone]

Since you're too lazy to click on a link, here y'are...

Just a few meters away, Microsoft's booth was packed. Lots of people, were looking at the three products Microsoft was presenting there: WebMatrix, a 1.3 MB free ASP.NET IDE, WindowsCE with its shared source code and Windows Services for Unix 3.0. Everything was normal and smooth at their booth, lots of people interested or simply curious.

That took me about four seconds...

Re:Question....

[Dahan]

I did read the article.

No, you didn't. If you did, you wouldn't have asked, "Is this the convention that MS got a booth in?"

They had the technologies listed, but they didn't tell whether or not people were openly mocking the poor saps who were supposed to man the booths.

See? You still haven't read the article:

Everything was normal and smooth at their booth, lots of people interested or simply curious.

So sad... all that effort into trying to appear on-topic, and you still didn't manage to get first post. Better luck next time! But when you get caught, don't lie about having read the article.

I really don't get the big deal.

[Valar]

I really don't understand what the big deal with XML is. The word processor people could just decide on one standard format, XML or no XML. The real inovation is that they would use the same format. XML is really more of way of thinking about things than a specific set of instructions, so I think it is a bit overrated.

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[Wolfier]

Yeah, it's a bit overrated...but one of the big deal is, you no longer have to write parsers if you don't want to. Generic XML parsers will do the job for you...

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[Havokmon]

I really don't understand what the big deal with XML is. The word processor people could just decide on one standard format, XML or no XML. The real inovation is that they would use the same format. XML is really more of way of thinking about things than a specific set of instructions, so I think it is a bit overrated.

You hit it on the head. XML is a way of thinking.

Would you rather go to your boss and say, "Let's take a look at replacing MS Office with Open Office. They've started using a standard file format, so multiple vendors applications can read and interact with those files without any issues. This standard is available for Microsoft to implement also."
OR
"Let's take a look at replacing MS Office with Open Office. They've started using an XML-compliant file format, so multiple vendors applications can read and interact with those files without any issues. This standard is available for Microsoft to implement also, who is not yet using XML."

The Boss's brain stops at 'XML', and says "I know that word, everybody is moving in that direction*".

*all the guys on the golf course are talking about it - so they must already be using it.

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[tim_maroney]

ou no longer have to write parsers if you don't want to.

That's not true for all applications. XML in itself is only useful for data that is suitable for sequential scanning and complete storage in RAM. To access the data in a random form, you need to build and maintain a binary index. To access data too large to conveniently fit in RAM, you need to have an external index and to be able to deal with partial XML data. XML can be bridged to a database but it is not a database.

--
Tim Maroney tim@maroney.org

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[Anonymous Coward]

XML is already a file format in Office. You're playing catchup, and you didn't even know it.

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[vadim_t]

Why? XML is really cool. MS Word always has a format incompatible with the previous version. Why? Because designing a binary format that is extensible and flexible is not something you can do on a weekend. With XML this becomes easier.

Suppose you want to define the font. In version 1.0 you have <font name="Arial" bold="true">. Now, in version 2.0 you come up with a cool formatting effect. It's a bit stupid but let's say you want font with a gradient. Now your new tag looks like <font name="Arial" bold="true" gradient="BlueGradient">. The old version of your app can simply ignore the new information and still load the document correctly.

Using a binary format, all that goes to hell when you realize that you need to store more data in a field and change it from a char to an int type, making the format unreadable by the previous version. And of course no company will be happy having to accept a format like what Word uses. What if they want to add a new feature that can't be expressed in .doc? When done well, XML should allow having a base everybody can read and still add features unique to your program.

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[CynicTheHedgehog]

1) DTDs

XML allows you to define your own document format standards and embed those standards into your documents, for on-the-fly validation during parsing. DTDs can be distributed to your vendors, and they can draft documents according to that DTD, and be assured some level of compatibility with your software.

2) Heirarchal Storage of Data

This may not be that important to a lot of people, but it offers the ability to categorize data in common groupings with duplication of meta data. It's great for, say, directory structures and whatnot. Sure, there's LDAP, but that's an interface standard. This is a storage standard.

3) Readability

There's a whole debate over how readable XML is, given the prevalance of markup, but I would argue that the heirarchal outlines are much more intuitive than a flat file format. Well-designed DTDs and well-named tags help reduce the interference of markup.

4) Conciseness

XML wouldn't be good for, say, a network layer protocol, but as an interface between applications and users it is fairly small for what it does. Sure there's "overhead" and "bloat", but who wants to visually parse run-together character strings or hexadecimal encoded bytes?

5) Standardization

XML has to make a lot of concessions because it is designed to be universal. It's a standard. Yes, not all applications make use of all the features it offers. They don't have to. But those features are available so more applications can make use of it. It's widely used, it's open, and it works.

XML is good at what it's designed for. The standardized office document formats are a great place for it, as it offers the user *some* readability outside of an application framework while preserving special markup. Ever try reading a .DOC file in WordPad? Yech.

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[Kunta Kinte]

XML is more than hype. It's a god send for many of us.

Try writing a parser for any widely used file format. Go ahead I dare you, DOC, RTF, anyone. Just the parser, so the end result is a syntax tree in memory. See how long it takes to get anything useful. Don't stop there think of revisions of the format. Languages, are we going to have one solid C library and thats it? Aren't we going to support Ruby and Phython? Think of the API to get other programs to use your in-memory parse tree. How are you going to do that? Another API?

XML makes this trivial. with libxml or any of the other popular XML libraries, no *real* coding is involved, just supply the DTD. And plus XML libraries are everywhere. DOM is documented and understood by programmers who may not have encountered your format before, shortening the learning curve for use of your product

With an XML file format *any* of those libraries can be used to edit the format. No more sending mouse clicks to Microsoft word to do simple doc conversions or other hacks. Just write a *very* short PERL script that would parse this file. Also because XML is becoming the parser language of choice, there is a good chance that suitable XML libraries are available for your platform/langauge or installed already.

The idea to use XML is most likely from coders who have had to deal with these parser issues for years. I doubt it was handed down my OpenOffice "management".

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[ejaw5]

it is nice they're collaborating on a common format. I can't say whether XML is good or not for a format, but it is nice to be able to take document files created from any office program and open and edit in a differnt program WITHOUT saving in a txt or rtf that loses a lot of formatting features.

Not to bash M$, but different companies working together is much better for the computer user. Ever try opening a Works document in M$ Word? It doesn't work, yet both packages are made from the same company, now what chance do other competing programs have with working with M$ files? The example of a common format will give more reason to use Linux, if this trend continues (or starts)

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[Wolfier]

come to think about it...why XML for word processors? It'd be a perfect world if they can just agree on a set of shared TeX scripts and macros, and use TeX as the default format!!

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[garcia]

we already have standards. MS already doesn't follow them. What's the point of pushing for something either a) MS won't adopt b/c they don't have to, or more likely b) will adopt but will change to suit their needs?

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[tim_maroney]

XML does not solve the format change problem. Adding new features to an XML-based word processor would necessarily involve changing the schema. Old applications could well be confused by the new data. They might be able to create a parse tree in memory, but on a semantic level they would not be able to understand what the parse tree meant.

It's definitely not as easy as just ignoring new data, as you suggest. Suppose the new feature is footnotes within footnotes. Throwing away all the nested footnotes when the data are processed by an old application is not the right way to go. And you can't just blindly preserve the unknown information either, since transforms done to the rest of the data (e.g., changing the font universally to Garamond) also may need to be applied to the unknown data. Or they may not. If you don't understand the data you don't know whether they need to be done or not, and you may not understand the right way to do the transform.

Some of these problems can be addressed in part, but they require significant extra infrastructure to do so, and complicate everyday data processing tasks. That is, a format flexible enough to solve most of these problems would be quite hard to deal with on an ongoing basis, due to the need to constantly make decisions based on variant data types and informational attributes. There is no magic bullet for the format change problem.

--
Tim Maroney tim@maroney.org

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[Sabalon]

They've started using an XML-compliant file format, so multiple vendors applications can read and interact with those files without any issues.

Yup...just like HTML - until things like Flash, Shockwave, Quicktime and all these other plugins get embedded into it.

Hopefully XML can remain pure and more useful than HTML has become.

And I don't even blame MS for this one - they may have added some things here and there, but even if you just follow the standards for HTML and CSS, half the crap only works on IE.

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[AwenAnam]

It's more than just parsing, when you work with XML you work both with a totally flexible data storage system and at the same time you work with a data storage system with a common well defined basic structure. The advantage of this? Portability, with a common base structure you can exchange data between applications based on XML data storage with veyr much ease as long as theyr use is similar, and some dissimillar applications would be able to share data too whereas before it was a tedious and long task to archieve so.

That is the real beauty of XML, portability from one source to another. Wich is also helped and aided by it being both an Open standard and a Human readable way of storing data.

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[Havokmon]

What's the point of pushing for something either a) MS won't adopt b/c they don't have to, or more likely b) will adopt but will change to suit their needs?

First of all, with licensing 6.0, we see that the customers are pushing back. They're not blindly accepting anymore. An XML format would help MS keep Office marketshare by being able to import and export that format.

