OpenOffice.org Built with KDE and GNOME Support

ks writes "Novell hacker Jan Holesovsky has released a build of OOo 1.1.3 that integrates with either KDE or GNOME depending on the environment it's running in. The build features KDE/GNOME look and feel, KDE/GNOME file dialogs and the Crystal icons. If you're running NLD, you have this already." Update: 11/27 18:13 GMT by T : Also on the OpenOffice.org front, the OO.o front page links to this interview with Debian ARM developer Peter Naulls, who has ported the suite to ARM processors. Hint: they're everywhere.

Comments

First Reply|

[IcarusMoth]

I think this is a great idea, one of hte reasons I had trouble with OOo in KDE3.X was its lack of smoothness. now if only someone will do the same for Abiword

Re:First Reply|

[IcarusMoth]

on second thought, what with me being a Computer Science major, and can do it myself! If only I had more modivation... maybe after July or so.

Re:First Reply|

[FlipmodePlaya]

You could always use something like MetaTheme, or an equivalent (check kde-look.org), to have GTK widgets drawn with QT. Seems like a convoluted solution, but it really works quite well.

Re:First Reply|

[irokitt]

So, you're busy playing Half-Life too?

Re:First Reply|

[mini me]

Seems like a convoluted solution, but it really works quite well.

In fact, on my machine at least, the Qt GTK+ theme is faster than the native GTK+ themes. The only problem is that it's still a bit buggy.

Re:First Reply|

[the_truk_stop]

So, you're busy playing Half-Life too?

I think it's Half-Life Two... ;)

Re:First Reply|

[Anonymous Coward]

Drawing GTK widgets with QT is like signing your name utilizing a laser, mounted on a satellite in orbit.

Re:First Reply|

[cmbofh]

But amazingly it's a workable solution. I've tried it with the gq LDAP client.

Re:First Reply|

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't have great success last time I tried, the beam was off by a micron and it ended up frying the cashier...

Re:First Reply|

[cmbofh]

You have to lower the shields first for a straight shot, or the phase fluctuations will make you miss horribly.

Re:First Reply|

[Sivar]

So, you're busy playing Half-Life too?

I think it's Half-Life Two... ;)

You're both correct: It's So, you're busy playing Half-Life Two too...

Re:First Reply|

[JamesTRexx]

Half-Life Tutu..?/
*imagines all the characters walking around in pink*

Re:First Reply|

[blcknight]

OpenOffice is really a peice of crap. It's buggy, slow, and hugantic. While koffice may lack certain "features", it's stable, faster, and smaller. There's still no equivalent to powerpoint on Linux.

Also, no one really commented on porting it to ARM. Now Open Office can crash iPaqs too!

Re:First Reply|

[IllForgetMyNickSoonA]

I was always wondering what attracts so many people to AbiWord. In my experience, it's not quite stable enough for me to replace the xemacs/LaTeX combination, or (more recently) OOo.

I just gave 2.0.5 a try. Writing a few lines of text, using mixed fonts, all in one section, went well. Then I tried to add a picture in tif format, which didn't work (it seems tif is not supported, at least on my installation). After accidentally trying to import the xcf version of the same picture (xcf is gimp format), AbiWord started to consume almost 100% of the CPU. After some 5-6 minutes, I had to kill it. File size was a few kilobytes, so that can't be the reason. All in all, I managed to bring it to fall by using it for only a few minutes. :-(

Now, this is a rather fresh installation of SuSE 9.1. Previous to this test, I already had some testing experience with older versions of AbiWord - all of which ended similarly. What am I missing? Why are, as it seems, so many people so attracted to AbiWord? It's one of only the few open source programs that never worked for me.

Re:First Reply|

[IcarusMoth]

honestly I'm a writer (among other things), and I like the cross platform compatibility of AbiWord its rather nice you know to be able to go from work (where I use Win & Mac) to home where I use (Gentoo & Mandrake) and have the same feature set and what not. I like AbiWord's rather clean interface and it feels less "Clunkity" than OOo. Also It will run on my old 233mmx laptop, which is the system that I adore and prefer to write on. I think OOo's footprint is too large to run in 32 mb of ram. But Abi does. so Abi it is.

Re:First Reply|

[IllForgetMyNickSoonA]

So, you don't have the problems with the stability that I have experienced, or have you learned, by experience, where the "flaky" parts of the editor are? I also dislike the footprint of the OOo, and even LaTeX can sometimes be a pain in the ass, but it seems AbiWord just keeps crashing on me much more often than it does for other people.. :-)

Re:First Reply|

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah they also need Carbon support for OS X. The current solution with X creates three menu bars just to open an OO.O document, and two icons in the dock. There are several ways you can quit the program, but only one is the right way to do it (otherwise you lose data, or it doesn't actually close). And it sure is confusing.

Wait, instead of developing custom solutions per environment, why not just use pre-existing cross-platform solutions like XUL or SWT? Then it can be as cool as Firefox or Azureus. Until then, I'm sticking with AppleWorks, thank you.

I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[Megaweapon]

This should help with either GNOME or KDE adoption in office environments since the user interface looks more streamlined.

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[rppp01]

I am actually going to be doing a presentation on how you can use linux as a workstation/desktop in a work environment. I am choosing OOffice as the office suite. I am glad to see it integrates with both environments.

How does it support things like ppt, doc and xls files? I really wanna impress who I am showing this to.

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[tepples]

How does it support things like ppt, doc and xls files?

Rather well. I've read success stories of OO.o flawlessly opening corrupted .doc files that crash Microsoft Word.

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[someonehasmyname]

It sounds like you need to do some research.

You've already picked OO.o, and you don't even know how it performs. What happens when they go with your ideas and switch from MS to Linux and you don't know how to support what you've suggested? They won't be impressed.

Not to be a troll, but stuff like this will only hurt adoptin of Linux. You tell them Linux is the best thing since sliced bread, they have you show them, they switch, stuff breaks, and you can't fix it. In the PHB's mind, you and Linux suck. So they go back to MS and never try Linux again.

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[reverius]

It does indeed open corrupted .doc files that crash Word... I did it once at work, to the amazement of everyone present (myself included). However, it did lose a bit of the formatting. Nothing that 5 minutes of dragging pictures around couldn't fix, though.

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering most Gnome 1.x users now run XFCE4 this may just be what's needed for the Gnome project to justify it's existance as a viable desktop; they were targeting clueless users with GConf. Careful what you wish for I say.

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[rppp01]

You are right. And I do. And I am getting started on it.

I've used it in the past, and found file support spotty. It is powerful in its own right.

But thanks for the 'wake up'. Nice to know the community cares enough to ensure the very best. And I mean that.

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[Janek Kozicki]

How does it support things like ppt, doc and xls files?

everything is great except for video in presentation. It works somehow, but does not even correctly open .ppt with video inside, though.

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[Anonymous Coward]

i think the reason it will open corupted .doc files is because of the "formating". OO.o will ignore formating options it cannot recognize or perform were office will continuously try to open it (hence the crash). Without the expectations of OO.o having some dificulties, this probably wouldn't have ever been possible.

It was probably formatting problems that caused it to crash/corupt in the first place. The loss is probably what saved the file :)

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice to see a mature non-flaming response for once. Best of luck with your research.

OpenOffice is very near to a 2.0 release. You might want to check out the latest builds from the 2.0 stream to get an idea of what is "coming soon": http://download.openoffice.org/680/index.html. The RPMs you can get from that snapshot can be installed on the same system alongside an OOo 1.1 release. I'd suggest sticking to the released version for the actual demo though! Good luck.

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[someonehasmyname]

Thanks. Like I said, I wasn't trying to troll.

It just sounded like you were the most Linux-savvy person at work, and if they decide to make the switch you'd better be ready. Switching to Linux is beneficial, but never easy. Everyone in the office will be asking you questions ALL day. If you don't know your distro of choice inside out as well as gnome or kde and all the dependency issues, advocating Linux isn't the best idea.

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[gad_zuki!]

Also mention MS activation and how you can't just copy office to your home PC anymore, even though you arent using both. Sure to those of us who know licensing this is an accepted practice, but to Joe User this could very well be seen as a pain or MS being too aggressive.

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, first of all, forget your macros; if your organization already has Word or Excel "applications" written in VBA, it will need to rewrite them to work with OO or develop them into real, cross-platform applications (web-based comes to mind). Don't underestimate the impact of this issue! Incredible things can be done with Word and Excel using the scripting built into it, especially when you get into integrating it with external systems (like printing invoices with information retrieved from a billing system). You may lose half of your audience right there if they are currently knowledgeable Office users.

After you get past that, the compatibility is hit-or-miss. Complex formatting, embedded content such as spreadsheets, and other issues make it hard to guarantee interoperability. I am careful to avoid doing things with documents I share that may make them difficult to work with, but managers and even secretaries can be expected to play with documents in a way that makes them only work in Office.

In short, the idea that Linux and OO is suitable for a work environment where Windows and Office is currently used is difficult to justify. OO is far slower, far less flexible, and will cost all but the smallest companies a fortune to re-train users. I use OO as well as Office and while I like the idea of OO (and I especially like to use it to export to PDF), it is a clunky package when directly compared to Office. Combined with modern Linux desktop systems that trade usability and performance for the sake of "proper" programming techniques, OO provides a dog-slow working environment that you will regret recommending.

I work with some small businesses that have historically balked at paying for software licensing, but the owners prefer to knowingly illegally license Windows/Office than use something else that they are unfamiliar with. However, if they had no predisposed aversion to something other than Office, these particular businesses may be able to get away with OO because they don't do anything complex that requires VBA or a particularly high level of integration. It all comes down to knowing your audience and knowing all of the limitations of the software you are advocating beforehand.

Finally, if you add filetype:doc or filetype:xls or filetype:ppt to a Google search, you can search for files of those formats. Try opening business-oriented documents found with those searches with both Office and OO and see what you find!

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[someonehasmyname]

Yeah, imagine if everyone here actually shared knowledge and tried to help eachother. Nice suggestion on trying the 2.0 stream. I haven't played with 2.0-pre on Linux, but the last snapshot I built actually runs pretty well on FreeBSD, so it'll probably run as well or better on Linux. :/

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[Ramses0]

It has a non-animated version of clippy, thus you will automatically impress the people you are showing this to. :^)

Actually, support is very solid. There are slight quirkisms (slightly different line-wrappings if fonts arent found, some UI choices are slightly different), but some important elements to your pitch must be:

1- if you need windows and office we can still install it

2- default config should be windows + openoffice

3- some groups can use linux + openoffice + evolution ...if your organization is of any substantial size (more than 20), you have to check your advocacy at the door and recognize the practicalities.

Windows you practically get for free, and having that safety net of "oh, and if it doesn't work, you can just grab a copy of Office and install that", is a great business advantage. Once your company realizes:

a- most people don't need all of Office

b- ideally you get less support calls from the linux people

c- when the next upgrade cycle rolls around, by switching to linux you avoid costs of upgrading both hardware and software ...you now have a great migration path over to linux. If you can get some insiders in the IT group (ie: to pave the way by making cross-platform compatible choices for infrastructure), then it could end up being a pretty straightforward switchover.

Best of luck, and don't try to tackle it all at the same time.

--Robert

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[kantai]

Additionally OO.o lacks some of the features of excel, (excel plotted and did histograms and best fit lines, where as OO.o has a rather poor grapher which only does bar graphs, line graphs, really horrendous xy plots, and pie charts.) this can be remedied, however, with some macros. Search OO.o macros for statistics.

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[cecil_turtle]

I've completely switched to OOo at home and haven't had any real problems, and use it a lot at work in conjunction with OOo.

My most complex Excel sheet converted easily and I only had to change of couple of functions where the OOo arguments were slightly different than Excel's. Also the file size in that particular Excel document was over 2MB but the OOo native file size was 94k (they use an XML format and then zip compress it - that's why some people claim OOo to be "slower").

I didn't even think about PPT's until I needed to open one on my laptop for a presentation. To my suprise it opened right up in OOo and I played the slideshow with no trouble.

Another thing to consider is that OOo can natively save PDF documents from any spreadsheet or document.

