OpenOffice.org: KDE Integration Project Launched

vfs writes "Someone at pclinuxonline.com noticed that a OpenOffice/KDE Integration Project has been started to "provide tight (but optional) integration of the OpenOffice.org to the KDE environment beginning with KDE look and feel and ending with KDE data sources." This could offer a great opportunity for enterprises to deploy an integrated, unified desktop." (Here's the dot.kde.org post on the project.)

Comments

Qt?

[Otter]

Details are sketchy -- obviously, since no code has been written except for the cuckooo kpart -- but:

I wonder if they're planning to do a pure Qt interface, as seems to be suggested in some places, or a KDE one? From the Mac point of view, pure Qt means a native OS X interface! The native Mac KDE seems to have stalled (nothing on their mailing list for weeks) and would require extra libs even if it were made to work.

Re:Qt?

[njchick]

But for Windows, Qt means no interface, as long as OOo remains free software and Qt for Windows doesn't become one.

OOo has an abstraction layer to deal with different toolkits. Qt is not a replacement for it because its free version is not as portable as OOo itself. Qt would be just another layer. gtk or wxWindows could be a replacement from the whole GUI stack in OOo.

Re:Qt?

[Haeleth]

I don't think you quite understand the point. OOo on Windows already has a perfectly good interface that looks pretty close to the native look and feel, uses the native save/load dialogs, and so on. OOo on MacOS X is currently an X11 application, and as such doesn't integrate at all - it uses X11 save/load dialogs, uses X11 grey menus attached to the windows instead of the Mac's unified screen-top menubar, uses X11 widgets, and so on.

A build of OOo with a Qt option would therefore mean a lot to MacOS X users, since it would provide them with something that looked like a MacOS X application. Meanwhile, Windows users could continue to use their Windows-like build. They would lose nothing, and Mac users would gain a lot. What's the problem with that?

Re:Qt?

[njchick]

The problem is that the developers would spend time on something that increases complexity of the project as a whole instead of delegating all GUI to one toolkit for all platforms.

It would be a quick fix for KDE and MacOS that may result in a nice interface, but I'm not sure it would be an optimal solution for the project.

On the other hand, the developers are in short supply. If they happend to be KDE fans, it's better that they do what they want than nothing. There's no way to force a KDE fan to rewrite OOo for gtk for free.

KOffice

[Ianoo]

I, for one, am glad they're admitting that KOffice is simply not mature enough for prime-time. No offense to the KOffice developers, I'm sure they are all far better programmers than I am and I'm sure they work hard on their project - but every time I use the suite it seems to crash for various reasons, which is not a good thing if I'm trying to work on a document and haven't been saving it every five minutes.

Maybe in a few years KOffice will be more mature and then all the KDE people can use it, but until then OpenOffice with tighter KDE integration seems like a fairly good idea. I don't care whether they recode the whole interface in QT or not, but maybe a Ximian-like tweaking to integrate the suite with KDE's VFS, printing system and open/save dialogs plus some KDE-ish toolbar buttons (it already can take on QT's colourscheme IIRC) would be more-or-less sufficent. If they want to take it further, of course, then that'd be even better.

Re:KOffice

[Zork the Almighty]

I use KOffice a lot and I quite like it. It has a different design philosophy from OpenOffice. Rather than trying to be a be-all, end-all clone of the monolithic MS Office, it's a lean, functional suite which is well integrated with KDE. It is very fast and very easy to use. I encourage anyone running KDE to try it.

Re:KOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

This is interesting, as I use KOffice precisely because it is stable. More stable than either MS Office or Open Office. It also is nicely integrated into my desktop and is consequently very fast to load.

Native Mac OS X port

[xyrw]

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

Look'n'feel

[Nucleon500]

Finally! OO.org's toolkit has always bugged me - it's kinda slow, never looks like anything else, and menus don't go away when you click on the titlebar. Besides, having yet another toolkit increases the load time and memory requirements. One of the goals seems to be a Qt backend for VCL, and eventually a new widget set might be used.