Secondly, XML is said to be 'human readable'. It's plain text. I'd say like EDI, which does have some garbage in it, but you can read the files themselves. If Microsoft were to try and 'extend' the XML format, it would first be sensationalized (probably producing bad PR), and then, if the standards body approves it, adopted (Assuming OO, and not MS is playing catchup at that point).

Not an issue.

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[ClosedSource]

"MS Word always has a format incompatible with the previous version."

No. Not always.

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[hysterion]

Hey! This is interesting.

You seem to have given serious thought (beyond the hype of false solutions anyway) to this question, which I'm also trying to come to grips with. What are some good/bad strategies when you're designing a language and trying to make it extensible? I got some empirical feel for it by looking at some choice BNF/yacc grammars, TeX sources, how perl or html moved from version to version, even C -> Obj-C or C++ (and I should probably take a look at this book), but if you have pointers at hand to any organized thoughts or references on the subject (books, courses, web, usenet, whatever), I'd be most interested. TIA!

moc.cam@noiretsyh

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[vadim_t]

I didn't claim that it solved the problem. But it does help a lot, when well used. Of course sometimes older programs won't be able to read the newer format correctly, but they almost certainly should be able to read at least something. A one byte change in a binary format can make the file completely unreadable.

For example, I wrote a tiny POP3 client that was designed to store mail on a floppy. The format is approximately this:
4 bytes magic number
4 bytes header length
compressed table of 4 byte message lengths
compressed messages
compressed table of 4 byte message lengths
4 bytes header length
4 bytes magic number

As you see, the format is symmetric, to avoid data loss if the header becomes corrupt. Due to this design it's absolutely impossible to add anything to the end of the file, and since lengths are used instead of offsets it's not possible to add any new data between the length table and the compressed messages either.

It's very compact, and can easily store 1000 messages on a floppy. However it's inefficent, requiring to decompress a message to read its subject. There's no way of adding an uncompressed message subject without breaking compability. With XML the length table would have looked like this:
<message length=1024/>

With this system a bit more space would be spent, but adding a subject line would have been trivial without breaking compability. With a well written program and reasonably well designed format it would have been very easy to make sure that even the 1.0 version could still read the messages written by a 5.0 version made two years later.

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[for(;;);]

> There is no magic bullet for the format change
> problem.

Sure there is. If both formats are open and processable by any language advanced enough to deal with the "character" data abstraction, scripts can be written in any language to translate from one format to the other. Lordy, you could even distribute these scripts as macros with a common interface, a practice invented by Dr. Paul E. Morphism in 1957. So users could be forwards-compatible with new formats without upgrading their client app, by downloading necessary translation modules.

Significant extrie architecture this is not.

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[rseuhs]

The point is that finally I can use OO to work on files that were created on KOffice and vice versa.

We need an open standard format that more than one project agrees on. This currently does not exist for wordprocessing and spreadsheets, unfortunately.

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[rseuhs]

MS Word always has a format incompatible with the previous version. Why? Because designing a binary format that is extensible and flexible is not something you can do on a weekend. With XML this becomes easier.

Eeek. Wrong.

Because a compatible format would not force-upgrade users.

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[vadim_t]

I suspect that this is true only in part. It's much more easy to ignore backwards compability and force upgrades as an additional advantage than try to make it backwards compatible. I've heard that the MS Word format is already pretty horrible, and I doubt it'd be any better if anybody tried to extend it while keeping compability

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[JPriest]

Because .doc for all intents and purposes is a best effort guess at MSFT's file format. Abi word, Gobe, Open Office, Koffice etc. all use separate file formats. If you are on Abi or Koffice and need to send a document to someone using OOo, why throw the .doc wrench into the middle of the process rather than using an open, well documented standard? In order to be freed of having to use MS office, there will have to exist a non-MS document standard.

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[tim_maroney]

Were you under the impression that all languages are translatable into each other? They're not. If version 1.2 allows a construct not present in version 1.1, then translation back and forth between the two formats leads to a loss of information. Again, consider the nested footnotes example.

--
Tim Maroney tim@maroney.org

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[Anonymous Coward]

> That's not true for all applications.

It is for any application that should be using XML.

XML has no database value. A database of XML documents may have value, but that's not the same thing.

XML's only technical advantage is the parser and validation system that surrounds it. If you can't use that, you're wasting your time.

It was, after all, designed as a follow-on for the Web. Thas it, small-ish packages of machine-machine data interchange and document structure. And, not much more.

On the less technical side, broad and deep use of XML in all transactions within a company can help automate the enterprise wide data dictionary. A most useful side effect.

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[Anonymous Coward]

> 1) DTDs
> DTDs can be distributed to your vendors, and they can draft documents according to that DTD, and be assured some level of compatibility with your software.

If "some level" means the don't have to write a complex XML parser for your data. But, in general, "your data" carries "your meaning" and parsing the data packet should play a remarkably small part in the game of exchanging data between vendors. The hard part, by far, is actually using the data - not reading it.

> 2) Heirarchal Storage of Data
> It's great for, say, directory structures and whatnot. This is a storage standard.

Actually, it is not so good for directory structures and whatnot. It is a fine way to *document* data contained in a directory entry, but a remarkably poor way to machanize the entry itself. XML is not a storage tool at all, in the tradional sense of database storage and retrevial. It is a tool that helps structure documents and data exchange packets.

> 3) Readability
> There's a whole debate over how readable XML is, given the prevalance of markup, but I would argue that the heirarchal outlines are much more intuitive than a flat file format.

To whom? A programmer? Why not just slug the thing into a struct? Worse case, slug some XDR around the fields. In fact, although one doesn't have to write an XML parser, handling the semantics of XML documents can be more difficult because the DTD/Schema may reflect vast amounts of "futures" and/or data described in some XML meta-standard that only serves to complicate the given transaction.

> 5) Standardization
> XML has to make a lot of concessions because it is designed to be universal. It's a standard.

Um, it is a "non-standard standard". Microsoft can dump its doc formats in XML, and the world won't be any better off for the exercise. I can back up your hard disk in XML, does that make your hard disk "a standard"? ASCII was the first argument I got on this, but ASCII indicates what the computer should actually do with the data, while XML indicates nothing about what the computer should do.

"Standards" exist so computers/applications will know what to do with data in a common and consistant way. XML, per se, does nothing of the sort.

Re:I really don't get the big deal.

[for(;;);]

Okay, I can agree with that. I would contend that you can map these higher constructs onto more primitive ones with loss of information (e.g., flatten the nested footnotes), and that this loss would be understood by users as the price of heterogeneity. But if loss is unacceptable, then true, XML wouldn't magically solve that.

suggestion for file extension for new XML document

[Anonymous Coward]

how about ".dox"?

India plans moonshot-a Question

[Anonymous Coward]

If Americans are called Astronauts; Russians called Cosmonauts; Chinese call Chinkonauts--then what will Indian spacemen be call Dotanauts? Stinkanauts? CurrySmellinganauts???

This is why linux is doomed to FAIL

[Anonymous Coward]

This is pathetic. A whole article about a linux trade show, and not ONE worthwhile piece of information. I've got some news for you linux types: without industry-standard applications like Microsoft Word or games like Quake 3, your little toy OS is going exactly NOWHERE.

I know a bunch of you are going to reply to this to whine about how all kinds of "exciting" (to a sunlight-starved gnome with CRT-bleached skin) server technologies were presented, but guess what? Boring server shit doesn't sell computers. Compliance with industry standards and good games do.

Re:This is why linux is doomed to FAIL

[Anonymous Coward]

This article appears to be written for those who have attended shows like this, but were unable to attend. It appears to be a pretty good summary of what went on, but leaving out all the geeky details of information that may be hard to convey in just one article.

Industry standard Microsoft Word? Tell that to my mom who has problems opening up her Word documents from other people who use word. Its not even compatible with itself. This toy OS you speak of is about as industry standard as your are going to get. It is molded for compatibility around a 30 year old operating system. Try that with Windows, that kept breaking programs through each release, from Windows 286, 3.0, 3.11, 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP. Old unix programs never die, they just run on newer hardware.

Re:This is why linux is doomed to FAIL

[Colin Walsh]

This is pathetic. A whole article about a linux trade show, and not ONE worthwhile piece of information. I've got some news for you linux types: without industry-standard applications like Microsoft Word or games like Quake 3, your little toy OS is going exactly NOWHERE.

What bridge have you been living under? I wasn't aware that there was *another* video game, exclusive to Windows, called Quake 3? Fancy that!

If you're going to attempt to insult us Linux using folk, you might as well do us all a favour and do it right.

-Colin

Article enclosed

[Anonymous Coward]

San Francisco, Wed. 14th Aug 2002. This was my first Linux-related exhibition, so I did not exactly know what to expect. Jill from DesktopLinux came by the house and picked me up this morning (thanks Jill :) and we arrived there around 10:40 AM, with lots of enthusiasm and some expectations for a nice geek show. However, it seems that this year's LinuxWorld is much more corporate than expected. Which is both a good and a bad thing for the Linux universe.