The issue with macros has been blown a bit out of proportion with some of the above posts. It is true that MS Office is very powerful with scripting, but honestly it's more of a small business solution to do some basic automation cheaply. Mid and large size companies typically have dedicated systems to perform such tasks / calculations. As far as interoperability with other companies, I haven't seen any kind of complexity in an Office document that came from another company as a public document that would cause any kind of issue with OOo.

To address the user issue, most secretaries and PHB's don't know MS Office well enough to even notice a difference. OOo has the same formatting toolbars that do the same thing. For the MS Office "experts", they should be savvy enough to learn OOo.

All of that said, please do be sure to spend the time and learn it yourself before you do the presentation on it.

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[cosmol]

That's nothing. I've had huge hassles trying to get video clips in .ppt to work between different windows machines all running the same version of Powerpoint. In this respect, Powerpoint doesn't have any advantage over OO.

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[Janek Kozicki]

I'm afraid this is unfortunately untrue. I make presentations of my scientific research every few months, and I have to show videos to people (reinforced concrete breaking under load). I do all my research with linux, though for presenting results I either have to:

-use evil powerpoint inside stolen vmware (afraid to admit, but I have legal win2000)
-make presentation inside OOo, and switch between desktops to run a video with mplayer, which waits aside

I use both of those methods interchangeably, favoring mplayer solution in order to promote linux around.

and I did put effort to make vidoes in presentations working with OOo - it works, but simply is not usable yet.

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because the thing playing the video in windows often isn't powerpoint, it's a COM object from a video player installed on the machine playing the embedded video. This is the once-buzzword "OLE" in action, something people nowadays take for granted.

But on a different windows machine or a mac or linux, the same player mightn't be installed, or even if the same player is installed, it mightn't have the same codecs (this often happens with Apple Quicktime or MS WMP).

The Microsoft windows OLE model has a number of serious technical problems that aren't shared by similar systems on linux, but the killer problem on linux is that there are multiple competing systems.

Freedesktop.org project is hoping to fix the mess - KDE and GNOME developers usually play nice together in the Freedesktop.org group, it's just the /. loser fanboys who kick off the flamefests.

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[mrchaotica]

...modern Linux desktop systems that trade usability and performance for the sake of "proper" programming techniques...

There's a reason for that. "Usability" can be fixed relatively easily, and "performance" will fix itself as computers get faster (although optimizing the order of an algorithm is still important). But if you start out without using proper programming techniques, you'll be screwed forever (e.g., MS Office), or at least will have to start over from scratch (e.g. Windows NT).

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I hope you're right. I'd like to talk about your argument in the context of OO. I am wary of the notion that usability will be fixed because I feel that the app is being developed in a way opposite that of successful commercial packages; the programmers of OO have far more power than the marketing people so they are acting only to make their lives easier, period. In commercial systems, it's not enough to just have feature X work; it needs to be reviewed by marketing and usability people before it is put into production.

Now, the performance issue is interesting. When I evaluate options for deploying a solution for a customer, I first find out what kind of hardware/software they are already using so that I don't present options that I feel will result in complaints. In small shops, they don't always have the latest and greatest hardware. At the rate that my customers are upgrading hardware, it will be many years before OpenOffice matches the current performance of Office for them (but then Office will be loading instantly and users will demand that). We are talking about an order of magnitude difference here, and complaints about the poor performance are often only second to complaints about interoperability. These top two are enough to prevent widespread adoption, unfortunately.

As I said, I hope you are right about future improvements to OO. I do feel that some usability experts should get in there and fix their end of things now, before many people start using OO and then have a right to complain about how the user interfaces are changing. It's shocking that people accept the changes that MS makes to their products, but OO is not going to be allowed similar latitude by customers.

In conclusion, I'm planning to throw OO training and support into my list of competencies and I am looking into the power of OO macros as well. I hate asking people to buy Office licenses because I don't think they are getting a good value for their money, but I'm not going to push OO too hard yet. I think we fundamentally agree; it again just comes down to the target market and what it is willing to accept in terms of performance and other limitations to get certain benefits in return.

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[ThogScully]

I haven't used Office in a good while, so this is unfamiliar to me... why wouldn't you be able to do this? Isn't that the point of using Office at all? Since it is "the standard" and can be opened anywhere?
-N

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[jrockway]

I don't think the OOo + mplayer is a bad idea at all. As long as everyone gets what you're talking about I would say the presentation was a success. If you want the audience to be wowed with FX, try Keynote on a mac :)

BTW, I know of people who give presentations with xdvik and lots of desktops. It works well enough.

Re:I've seen it in action, it's pretty sweet

[Anonymous Coward]

> This should help with either GNOME or KDE adoption in office environments since the user interface looks more streamlined.

But I use MS Windows you insensitive clod!

NLD?

[Anonymous Coward]

wtf is NLD?

Re:NLD?

[sloanster]

Novell Linux desktop

Re:NLD?

[crazy blade]

Novell Linux Desktop. http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/

Re:NLD?

[Janek Kozicki]

Novell Linux Desktop

Re:NLD?

[Anonymous Coward]

look I am writing this with ./na, my new Poc nii Poc key nei ke i ni Fret keg i t pc

6 g od da m net
it Sviks

Mirrordot Link

[b0lt]

here

NLD

[Anonymous Coward]

I just started playing with the Novell Linux Desktop and it looks really nice. After having Novell removed for Windows AD at work, it was nice to see the big N on a screen again. ;)

It's basically Suse with some tweaks, but it's got a very professional look and feel about it with everything nicely integrated.

Re:My my my...

[l3v1]

writing code for an obviously inferior tool that relatively few (alleged) people would use. Jan, like so many of the slashdot groupthink, needs to get a life or at least an XP laptop

Another flameish troll BS-writing anonymous. Since you already saw and followed your light to the end of the tunnel, why don't you let us poor stupid others find our own ?

Your one pointed to an XP laptop with MS's Office. Thank God, this is not the only way.

Just pack your ignorance and get yourself lost.

As for KDE/GNOME integration of OO.org: I welcome it enthusiastically. Every step to make it slinker, better, faster, more = a good step.

n-tierety

[Doc Ruby]

This is a great move, generating momentum towards a real superior Linux desktop architecture. Any well designed app should be split into Data, Business and Presentation layers, independent/interdependent of one another across a clear, well defined API. This new build can be optimized by another programmer to actually separate the Business (OO.o) and Presentation (KDE/GNOME) layers, because the source is open. Refactor OO.o as an object that can run separate from its UI, and all its features are available to *any* calling program, reusable without having to write spellcheckers again, or text edit panels, or .DOC readers. In fact, the next great move will be to refactor the OO.o data layer, so it can run not only on any FS, like ext3, ReiserFS, SMB, NFS, but interchangeably across networks as straight sockets, or SQL DB tables, or RDF streams, or any data source that's adapted to the data API. Let's get it on!

Re:n-tierety

[nbvb]

One word: OpenDoc.

Been there, done that. Got burned.

Re:n-tierety

[cmbofh]

> Just better software and better software engineering.

Now here's where it gets ridiculous.

Well. A GNOME fanboy complaining about alleged fanboys.

Re:n-tierety

[Doc Ruby]

You don't like applications to have 3-tier architecture with IPC APIs? You must have been burned pretty bad - maybe you even worked at Taligent while I was over at Apple. After we switched the APW to C++, we all thought we'd never rewrite "EditableTextPane" again. But we were naive enough about sharing source with strangers that we didn't realize that once the source is open to the public, we need it to come with human-readable docs to reuse it. That's why the API is so important. As are practical conventions, like the 3 tiers, rather than a freeform n-tier model where the APIs are never split consistently enough to fit together completely. Especially with web services and OO.o, we've got another chance to do this extremely important pattern right, or screw ourselves again for yet another decade.

Re:n-tierety

[m50d]

Well, KDE integration is less important, since KDE has a proper office suite of its own. As far as I can see, "gnome office" consists of Abiword and Gnumeric pretending they're an office suite.

Re:n-tierety

[Anonymous Coward]

The news is from dot.kde.org, I wonder why they are talking about KDE integration? Oh yes! It is a KDE news site!

Re:n-tierety

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that slashdot rarely posts GNOME news, and yet every little change in KDE is repeated with orgasmic delight. From reading slashdot you'd think KDE was actually ahead of GNOME, instead of the truth -- which is that KDE is 2 years behind in the important basics such as accessiblity, useability, documentation and quality of apps.

Re:n-tierety

[Anonymous Coward]

> instead of the truth -- which is that KDE is 2
> years behind in the important basics such as
> accessiblity, useability, documentation and quality of apps.

You don't really think anyone will believe such a ridiculously sweeping statement, do you?

Re:n-tierety

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to believe anything... check it out for yourself. Just don't believe the mongs on slashdot.

Re:n-tierety

[Anonymous Coward]

The simple point is: GNOME has not produced a binary build from ooo-build, at most pointing to "this distribution has it". KDE did with 1.1.1 and now with 1.1.3 again.

Re:n-tierety

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, KDE zealots are as much out of touch and funny as GNOME zealots, in fact all the zealots are out of touch and funny. Except Vi(m) zealots, we are just right!

Re:n-tierety

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not entirely sure what "your point" is... Ximian/Novell has had a GNOME integrated OO for a year. None of which generated excited squealing on slashdot. Quite what your post is supposed to prove is a mystery.

Re:n-tierety

[Anonymous Coward]

Your point seemed to be whining about KDE news in a KDE news site. And if it helps, they mention GNOME integration in the article also, but it is a KDE news site so they concentrate on KDE integration. And Slashdot really doesn't report about every little change in KDE, it is just your imagination...
What comes to the quality of desktop environments, use what you like, if you think GNOME is better then use it.

Re:n-tierety

[Anonymous Coward]

And excited squealing is a good measure for software quality, right? What the hell does it matter what these teenaged fanboys think! Use what you like and stop whining!

Re:n-tierety

[Anonymous Coward]

Your point seemed to be whining about KDE news in a KDE news site.

No get a clue... dot.kde.org *is* a KDE news site, and if they want to talk about KDE that's fine. Slashdot is not supposed to be a KDE news site, and yet it often bears a striking resemblance to one. Try reading the fucking messages before replying, goober.

Re:n-tierety

[nbvb]

I wasn't a programmer (I'm not a programmer, but I play one on TV), but I was burned pretty bad as an end user.

I actually used the OS/2 implementation of OpenDoc, and even wrote a bunch of my documents with OpenDoc parts, figuring they'd be cross-platform enough to be around for a while.

Now I'm stuck with a Thinkpad T21 I keep around running Warp 4 just so I can read those documents ....

Oops. :)

Learned my lesson there; now I just keep most of my documents in ASCII format and the worst I have to do is run "unix2dos" against them... (I LOVE having a Mac that runs Unix!)

I like your idea about standardized APIs and documentation; it's definitely the right thing to do. But part of me feels that we're STILL using the wrong tool for the job -- HTTP is a stateless protocol, and we're fudging stateful tasks on top of it. I'd like to see a stateful protocol developed as a complement to HTTP, so that we can solve a lot of 'web services' problems ... But that's just me.

Re:n-tierety

[Anonymous Coward]

So get busy submiting Gnome articles, loser.

Those who can, do; those who can't whine on /.

Re:n-tierety

[Jagasian]

Please use even more buzz words next time. I was fapping when you said "object" right after saying "refactor". Too bad your idea would result in a seriously bloated over-engineered steaming pile of crap.

Re:n-tierety

[Doc Ruby]

Too bad you're a shitty engineer, who doesn't know what "refactor" means, or has a quicker, more precise way to tell a programmer to do it. Please add even more Slashdot whining bullshit to your useless post next time, and post it in a thread I don't read.

Re:n-tierety

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, yes, and the neighbours dog has been watching me funny lately. I think it is plotting against me.
As the guy above me said, if you want news about GNOME then send one! It is the same bloody crap every time. Waaa!! Too many GNOME news, no waaa!!! Too many KDE news.
If you look at the headlines you might think this is a Microsoft news site, there are so many news about Ms...

ps. what is a goober?

Re:n-tierety

[Anonymous Coward]

So get busy submiting Gnome articles, loser.

Are you fucking dim? You sound like it.

Lots of GNOME news is submitted. It gets rejected because many of the slashdot editors are KDE users.

Those who can, do; those who can't whine on /.

Like you?

Re:n-tierety

[Anonymous Coward]

As the guy above me said, if you want news about GNOME then send one!