Of course, the big question is, which one. What are your favorites, people? I like the idea of wxWindows, though I wish it had a Qt port. In the long run, I'd rather see something like X but with server-side widgets, and I think wxWindows might be easiest to adapt to this model. In the short term, Qt or GTK would be great.

Re:Look'n'feel

[Anonymous Coward]

OO.org's toolkit has always bugged me - it's kinda slow, never looks like anything else, and menus don't go away when you click on the titlebar.

I just tested this. I opened OOo, looked at it, then opened a menu and clicked on the title bar. It looked like a normal Windows application, and the menu went away when I clicked on the title bar.

Maybe you should have mentioned which platform you're using?

Am I the only one

[Kethinov]

Am I the only one who sees this as a waste of time? KDE already works. OO.org already works. OO.org already works in KDE. All this time spent on making it look better could be used in giving Linux some real features that it really needs.

Re:Am I the only one

[pr0c]

"Kethinov: Am I the only one who sees this as a waste of time? KDE already works. OO.org already works. OO.org already works in KDE. All this time spent on making it look better could be used in giving Linux some real features that it really needs."

Exactly the thinking that costs us linux users. Working isn't good enough, windows 'works'. We need shit that goes above and beyond if we want to grow.

Re:Am I the only one

[Kethinov]

Come now. Running applications in GTK, running applications in QT, really does it matter? This whole toolkit integration war is causing more problems than it's solving! Instead of rewriting apps so that they integrate better in KDE or GNOME, we should be concentrating on things that really matter... you know, like a package management system that doesn't suck or an in installer that doesn't suck?

Re:Am I the only one

[LittleBigLui]

like a package management system that doesn't suck

#> emerge package_management_system_that_doesnt_suck ;)

Re:Am I the only one

[Chainsaw]

You're right, of course. Creating an intelligent installer system that abstracts the creation of icons, checking if an application is installed and even choice of UI (KDE/Gnome/Windowmaker/curses). The problem here is quite odd - if I were to write a wonderful system that could do everything that you could ever demand, people would STILL complain and duplicate my work because it was written in C++ and not C.

However... The Qt/GTK+ non-workandlookalike crap can be solved in a pretty easy way. Make a small library that they BOTH use to draw widgets. That is - both 'new QButton("OK")' and 'gtk_new_button_with_label("OK")' would generate a component that looks, feels and IS the same. How come that neither of the two have proposed this and seen that it sucks considerable less than the current way?

Re:Am I the only one

[Anonymous Coward]

> KDE already works. OO.org already works.

Can you embed a KDE object into an OO document? If not, it doesn't work to commercial standards.

Re:Am I the only one

[DrMorris]

A library which abstracts the creation of widgets might be nice but - despite the fact that it would only be possible to a certain extent - wouldn't help much. This whole integration topic is more about things like kparts, kdcop, k... I guess.

Re:Am I the only one

[damiam]

How come that neither of the two have proposed this and seen that it sucks considerable less than the current way?

Because it would be buggy, a pain to implement, and an additional layer of overhead on an already none-too-speedy desktop.

Re:Am I the only one

[JasonStiletto]

"making it look better" is one of the things Linux sorely needs. Users don't like inconsistant interfaces. Users don't want things that work 13 different ways. It doesn't matter if something works if no one uses it, and giving an app a native interface does loads for making it more user friendly. All the heavy lifting has already been done, so why not throw on the paint job and make Open Office have a native KDE or Gnome interface. Seems the right way to head to me. JS

Re:Am I the only one

[Anonymous Coward]

This is slashdot.

Only preaching to the choir is allowed here.

Truths that nobody wants to hear will be immediatly marked as flamebait.

rpm suxs & apt-get rocks but somehow I find myself running redhat. whats up with that?