Part I

First booth I visited was AMD's. Their booth is right at the entrance of the South Hall, and it is nicely designed, with lots of space to move around. Main highlight was Opteron. While they had a couple of Athlons running, most of the machines, shows, speeches and specials were all about Opteron, Hammer and the x86-64. I think it is obvious that AMD does not try to race against Intel and Pentium4 (which will be running at 3 GHz in two months) as much anymore. They are already behind in the 32bit x86 speed race, running at 1800 MHz (2200+) with the AthlonXP CPUs already maxed out in both speed and heat. Opteron/Hammer is the future of AMD, and this LinuxWorld really made it a lot more clear where the company is heading to. The whole show at AMD was about it. They also had some benchmarks going on running IBM DB2 on a 800 MHz Opteron, which performed well. The SuSE Linux used for their tests, was able to run both 64-bit and 32-bit compiled applications at the same time. For example, SuSE itself and DB2 was compiled as native 64-bit, while the Opera app I launched was a 32bit app running side by side with the 64-bit ones. Very good integration between the two architectures. Two in one, smooth switch.
Next booth I visited was Trolltech's. They had on display the ED.1, which has a folded, full keyboard! The device is kind of stuffy though, pretty thick. I asked them what their current relationship is with KDE and what if the KDE project requires some changes to the API, and they replied that they mostly do modifications for embedded or cross platform aware customers, so if a feature is not cross-platfom "enough", or many customers haven't asked for it, the feature probably won't get implemented if it is only needed by KDE. (Hey Waldo, masquerade as a Trolltech customer and ask for that QSplitter... ;)

The .ORG pavilion was cool -- full of real geeks. A lot of open source projects found a roof in the LinuxWorld, even if their exhibition space floor was minimal. The Debian guys were there, I bought their t-shirt for a tenner (they were joking that "KDE 3 for the next Debian will be released in 2008 or 2009), Gnome were just next to them, and it was ran by various people at different times of the day. I would have bought a Gnome t-shirt too, with the new logo on it, but the printed logo was really small, so it was really not justifying the $15. I talked to a couple of people on both the Gnome and KDE booths, asking for interoperability, perfect collaboration between Qt and GTK+ applications, and they told me that more and more developers are getting sensitive into the issue and they seek ways to do so. Today, the MIME types format is now understandable from both KDE and Gnome and they see this as the first step of the collaboration.

The NetBSD booth was just next to KDE's, but no one and nothing was there. It seems that the guys didn't make it to the expo.

The OpenOffice.org booth was full at all times. In fact, it had more people around it than the StarOffice booth. Lots of people were asking questions, like what is the difference between OOO and SO6. I talked to a gentleman at the booth and he told me that some Gobe people were there, and they were all discussing the idea of creating a new, XML-based, common format, that will be accessible from all major Linux offices and word processors, including SO, OOO, gobeProductive, KOffice, AbiWord etc. He said that the current OOO format is not that great and it is a bit heavy, so they would like to work together towards a new common format.

The MotifZone was there too, and except the fact that they wouldn't like using QT or GTK+ "because not all features or widgets are there", they were clear that they only target the corporate market, or other heavy Unix developers, and not as much Linux or *BSD. Recently, they added the ability to compile a Motif application with a new look that looks better, in their surprise, the corporate devs still use the traditional Motif look.

Some of the Gentoo Linux PPC guys were there, they were... compiling... hmm... compiling... :)
I was eager to meet Daniel Robbins, but he had to fly that day, he was present only the first day of the expo.

I stopped by the Aurora SPARC Linux project, who have basically back ported the Red Hat Linux 7.3 to SPARC after Red Hat stopped supporting the platform. Interesting project. Their version of Red Hat (which of course does not have any logos or mentions to the company to avoid legal issues) runs on all 64bit SPARCs, and they now port the new Installer to the 32bit SPARCs, so their port would be truly complete.

CodeWeavers were there, they were presenting Office under Linux, and they are creating two new products, one of which is the ability to run Photoshop properly under Linux! In fact, they had a beta ready to ship, but they found some last minute bugs, that put the release on hold. Just on the other side of CodeWeavers you would find the PogoLinux guys, but I had no idea that Jason Spisac from Lycoris was using it as shared booth. There was no Lycoris logos or big posters anywhere, so I missed him. If I regret one thing from the whole show, is that I didn't meet and talk to Jason. :(

Just a few meters away, Microsoft's booth was packed. Lots of people, were looking at the three products Microsoft was presenting there: WebMatrix, a 1.3 MB free ASP.NET IDE, WindowsCE with its shared source code and Windows Services for Unix 3.0. Everything was normal and smooth at their booth, lots of people interested or simply curious.

The Sharp's booth was also packed at all times. They were selling the Zaurus for $300 (which is the price they sell it to some of their resellers). The PDA can be found in retail as low as $325+tax+shipping.

Part II

Walking a bit further, someone with a familiar face passed me by. I immediately recognized Linus Torvalds. He was walking alone, with a... smile in his face. I could see he was feeling pretty happy (and that is not just women's instict ;). I decided to talk to him, he was very kind and cool, but also seemed a bit... lost, as he was there for an appointment and he couldn't find the appropriate booth. ;-)
The biggest booth of all, was HP's. I did not like it and to be honest, I don't quite understand their business with Linux. Instead, I asked for information about... HP-UX. They did not have anyone from the HP-UX team on board, while Sun did have a lot of Solaris stuff to show off just a few meters away from the HP booth. In fact, the Sun's booth was shared to many projects, like Solaris, StarOffice, Sun Linux, other third party Solaris-related companies and Gnome 2.0 (btw, their default configuration of Gnome 2 is even worse than the default Gnome 2). Also, all the CDE applications instead of evenly show in the Applications menu, they have their own folder on the root of the menu, called "CDE". Great integration Sun. NOT.

The booth that had by far the most people of all, and it was packed all the time, was Red Hat's. These guys are big. They ran the whole show at LinuxWorld. You go to Sun, they use Red Hat. You go to Google, they use Red Hat. You go to some other booths and products, and they still use Red Hat. Robert Young was there, very obviously happy, discussing business with some other people in their booth's mini-lounge. Ximian was using a bit of Red Hat's space floor too.

And if Red Hat was the strong player there, SuSE was the weakest one. SuSE gets the award for the worst "professional" booth at LinuxWorld. I was very disappointed by the people who were running it. The booth was very plain, they had nothing to give to visitors, and the guys were so no-enthusiastic, that really depressed me and made me wanna go away from their booth. Half of their booth was about SuSE Linux 8 and their email server product, and the other half was about UnitedLinux. Very few people around them. And the exhibitors did not help with their attitude. I heard from other media people (I went there with a "media pass") the exact same complaints for their performance.

And talking about Red Hat and SuSE, the biggest absent from the show was Mandrake! Where did these guys go anyway? A lot of Linux-friendly companies and lots of OSS projects were missing, but Mandrake's was the most obvious and un-excused one. [Update: I now hear they were there, under the AMD booth. Well, they were completely... undetectable.]

Intel's, IBM's and Borland's booths were pretty big, Intel was showing lots of embedded stuff. Netraverse was there showing their three products, Covalent, Google, and also lots of embedded-related companies.

This LinuxWorld was a bit corporate, not many geeks around, but still always a few, mostly around the .org pavilion. The kinds of products mostly presented there were either for the embedded world, or for servers. In fact, because of this very professional/corporate embedded-feel of the Expo, even Microsoft's presence was kinda making sense... However, in general, nothing ground breaking was shown in this Expo...

The highlight of the Expo would be AMD's multiple Opteron presentations really. And I am not even a lot into hardware (still happy with my dual 533Mhz)... It was kinda of a let down to not see ANY new desktop-oriented application presented at the Expo. There was no company exhibiting, that its commercial products would be truly for the desktop. No professional DTP applications, no video editors, no Illustrator-killers, no high end audio apps or 3D. Nothing. Just embedded and server stuff. A lot of Linux users try to convince us or establish the idea that Linux is or can be big on the desktop, but the absence desktop-oriented exhibitors, tell the opposite story so far - and this is indeed kinda of a let down.

Just 15 minutes before I leave the building, Michael Bego, the Xandros VP, spotted me (because of my back pack, a woolly sheep-bag :) and we talked for a while. Mr Bego is an exceptional, kind young man. He really does not deserve your harsh criticism to their (unreleased yet) product guys. He told me that because of the feedback from the OSNews forums, the colors and some of the icons and other elements of the UI will be changed and will be ready for the last beta, before the final release of the product. He also told me that the large majority of the Xandros Desktop 1.0 will be open sourced completely, and only some of their enhancements to the file manager, installer and some wizard pref panels that they were engineered from scratch won't be opened immediately. In fact, the company is studying the possibility of opening their source code at some point, to a (stricter) license scheme similar to SuSE's Yast2. But it is not certain yet, it is still under discussion. They are about 25 people working today for Xandros. I asked Mr Bego which kind of desktop users Xandros targets: The Linux-aware desktop users, or the completely unexperienced ones. Xandros apparently tries to play nice with all. He also said that Lindows bases some of their under-the-hood code on the Xandros one, however none of the pref panels, installer, and other enhancements found on Xandros can be found on Lindows. Yes, Xandros respects the users and root Unix accounts (while on Lindows you are only logged in as root).

I got some pictures from the expo, but my camera is not digital (neither I am sure it works, haven't used it for 2 years :), so I will have to find some time and go and print them. It might take a couple of days to do so.