And like the guy above you, you are a fucking cretin.

ps. what is a goober?

A small ugly reptile known for its lack of intelligence and poor personal hygene.

Re:n-tierety

[Anonymous Coward]

And excited squealing is a good measure for software quality, right?

Ummmm... no. Listen, Mr. Non-sequitur, the usual way this works is that people read a message, understand the concepts, and only then reply.

Re:n-tierety

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, KDE integration is less important, since KDE has a proper office suite of its own. As far as I can see, "gnome office" consists of Abiword and Gnumeric pretending they're an office suite.

Oh yes... welcome to slashdot... where this kind of shit gets modded up.

Re:n-tierety

[m50d]

If I'm wrong, correct me.

Does anyone know

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know if this is going to be integrated back into the OOo trunk?

Re:My my my...

[justsomebody]

Not really. Whole talk here is about DE consistancy.

OO.o uses its own widget set. Except that in Windows OO.o uses M$ API in *X it uses X11. Now OO.o widget sets are taking its ground on underlaying DE insted of X11.

XP laptop??? Been there, never again. And "never" is a definitive term in this case.

p.s. if you were meaning M$ Office. Yeah right. Just look at the consistancy of XP and Office 2003. It looks like mad cows piloting the space shuttle under water. No consistancy at all.

mirror

[gr8fulnded]

Poof... Good old mirrordot to the rescue...

Something similar for Mozilla

[Dreadlord]

Something similar for Mozilla and Linux:
The Mozilla integration project for Linux desktops

Running NLD

[owlstead]

What if I'm running it _in_ NLD? 'Cause I'm there already.

This is a good thing. One of the reasons that Java never took off from the desktop was that it didn't integrate with the native GUI. Nice to see OpenOffice not making the same mistake.

Too many linux applications still have horrible, unusable file selectors. It will never take off as long as such monstrosities are present everywhere.

This is one of the reasons why Windows is used by so many people. They do provide a more or less monotone interface. Even if the interface is horrible (like personalized menu's) it's horrible all over the place.

Re:Running NLD

[ScrewMaster]

So what what you're saying is: rather than be nice sometimes and nasty at others, it's better to be consistently nasty. And that's true, from the perspective of a user who just wants to be able to figure something out once, get used to it, and not have to keep re-figuring it out every time he loads a different application. Microsoft has their Common Controls libraries for things like file and print selectors: they aren't an optimal solution in my opinion but they work, people are familiar with them, and I will generally use them for that reason.

Re:Running NLD

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Java is quite suitable for writing desktop apps if you use SWT instead of Java's horrible AWT/Swing madness. You get native widgets, menus, file choosers, etc. while maintaining platform neutral Java code.

SWT is open source and part of the Eclipse project:
http://eclipse.org/

Is this the real thing?

[Qwavel]

Does this actually use GTK and Qt? Or is it just simulating them?

If it actually uses them then that would be great! Otherwise I'll take a pass.

Re:Is this the real thing?

[th3w4y]

it is using those... NO simulation

Re:Is this the real thing?

[archen]

That should open up a lot of possibilities in KDE by using dcop then. I'm certainly looking forward to that! I wonder if this will improve loading times as well.

Re:Is this the real thing?

[maw]

I can't speak to qt, but it actually uses gtk in places, such as in the file-chooser mentioned above. However, most of the widgets are still simulated; they follow the gtk theme well, but they feel different. Of course, themes never change an application's feel.

The old openoffice file chooser was terrible, though; having the nice new gtk file chooser is really cool.

Re:Is this the real thing?

[Karma Sucks]

The Way is wrong. It's simulating with OOo Native Widget Framework but it gets the filedialogs from GTK/KDE libs. Might be different with OOo 2.0.

Re:My my my...

[The Cisco Kid]

God forbid that people might actually have some choices. Personally I dont use MS Office (or any other MS software or platforms), *OR* OpenOffice, because

1. The entire concept of a 'Word Processor' is stupid - http://www.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html

2. If I need a database, I'll use Mysql (Or PostgresSQL, etc)

3. On the (rare) occasion that I need to arrange numbers in a table, I use Gnumeric.

Re:My my my...

[BenjyD]

Just ignore them and they go away (eventually). It's not like anyone has to read people modded down to -1 anyway.

Why OpenOffice is important

[Ars-Fartsica]

Microsoft has essentially turned into a replacement parts business for Windows and Office - adoption of new PCs at home and at work has normalized, new business is flat. Many of their new ventures are flat, ROI negative, or true money losers.

Having a drop-in replacement for Office is critical to attacking their core replacement parts business.

Kudos by the way to AbiWord and Gnumeric, two excellent programs that are native GNOME apps today.

Re:Why OpenOffice is important

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that Microsoft's file formats were ever allowed to become "standard" to begin with. I've yet to see a B2B MSWord document that couldn't be sent as text, the same user ignorance that sees procmail rejecting html emails to the bit-bucket all over the world. Abiword is a GTK app, it can thankfully be built without GNOME. Not sure about Gnumeric because I use sc.

Re:Why OpenOffice is important

[yuri benjamin]

Hmm. As long as oowriter and abiword can interchange files, and oocalc and gnumeric can interchange files, then freedom from (MS) vendor lock-in is a real possibility.

Do abiword and gnumeric read/write .sxw and .sxc files? The formats are open so there's no reason why not.

I think all three, OOo, abiword and gnumeric are important, but it would be better still if they all share an open document format.

Just some random thoughts.

Re:Why OpenOffice is important

[Ars-Fartsica]

Do abiword and gnumeric read/write .sxw and .sxc files?

Yes.

Re:Why OpenOffice is important

[yuri benjamin]

Do abiword and gnumeric read/write .sxw and .sxc files?

Yes.

Good. It looks like all the non-MS wordprocessors and spreadsheets play nicely with each other.

Re:Why OpenOffice is important

[bvankuik]

Although you (and I) like OOo, you can't claim that it's a drop-in replacement; the im/export is good but DEFINITELY not flawless.

Re:Why OpenOffice is important

[innocent_white_lamb]

As long as oowriter and abiword can interchange files, and oocalc and gnumeric can interchange files, then freedom from (MS) vendor lock-in is a real possibility.

I own and operate a movie theatre. The various film companies (Disney, Warner, Paramount, etc.) require box office reports to be sent to them as Microsoft Excel files. I make 'em up with Gnumeric and email them in with Sylpheed, and nobody has complained yet.

slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

dot.kde is slashdotted to become dot/.kde

Aqua on Mac OS X

[HeelToe]

Oh please, let's do this for Mac OS X!

Re:Aqua on Mac OS X

[Puggs]

I made a post on this subject the other day.

The last version I used had a windows style menu, this has now been replaced with an aqua style menu in the alpha release

Re:Aqua on Mac OS X

[ThousandStars]

I'd like one too, but it isn't coming until 2.0; however, the OS X porting page recently changed to say that a true Mac port is "slowing." My understanding from reading the lists is that only two people are actively working on the OS X Aqua version.

It's going to be a while before we see a true OS X version of OOo.

Re:Aqua on Mac OS X

[HeelToe]

I played a bit with NeoOffice/J but in the end returned to the X11 version - I just can't stand not having the mouse wheel.

For work I have to use Office:Mac, but I prefer OOo for personal work. I'm pretty close to seeing if anyone will join in a pledge drive to fund a native Aqua port of OOo. I'd be willing to pay the purchase price of Office:Mac - I wonder how many others would be willing to do the same.

Re:Aqua on Mac OS X

[Zhe Mappel]

Slowing? Given their pace, how could anyone tell? Not that I blame those two guys; their generosity is truly appreciated and even somewhat astonishing, given the attitudes of their peers.

It's disappointing that the Apple community can't produce more open source contributors. With everyone and his brother schlepping another icon manager or DVD collection database, there's an abundance of frivolous software and a shortage of work on truly useful, liberating products like OOo.

Re:Aqua on Mac OS X

[Macrat]

You're a little confused.

There are ZERO people working on an Aqua version.

You are confusing the Java wrapped version of OOo/X11 with an Aqua version that is dead in the water.

Re:Aqua on Mac OS X

[minus_273]

i actually saw open office sold for 39.99 in a box at apple stores. The screenshots make it look hideous even more so because it is placed next to MS Office which integrates very nicely

Re:Aqua on Mac OS X

[ThousandStars]

Do you have a source?

I'm not doubting you, necessarily, since I haven't paid close attention to the project; but I understand that there are two people involved, even if they are waiting for 2.0 final to really work.

Re:Aqua on Mac OS X

[ThousandStars]

With everyone and his brother schlepping another icon manager or DVD collection database, there's an abundance of frivolous software and a shortage of work on truly useful, liberating products like OOo.

This may occur in part because 1) people assume others will pick up the slack, 2) the scope effort necessary to write an Aqua version is massive and 3) there aren't enough interested OS X developers to go around.

The second point is particularly significant: I have neither the time nor the skill to do any serious development for OOo, and from looking at the 1.1.1 codebase, I'm amazed that anyone knows what the hell each piece is supposed to do. 2.0 is supposed to be much cleaner, but even so, the effort necessary to get an OS X native version will demand many man-years. An icon manager or DVD collection database can take a week or a month, but something like OOo means a much greater committment.

Still not native GNOME or KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Now some requesters changed and some icons chanced as well. How about porting it throughly that is getting rid of the old Toolkit that OOo still depends on. Right now these efforts look more like cheap patchwork than real solution.

The old OOo was build upon it's own Framework and Toolkit. Now with adding KDE and GNOME support to it developers have add another overkill and resource eater to OOo making it bulkier and bloddier than before.

OOo native KDE or GNOME is the right solution but this should be done untils it is done and then being announced.

Re:Still not native GNOME or KDE

[cmbofh]

I take it you're volunteering to *rewrite* OOo *twice*, using GNOME and KDE technologies? Let me know when you've finished.

Re:Still not native GNOME or KDE

[twener]

There will be never a native GNOME OOo or KDE OOo - but better integration possibilities are being worked on for OOo 2.0.

Re:Still not native GNOME or KDE

[m50d]

That shouldn't be necessary. Just rewrite some of it so that it has a proper backend and frontend like xine. Then we can write a gnome and kde frontend without so much effort, like totem and kaffeine.

And yes, I am willing to do it myself if no-one else will. But if that's what you want, expect a full port of OOo 1.3 some time in 2008. Seriously, is anyone organising a project anything like this? Because I will join and submit anything I can.

Re:Still not native GNOME or KDE

[cmbofh]

Let me add:
If you really want a native office suite then I think that KDE + KOffice is the most integrated, complete and promising for the future. Although I think it's not there yet, especially the MS format filters of OOo are still more usable in the real world (and no, using the OOo filters in KOffice is not an option, that has been discussed over and over again).

Re:Still not native GNOME or KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Xine is hardly a fair comparison. It has 5-10 UI functions and only a couple outputs. Compared to thousands for something like OOO.

It would make much more sense to develop "meta-toolkit" standards so something like OOO doesn't stand out like a sore thumb.

Re:Still not native GNOME or KDE

[cmbofh]

Interesting. Do you have a link?

Re:Still not native GNOME or KDE

[twener]

For example this document.

Re:Still not native GNOME or KDE

[cmbofh]

Thanks.

Only KDE icons

[Xpilot]

In the link provided, only KDE icons are provided, though GTK+ is used when run in GNOME, and you need the NLD version for the full GNOME look. So the best bet for GNOME-only using folk like me is still the build tool itself.

Re:Only KDE icons

[SpeedMan]

GTK2 is used in Gnome with the patched OOo. Also, the fully patched packages are in Debian Experimental with Gnome VFS and Evolution address book support.

Re:Nonverbal Learning Disorder

[Janek Kozicki]

your sig always puts a smile on my face ;)

Re:Nonverbal Learning Disorder

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, God forbid that someone should use three self explanatory words rather than an obscure acronym that has to be found by searching Google !

Finally, a useful clue. Thanks

[tepples]

Have a clue (link to Google results for nld gnome kde openoffice.org)

Thanks for putting an actual query in your clue; it looks a lot more useful than the much-less-useful link to Google's front page that some whiners supply, and it demonstrates techniques useful to others learning to search.

Re:Finally, a useful clue. Thanks

[Doc Ruby]

Thanks - I swing the cluestick wildly sometimes, and sometimes I get a line drive :). I also like whining about simple math quirks with Google.

