Slashdot Mirror
Native KOffice for Mac OS X
bsharitt writes "A preliminary version of KOffice has been built natively on Mac OS X. It looks like a lot of the hard part is over, and now a lot of cleaning up and bug fixes stand between Mac OS X and a free full featured office suite." There's also a story on the dot.
Perfect opportunity for Apple to do what they did with Safari and Darwin. Extend it, make it better, include it as an Apple branded product, and give the changes back to the community.
I wonder how long it will be before Appleworks is nixed in favor of a kOffice - based product. Microsoft Office for the Mac is actually a really good product, and Appleworks doesn't touch it. Get to work Apple!
Well, since there is a project underway to develop a QT interface for OO then OO/QT will compile natively on OSX and all is well. KOffice never seemed to deal well with MS Office docs as far as saving them correctly but OO rocks..and with a QT UI for OO then QT/Mac will be the God sent for OSX users. :)
Tell me what you believe...I'll tell you what you should see.
What annoys you about it? Granted, it took me a while to get used to my iBook, but I love it now. Sure its a little weird not having a differentiation between a maximized window and one thats just the size of the screen. However, once you embrace the Jobs way its useable.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
This is a great milestone but...
Trolltech needs desperately to update the OSX port of QT. The widget have a cumbersome appearance and need to be updated to Panther style. Text alignment is in need of some fixing up. This isn't a complaint... the OSX version is still in its infancy and I'm sure time will allow a more integrated look... I'm just anxious.. because QT really is a great toolkit / API.
Good Job!
Eddy.WriteLinux.Com
The port of Konquerer and KOffice is using the native QT/Mac port. This is great for two reasons. For one it helps find bugs and missing features in QT/Mac. That'll make porting future projects easier and make using QT/Mac for cross platform development better. Secondly it will enable a lot of fairly good programs to run native.
I agree that KOffice isn't that great, although it holds promise. But having it native is a big deal. Open Office might be more powerful, but because it is an X11 app, it really doesn't have an Aqua look and feel. Further cutting and pasting of graphics or drag and drop don't work. That's a rather large failing with Open Office. (I also think Open Office is weak compared to MS Office and further Apple is expected by some to be releasing its office suite this winter or spring)
I'd kind of like to have a native Konquerer, if only to deal with directories with lots of files. Something the Finder doesn't deal well with. Using it to organize my web directories would be very nice as well...
Which is odd because I thought the QT for Mac was supposed to use the OS X native widgets.
I don't want to suggest this means it's useless. Obviously, having an application you can place anywhere in the file system, double click to run, associate with files (with a file, as the default for a type of file where the file isn't associated, and used for Open With...), etc, is infinitely better than an X11 version, but, well, I suspect most of those with MS Office or even AppleWorks will probably stick with their proprietary apps for now. Which is a shame.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Because they're more interesting. They've had a hell of a year.
Besides, Microsoft has been sitting on their laurels. Groklaw has an interesting bit where PJ notes that Investor's Business Daily made up their "Top Ten Tech Stories of the Year" list without mentioning Microsoft a single time in any context. This isn't because the "regular" PC world is losing relevance, but more just that there isn't much going on in the "regular" PC world.
But... that's what happens when one company is in charge of most of what people do: Nothing. Why should they do anything? They've got 80% of the world using their stuff.
People also look at the price. For poor people like me price is still a big factor in what influences my decisions to run what software.
Make me your friend. All my friends get +1 modifier and I need friends :)
Where can I donate specifically to the team of programmers working to bring KOffice up to finished, final release quality on OS X?
I would gladly pay to encourage their efforts.