My... LinuxWorld Awards:

1. Best Booth: AMD
2. Worst booth (ever): SuSE/UnitedLinux
3. Most crowded booth: Red Hat
4. Less crowded booth: X.org and 2-3 others.
5. Most interesting project: Aurora Linux.
6. Most interesting product: Borland Kylix.
7. Most interesting person: The main Microsoft guy. Wasn't that guy sharp or what?
8. Sweetest person I talked to: Sharp Zaurus marketing manager (spoke to her at the Intel booth too) and Michael Bego.
9. Sleepiest person I talked to: All these guys at SuSE/UnitedLinux... What were they thinking?
10. Best Free Gift: Sun's Gnome2 light pen! Kewl... :)

Until next year!


You may think I'm posting this in case of a slashdotting, but, really, I'm doing it cause it pisses off ELoli, and I love seeing her mad.

Down with your copywrite 'claims'.

Re:Article enclosed

[Anonymous Coward]

I recommend you do not copy/paste whole articles from publications that explicity include at the bottom of their page:

"Reproduction of OSNews stories is granted only by explicitly receiving authorization from OSNews and if credit is given to OSNews."

Re:Article enclosed

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew you'd come by to get pissy Eugenia!! Is it that time of the month?

Re:Article enclosed

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off, jewboy. You should be gassed along with all your kike brothers.

Set the standards babe!

[miffo.swe]

Thats more like it! Hopefully they give the olive branch to all Mac and Windows developers too. Not to Microsoft, remember kerberos anyone?

If GNU/linux/Open Source can be a part in setting the standards instead of just following them it would be awesome. Then linux could be the developers platform that set the industry instead of just playing tag along with windows.

To get backing for this it needs support from all other than Microsoft to be able to pressure them into supporting it. A web standard for documents would be nice instead of plain txt or vendor locked Microsoft and Adobe format. Adobe has its place too but its not a real standard, and its not free.

Re:Set the standards babe!

[BitGeek]

Adobe has its place too but its not a real standard, and its not free.

Sure it is. Its an open standard.

Apple created the OS X compositing engine to be compatible with PDF, making PDF generation a trivial thing for Mac Apps, and they did this without paying Adobe any money.

AFAIK there are Open source implementations of PDF as well, if not then its only because nobody wanted it enough to write one.

Or did you mean Free as in GNUtalitarian? "Sure, you're free to use our icon, you just have to open the source for your whole program. No, just releasing the changes you make to our work isn't enough, sorry."

Re:Set the standards babe!

[GypC]

PDF isn't really a word processing format though... it's a display format.

Re:Set the standards babe!

[Bozar]

"A web standard for documents would be nice instead of plain txt or vendor locked Microsoft and Adobe format"

You mean like HTML? ;-)

Most (if not all) word processors are capable of exporting html and that's one hell of a standard. Open too.

Re:Set the standards babe!

[ces]

Last I checked ghostscript and ghostview supported PDF. I've used ghostview as a poor-man's Acrobat, output to PS file, use gs to render pdf. Also handy for making PS files viewable on Windows machines.

Re:Set the standards babe!

[Anonymous Coward]

PDF renders far better on Linux than it does on Adobe's clunky reader. Acrobat 5 (lite version) takes about 13 megs of my disk. For what I use it for, acrobat reader is at least 8-10 times larger than it needs to be. I can't even remember the name of the default reader on my Mandrake box, but I remember deciding it put adobe's acrobat reader to shame after the first 3 seconds of using it.

Early post!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not first post, of course, but still close to the beginning.

http://goatse.cx

You're damn skippy!

[jonfromspace]

We are currently doing a doc filter for data mining at my company, and being able to use a generic XML parser would be fantastic. Currently, we are dealing with .doc, .pdf, .html, etc. etc. what a pain in the arse!

NetBSD booth

[bsDaemon]

I'm sad to hear they didn't make it. I don't know why, but i'm just getting into Net after 6ish years w/ Free. Daemonnews was supposed to have a booth, too. I think the FreeBSD people where going to but, i know not.

It is nice to know that people wheren't setting fire to Microsoft or anything. anything that makes either linux or bsd look bad is going to end up being bad for the other, becuase we're all on the fringe compared to say, sun or ms.

Greate company

[wilburdg]

I really think CodeWeaver has a great place in the open source community. They are creating proprietary code, but in doing so, they are giving many windows users the option to switch to linux, by making available their favorite apps. Just because they offer a proprietary solutions, doesn't mean they aren't supporting the open source community.

Re:Greate company

[Anonymous Coward]

Niggles!

Re:Greate company

[Anonymous Coward]

I still don't get it. Is CodeWeaver open source or not? Is it WINE? I know it uses WINE code somehow, but do CW contributions make it into the WINE tree? Is it open source but commercial (like Netscape is to Mozilla?)

I looked on the site but could not find a clear explanation of CW vs. WINE & Open Source Vs. Proprietary..

Could someone shed some light on this?

Re:Greate company

[Centove]

You didn't look hard enough:

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/office/suppo rt _wine.php

And more mention of it here:
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossov er/the_ real_dirt.php

damn it!

[Anonymous Coward]

...the fact that OpenOffice.org is collaborating with _all_ the other major Linux office suites and word processors towards the creation of a new, open XML-based, file format.

That's not what the article said, the article merely states that there is an interest in doing that.

He said that the current OOO format is not that great and it is a bit heavy, so they would like to work together towards a new common format.

Re:damn it!

[fferreres]

That's not what the article said, the article merely states that there is an interest in doing that.

That's what they said. You probably forgot to configure the "Slashdot DTD" or Schema for preprocessing slashdot news :-)

photoshop on linux??

[Dr. Awktagon]

I think I just wet my pants...

Re:photoshop on linux??

[armyofone]

You mean you can't tell for sure? :-)

Serioiusly though. Do you really need Photoshop when you have the GIMP?

Re:photoshop on linux??

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, yes. Photoshop is only about a million times easier to use than the GIMP.

Re:photoshop on linux??

[Anonymous Coward]

>Serioiusly though. Do you really need Photoshop when you have the GIMP?

YES. Does GIMP do CMYK? What about ColorSync? Until then, it is NOT a Photoshop competitor for serious use.

Next, I hope they get Illustrator and InDesign working, to complement Photoshop.

Re:photoshop on linux??

[Rude Turnip]

Now I can "borrow" my fiance's G3 Mac, switch in a PC w/Linux & KDE w/an OS X theme, install Photoshop with Codeweavers and she'll never notice! muhahhahahahahah!!!!

Re:photoshop on linux??

[Anonymous Coward]

Never notice? The difference between Aqua and an Aqua theme is pretty damn obvious when you've been using OS X for a while.

Re:photoshop on linux??

[kappax]

lol!! i had photoshop on linix 1.5 years ago with wine, what is the big deal ? this is old news to me. I dont think you ppl have tryed as many apps as you should. I when down the list and treyd just about every exe i could find my Ms partition.

A Zaurus for 300 bucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn. Now I wish I was there.

New format?

[raptwithal]

From the post: the fact that OpenOffice.org is collaborating with _all_ the other major Linux office suites and word processors towards the creation of a new, open XML-based, file format.

From the article: some Gobe people were there, and they were all discussing the idea of creating a new, XML-based, common format

Isn't there a difference between 'discussing the idea' of creating a new format and actually doing it?

Re:New format?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes,
First you discuss,
Then you form a standards group,
then you make the standard.

Re:New format?

[Soko]

Said the AC:
Yes,
First you discuss,
Then you form a standards group,
then you make the standard.

Other than being "Captain Obvious", the AC is correct. You need to get all of the cats into the same corral before you can herd them along.

At least they're attacking the root problem - a useable, patent free, open standard document format, rather than a de facto standard format that's closed, proprietary and difficult to reverse engineer.

Soko

Microsoft Presence...

[dubious9]

It's nice to know that the MS booth was not targeted for any pranks (AFAIK). This really gives a lot of credibility to Linux and the open source (and especially Slashdot) communities, by showing that we can play nicely even if we do refer to MS as the evil empire.

Evidently they got spent a lot of time thinking about who should represent them because the OSNews lady was quite impressed:

"Most interesting person: The main Microsoft guy. Wasn't that guy sharp or what?"

This is the best example I've seen to date about Microsoft taking *nix seriously

Re:Microsoft Presence...

[paladin_tom]

You don't consider them running their free online mail service on FreeBSD for years "taking *nix seriously"? ;-)

Re:Microsoft Presence...

[mlarios]

From NetCraft: The site www.hotmail.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000. It's not even very recent news, they started switching to Windows 2000 on August 1st, 2000.

Re:Microsoft Presence...

[Anonymous Coward]

and on December, 2001 it was still on Unix

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/23348.ht ml

what evidence do we have that they have actually gotten FreeBSD out of there?

Not that they would ever lie...:)

Re:Microsoft Presence...

[paladin_tom]

Yes, I know they're using Win2K now, but they were using FreeBSD for years... which is what my post said. :-)

Just came to think about a thingie.

[miffo.swe]

Is it possible to create a similar approach as with networks on documents. Creating an "OSI" model for documents would allow easy changes along the way and extensions on both high and low levels without the need to rewrite all code at once.

It has obviously been proven very succesful on networks so do any of you think it would be workable?