^n^l ^l^c -^v is a nifty riff that I'd love to macro into a pair of Mozilla hotkeys. If Slashdot form fields had hotkey "tabstops", I'd be Web Ruth.

Re:Finally, a useful clue. Thanks

[trewornan]

I fear I'm going to make myself look stupid . . . but I've got to ask!

What's wrong with:

(i squared)*pi = -3.14159265 ?

Re:Finally, a useful clue. Thanks

[Doc Ruby]

Out of context, nothing - it's just quirky. But what does it represent?

hmm...

[Pivot]

Does this mean I can now get openoffice with JFC/swing widgets instead, to get an all java desktop??

Re:hmm...

[fimbulvetr]

Yeah, then it'd run even slower.
You might as well wait for longhorn if it's a bloated, slow p.o.s. that you're aiming for.

Re:hmm...

[Z-MaxX]

You could use the Metal GTK theme to get the Swing look.

What about Qt on MacOS X, then?

[rxmd]

If OpenOffice can be built with KDE support, does it use Qt for the frontend under KDE?

Why not use Qt/Aqua on MacOS X instead of the incredibly clumsy X11 interface, then?

Re:What about Qt on MacOS X, then?

[Carewolf]

I've been told that the largest obstical for the Mac port is not porting widgets, but redesigning parts of the user-interface that requires a more _functional_ mouse.

Re:What about Qt on MacOS X, then?

[minus_273]

you mean like using ctrl-click on a mac... think about how often you need to right click on a mac and you will know why there i no real need for another button

Re:What about Qt on MacOS X, then?

[mrchaotica]

Okay, so it violates the Apple Human Interface Guidelines. However, it's still a lot better than leaving it X11!

Besides, you do realize that multi-button mice work just as well on Mac as they do any other computer (and if the mouse is one-button, you can still cmd-, option-, and ctrl-click), right?

Features of interest...

[Preston Pfarner]

So, now that they're concentrating so much effort on the look and feel it must be really solid on the core functionality, like opening a simple MSWord file, making a simple text edit, and saving it back to the same format (so you can return it to the MS person who sent it to you).

This document may contain attributes and information that cannot be saved Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP. Do you want to save your changes using the OpenOffice.org 1.0 Text Document format?

Argh! Great, keep unifying with desktops, but it's still pretty restricted in its ability to interoperate with an existing base of Windows office users. (or at least give a hint as to what "attributes and information" are causing trouble so people can avoid using them)

Re:Features of interest...

[Anonymous Coward]

*may*
It looks to be a catchall CYA prompt
Word itself would be wise to prompt with such a message.

"You are using Microsoft Word XP, This document contains attributes and information that will render it a hideous piece of shit if opened on earlier version of Word, if it can even be opened."

Continue with save ?"
"YES", "No", "Cancel"

Re:Features of interest...

[SillyNickName4me]

Did you ever consider that OOo might in fact have features that simply cannot be saved in MS word format? This does not mean at all that you cannot make MS word format documents, it just means that it has the same limitations as for exampel Office 2000 when tryign to save a MS word 6 document. It simply cannot save things in that format when the features needed are not supported, but it can create readable MS word 6 documents pretty well.

Re:Features of interest...

[HeghmoH]

It would be nice if it would actually scan for the things that aren't supported before popping up that notice, though. If you open a .doc, delete a letter, and hit save, you will get that notice, even though you can be pretty damned sure that nothing is going to be lost.

Re:Features of interest...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Did you ever consider that OOo might in fact have features that simply cannot be saved in MS word format? This does not mean at all that you cannot make MS word format documents, it just means that it has the same limitations as for exampel Office 2000 when tryign to save a MS word 6 document.

Except that I've seen it give that dialog when I've started to save an imported Word or Excel file. REALLY annoying since I did not, to the best of my knowledge, use any OO.o-unique functionality - but there's that damn message just the same. More annoying that it won't tell me what those pesky attributes and information *are*, just that they exist. Geez.

Re:Features of interest...

[SillyNickName4me]

> Except that I've seen it give that dialog when I've started to save an imported Word or Excel file. REALLY annoying since I did not, to the best of my knowledge, use any OO.o-unique functionality - but there's that damn message just the same. More annoying that it won't tell me what those pesky attributes and information *are*, just that they exist. Geez.

I agree, it would be much better when it only gives this message when a real issue exists. Curretly all it knows is that there is the potential of a problem.

Still, it is better to get it when there is a potential issue then finding out later that your document was not saved correctly without warning that this risk was there.

Direct Link to Mirrors

[twener]

Download OOo_1.1.3-kde_LinuxIntel_install.tar.gz

Re:Nonverbal Learning Disorder

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you expect? Novell is a USA company... whole bloody country is an acronym!

Re:Nonverbal Learning Disorder

[Doc Ruby]

"News for Nerds". "obscure acronym that has to be found by searching Google". Who's out of line, AC?

And what frontend?

[tepples]

If I need a database, I'll use Mysql (Or PostgresSQL, etc)

And what frontend? The point of database software is that they provide graphical tools for generating forms and reports, which use MySQL, PostgreSQL, Jet, etc. as backends.

Re:And what frontend?

[msh104]

I heard people say rekall is a good app and kexi also moves in the right direction. http://www.koffice.org/kexi/screenshots.php

Re:And what frontend?

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't forget knoda

Re:And what frontend?

[The Cisco Kid]

The point of a database is to store data. If you need someone for end-users to access, then you need to write something. Generally, I find a php app works fantastically, and automatically gives web-accesibility as well (if desired)

Re:Nonverbal Learning Disorder

[Doc Ruby]

Thanks, it has evolved to its current syntax after a few constructive criticisms from other, nearly-satisfied Slashdotters. Open source .sigs!

Window Managers

[oexeo]

I just began developing an GUI-based application for KDE/Gnome, my major obstacle being the window "managers". It goes something like this:

Developer: OK, put this window here.
KDE/Kwin: Actually it's better over here.
Developer: No! I'll need that space later for another window.
Gnome/MetaCity: I know, I know! How about here?
Developer: Christ! No not there either.
Developer: OK, how about you both put it here? that makes sense.
KDE/Kwin: That's great, but I'll just shift up a bit, and flip your directions horizontally.
Gnome/MetaCity: Ignore KDE, it's perfect! But I think it would be even more perfect over here.
Developer: Jesus Christ!

It's usually possible to get what you want, but often involves hacks, redundant code, and forking.

I realise this is intentional and in the interests of usability and consistency, but more often than not the it's counter productive to the cause, since frequently a human knows better than a computer when it comes to usability.

Re:Window Managers

[Anonymous Coward]

I realise this is intentional and in the interests of usability and consistency, but more often than not the it's counter productive to the cause, since frequently a human knows better than a computer when it comes to usability.

You're right: a human (the user) knows better than a computer (specifically your program) what he wants. I want my window manager to ignore your application's requests to stick stuff where you want, and instead put things in a useful location for my use of the program.

Re:Window Managers

[oexeo]

You're right: a human (the user) knows better than a computer (specifically your program) what he wants. I want my window manager to ignore your application's requests to stick stuff where you want, and instead put things in a useful location for my use of the program.

I don't disagree with you; you can put the windows where ever you like, but I want to be a able to reliably position them for their initial state, after that you can move them anywhere you like.

Re:Window Managers

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignore the bloat and just use the widget libraries. Clued in people only run them out of morbid fascination, there are better desktops for doing actual work.

Re:Window Managers

[SillyNickName4me]

if you want control over window placement like that, you either define a workspace for your windows to recide in, or you just rethink your idea.

1. Your application has no fucking clue abotu how the user wants their windows displayed
2. Your application has as little clue about what the rest of the display is used for.

The window manager however has a bit of a clue about both, so it IS the proper place for deciding on window placement. All your application should ever try to do is give a suggestion.

Sorry to say, but if you do not udnerstand this then imo you have not understood what a windowsing system is for.

In short, when you develop for a shared gui environment (ie, the gui is also used for other things then your application) you do NOT have control over window placement, deal with it or write your own dedicated gui, it is the nature of the beast.

Re:Window Managers

[Anonymous Coward]

Not flame-bait, genuinely interested: what desktops are better?

Re:Window Managers

[Janek Kozicki]

sawfish is great. Or at least much better than any other window manager (that's why I use it).

... and I love when it occasionally opens a new dialog box in another workspace...

Re:Window Managers

[Fancia]

Not flame-bait, genuinely interested: what desktops are better?

I prefer XFce, personally.

Re:Window Managers

[IamTheRealMike]

Yes, it's by design. It sounds like you're trying to simulate a tiled MDI layout in the absence of MDI (which is also by design). A better solution may be a large window with splitters and/or dock widgets rather than attempting to fight the WM, which is resisting your abuse of it.

Re:Window Managers

[arkanes]

Too bad. That's not your job. It's MY computer, not yours, and my window manager will stick windows wherever I want it to. There's no need for you to "reliably" position the windows anywhere, unless you're a control freak, in which case you need to stop that.

Re:Window Managers

[Anonymous Coward]

you can strongly suggest to ICCCM-compliant window managers where you want your windows to be, and they will usually comply. You just can't assume absolute control, without making an unmanaged window (and note that it's up to the window manager to allow your window to be unmanaged, but most do, so that XMMS looks pretty).

Applications which make assumptions based on precise window positions are Just Stupid (see the otherwise excellent Idruna Photogenics on Linux).

Re:Window Managers

[oexeo]

Too bad. That's not your job. It's MY computer, not yours

Yes it's your computer but I'm not forcing you to use my application, am I?

There's no need for you to "reliably" position the windows anywhere

Believe me, if I sent you screenshots of the mess made by some window managers of a perfectly valid layout, you would understand that sometimes there is a need, unless I want to leave it to the user to waste 10 minutes of his life fixing the problem.

Re:Window Managers

[Anonymous Coward]

How many windows does this application of yours have that it would take 10 minutes for somebody to sort out what goes where? Perhaps your overall gui design is what needs to be looked into.

Re:Window Managers

[oexeo]

Dozens, but only a few are shown by default. But yours is a straw-man argument, and beside the point.

Re:Window Managers

[oexeo]

> It sounds like you're trying to simulate a tiled MDI layout in the absence of MDI

Not really.

> A better solution may be a large window with splitters and/or dock widgets

This works for some designs, but in my opinion unless very carefully implemented, this actually locks in, and frustrates some users further. At the very least the user should have the option to dock and undock the windows, in which case it would be nice to reliably define a default position for undocked windows.

Re:Window Managers

[oexeo]

1. Your application has no fucking clue abotu how the user wants their windows displayed

Yes but I'm a human/user and I have a rough idea for a good starting point, after which the user can tweak it however he likes. Also, never heard of usability-testing?

2. Your application has as little clue about what the rest of the display is used for.

If a window placement is impractical then I have no problem with the window manager repositioning it. My problem is when it moves a window to an absurd position when there is no logical reason to do so.

Sorry to say, but if you do not udnerstand this then imo you have not understood what a windowsing system is for.

So because I have a negative opinion about some aspects of some window systems, that somehow relates to me not understanding them? I understand them, but that doesn't change the fact their not perfect.

Re:Window Managers

[SillyNickName4me]

> Yes but I'm a human/user and I have a rough idea for a good starting point, after which the user can tweak it however he likes. Also, never heard of usability-testing?

THe situation resulting from what you suggest is that this has to be doen for each and every application someone uses. It is definitely better for the user if they can do that in one central place, which happens to be the window manager.

That your application suggests an initial position and size is good, you know betetr then the end user what woudl work for your application initially.

That said, whenever I encounter an application that tries to get around the saved window positions that my wm tries to 'enforce', I will start looking for an alternative. I have good reason to size and position windows in a certain way and have the window manager restore them in that way, and I find applications that try to get around that extremely annoying.

When Windows was relatively new, many applications tried to 'force' their own window sizing and positioning on the user, often by creating a screen sized work area and keepign all their windows in there.

Some applications that did this..
Excel
Lotus 123
Word
WP

You will notice when trying any of those applications in modern versions, that they stopped trying this, and rather let the gui decidde.

When you look at X based applications, the same story applies (OpenOffice just for one example)

There is a good reason for this, it has been shown again and again and again that users find this behavior extremely annoying and disturbing for doing their work. You really believe you know better then this?