Yes, you are

[Feztaa]

Integrating OOo into KDE will be awesome, it will provide for greater consistency between applications, and there will simply be one less reason for people to complain about all the inconsistent GUI toolkits on Linux.

Now, all we need is a rewrite of Mozilla in Qt... :)

Re:Yes, you are

[vigilology]

Spot on. I'm trying to convince my father that Linux is the way to go for his work desktops, and it's rather hard when the OOo and Mozilla file dialogs do not contain that beautiful shortcut to the floppy disk. I've had to set up a link to /mnt/floppy in his home dir instead. Down with custom file dialogs! Hooray for KDE file dialogs!

Re:Yes, you are

[damiam]

Konqueror used to have a Gecko rendering backend available. I haven't heard about it in a while, maybe it died from lack of interest.

Re:Yes, you are

[Feztaa]

Down with custom file dialogs! Hooray for KDE file dialogs!

Yeah, I love the KDE file dialog, it's awesome. Way better than the GTK2 one...

Also, KDE's choice of focus models verse GNOME make KDE awesome (GNOME's focus model just gets worse and worse with every version).

And the answer to the GNOME vs. KDE debate is...

[MikeCapone]

XFce!

Re: rewrite of Mozilla in Qt

[DrMorris]

There is a configure option to compile Mozilla with QT, however AFAIK the development is discontinued. But then again, how could one benefit of a version of Mozilla built with QT if it doesn't use [some of] the KDE libraries?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you get much interoperability with KDE apps just by using QT.

No K

[fm6]

You assume that KOffice has a serious reason to exist. It doesn't. Perhaps it made sense at one time for KDE to try to replicate every Microsoft desktop software. But now it's time for them to adjust their goals. They need to acknowledge that they don't have the resources to do everything they'd like to do. They especially don't need to duplicate the work of the OpenOffice team. If OO interoperability were as much an issue as it used to be, things might be different.

Re:No K

[Brandybuck]

Perhaps it made sense at one time for KDE to try to replicate every Microsoft desktop software. But now it's time for them to adjust their goals.

You're assuming that KOffice is part of the KDE project. It is not. It is a separate project. As such, it's not much different from Gnome Office, AbiWord, Gnumeric, etc.

Re:No K

[fm6]

The KDE source files all say "This file is part of the KDE project." The email given for the koffice.org webmaster is webmaster@kde.org! Sounds like more than a casual connection.

Re:No K

[Brandybuck]

Of course it's more than a casual connection. Ditto for Gnumeric being a part of Gnome.

But KOffice has a different release schedule and is treated as a distinct project. From the end-users' perspective, it's just another KDE application.

Re:No K

[calidoscope]

Perhaps it made sense at one time for KDE to try to replicate every Microsoft desktop software.

KOffice replicates MS Office the same way that Linux with a window manager replicates M$-Windows. The most intriguing part about KOffice is that it doesn't slavishly follow M$-Office. KWrite borrows heavily from DTP, where OOo's Text personna is primarily a word processor.

Re:And the answer to the GNOME vs. KDE debate is..

[drix]

Looks suspiciously like KDE 1 to me. And it's not appreciably faster on my box than anything else. But I guess what makes it truely wonderful it's that it's built on GTK+. I've always relished the "opportunity" of developing with a fully object-oriented toolkit written in a fully procedural language. It's real... elegant. Right up there with Perl 5's "grafted on" OOP constructs.

Give me Python or give me C++. Give me C++ or give me Objective C. Give me ObjC or give me death. But for the love of God, don't give me C and make me weld classes, methods and attributes to it.

4 apps for 1

[sawanv]

Yes and in keeping with the traditional KDE mode of providing 4 applications where one is required, OO will now become a standard part of the KDE didtribution which knowledgeable user will be able to remove/disable during install (and bad luck if you are a relative newbie, you will still get all the s*&^ libraries and crud needed by OO on your system, unneccessarily).