Re:Just came to think about a thingie.

[Anonymous Coward]

How is that offtopic?

Clueless moderators...

Heh...

[armyofone]

Whoops - should have skipped the preview button and done it in three seconds. That way I might not have been redundant.

RedHat?

[garcia]

the booth that "was packed all the time, was Red Hat's. These guys are big. They ran the whole show at LinuxWorld. You go to Sun, they use Red Hat. You go to Google, they use Red Hat. You go to some other booths and products, and they still use Red Hat."

I ran RedHat for many years, it is still running on my Alpha UDB because I am just too damn lazy to wait for Debian to install on that lowly machine. Why is there such a buzz around RedHat as far as their distribution goes?

I know that they do A LOT for the community but I just don't see their distribution as being the cleanest and safest of all.

Any ideas on why they would be such a popular choice? Is it just their physical popularity or is there something else I am missing?

Re:RedHat?

[Jonny Ringo]

I often think its becuase of the "first to market" deal. Like Amazon for ecomerce or Ebay for auctions or Yahoo for portals. Redhat has been around for a while (one of the firsts) and they do a pretty decent job of marketing themselves.

BTW, I am aware that Redhat does not eq linux and Linux was around before Redhat

Re:RedHat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I remember when I first went looking to install linux some 4+ years ago, I stumbled on RedHat in a book. That sealed it for me. I ran it until Mandrake 6 appeared some time later on. Mandrake at the time was still RedHat will enhancements.

RedHat has a corporate presence that is missing with the other linux distros. They have meaningful corporate relationships and agreements with some of the big boys out there. And, they have worked hard on things that users wanted improved- such as the install. So, while they aren't the best, they might just be the best- for corporate America.

And besides, if you go somewhere and they are running RedHat, are you really going to bitch that thye should have installed debian instead? No, you are impressed that another company is using linux.

Re:RedHat?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are regular people I know who know that RedHat is an operating system, they may or may not know it's Linux, but it's a known entity.

People who know jack about computers are pretty paranoid about installing an OS they haven't heard of.

Re:RedHat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone was buzzed about Redhat because there was a huge corporate presence this year. And Redhat is the only US distro with the proper corporate mindset. Suits flock to them because they look, act, and talk like Microsoft.

Wow it is fun out here.

[Metex]

Right now I am sitting in the press room typeing this and all I can say is LinuxWorld has evolved in many ways. At first glance most of my friends were somewhat dissapointed and the considerable drop of booths and people attending. But big buissness that have in the last past few years showed up in full force even the 3v1l Micro$haft. This signifys the continueing trend of how Linux and LinuxWorld Expo has turned from a kinda Comic Book convention atmosphere where you know everyone into a serious suit affair.

The highlights from linux world for me? Getting a pic of 17 Microsoft Employes all holding up a bumpersticker that said "You shouldnt Buy software from ex convicts". Besides that the allways insperational Linux Bowl/ or by its proper name the Golden Penguin Bowl when my Friend Arthur Ulfelt(? last name allways screws me up) got picked to be on the sides. And unfortunatly again one of my friends were on the looseing team since last year I got my friend Jesse Crocker to go up on one of the sides he lost forgetting that Trinity was in room 303 and he missed the 20 people makeing signs that said it with there fingers. Oh well. Arthurs shigning moment was when he said as the answer "Food" to the questoin is C6H1206 food or poisen =)

Re:Wow it is fun out here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please tell me English is not your first language...

Re:Wow it is fun out here.

[Cirrocco]

Your friend was an excellent choice. He had great presence and spoke well, even if he didn't get a chance to answer too many questions.

BTW, I submitted the story of Jeremy being on the winning team for a change...but it hasn't been accepted or rejected just yet. ChrisD may have taken offense at pointing out his "repepetitive" spelling mistakes...

Re:Wow it is fun out here.

[robr]

Any chance you could scan in that picture and send me a copy? I was one of the Aurora guys passing out the bumper stickers :-).

-rob

Re:Wow it is fun out here.

[Metex]

When I am drunk absalutly not =)

We already have them.

[bhsx]

You just recompile the games we have. I've got a Sharp Zaurus. I've got pacman(i think the origianl rom:) an asteroids game, doom and quake(have to switch between those) on a 256MB compact flash.

Photoshop on Linux will get people to use Linux

[gatesh8r]

It's not a matter of what's available, it's a matter of what people like. I think the GIMP is great, and sure whomps Photoshop. But... people like Photoshop, and people don't want anything else but Photoshop. It's nolstagia, and that's what keeps people going back to the well of Adobe -- the same goes for M$ with their Office suite (though OO and SO are available and do great) and Intuit with Quicken and Quickbooks.

Re:Photoshop on Linux will get people to use Linux

[Afrosheen]

Alot of people depend on Photoshop for their livelihood, and have been using it since version 3 or lower. It's pretty hard to make the transition from Photoshop to Gimp...seems like everything is missing/works wrong. Trust me, I've wrestled with Gimp from time to time, but at the end of the day, I end up using Fireworks. I'll be sending Codeweavers a big wad of cash the day they have Codeweaver's Flash/Dreamweaver/Fireworks.

Re:Photoshop on Linux will get people to use Linux

[teamhasnoi]

Gimp is great if only because it's free. Photoshop is able to do much more. Like get me jobs, allow me to finish them, and send them to people who can print them out.

It's got nothing to do w/ nostalgia, Photoshop gets the job done. If Gimp did more than RGB, and was easier to use, then we'd see more people use it.

I think the nostalgia is yours, for Gimp.

Re:Photoshop on Linux will get people to use Linux

[mrcparker]

It would really be neat to see a project which takes the gimp code and wraps it in a photoshop-like ui.

WHAT THE FUCK IS WINDOWS 286?

[Anonymous Coward]

LINUX RUINS THE LIVES OF ITS USERS!

[Anonymous Coward]

XML DocBook?

[jgilbert]

OpenOffice.org is collaborating with _all_ the other major Linux office suites and word processors towards the creation of a new, open XML-based, file format.

I'd be content if one of them would come out w/ a straight up DocBook editor that despensed w/ all the WYSIWYG non-sense and provided a convenient way to apply stylesheets and generate different output. What's the advantage of yet another XML DTD?

Of course, it would also be nice if everyone would standardize on kerberos for single sign-on instead of all the bitching about liberty and passport.

jason

Re:XML DocBook?

[redcliffe]

The problem at the moment is the huge number of incompatable office programs on Linux. This would mean they would all have at least one common format that they can stabily support.

Re:XML DocBook?

[jgilbert]

More of my point was why can't they just use XML DocBook? What's in this yet another format that is so new and different?

jason

Bugs

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

>>CodeWeavers were there, they were presenting Office under Linux, and they are creating two new products, one of which is the ability to run Photoshop properly under Linux! In fact, they had a beta ready to ship, but they found some last minute bugs, that put the release on hold

Bugs, yeah...they're called Microsoft lawyers

Photoshop on Linux is a good thing

[Plasmic]

Unlike GIMP, Photoshop actually supports CMYK, Pantone, and 16-bit/channel images. The entire pre-press industry depends on these features.

The only app for Linux that's competitive in this space is GIMP. According to GIMP's web site, supporting CMYK will "require a complete rewrite" of the painting engine and will not be available until GIMP 2.0 which some speculate will never come to fruition.

There are entire industries blocking on Linux having the capabilities that Photoshop provides. This is a great step in the right direction, even if it's just a stop-gap until GIMP 2.0 is available.

CMYK is a color model in which all colors are described as a mixture of these four process colors. CMYK is the standard color model used in offset printing for full-color documents. Because such printing uses inks of these four basic colors, it is often called four-color printing.

In contrast, display devices generally use a different color model called RGB, which stands for Red-Green-Blue. One of the most difficult aspects of desktop publishing in color is color matching -- properly converting the RGB colors into CMYK colors so that what gets printed looks the same as what appears on the monitor.

Photoshop does this rather well.

Re:Photoshop on Linux is a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

How are CMYK colors displayed properly on a RGB monitor that they use to work with? What percentage of quality are we losing from the RGB -> CMYK conversion? Considering that print rags are becoming outdated, is this really that important?

Re:Photoshop on Linux is a good thing

[blakestah]

How are CMYK colors displayed properly on a RGB monitor that they use to work with? What percentage of quality are we losing from the RGB -> CMYK conversion?

Well, CMYK is actually a smaller colorspace than RGB, so we DO lose quality. However, CMYK is closer to looks the same everywhere and is as such the standard of the print industry. As a scientist, every color figure I make must be converted to CMYK to be used, or else I have to send in hard copies, which they scan into CMYK.

Considering that print rags are becoming outdated, is this really that important?

Yes. Linux (and GIMP) will be useless for pre-press work until the CMYK thing is worked out. And that is HUGE. Many online publishers (most?) still produce paper versions, and use CMYK for both. Don't underestimate it - GIMP having real CMYK support would be an enormous advance for GIMP and for linux.

Re:Photoshop on Linux is a good thing

[jonadab]

> CMYK is a color model [...]