> If a window placement is impractical then I have no problem with the window manager repositioning it. My problem is when it moves a window to an absurd position when there is no logical reason to do so.

Your problem is a buggy window manager then. Provided that the Window manager does placement properly, the problem you describve does not exist. Hence, I do not see why this is a good argument for your case, it is however a good argument for saying that there are buggy window managers that do not handle this properly.

> So because I have a negative opinion about some aspects of some window systems, that somehow relates to me not understanding them? I understand them, but that doesn't change the fact their not perfect.

Your post indeed suggests you do not understand the purpose of a general purpose windowing system.

General purpose windowing systems have limitations and one of them is the one you encountered. All I said is that if you cannot live with that limitation, you should use an alternative that does not have this limitation because that limitation is there for a very good reason. When developing for a general purpose system that is shared by multiple applications, it is simply a very bad idea to act as if the rest of those applications do not exist or are irrelevant. I'd really suggest leaving such decisions to the user or administrator of such a machine.

It is not like alternatives do not exist, but they have their own limitations. You can have a very good reason for wanting full control over window placement and such, and I am not trying to say that there are no valid situations where this can happen. I am however sayign that a general purpose windowing system is not the solution in such situations.

Re:Window Managers

[steve_l]

yes, the best thing apps shoud do is

-remember where they were last use, and pop up there again. After verifying that that position is in range of the (multiwindow) system. You dont want it being hidden when the display resolution changes.

-also, save that (along with all other state) intermittently, so even when they crash, customisations dont get lost.

Re:Window Managers

[oexeo]

THe situation resulting from what you suggest is that this has to be doen for each and every application someone uses. It is definitely better for the user if they can do that in one central place, which happens to be the window manager.

I don't really know how you've drawn this conclusion, I never stated it *has* to be done for every application, only that when it's appropriate for an application to have predefined layout it would be better if the window manager made a better job of following those guidelines, and *only* repositioning windows against the directive if a valid reason to do so (such as being off-screen, obstructing a toolbar, etc) exists.

That your application suggests an initial position and size is good, you know betetr then the end user what woudl work for your application initially.

I don't claim to know better than the user, only the window manager which has very little concept of logic to be able to position an applications widows in context to each other.

That said, whenever I encounter an application that tries to get around the saved window positions that my wm tries to 'enforce', I will start looking for an alternative. I have good reason to size and position windows in a certain way and have the window manager restore them in that way, and I find applications that try to get around that extremely annoying.

I agree with you on that, and never suggested otherwise, so what's your point?

When Windows was relatively new, many applications tried to 'force' their own window sizing and positioning on the user, often by creating a screen sized work area and keepign all their windows in there.

Forced? the window has to be display at some point, be definition any position is forced, if you mean attempting to maintain a window position after the user has moved it, or Window Manager has (but with good reason, which is my point often it does not have good reason), then I've already agreed you shouldn't 'force' a position on a user after that point.

There is a good reason for this, it has been shown again and again and again that users find this behavior extremely annoying and disturbing for doing their work. You really believe you know better then this?

You seem to have a totally inaccurate perception of my views, maybe if you actually read what I've posted instead of drawing your own conclusions on what I think, you would realise that most of the points you've been arguing against are irrelevant.

Your problem is a buggy window manager then. Provided that the window manager does placement properly, the problem you describe does not exist. Hence, I do not see why this is a good argument for your case, it is however a good argument for saying that there are buggy window managers that do not handle this properly.

Jesus F. Christ, this is the good part, you finally get it, tell me you get it, and then proceed to tell me it's not a good argument to my case, when what you just stated *is* my case.

Re:Window Managers

[SillyNickName4me]

> I don't really know how you've drawn this conclusion, I never stated it *has* to be done for every application, only that when it's appropriate for an application to have predefined layout it would be better if the window manager made a better job of following those guidelines, and *only* repositioning windows against the directive if a valid reason to do so (such as being off-screen, obstructing a toolbar, etc) exists.

Which are also the only reasons why most window managers try to change the initial display of an application. That is, unless the user has saved preferences for that application.

There are exceptions, and some window managers give the user the option of overriding this and always let the window manager decideon the initial display even when there would be no problems. In many cases this is a choice by the user.

> I don't claim to know better than the user, only the window manager which has very little concept of logic to be able to position an applications widows in context to each other.

So put them inside a workarea if that is really important. For that matter, I have yet to see the Gimp fail in this regardless of the Window manager I use. (you can argue a lot about if user interface of the Gimp is logical and such, that is not the point, the point is that it manages very well to start with its windows nicely grouped together)

> Jesus F. Christ, this is the good part, you finally get it, tell me you get it, and then proceed to tell me it's not a good argument to my case, when what you just stated *is* my case.

When the window manager is buggy, use another window manager or fix it. Solving this by havign your application override the window manager is not the proper solution.

You still don't seem to get my point here. Your observation may be right, but your solution is not the proper one for the problem you are having.

Re:Window Managers

[Anonymous Coward]

damn.. I just read through this thread and you just said a whole lot of nothing.

Re:Window Managers

[oexeo]

Which are also the only reasons why most window managers try to change the initial display of an application. That is, unless the user has saved preferences for that application.

That's the way it should be, but it's not the way it is for most window managers.

So put them inside a workarea if that is really important. For that matter, I have yet to see the Gimp fail in this regardless of the Window manager I use. (you can argue a lot about if user interface of the Gimp is logical and such, that is not the point, the point is that it manages very well to start with its windows nicely grouped together)

A workarea is good, but not always an option, and in my case it's not. Plus, using the GIMP's totally fucking terrible GUI as a positive example of anything isn't gonna persuade me of anything, anyway.

When the window manager is buggy, use another window manager or fix it. Solving this by having your application override the window manager is not the proper solution.

Fix it? I should go to every users house and re-code whatever window manager he is using? seriously WTF are you talking about?

Or you suggest I should force a different window management system on the user? Seems totally contradictory to keeping the user in control.

Overriding the window managers bad judgement, and allowing it control of what it doesn't mess up, still seems the best option available.

Re:Window Managers

[SillyNickName4me]

> That's the way it should be, but it's not the way it is for most window managers.

Please come with examples where that isn't the consequence of a user having told the window manager to do so?

For now it is your word against mine, you saying most don't and I am saying most do this properly.

> A workarea is good, but not always an option, and in my case it's not. Plus, using the GIMP's totally fucking terrible GUI as a positive example of anything isn't gonna persuade me of anything, anyway.

Ah yes, you can only look at what soemoen does wrong, and not at what they might do right?

I do agree that a workarea isn't always the proper solution, and I have had cases at hand where the only proper solution was to not share the display with other applications at all.

> Fix it? I should go to every users house and re-code whatever window manager he is using? seriously WTF are you talking about?

If you believe that kwm for example is not handlign this properly, how about submitting a fix to the kde development team? (change kde to whatever other window manager you are havign a problem with)

> Or you suggest I should force a different window management system on the user? Seems totally contradictory to keeping the user in control.

Force? nope. Tell them that your application only displays as you intended it when they use window manager x? why not? Leave the user in control, and (see next point also) honor the decision of that user.

Overr> iding the window managers bad judgement, and allowing it control of what it doesn't mess up, still seems the best option available.

Replacign bad judgement of one system by bad judgement of another system is simply not a solution.

The window manager has better information abotu what is ont he screen then your application, and is the only place where this can be solved properly.

If the user for whatever reason instructs the window manager to behave differently from what you would prefer, then you should come up with some extremely good reason for not honering that.

Re:Window Managers

[oexeo]

Christ! I give up already, I can't persuade you, and vice versa. I think maybe we both could be doing something better with our time.

Re:Window Managers

[Anonymous Coward]

This one is easy. KDE is better and technically superior.

Re:Window Managers

[philovivero]

Yes. Humans do know better than a computer. But the last person I want in charge of placing windows on my machine is the developer of the app.

Developers are incredibly bad at usability.

I can't count the number of dialogues I've had to deal with that don't resize, or if they do resize, the contents inside don't act sensibly. (I can only see two items in my 100-item file list at a time? Oh, please).

Oh! Great. I started up this appication, and the stupid unmoveable unresizeable uncoverable splash logo is right in the middle of my web browser, so I have to sit back and do absolutely nothing for the 45 seconds it's going to take for this lame app to start.

I'd much rather have the window manager have some simple window placement rules that no application can ever override. At least then, if I realise the window placement rules are stupid, I can fix it in ONE SPOT rather than try whack-a-mole fixing every application I use.

Re:Nonverbal Learning Disorder

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, God forbid that someone should use three self explanatory words rather than an obscure acronym that has to be found by searching Google !

You must be new here. Welcome to Slashdot!

I know; -1, Tired Joke

Re:Is this the real thing? yes

[rdieter]

Does this actually use GTK and Qt?

Well, it uses GTK and KDELIBS if that's what you mean.

Mac OSX KDE build?

[CdBee]

The OSX ports of OOo have always had difficulties due to the limited number of developers available. Since KDE and GNOME already run under OSX - parts of the former natively without X11 - could this be a porting short-cut to a fully functional OSX build?

Re:Mac OSX KDE build?

[Anonymous Coward]

NEWSFLASH
*It's not the limited number of developers.*
Have you ever tried coding an app in OSX?
There are no standards.
None that are easy to find, use and decipher anyway.
Sure you might be able to make a good looking app in OSX if you own the OS, or have a good partnership with apple.
Just about any GUI coder can make something look good in Linux/Windows, but OSX is a clusterfuck.

Re:Mac OSX KDE build?

[CdBee]

NEWSFLASH
It *is* the limited number of developers. Refer to the OSX porting pages on OOo site where they state that they are held back by a shortage of developers, and to the several press releases over the past few years where they appeal for OSX devs to join them

Open Office: your MS Office document repair kit.

[MsGeek]

It also removes macros. Sometimes it is a pain, because those macros are needed in an MS Office document, particularly in Excel. But if those macros are either corrupt or infected with a Macro Virus, losing the macros is actually A Good Thing. (tm)

Last year, the All Tomorrow's Parties music festival sent the band Saccharine Trust an elaborate Excel spreadsheet which provided an overview of the schedule for the entire weekend's performances at Camber Sands in the UK.

Joe Baiza had Office 98 for Mac running on his iMac. No joy opening the spreadsheet. He then sent the spreadsheet to Chris Stein, the band's bassist, (No, not the Blondie guitarist! Same name, different guy...) who tried to open it in Office XP. Again, no joy.

I get the spreadsheet sent to me. I open it in OO.o. Success! I saved the document first as an OO.o native format file, then resaved the native OO.o file as an .XLS. I sent it back to Joe and Chris, and voila! They could open it too!

I'll have you know that NOTHING got screwed up in the formatting. Maybe a few weird calculations used by the ATP folks got messed up, but the guys in ST didn't need them. All they needed was the time that ST needed to go on, and also the times for some of the other bands on the schedule the guys wanted to see. OO.o rules.

Re:My my my...

[Mr. McGibby]

The "word processor is stupid" idea is narrow minded. True, for certain classes of documents, TeX is a better way to do things. But isn't perfect either. The referenced article talks about the two phases of preparing documents, composition and typesetting. Composition is about the words and typesetting is about the "look" of the document. The problem is that TeX is horrible at the second step. True, it makes great looking documents "out of the box", but if I decide that the default look isn't what I want, then it is far too difficult to change it. Where is the tool that allows me to change the format as I like? Every TeX article I read basically says, "If you don't like it, you're wrong." Certainly not a very user-friendly attitude to have.

The other problem is that many word processors are very useful for those cases when the text composition isn't really important, but formatting is the key point, like a sign for my garage sale. Have you ever tried do something like that in TeX?

Don't get me wrong, I use LaTeX all the time, but only for very specific types of documents. It just doesn't work for the majority of stuff that I need to do.

What about Suse 9.2?

[ChiralSoftware]

I have installed Suse 9.2, and the OOo 1.1.3 looks pretty standard on it. I assume the next Suse is going to come with this? Is there an easy way to install this new OOo in Suse 9.2 without breaking everything? This is something Linux needs, badly. OOo is a great system but obviously it's not well integrated with the rest of KDE. If they can really get it integrated with KDE it will be a major step forward for the Linux Desktop.