As for poor aunt Tilly, she will just see more menus than good and end up more confused.....

Rewrite OOo in XUL

[axxackall]

Now, all we need is a rewrite of Mozilla in Qt.

I have a better idea: how about to rewrite OOo into XUL/XPCOM/Gecko?

Seriously, The composer in Mozilla is already a good document writer. Calendar, Bookmarks and History are good examples of tables. SVG graphics is on the way too. So, it *is* possible to rewrite OOo in XUL.

Why?

• Because OOo will be automatically ported to any platform where Mozilla is ported already.
• Because the cost of further developement of OOo will be dropped as XUL applications are much easier to develop and support.
• Because it will be easier to customize look-n-feel (chromes) of OOo.
• Because OOo will be better integrated with the browser and mail application.

Re:Rewrite OOo in XUL

[Feztaa]

rewrite OOo into XUL/XPCOM/Gecko?

Brilliant!

You know, I've always thought that OpenOffice wasn't slow enough, but I could never think of a decent way to make it slower. You've really hit the nail on the head, though: We can add another abstraction layer to the code!

Seriously, though, I think OOo is already big and slow enough, it needs to become faster, not more bloated. The idea of rewriting OOo's interface in XUL (which is basically XML + javascript) makes me shudder.

Re:Rewrite OOo in XUL

[rollout]

Wait! This IS the way to go. Computers are getting faster (remember Moore's Law) and this is future-looking (features/cross-platform over speed, since speed will be a non-issue) response. In the very near future the speed issues will revolve around using the internet as our network instead of processor speed.

Re:And the answer to the GNOME vs. KDE debate is..

[Trejkaz]

CDE + Gtk = XFce

Can it catch up to GNOME bindings? Abiword?

[Ars-Fartsica]

KOffice has lagged for a long time. The GNOME bindings and skinning projects for OO.org are well along already. Abiword is a kick-ass word processor.

GNOME takes the office apps crown for 2004 unless KDE pulls a miracle.

Re:Can it catch up to GNOME bindings? Abiword?

[Tukla]

I won't argue about Gnome getting the "office apps crown". I do think the comparison is a little unfair, though. After all, KOffice was written from scratch as a KDE office suite, whereas OpenOffice and Abiword were preexisting projects that were "adopted" by Gnome.

Ill stick with Koffice

[nurb432]

While it still has some maturing to go.. its tightly integrated into the desktop, and is consistant ( relative to kde ) today...

Its also much 'lighter' then OO..

OO is nice, dont get me wrong. But it fills a different niche..

Very Bad idea

[Qwavel]

OOo has decided that they will be moving away from VCL to a different GUI toolkit/framework (though it now appears that this will not happen until after 2.0).

So, any patching done to the VCL now is just temporary, and will have to be thrown out after 2.0.

Here's a much better plan. Decide what framework you think they should switch to and improve it with features that might be useful to OO. That way your work lives a lot longer, and even more importantly, it is available to everyone who uses that framework, not just OO.

I personally agree with their decision. Having OO uses it own, very inaccessible, GUI framework is very bad for the open source community (and for OO). Their are many excellent GUI toolkits/frameworks out there, such as wxWindows, the Qt framework, SWT, etc. Any of these could easily be used via (and could benefit from) OO's component technology. So let's shoot for that rather than taking such a short term approach.

It's a *clipboard* thing

[Tetch]

For me it has little to do with making the office apps look different or "better", and a great deal to do with using the KDE clipboard to transfer information between the office apps and other KDE apps.

At the moment I can't do that easily (how would you paste from a Konsole session into a word-processor document ?), and anything that makes that a snap is progress, IMHO.

Other OSes?

[shish]

What about windows? Hasn't QT/win32 been dropped? (the free version, at least)

Re:I have a better idea..

[Anonymous Coward]

you KDE lovin fags, stop marking the truth as flamebait