CMYK is a color model that only works on absorption media
(such as pigment on paper). On a luminous medium (such
as a CRT), things fundamentally don't (and can't) work that
way. As good as Photoshop is, speaking of its having "support
for CMYK" is marketroidese. All this means is that it can
convert from RGB formats (which *must* be used on your CRT
computer screen) to formats intended for printing. The
conversion is necessarily lossy, because ink on paper cannot
represent all of the same colours that the computer screen
can (and vice versa). Unless you're using phosphorescent
paint and viewing it under a blacklight, or some trick along
those lines, you can't represent the brightness of the sky
(for example) on paper. Similarly, your CRT can never show
a truly _flat_ (as in nonglossy, nonluminous) color.

You can throw buzzwords like "CMYK" at this all day long, but
an image will NEVER look the same on paper (no, not even on
glossy paper, although that's closer) as it does on a CRT
monitor, and that's a problem Photoshop can't solve.

LCDs (at their current level of tech) are even worse, because
they show colors inconsistently. Perhaps some future technology
will allow computers to display both luminous and flat colors on
the same display...

While we're on the subject of Photoshop, I agree that Photoshop
on Linux is a good thing. Photoshop is very entrenched in the
publishing community, and for good reason; it's quality stuff.
It also has a pricetag to match, so I surely hope Gimp continues
to develop (as it has been doing great so far), for those of us
with less expansive budgets. Photoshop may be (and probably is)
better, but my take on the matter is that Gimp is _comparable_,
which is a tremendous achievement. (I have a friend who does
graphics work for a living; he works at Eisenbraun's, a publisher
specialising particularly in ancient near-east stuff. He works
with Photoshop a lot. He'd been trying out Gimp, and was in
some ways (not all ways, but some) impressed with it, and had
noted that it had some really nice features Photoshop 6 did not
have. (He didn't specify which features.) Then he got the new
Photoshop, and they had it, he said, "in spades"). That says
to me that the two programs are in roughly the same league, a
huge accomplishment. But people who already know Photoshop and
have the budget for it will want to stick with it, rather than
learn Gimp which, although it's free, is not substantially
_better_ than Photoshop (at least, not at this time), surely
not better enough to justify a non-programmer to switch.

To me, Photoshop on Linux is a great thing, because it's
cross-platform technology, one more step toward separating
the decision of what OS to use from the decision of what
other software to use -- and THAT is a VERY good thing.

Re:Photoshop on Linux is a good thing

[Adam Wiggins]

For people doing print work, CMYK is definitely important. For everyone else, it doesn't matter one bit. And people doing print work should be using a vector format anyway!

FYI, for non-professional use, creating RGB images and then converting them to CMYK works fine. I have created a number of flyers, folders, and other print materials in this fashion. The final colors come out looking a bit different from what was on the screen (paricularly the blues), but it certainly looks just fine.

Re:Photoshop on Linux is a good thing

[FattMattP]

For people doing print work, CMYK is definitely important. For everyone else, it doesn't matter one bit. And people doing print work should be using a vector format anyway!

Really? Tell us, how does one make a vector format of a photograph?

Re:Photoshop on Linux is a good thing

[The Madpostal Worker]

Even though your computer can't display CMYK images correctly the bigger point is color management support. It doesn't matter if the color is in CMYK or RGB, or grey scal eusing a 50% dot preceptual encoding the software needs to have a way to merge all of these together into one document to be printed.

This final colorspace can be RGB, or CMYK, or a two plate process (black + spot color). Thats what I need to from photoshop.

Re:Photoshop on Linux is a good thing

[LMariachi]

"Absorption medium?" "Luminous medium?" The fact that you don't even know to refer to additive primaries and subtractive primaries reveals your lack of understanding.

If you really think that CMYK is nothing but a buzzword thrown around by marketing people, then you have no idea what you're talking about. Go talk to anyone who actually works in publishing or printing and tell them CMYK is a buzzword -- I'm sure they'll get a big laugh out of it. The point of being able to work in CMYK is that you get a very close representation of the printed color on screen. The limitations of a "luminous medium" in representing a reflective medium are minimal (can't show fluorescent or metallic inks); equating them with the inverse (trying to represent RGB with CMYK) is idiotic.

Re:Photoshop on Linux is a good thing

[LMariachi]

Duh, you halftone it.

But you're right, the parent statement was stupid.

Re:Photoshop on Linux is a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

The Gimp is a good Web bitmap editor, and that's all it excels at.

For the casual user, and the non-professional, it's a really adequate tool.

Of course, most of what The Gimp provides is available for quite a low cost on the proprietary platforms as well.

Re:Photoshop on Linux is a good thing

[seann]

it starts with ma
and ends with gic

Re:Photoshop on Linux is a good thing

[jonadab]

> The fact that you don't even know to refer to additive primaries
> and subtractive primaries reveals your lack of understanding.

Either that, or I understand the additive properties of light
and absorptive properties of pigment but didn't think it
necessary to get too technical.

> If you really think that CMYK is nothing but a buzzword thrown
> around by marketing people, then you have no idea what you're
> talking about.

CMYK is a printing system. But saying that a piece of
computer software "supports CMYK" is meaningless buzzword
speach. The document still won't look the same on paper
as it does on the screen, or vice versa.

> The point of being able to work in CMYK is that you get a
> very close representation of the printed color on screen.

My turn to laugh. You have bought the marketing line.

> The limitations of a "luminous medium" in representing a
> reflective medium are minimal

Even if we go from 32-bit to 64-bit colour, a monitor still
can't accurately reproduce flat, non-glossy, non-luminous
tones. Representing fluorescent inks (well, some of them)
actually works much better than representing a surface with
low reflectivity. I'm talking about substances that are
not really dark, certainly nothing like black, but just dull
looking. They reflect some light, with biases toward certain
wavelengths, but mostly they absorb it across the whole
spectrum. You can play with gamma correction all day and not
get it right. Why do you think photographs of dark unvarnished
wood look so lousy on your screen? Things like dark blue yarn
and raisins reflect mostly ambient light, a mixture of assorted
wavelengths from an entire range (albeit with biases toward
certain subranges), that are not at all well modelled via RGB.

Metallic inks are an extreme case, but I was talking about
more everyday stuff.

Raster

[Anonymous Coward]

I notice that Raster was absent this year...he was deming the evas tool or library last year....Maybe he decided to pack it in? Does anyone know?

Re:Raster

[bsDaemon]

he's kind of in Australia with an actual job that is much les likely to let him go than VA or RH, which probably shoved him there.

Re:Raster

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Raster was disgraced by being that technology has past him by

Typical insane linux zealot delusions

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears to be a pretty good summary of what went on, but leaving out all the geeky details of information that may be hard to convey in just one article.

Here's a clue for you, buddy: if an article goes on for two straight paragraphs about "32-bit applications" and "64-bit processors," it's got the "geeky details." In spades.

I don't want the geeky details, and I certainly don't need them to see that there was nothing that a REAL computer user would be REMOTELY interested in presented at this convention.

Industry standard Microsoft Word? Tell that to my mom who has problems opening up her Word documents from other people who use word.

And who are these other people? Oh, right, EVERYBODY. That sounds like a standard to me.

Its not even compatible with itself.

Right, and I suppose you think they should have left Office at version 1.0 and forgotten about it, since a newer version might have (horrors!) an incompatible file format.

Whatever.

News flash: if you want to read current documents, you have to stay current. I understand that your freeloading linux mindset may give you some problems with actually PAYING for software (whoa! weird idea, man!), but if you don't pay REAL MONEY for upgrades, how are the people who write your software supposed to make money, to say, feed their families?

Eazel sure did well.... (cough)

This toy OS you speak of is about as industry standard as your are going to get. It is molded for compatibility around a 30 year old operating system.

Yeah, I agree: linux would have been pretty standard in about 1972. Now it's just a joke.

Try that with Windows, that kept breaking programs through each release, from Windows 286, 3.0, 3.11, 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP.

I can still run all my old DOS programs in Windows XP. But, hey, if I ever find one that I can't run, that's the price of progress. I'd much rather lose the occasional 20 year old program (why would I want to run software from 1982?) than be stuck with some ridiculous OS that requires me to "recompile my kernel" every hour.

Old unix programs never die, they just run on newer hardware.

And that's exactly why unix has been left behind -- along with the rest of the 70's.

Re:Typical insane linux zealot delusions

[Anonymous Coward]

News flash: if you want to read current documents, you have to stay current.

You live on the bleeding edge of excitment and apparently don't have to worry about compatibility.

Re:Typical insane linux zealot delusions

[GypC]

Awww... what's the matter? Couldn't get linux installed like all your l33t friends? Made you feel stupid didn't it? You thought you knew a lot about computers and it turns out you just know a lot about Microsoft products.

Step off, lightweight.

linuxworldexpo is running windows

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? the event of the summer for Linux and it cannot be run by its own system. If you do not believe me click http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.linu xworldexpo.com

Oy, it's bad

[actappan]

I stubled over to the show a couple times in the last few days - only a couple blocks from the office here. All the geeks in the office agreed that it was deeply deeply lame. 'Bout the best thing to come of the show was the elastic badge holder thingy.

The floor seems empty, the booths seems thin, and the coolest thing I think I saw was this handheld voice rec translator - and it was running Windows.

And - RedHat seems like a bunch of revolutionaries compared to the other exhibitors. They actualy use the words Open Source.