Re:What about Suse 9.2?

[Karma Sucks]

Suse 9.2 should have it too. If you try to open a file and you see the KDE file dialog you know you have it whatever distribution you're running.

Re:What about Suse 9.2?

[m50d]

I *think* Suse uses the Ximian builds of OOo, which have better integration but less applications.

Re:What about Suse 9.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you have to install the OpenOffice_org-gnome and OpenOffice_org-kde packages?

OO.o on the ARM?

[jx100]

woohoo! OpenOffice DS!

Re:OO.o on the ARM?

[richdun]

Now all we need is CrossOverOffice DS (for iTunes of course) and I can completly replace my Powerbook with a DS.

Just wait a few more months...

[Atmchicago]

Although I applaud the move, this will be somewhat outdone in a few months when openoffice 2.0 is released. 2.0 will support better native integration anyway, including look-and-feel.

Re:Open Office: your MS Office document repair kit

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you then explained to the band members why you were able to open the file.

Here's what I want!

[erroneus]

FC2/FC3 RPM packages.

That's all. On one hand, I like the way RPM works and what it does for the user. On the other hand, I can never seem to get the most up-to-date packages. It's terribly unfortunate and is always a balancing act between installing from tarball and maintaining RPM integrity. I suspect there are ways of handling it better and further that someone might even volunteer these better ways right here in response to this.

But if someone out there loves to build useful RPMs and has already built RPMS suitable for FC2 and/or FC3, please let me know where they are! I know I can't be the only one wanting them.

Re:Here's what I want!

[twener]

Fedora Core 3 ships with KDE and GNOME integrated OpenOffice.org 1.1.2.

Re:Here's what I want!

[Lussarn]

I don't know Fedora core but most distros use / as base for their packages. If you install something from tarball use /usr/local. That seems to be the standard for most Linux distros. ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
make install

That way you can just wipe your /usr/local if it gets to dirty.

What about OS X?

[ciurana]

Disclaimer: I'm an OOo advocate, as you can see from this Computerworld article (http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/softw are/apps/story/0,10801,92195,00.html?SKC=software- 92195) that I published last Spring.

I used OOo since the days of StarOffice. I managed to write two books, many presentations, spreadsheets, and countless business documents in it. OOo is probably one of the best office applications and it's cross-platform.

I had quasi undying loyalty to OOo until I decided to go to OS X. While the feature set is almost identical to other versions of OOo, the GUI is one of the ugliest. OOo also lacks compatibility with Exchange servers, which I'm forced to use for work (yuck!). For these two reasons, I had to cave in and return to Office:Mac.

The efforts to tightly couple OOo with KDE or Gnome are important and interesting but far from the marketing win that OOo needs. An OOo version that supports the native OS X look and feel would probably win lots of support from Apple's user base because it would be, in most cases, a drop-in, free replacement for Office:Mac.

I interact now with quite a few Mac users on regular basis; most, if not all, would love to ditch Office:Mac in favour of OOo if the GUI and other system integration issues were resolved. I believe that an OS X/Aqua version of OOo is more strategically important than one for Gnome or KDE because it would generate instant press outside the early-adopter, Linux world.

A strategic marketing win could result in additional funding/participation/donations to OOo to carry on with other projects that, although important, lack the visibility that the Mac has or could bring to OOo.

Cheers,

Eugene

Re:What about OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

See
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=130947&cid=109 32323

Re:What about OS X?

[IamTheRealMike]

The integration work for GNOME and KDE has been largely funded by Novell and Red Hat. There are apparently no such companies funding OS X integration, probably because Apple values its relationship with Microsoft too much.

Re:What about OS X?

[Chiisu]

I too would like to see an OS X-native version of OOo, but I don't think that'll arrive until after version 2 is out. In the meantime, I'll just stick with TextEdit.

Re:What about OS X?

[bjhonermann]

Check out OOo's page on OSX development at http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/timeline.html

Quoting the relevent section

What's holding back the Quartz and Aqua tracks?

To implement Quartz and Aqua, we will need to change APIs that are owned by different projects here at OOo, and the one we really do need to target is undergoing a major revamp (Toolkit2). These changes will affect all platforms, so we are working with gsl to get the hooks we need to complete a native port.

Aside from our compilation efforts, the majority of our work can't be completed until these APIs are in place or at least designed to a point where we can begin figuring out how to marry them to MacOS X. There is no active coding at this time. With limited testing and development resources, it is unwise to spend all of our efforts porting a "dead" API that would not allow our work to be incorporated into newer versions of the software. As such, any delivery estimates here should be considered "relative" to the time the APIs are completed.

All further development of the Quartz and Aqua tracks has been postponed until OpenOffice.org 2.0 due to gsl timeline. Initial delivery of 2.0 for Win32, Solaris, and Linux x86 expected in Q1 2005. Projected OS X X11 port availability expected to be Q2 2005. Projected OS X native availability of OpenOffice.org 2.0 is currently Q1 2006.

In other words, native OSX is coming but right now all the API's are being rewritten so porting the old ones is a waste of time for the developers. Porting the new ones can't really begin until the API's are finished being designed. It's a pain and it's frustrating. I still recommend NeoOffice/J (http://www.neooffice.org/java/) to my OSX using friends if they don't have access to Word. It's native but still pretty ugly. Just saves on having to install X11.

-Brian

Re:What about OS X?

[BarryJacobsen]

Apple values its relationship with Microsoft too much

I dunno, it is a nice relationship, but maybe it's time apple tried to go without them. Invest in OO.o and make it work seamlessly on the Mac and include it in default installs (similar to (my understanding of) what they did with KHTML/Safari) - now when people buy a mac, they also get an office suite. Maybe also think about investing in wine and allow people to run windows apps, possibly some games. I think apple needs to realize that they seem to know what they are doing far better than Microsoft does an when they believe in themselves more, so will everyone else who's hesitant about them.

Re:What about OS X?

[ThousandStars]

I had quasi undying loyalty to OOo

I don't think you can have semi-undying loyalty to something; it's a binary proposition: either you're undying or possibly dying. Since you say that you "had to cave in and return to Office:Mac," I think we can characterize your loyalty level as dead, or at least comatose, unless we want to consider possibilities concerning vampirism (sp?) or zombism.

(sp, once again -- my dead-tree Merriam-Webster's Collegiate won't help me with the tendency to act like a zombie or vampire).

Re:What about OS X?

[ciurana]

Excellent point!

Will that make me an office suite vampire of sorts? The nosferatu of software? Hrm... something to think about...

Thanks for the clarification -- and a good laugh.

Have a great day,

Eugene

Re:What about OS X?

[gallir]

I believe that an OS X/Aqua version of OOo is more strategically important than one for Gnome or KDE because it would generate instant press outside the early-adopter, Linux world.
A strategic marketing win could result in additional funding/participation/donations to OOo to carry on with other projects that, although important, lack the visibility that the Mac has or could bring to OOo.

Is it so difficult to understand that OOo is free software, Gnome is free software, KDE is free software and GNU/Linux is free software but OSX is not free software?

Damn!

Re:What about OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats whay Apple bought ClarisWorks (AppleWorks for the past few years).

Re:What about OS X?

[Shadowlore]

OOo also lacks compatibility with Exchange servers

Which since it isn't an email client doesn't seem to be too much an an issue in this MS laden environment.

Re:What about OS X?

[ciurana]

gallir wrote:

Is it so difficult to understand that OOo is free software, Gnome is free software, KDE is free software and GNU/Linux is free software but OSX is not free software?

So?

Windows isn't free software either and OOo works great in that platform. Mindshare is the name of the game. You can get more mindshare releasing something for Mac than for KDE. I didn't say "don't do the KDE version"; I said "do a Mac version soon". That would get more mindshare than KDE and Gnome combined. For good or evil, everyone always pays attention to what happens in the Apple camps. Whether you like it or not, Apple has been leading the industry for more almost 30 years (yeah, I know about the mid-1990s woes; let's ignore those for now).

Cheers,

E

Re:What about OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

..."do a Mac version soon". That would get more mindshare than KDE and Gnome combined.

I don't think so. OS X may have more users than KDE and Gnome, but OS X users have had an alternative that's not available to KDE/Gnome users: MS Office for Mac.

Most Linux users use OOo because it's the best option available to them. However, I think many Mac users would stick with MS Office even if a Mac version of OOo was available.

That's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Re:Nonverbal Learning Disorder

[Anonymous Coward]

Most regulars understood. But hey look, your anger helped you learn something today! It really is an energy!

I'll be impressed

[jeffkjo1]

I used OO in Windows XP (I know... I know, it's not by choice, the XP, that is.) Anyway, I think that anyone who uses OO in Windows recognizes it's mass shortcomings (which makes it difficult for me to recommend to others.) If they made OO integrate properly with Windows Widgets... then I'll be impressed... and excited.

Re:I'll be impressed

[DarthWiggle]

While I agree and am looking forward to OOo 2.0 which, apparently, will be more "native-friendly" (is that true? anyone?), you could easily say the same thing about Firefox on OS X, for example. I'm not talking about the toolbar icons but the widgets like textboxes, radio buttons, etc.

I can't imagine how difficult it must be to build a cross-platform application that a) remains internally consistent with itself and b) remains externally consistent with its environment.

On the other hand, the default OOo icons are ... ugly ... :)

Re:I'll be impressed

[rheimbuch]

The OOo 2.0 beta definiately improves on native integration. Here's a shot of a recent beta version: http://www.cs.montana.edu/~ryanh/openoffice2.0beta .png The same old ugly icons, but those will probably be easier to fix. Also, the list of targeted features for OOo 2.0. http://marketing.openoffice.org/2.0/featureguide.h tml

Re:I'll be impressed

[DarthWiggle]

Well, I'll be eager to try OOo 2.0 out, to see if they've fixed my three biggest peeves:
1) nutty font handling
2) nutty header/footer handling
3) sloooowwwwwwwww

Don't get me wrong, it's an almost unfathomably strong accomplishment to keep OOo as competitive as it is, but it needs work (which it appears to be getting).

And, lest you wonder if I'm anti-OOo at some level, I look forward to the day when it replaces Office. It's just not there for me yet.

Re:My my my...

[m50d]

That word processor page is nonsense. Integration is good in a computer system. Yes, there are cases where style and content should be separated, although not as many as people seem to think, which is incidentally why the whole css idea is also stupid. If I want to make part of my document bold, I want to make part of my document bold. I don't want to define a class of things which are empasised, and therefore bold, and then declare that this word is part of that class. I just want to make it bold.

I want my text editor to be able to do basic formatting just like I want it to be able to add up a row of numbers - something you'd want me to use a separate spreadsheet for. Does it replace a dedicated program? No. But is it good enough for enough cases that it makes me more productive? Yes.

Re:My my my...

[(void*)]

The idea is not "narrow-minded". The idea is an
interesting idea - COMPOSITION and LAYOUT are different things!

The deficiencies of TeX not being tweakable should not be used to against for the importance of the above idea. That about that.

I tried it

[Anonymous Coward]

I just downloaded the tar.gz and installed it. It's slower than the rpm that comes with Mandrake 10.1. AND that has gtk style icons too. I think I'll stick with the version that comes with mandrake.

If I was using kde I might be inclined to use this... but I'm not.

Re:My my my...

[mark-t]

They are different things, agreed. But the fact that that the modern wordprocessor doesn't differentiate them is a consequence of the niche it is filling, to make a document preparation system available to people who may not have any experience in porfessional typesetting, while still giving them enough control over layout to be able to produce a document that _most_ people wouldn't think was ugly compared to a more professional typesetting job (because most people are too indifferent or unknowledgeable to recognize the differences).

Shameless begging

[Gondorian Warrior]

I'm a Mac user, I know squat about developing/codeing, I don't like Microsoft

I NEED Open Office

If any of you can help develop the native port of OOo to Mac PLease Please Please Help

http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/

GW

Re:Shameless begging

[Anonymous Coward]

No you don't, OO sucks balls. Politics aside, Office on the Mac is far superior. Just BitTorrent the bastard, problem solved.

Re:Shameless begging

[mrchaotica]

It sounds almost as if you're saying "I'm a Mac user, therefore I know squat about developing/codeing," which is more than a little trollish. I'll assume you're not, though.

Anyway, as a Mac user, you ought to learn a little bit about Applescript, at least -- it's really useful! And combining it with UNIX commands and shell scripting is even better.

Re:My my my...

[m3j00]

XP laptop??? Been there, never again. And "never" is a definitive term in this case.

p.s. if you were meaning M$ Office. Yeah right. Just look at the consistancy of XP and Office 2003. It looks like mad cows piloting the space shuttle under water. No consistancy at all.

This is what's wrong with slashdot. All you have to do is advocate something OSS or anti-microsoft (using a dollar sign in your Microsoft abbreviation gives you bonus l33t points) and you get +5 Insightful.

Face it people, as much as you may hate their business practices, MS makes some very good products. It's just a shame that your OSS zealotry keeps you from forming an independent opinion about a product before you baselessly lambast it because it's made by the company slashdot loves to hate. I really wonder how many people flame "M$" online using IE on a computer running Windows XP

Re:My my my...

[Anonymous Coward]

If I want to make part of my document bold, I want to make part of my document bold. I don't want to define a class of things which are empasised, and therefore bold, and then declare that this word is part of that class. I just want to make it bold.

Are you taking into account people who can't see your bold text, for example people using a Braille system, speech synth or non-bold capable terminal? If there is an informational purpose for the bold text, some of the potential users of the site will never get it. If not, there is no real reason to use bold text anyway.

Of course, if we're talking about your personal site, no one cares if you use bold for every other word or replace quotation marks with goatse thumbnails. But if the question is about sites targetted to a large, non-predefined user group (for example, government sites), there is a real, valid reason for using semantic markup and defining the styling with CSS.

What?

[Seraphim_72]

What more do you want this to do?? Java scripting (or your choice of languages) incredible DB support, a great text editor, cool drawing proggie and more, what more do you want?? No really, I would like to know.

You are wrong

[nniillss]

1. The combination of LaTeX and TeX produces perfect layout if used appropriately. In contrast, the output of PowerPoint and Word and the like induces physical pain in people that care for proper layout. LaTeX/TeX is a production quality typesetting system just as QuarkXPress.

2. You seem to mix up TeX and LaTeX. Plain TeX is the typesetting system with which the expert can do everything. LaTeX is a set of macros and document types and classes which allows less experienced users to get near perfect results for a restricted set of cases.

3. If you want to make signs for a garage sale, look for the appropriate package. For a start, I would recommend "slides" or "foils". On the other hand, I will be the first to admit that a standard WYSIWYG word processor might be a better tool for this job (if you don't care, e.g., for proper kerning of the letters).

Re:You are wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I find the output from TeX/LaTeX old fashioned, ugly and boring. The amount of effort needed to get a good looking LaTeX or TeX document is far more than I'd ever want to put in on any document - if I did I wouldn't get any real work done.

Re:You are wrong

[yuri benjamin]

One word.
LyX.

Re:You are wrong

[gekhond]

"The amount of effort needed to get a good looking LaTeX or TeX document is far more than I'd ever want to put in on any document "..."no real work done"?? You have clearly never worked on substantial texts involving an extensive amount of structure, math, references, etc. LaTeX can't be beat in those areas and in my opinion produces gorgeous, professional looking documents. That's why large numbers of highly productive physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, etc. swear by it. I agree that MS Word is great for yard sale announcements and other ephemeral documents.

Re:My my my...

[(void*)]

Which is true, but in selecting the best tool for the best jobs, one should be guided by more objective metrics, other than the subjective impression of control. Document size and complexity, file size, preservation of semantics all contribute towards deciding for TeX over Word, other than for the smallest of documents.

Re:My my my...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just so you know... I have mod points, and narrowly avoided modding you down.

Do Not Feed The Trolls. Prove you're better than they are by ignoring them.

(posting anonymously because who the fuck wants to read this other than, perhaps, you?)

Re:Nonverbal Learning Disorder

[Frizzle Fry]

If it's an acronym that almost everyone knows, then I agree. But when it's something more obscure like this, it's much more efficient to have someone ask and someone else answer in the comments so that all of us reading the comments also benefit from the answer. If no one asked these questions, it would mean that thousands of us would each need to go and search for the answer. Doesn't that seem like a less efficient system than posting the answer once?

Re:My my my...

[Realistic_Dragon]

"The other problem is that many word processors are very useful for those cases when the text composition isn't really important, but formatting is the key point, like a sign for my garage sale. Have you ever tried do something like that in TeX?"

If what you are making is esentially a graphic then use something approptiate to the task! In this case a graphics package or indeed a DTP package is what you need, not a word processor.

Re:My my my...

[Anonymous Coward]

Every TeX article I read basically says, "If you don't like it, you're wrong." Certainly not a very user-friendly attitude to have.

Still, they are right and you're wrong. There are specific rules to typesetting -- it's an art like composing a waltz. If you don't follow the rules for a waltz, then it isn't a waltz. Likewise, if you don't follow the rules for DocumentType X, then you don't have a DocumentType X. TeX was designed knowing this, and its defaults are all DocumentTypes. Also, LaTeX is deep and hardly documented in some places. There are LaTeX macros for writing music, producing posters, etc and onward. Finding what you need can be very difficult.

a sign for my garage sale. Have you ever tried do something like that in TeX?

I've seen LaTeX posters before. You can tell LaTeX to use A1 paper, for example, and use a poster macro set from the internet to do that sort of thing. Then shimmy on down to a Kinko's and get them to print it for you. To add some weight to your point, I don't actually know how to do this, but I know LaTeX can do it because I've seen very, very pretty examples. That fact also adds weight to my claim that LaTeX could use some documentation for beginners.

It just doesn't work for the majority of stuff that I need to do.

Unpossible! LaTeX does everything. It is you who are failing LaTeX by not researching to see if there's a way to do what you want already, and if not, by writing your own macro sets (which is admittedly confusing). I wrote macro sets to do my resume in LaTex, basing them off of an example or two I found on the Internet. My resume looks awesome now, and I didn't have to fight with column settings in Word.

Re:My my my...

[mark-t]

Well saying what people _should_ do is all very well and good, but it doesn't change the way people actually behave. Most people are lazy, and will choose the simplest tool that allows them to get the job done to their own level of satisfaction. More power to those that take it further than that, but I'm not holding out any hope for the general populace actually migrating towards that mindset.

Re:My my my...

[Anonymous Coward]

But the fact that that the modern wordprocessor doesn't differentiate [content and layout]
What do you think that damn "stylist" window is for ?!

Ironic!

[teknurd]

This the type of "feature" for which so many /.'ers criticize Micro$loth.

Additional OOo Mirror

[SeanEParsons]

I've noticed that my local mirrors are taking between 4 to 80 hours to download. I'm going to place it on my site temporarily to help out with the downloads.

Check out here to download.

Re:My my my...

[SiliconEntity]

1. The entire concept of a 'Word Processor' is stupid - http://www.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html

Oh, right. I love this comment:

Take for instance a section heading. So far as the logical structure of a document is concerned, all that matters is that a particular piece of text should be ``marked'' somehow as a section heading. One might for instance type \section{Text of heading}.

Come on. No one in their right mind would want to type "\section{Text of heading}"! Nothing could be less intuitive!

If this is your alternative to a word processor, 99% of people would do better with a word processor. I mean, really, backslashes and curly braces and magic keywords that have to be memorized? Give me a break. That will never work for the typical user. Programmers, yes, but users, no.

Re:My my my...

[mark-t]

Well, the point of using a tool like Word or OpenOffice is so that the person using it doesn't _HAVE_ to posess any technical typesetting training.

In the hands of an amateur, TeX is capable of producing some really hideous stuff too... and I mean bad enough that even people who _don't_ have real typesetting experience would think it was ugly the instant they looked at it (I've seen it happen). To produce beautiful stuff with TeX actually requires considerably more effort on the part of a person who is not that familiar with the intracies of page layout than it would with a wysiwig system. At least with a modern wordprocessor, it is possible for an average person to satisfy another average person, who's unlikely to notice (and certainly not pay any attention to) the quality differences between that and a more professional typesetting job. Conversely, a person who _IS_ more knowledgeable about typesetting, is likely to find that the "intuitive" systems that Word and other word procesors employ to be too restrictive or limited, and I have no doubt that they would greatly benefit from using a more robust typesetting tool like TeX.

Re:My my my...

[bwalling]

1. The entire concept of a 'Word Processor' is stupid - http://www.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html

That entire article was written on the basis of the fact that most people incorrectly use word processors! You can do exactly what the author is describing in Microsoft Word, and it is a hell of a lot easier than Tex. As you are typing your document, you simply mark things with Heading 1, etc (create new styles as you need them). When you're done "composing", then edit the styles such that your document is rendered as you want it to be.

As for the argument that the recipient of your document will need to have the same program you composed it in, I fail to see how Tex is better. If I sent my Dad a Tex document, he'd be pissed off that he had to read all of that \section{} crap along with the text, because we both know he isn't going to have anything that will render Tex.

OpenOffice on Arm, sweet.

[wobedraggled]

Now I can write documents up on my Nintendo DS :)

Re:My my my...

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, really, backslashes and curly braces and magic keywords that have to be memorized?

That's what LyX is for.

Re:My my my...

[Coryoth]

Where is the tool that allows me to change the format as I like? Every TeX article I read basically says, "If you don't like it, you're wrong." Certainly not a very user-friendly attitude to have.

It's actually very easy if you're willing to learn a little TeX. For those that aren't, I'm surprised no solutions have been made available. I'e written a small Gnome app tht lets you do basic drag and drop design for presentation templates and will output a LaTeX documentclass. It isn't quite at release quality yet, but I'm not much of a programmer and I had no real difficulty writing it.

Jedidiah.

screenshots

[sewagemaster]

here and here

Re:Open Office: your MS Office document repair kit

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly, he or she should explain to the people who sent the document why MS Office formats are poor document exchange formats, and encourage them to use a format that:

1. Anyone can view without expensive software.

2. Doesn't commonly contain malicious code.

3. Is reliable (problems openning MS Office files under different versions or even the same version are all too common).

4. Is open and documented. This helps ensure 1, and allows for the possibility of recovering data if the file is corrupted in some way, or if software designed specifically for accessing the data is not readily available for some reason. Example: I could extract the text and images from a OOo file using just a few standard tools if I needed to.

Re:My my my...

[Anonymous Coward]

If any of the things you suggest come at cost of spending more time preparing the document, your solution is NOT the best tool for the job for the vast majority of people.

Re:My my my...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no problem adjusting it to my looks. I've actually done magazine layouts and business cards with TeX too, but that was a little (ok, a lot) more work than it was worth. The learning curve is rather steep though. And LaTeX sucks at reporting errors.

Soooo, what does this mean?

[poofyhairguy82]

Ok, I don't get it. What does this mean? Does it mean that OO no longer sucks in gnome? That would be great. I RTFA but it did not tell me in laymen's terms what will actually be better, just a promise that it would be.

I use Abiword because I hate it when OO's writer turns my fairly fast computer into a stuttering idoit everytime I use the spellcheck (except for in Mandrake for some reason). Will this make that stop? I hope so, because I am getting tired of the bug in Abiword that keeps things you deleted on the screen. It confuses me, but it is still not worse than my system locking up everytime I need spell checking.

Re:My my my...

[mfg]

You can do exactly what the author is describing in Microsoft Word, and it is a hell of a lot easier than Tex. As you are typing your document, you simply mark things with Heading 1, etc (create new styles as you need them). When you're done "composing", then edit the styles such that your document is rendered as you want it to be.

One of the nice things about a markup language compared to a word processor is that the document style is under the control of the user - the person who'll be reading the document - rather than the author. If you want full control over how a document looks then ship it as PostScript or PDF.

Another useful thing about markup languages is that they're usually plain text, which makes them readable even if you don't have a particular program. This also makes them easy to process automatically - extracting the title, authors, abstract etc. for example. Given a repository of papers, we can automatically produce statistics showing, for example, how many papers each author has published - just the sort of thing that funding bodies want to know. Try doing that with some WYSIWYG format where the various sections are obvious to a human eye but don't have anything in the file to say that centered text in bold is the title, the first italic bit is the abstract etc.

Re:My my my...

[The Cisco Kid]

IMNSHO, if it doesnt need something like TeX, then plain text is sufficient.

Re:My my my...