Way downhill from last year (where's Ximian and the cool jungle booth?)

Re:Oy, it's bad

[linuxlover]

Spot ON!
I went there on Aug 14 Wed, taking the day off at work. BIG MISTAKE.

1) the fun stuff were missing. Last years, there were tons of bean bags outside where geeks hung out and they were playing Matrix movie (or somethign else?) on a very big screen tv. This year nothing!

2)most people in the booths wore full-sleeve shirts except the guys @ kde.org! Can you say 'business casual'? Yuck!

3) the toys were lame too. I was only excited by
3.1) google color pen
3.2) Linux poster saying 'I will be your server for today Mr Gates'

4) Mandrake, where art thou? I just couldn't find the guys.

5) most guys in the booth were SALES people not techies. So asking them questions were pointless. I asked the 'geekiest looking guy' @ AMD booth about their Athlon MP workstation setup. I asked them what Video card they were using. THe answer I got 'we used standard OEM parts'.. WTF?? I left the booth laughing.

6) another eg: I asked the guy on SUN booth about SPARC-Linux. he said 'Linux runs only on intell stuff' ..Oh My GOD!

7) There is no 'COOL' product on display. Every one is selling (overpriced) network storage solutions and some embedded chips. I saw no compelling embedded device application at all.

8) the interestign part of the show was watching Larry Ellison give a presentation *shudder*.

Basically it has turned into a Comdex of Linux! waste of $30 bucks !!..*yawn*

LinuxLover

Re:Oy, it's bad

[linuxlover]

Replying to myself;

9) where are the GAMES man? Transgaming was absent. I couldn't find a single game vendor!

Low quality article

[bryanbrunton]

Commenting on the Athlon, the article starts out with:

"running at 1800 MHz (2200+) with the AthlonXP CPUs already maxed out in both speed and heat"

The 2400+ and 2600+ Athlon will very likely be released on the 21st of THIS month. And they are supposed to be running much cooler. AMD found a glitch in the Athlons that was responsible for a good deal of the chips heat.

Re:Low quality article

[sean23007]

Do you have a link for that?

Re: games games games!

[cruise]

Everyone knows that parents new computer so their kids can play the latest games.

Thats why new computers come with Windows installed.

I hate CNBC!

[Anonymous Coward]

They showed this crap last night and i thoguht what the fucking fuck? Not only that, LNUX shares actually went UP!

We didn't have to

[Invictus2.0]

Scott McNealy and Larry Ellison slammed them (and others) quite nicely for us during their keynotes (I still don't think very highly of Ellison, but I digress). Remember, if geeks trash tlak corporations, we're immature, if corporations trash talk other corporations, they're competetive.

Fringe? Wait for Sun's reverse stock split.

[BoomerSooner]

Then you'll see fringe. 4.27/share, ouch.

Open Source PDF

[obotics]

PDF is openly available to be implemented in various systems.
Check out Xpdf. Xpdf is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), version 2, so that should make many /. readers happy :)

TechTV

[brandonsr]

And for this of you who get TechTV you can watch CmdrTaco on an interview tonight, or so the email in my box is telling me.

Funny quote...

[thrillbert]

"Next booth I visited was Trolltech's"

Wow.. didn't know the /. trolls were so well organized to have their own company...

---
It is very difficult to prophesy, especially when it pertains to the future.

Without a partition is the key.

[BoomerSooner]

Installing PS5, 6, or 7 on Wine does not work, and if you can get it working it's extremely unstable (one of the major benefits of using linux).

A bit offtopic, but still in concept

[justsomebody]

"Here's a clue for you, buddy: if an article goes on for two straight
paragraphs about "32-bit applications" and "64-bit processors," it's got
the "geeky details." In spades.

I don't want the geeky details, and I certainly don't need them to see that
there was nothing that a REAL computer user would be REMOTELY interested
in presented at this convention."

I guess you're one of the happy readers of "Runs better, faster" type of
logos, maybe you should read some children web site, there is that kind of
readings you'd wish. Hope you're not expecting that mostly linux geek site
will go on your level.

Or on the other hand, it would be useful some kid, user, geek preference
in your info.

"And who are these other people? Oh, right, EVERYBODY. That sounds like
a standard to me"



But, doesn't it bother you that less and less people confirms to that EVERYBODY?

"Eazel sure did well.... (cough)"



WHat has Eazel to do with documents compatibility

"I can still run all my old DOS programs in Windows XP. But, hey, if I
ever find one that I can't run, that's the price of progress. I'd much rather
lose the occasional 20 year old program (why would I want to run software
from 1982?) than be stuck with some ridiculous OS that requires me to "recompile
my kernel" every hour."



????

Ok, I've bought my self notebook with XP PRO. There's only two windows apps
I'm using.

One goes way back into startings of my company. All my comapny papers are
inside. Guess what. It doesn't work under XP.

Second one is not so old it's a one year old program that I use to connect
to the bank (Same program that half of the country uses). Guess what, Doesn't
work under XP.

So, to hell with your progress. Here's why somebody would use a program like
that.

"And that's exactly why unix has been left behind -- along with the rest
of the 70's."



Considering maturity of your answers, 20 years before you were born :-)

Re:A bit offtopic, but still in concept

[Planesdragon]

One goes way back into startings of my company. All my comapny (sp) papers are
inside. Guess what. It doesn't work under XP.

Is that an archive format, a word processor, or an e-mail program?

It sounds like either a custom-built proprietary system, or a long non-upgraded system from a major vender. If the former, what the hell are you using XP for? If it's the later, bite the bullet and upgrade.

Second one is not so old it's a one year old program that I use to connect
to the bank (Same program that half of the country uses). Guess what, Doesn't
work under XP.

Hmm... do you mean Quicken, Money, your web browswer, or that proprietary "bank" software some banks were peddling? Upgrade if you can, and if not, go to the bank and see what they reccommend.

You might also want to try compatability mode for the apps before you call them dead. Man, if only Unix had a "compatabilty" mode--but that would require a standard, wouldn't it? (j/k)

So, to hell with your progress. Here's why somebody would use a program like
that.

Flame away, flame away. Just trying to help a fellow geek. :)

Re:A bit offtopic, but still in concept

[justsomebody]

Xp came bundled with the notebook? So either I stay with ice age hardware, or ice age software. Guess what, I need hardware for other things.

Bite the bullet? :-) I did, I bought VMWare installed 98 and now all the work I do is under Linux.

No, not proprietary software, there's only two different softwares that here in our coutry are used to connect to the bank. Guess what, Quicken is not supported. And yes I contacted vendor, they said I should move to Win2000.

Compatibility mode???? Hope you had better luck than me. That thing never worked. And yes, I tryed that.

Why the hell, would I need compatibility mode. Everything is either GPL or it's vendor supported. Every piece of software I bought for Linux is vendor supported.

Help me? With what? Sorry, I didn't asked you for help. Reason I answered was irritation with you arrogance in previous posts.

Re:A bit offtopic, but still in concept

[Planesdragon]

Help me? With what? Sorry, I didn't asked you for help. Reason I answered was irritation with you arrogance in previous posts.

You expressed dismay and a problem. I attempted to offer help. We are both allready participants in a relatively open forum for discussion.

I am bound by my faith to attempt to help my fellow man. Many apologies if I have offended your sensibilities. (Although I do wonder what country you're in...)

My own experiences with Linux have been less than stellar, and I have encountered near-zero incompatability between any two versions of windows. I am actually quite surprised that a vendor was able to wrangle code so it would work on 2000 and not XP

Re:A bit offtopic, but still in concept

[justsomebody]

I expressed a problem and a solution. No need for help.

Ok, thanks for trying to do something I've already done.

But, 2 points.

1. My experience with Windows go far enough. From the beggining 'till now. My work still involves working with them. Linux just can't support some jobs (but less and less :-). My work involves mainly servers, coding and making custom system services with making cusom software and supporting advertising companies.
2. My experience with Linux. Well after working on SGI and Sparc. I've left Unix. There was no valid (or cheap, take it or leave it, I was still student) platform (after I've left the job where I was working with them) until Linux became valid platform for my needs. Now I'm back on *nix and that's the real thing. Coding too :-)

Fellow man? First step on the ground and post viable comments. That's the kind of people that I call fellow man (not trollers). Although I admit that your attitude has changed.

Spitting on the ground you don't own is not allowed. If you're incapable to set up Linux (what is well readable from your post), that's not a reason to post to the world. Ok, learn your magic and when your ground is stable to make the posts constructive enough.

From which country I am? :-) I could be almost from any European country, they all use coutry specific connections to their banks. But I enjoy incognito.

work on 2000 and not XP? any driver based software. Credit Card specific software (that involves bank software). Based on a change of a driver model. Try installing older version of Corel. It may put in danger your System folder. Based on the thinking that applications provide system libraries in system folder many setups override without a question, that puts in danger whole system.

I wonder one thing, how many friends have you asked for help with linux (the ones that know what to do) before you started to think the way you do. And what version, ususaly that means 5 or 6 redhat. The orld has changed since then.

Many apologies if I have offended your sensibilities? No thanks, but apologie accepted.

Re:A bit offtopic, but still in concept

[Planesdragon]

I wonder one thing, how many friends have you asked for help with linux (the ones that know what to do) before you started to think the way you do. And what version, ususaly that means 5 or 6 redhat. The orld has changed since then.

Not sure what version they're using. My lack of faith has come from watching them try and "impress" me with Linux.

I'm more worried about a good word processor. I looked into the OpenOffice windows client, and it simply doesn't meet my needs. :(

(I have to wonder if you're not confusing me with someone else, but ah, well. /. is a big place.)

Re:A bit offtopic, but still in concept

[justsomebody]

If you're not the original thread poster then accept my appologies, otherwise... But since we're so nicely posting previous posts comments, I doubt it. :-)

But if you're not, you should probably notice that it started as major trolling. So if you've fallen into this thread in a wrong time, well it has been a mistake. Check whole thread and then you'll know how big /. is.
Oh, yes. I've just checked your info, and I'm almost sure you're the right person. You must enjoy in conversations like this. God forbid me, I enjoy them too. That's tipical either for life losers or people that are used to have the last word (guess what, I'm the second one).

"Not sure what version they're using"
God, you've had a great and intensive look over something so complex as OS. It's just as terrile as testing space shuttle by spell checking what it writes on the bumper sticker.

And...
My lack of faith has come from "using" Windows longtime :-) not looking

"I'm more worried about a good word processor. I looked into the OpenOffice windows client, and it simply doesn't meet my needs."

I agree, until MS Word can't make linked text frames, with tables that go trough few pages (with self maintained styled headers) and cross calculate beetwen them, and in the same time change graphs, pages overlayed with transparent pictures, oh yes and print to PDF. I agree, I don't need him. This wasn't begging for help, or dismaying a problem so I don't need an explanations. Second reason is that word processor is not what I need much (need other tools much more), but I need it in some manners very intensively

But since you're probably used to work in some different way, I won't persuade you to use it. Simply, I don't care what you're using.

port to FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

We should be encouraging these vendors to port to FreeBSD because Linux is dying.

CMYK

[panurge]

Much of the world still uses print media and the use of color is constantly growing. Laser color printers and inkjets are effectively CMYK - they use 3 ink colors and black to reproduce a range of the spectrum (gamut). RGB is based around additive colors - adding light - while CMYK is based around absorbtion by pigment - subtracting light. So their characteristics are different. The answer to visualisation is the expensive process of proofing.

Even more important, mixing colors cannot create exactly certain shades which can be produced by specialty inks. These colors are represented by "Pantone" colors, and any decent prepress system must allow spot Pantones to be added to an image.

Photoshop is the killer color application, and running it successfully on Linux would be a step towards giving Linux a slice of Apple's pie. But it is a relatively small pie, and I can't see the prepress guys happily surrendering their much-loved Macs any time soon. The fact is that "office" printers are stepping on the low-end territory of commercial print - and for these, the key issue is good Linux drivers with an ability to provide quality output from RGB.

My conclusion: Photoshop on Linux - OK but probably not a killer app
Excellent Linux drivers for things like the HP 4600, that work well with GIMP - better use of resources.

standardize the file format through ISO

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a lot of companies / organizations / governments who have policies to always buy only products that support open interoperablity standards (if available).

Take that format into ISO (not something on the national level, it has to be on an international level) and get it ratified as an international standard. Would be very surprised if ISO resisted that idea.

Marketing slogan: we want to be able to read our documents in 30 years from now.

Office programs

[Reality Master 101]

Man, maybe they should spend some time actually getting their suites to WORK RIGHT rather than file formats.

For various reasons, I needed to open an Excel file under Linux yesterday. Now, this Excel file was created with the Spreadsheet::WriteExcel module for Perl (which rocks, by the way). Totally documented format. So what happens?

Gnumeric: Opens it, but formatting all screwed up

Koffice: Core dumps

OpenOffice: Core dumps

This was NOT a complex spreadsheet. This was seriously pitiful. I hadn't tried the Linux office suites in a while, but this does not give me more motivation to try again.

Unified office format and filters

[InodoroPereyra]

The single greatest consequence of a unified document format for all the Linux office suites is the economy in filter code. One single filter would be enough to go from, say, M$ Word 97(or whatever they call it) to the XML word-processing format, and would work for _all_ GNU/Linux office suites.

That in turn would allow cooperation between all of these projects on getting just one filter but get it right, thus avoiding unnecessary multiplication of efforts. In short, I hope this idea goes through, everybody (but M$) wins ...

Linux has more users than developers. Great!

[Nailer]

The mainstream success of Linux was inevitably going to be based on it being the best solution for a particular kind of job, and perhaps realizing that that quality comes as a result of Open Source licensing. To get the mainstream public to believe in the `ethics' of Free Software (that non-free software is immoral) was never realistically going to happen.

I always thought real techies used the best tool for the job. If Linux is that tool, and that's why the Linuxworld attendees are there, more power to them

Its a good thing that Linux now has more users than the developers. It means the developers were doing something right. Just like the Windows world, there will be seperate, smaller shows that will cater for developers - OSCon here we come. As a system admin and someone who often has to work out the best way to perform a given tak on Linux I like the fact that they're seperate - system admins have a different set of skills and desires than coders do.

Re:Linux has more users than developers. Great!

[ReelOddeeo]

Now when we get to the point of more users than distributions, then we'll really be cooking.

Then the next milestone will be more users than Windows has bugs. (Or should that be security exploits?)

protest to mandate open source purchases fizzles

[tim_maroney]

Linux users march on city hall

So it appears this crazy cause to make software "free as in required by law" is not even popular among the open source faithful. Chalk one up for common sense!

--
Tim Maroney tim@maroney.org

mod this up

[Anonymous Coward]

QED

Re:protest to mandate open source purchases fizzle

[Arandir]

There's a whole bunch of people in the Free Software community, including a certain Redhat CTO, that still don't "get it".

Uh uhg ...

[fferreres]

So instead of using an open format to create a spreadsheet, you use a perl module and create some .xls closed format file and then expect other non MS suites to open them perfectly, and when one of them doesn't perfectly open your perl-created closed-format excel you request to have them working right and to not focus in file format?

I'f I had the power I'd award your post the troll of the milenia award!

Re:Uh uhg ...

[Reality Master 101]

So instead of using an open format to create a spreadsheet, you use a perl module and create some .xls closed format file

Apparently, you've been living off planet earth for a while. While you've been gone, we've establish MS/Office as the industry standard document interchange format. My customers use Excel; My customers like Excel; therefore, I send them automatic Spreadsheet reports in Excel.

Besides that, you've apparently bought into the propaganda that Office is a totally closed format. Untrue. There are definitely undocumented parts, but much of it IS documented. That's what Spreadsheet::WriteExcel uses.

then expect other non MS suites to open them perfectly, and when one of them doesn't perfectly open your perl-created closed-format excel you request to have them working right and to not focus in file format?

You're damn right. An office program is completely WORTHLESS if it can't open the industry standard document formats. Maybe it's fine for you if you just want to exchange documents with your l33t haxhor friends, but in the real world, an office suite must read/write MS documents perfectly.

Which is the point. If the filter is such garbage, why even include it in the distribution? I would rather they at least be honest and say "We don't support MS/Office format." and then people can make an honest decision on whether they want to be completely closed off from that part of the world.

But there is just no excuse for not opening a simple Spreadsheet created with a COMPLETELY DOCUMENTED FORMAT.

Re:Uh uhg ...

[fferreres]

Untrue. There are definitely undocumented parts

Do you actually read your own post and check for consistency? Besides, I know MSOffice is the standard and that i can't use anything but Office when i need to talk to "normal people", but we will NEVER get 100% compatibility.

So the point is having a file format that every other single office suite can talk to. Then we can create a MSOffice import/export filter and that's it.

We can't keep saving everything as excel files as the standard. We need 1 single xls import/export filter to talk to a unified file format EVERYONE ELSE can use.

But you'll never understand so I don't feel write for answering and losing my time ...

Re:Uh uhg ...

[Reality Master 101]

So the point is having a file format that every other single office suite can talk to. Then we can create a MSOffice import/export filter and that's it.

That's fine -- in theory. I suppose one might argue that we could have a common filter interface. But I didn't see anything in those (admittedly) skimpy reports about that. All I see is talk about having a common format, not for the advantage of being able to read/write MS formats, but just so that there's a common format.

It's obvious that none of the suites are serious about writing MS documents, just based on the fact that THREE of them choke on an extremely simple file created without using ANY of the undocumented features.

I guess what irritates me is just the extreme stupidity that goes into this. It's like, "we hate Microsoft so much that we're going to write this office suite, and just to make sure no one uses it, we'll make the Microsoft import filters completely suck! That'll show Microsoft!"

Re:Uh uhg ...

[fferreres]

MS file formats are designed to break compatibility. Even MS word crashes with document it has created itself. It's badly done.

OO has put a lot of effort in filters, but it's not only a compatibility thing, it has to actually implement _EVERYTHING_ Word and Excel do as well as provide their own funcionalities as well as reverse engineer every damn change. It's not easy and it will never be perfect.

Try to create your spreadsheet in Excel (same spreadsheet) and if it STILL crashes OO please file a gub report. They are very responsive and want to help.

But it's be nice if you used CVS or something else than .xls from perl.

Please ignore

[LinuxWhore]

this.