[The Cisco Kid]

You wouldnt send someone a TeX document anymore than you should send them a 'Word' document, unless you have specifically arranged with them that it should be in a specific format.

For general distribution, or to unknown recipients, you should send in something that is standard (and to be standard, it needs to be a documented format, 'DOC' fails that requirement) plain ascii text works, or if for some reason you need to control the appearance, postscript or PDF.

The big problem is people *assuming* everyone has MS-Word, and using it's proprietary format to exchange information by default.

Re:My my my...

[(void*)]

What does that mean, spending more time preparing the document?

Re:Open Office: your MS Office document repair kit

[MsGeek]

I did! They were suitably impressed.

MS excuse: Let your Access do the writing

[tepples]

If you need someone for end-users to access, then you need to write something.

The point of things like Microsoft Access and its StarOffice counterpart is so that end-users can "write something". If you made a decent PHP/MySQL code generator that duplicated much of the functionality of Access, and you pimped it in your Slashdot signature, then people wouldn't have as much room to complain.

First link when NLD is googled:

[Anonymous Coward]

is a site on Nonverbal Learning Disorder (NLD). How approrpiate :-)

Additional integration in NLD (including Mozilla!)

[soren42]

Actually, Novell did similar work for Mozilla (well, actually for Firefox) in the NLD development. Firefox under NLD actually utilizes the CUPS printer list and settings - a vast improvement over the older "just-dump-postscript-to-lpr-and-use-the-default-p rinter" option. Additionally, Firefox under NLD will take it's proxy settings from the GNOME user proxy settings. I believe both features have already been contributed back to the community already.

I've been using beta versions of NLD for several months now, and I have been very impressed with the work that Novell has put into intergrating the desktop components. This was a big sore spot for Linux on the desktop, and NLD is an excellent first step. There may still be a lot of work to be done, but kudos to Novell for realizing the issues and beginning to adddress them.

Re:My my my...

[yuri benjamin]

The big problem is people *assuming* everyone has MS-Word, and using its proprietary format to exchange information by default.

Yes! That's one of my pet hates.
(My other pet hate is apostrophes in possessive pronouns :-P )
I've managed to get job interviews after sending resumés as PDFs.

Re:My my my...

[bwalling]

The big problem is people *assuming* everyone has MS-Word, and using it's proprietary format to exchange information by default.

It's a problem for Microsoft's competitors and for FOSS zealots, but not for the rest of us. I don't communicate with a single person that doesn't have MS Word (or at least WordPad). Let's not forget that if you are running Linux, you have made a choice to use something that has different features and limitations than the software that 90+% of the world uses. It is not the obligation of the vast majority to facilitate the minority - it is the other way around.

For general distribution, or to unknown recipients, you should send in something that is standard (and to be standard, it needs to be a documented format, 'DOC' fails that requirement) plain ascii text works, or if for some reason you need to control the appearance, postscript or PDF.

Plain text does not allow formatting, and PDF does not allow editing.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:My my my...

[justsomebody]

...and you get +5 Insightful

??? When?

M$ is something I won't stop using. Mostly because of how much of $ I already spent on their products. It's not like I would appreciate them, more like I'm forced to use them. Not even a single software did its job like it should. Maybe that's a difference when you own a company and you have to buy all software that you use.

p.s. It was talk about laptop. Not every computer. I have 12 (2 apple) of them + notebook. You wouldn't believe how expensive software can be for such little ammount of computers. That's why I think that I earned my privilege to write M$ (take in question that I'm mostly one person company)

Face it people, as much as you may hate their business practices, MS makes some very good products

Did I miss some product or what? For now they all sucked

I really wonder how many people flame "M$" online using IE on a computer running Windows XP

Answer is simple:)
1. All users that are not satisfied
2. All users forced to use them at job
3. All ITs that have seen too much of broken things and they are pissed off.
4. Me. When making some tasks at customers that last more time and I'm too lazy to take out my notebook.

I totally agree.

[eugene ts wong]

Having everybody search for it is inefficient. I think that search skills are overrated. If people spent more time answering the question and less time complaining about it, then the community would save time as a whole.

I think that independence is overrated.

Re:I totally agree.

[Doc Ruby]

If you can't read the story blurb, and get that "NLD" has something to do with "GNOME", "KDE" and "OpenOffice.org", then search for that, maybe you should just lurk in the discussion, rather than posting.

Officefox?

[the_true_cirrus]

A few people mentioned that OO.org is good but quite clunky. That got me thinking... why don't the open office people do what the mozilla people did with the mozilla suite - break it up into seperate apps, make them lean and more focussed (as in Seamonkey -> Firefox & Thunderbird)?

And while they're at it they should make it integrate *prefectly* (file dialogs, UI conventions, drag'n'drop and all!) with different Window managers, desktops and OSes. (OpenOffice on MacOS X, for example, is quite horrible at the moment!)

So, how about it then? Bring on OfficeFox! :P

Re:My my my...

[renoX]

Except that noone cares about 'idea war' but only about which implementation is better.

Maybe doing the composition and layout separately is better in theory, but I won't use it because IMHO Latex suck!

In Latex, the layout is bad (I can recognize article made with Latex: usually the figures are put at strange location such as at the end of a chapter which makes thing less readable) but even worse the language itself is bad too: I tried to learn it once and rejected it: the language is far *too ugly* for my taste.

I've heard about Skribe http://www-sop.inria.fr/mimosa/fp/Skribe/doc/user. html
The language seems good (Scheme) but I've not really looked at it yet.

PS:
Word suck too but Framemaker is great for the other idea of WYSISWYG.

I checked it... it is the same version

[Anonymous Coward]

I checked on a Suse 9.2 system, and OpenOffice on that system does use KDE file dialogs. Cool. Much nicer than what they had before. I guess OOo 2.0 is going to be even better in this respect.

Re:My my my...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Are you taking into account people who can't see your bold text, for example people using a Braille system, speech synth or non-bold capable terminal? If there is an informational purpose for the bold text, some of the potential users of the site will never get it. If not, there is no real reason to use bold text anyway."

Fuck'em. They're a tiny minority.

TeX is for elitist zealots. I can go faster in Word then the time it takes you to setup TeX.

Re:My my my...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well Said.

Someone should put all these zealots on a ship, and sink it.

10 LET M$ = "Microsoft"

[tepples]

A fifth reason to call Microsoft M$ is to claim that Microsoft should have stuck to programming language tools (such as for the BASIC language, some dialects of which require names of string variables to end in $). The following is a valid program for the "Applesoft" BASIC interpreter in the ROM of the Apple II+ through IIGS:

10 LET M$ = "Microsoft"
20 PRINT "Apple II BASIC Interpreter"
25 PRINT "developed by ";M$
30 END

Section 508 and the ADA; M$ Word pricing

[tepples]

10 LET M$ = "Microsoft": REM Comment subject line has limited length

Fuck [people with vision disabilities]. They're a tiny minority.

Companies that adopt such policies are in violation of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, and they quickly lose their lucrative U.S. Government contracts. Even some companies with no U.S Government contracts may still be subject to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

I can go faster in Word then the time it takes you to setup TeX.

If you're taking setup time into account, I can play along too. I put in a CD, unzip a LaTeX or distribution, and start LyX, and I'm in a WYSIWYM (what you see is what you mean) environment that's a hybrid between a text editor with TeX macros and a word processor. For commercial proprietary software, on the other hand, the time of installation includes the time it takes to flip burgers to earn money for a license. Your method can compete only if you choose OpenOffice.org Writer instead of Microsoft Word. Or did you count on having Microsoft Word in a bundle with the PC?

Re:Section 508 and the ADA; M$ Word pricing

[m50d]

A slashdotter is not a fair comparison, because we don't represent the average person. I'll put a random coworker, or, if you think that's unfair because of them having used MS word, a random non-computer-user (not that many of them around, but hey) on OOo Writer against one on any TeX setup you choose, any day, and I'm confident they'll be more productive.

Re:Open Office: your MS Office document repair kit

[wkitchen]

All they needed was the time that ST needed to go on, and also the times for some of the other bands on the schedule the guys wanted to see. OO.o rules.

It does. But this also demonstrates why it's bad to send simple information in needlessly complex, closed, proprietary formats.

WordPad != Word; accessibility

[tepples]

I don't communicate with a single person that doesn't have MS Word (or at least WordPad).

I don't have Microsoft Word on my computer. I have Microsoft WordPad 2000, but WordPad doesn't support style sheets, which are the topic of this subthread. Has this changed in Windows XP SP2?

Let's not forget that if you are running Linux, you have made a choice to use something that has different features and limitations than the software that 90+% of the world uses.

Did I make that choice to buy a computer without buying a one-seat home user license of Microsoft Word, or did the person who bought my computer make that choice?

It is not the obligation of the vast majority to facilitate the minority

Yes it is. People with any given disability are a minority, but Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, requires the U.S. Government and U.S. Government contractors to create accessible systems. How is "bold" accessible to a speech reader or a Braille terminal?

Plain text does not allow formatting, and PDF does not allow editing.

But do you always want the readers of your copyrighted document to have easy access to preparing a derivative work of your document?

Re:My my my...

[AndrewRUK]

Ahh, I get it...

Word processors, specificaly WYSIWYG, are stupid and inefficient, we should all use TeX instead.
But the TeX commands and syntax are too complex, so use a nice program to generate the TeX. A WYSIWYG word processor, opps, I mean, a WYSIWYM document processor, that outputs TeX.

So, word processors are "stupid and inefficient", unless they output TeX and are called document processors?

Bad habits carried from WordPad to Microsoft Word

[tepples]

That entire article was written on the basis of the fact that most people incorrectly use word processors!

Either that, or that word processors' tutorials encourage users to use them incorrectly. In addition, many users of Microsoft Word for Windows are upgrading from WordPad bundled in Windows 2000, which doesn't seem to expose any GUI for style sheets, and carrying their learned anti-patterns with them.

If I sent my Dad a Tex document, he'd be pissed off that he had to read all of that \section{} crap along with the text, because we both know he isn't going to have anything that will render Tex.

If he's coming from a fresh install of Windows, we both know that he may not have anything that will reliably read Microsoft Word documents either, as not all PC vendors bundle a Microsoft Word license, and WordPad can't read everything that Microsoft Word can put into a .doc file. You need to negotiate a common format, and if you use LaTeX, then such formats include HTML, which a standard web browser can read.

Copy n paste from OO will finally work??

[ylikone]

The major problem I STILL have with OO is that I often need to copy and paste from it into a text editor like vi or joe. This never works, usually you end up with a small random portion of what you are trying to copy. Truly annoying. I really don't understand why this little discrepancy hasn't been taken care of a long time ago.

Already been done

[ylikone]

They already did this. You obviously have never used the first versions of openoffice/staroffice when it opened up it's own desktop environment. I hated OO back then.

Re:My my my...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't like La(TeX) you can try nroff instead. The man pages in Unix systems are based on it. And you can use its companions to work with equations (eqn), tbl (tables), pictures (pic or ideal), etc.

A document processing workflow could be like:

pic document | tbl | eqn | troff | lpr

The Unix Programming Environment, by Kernighan and Pike, has a nice chapter on "Document Processing" ilustrated by the use of such tools.

OpenOffice.org - name not speech compatible

[Magickcat]

All it now needs is a decent name, compatible with normal human speech.

Re:Open Office: your MS Office document repair kit

[BillyBlaze]

I don't have much experience with this, but I thought there were options that allow OpenOffice to simply pass the macros along unchanged. Don't they work?

Re:Nonverbal Learning Disorder

[Doc Ruby]

Of course it's more efficient *for you* to ask a question for someone else to answer. If you search for it yourself, you might not only learn the meaning of the acronym, you might learn something worthwhile to post in the discussion.

Re:My my my...

[Unknown Lamer]

It's different with LyX; you only specify the logical structure of the document. LyX provides a pretty view of those hidden commands. You do not specify the font, text sizes, margins, etc. You specify "heading," "paragraph," "chapter," etc.

The final look of the document can be completely different depending on the style used.

Re:Open Office: your MS Office document repair kit

[trewornan]

Don't forget:

5. Isn't bandwidth wasting, bloated, crap.

OpenOffice is beta software

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to write a term paper in OpenOffice. It had a bug that caused me to lose numbering on the pages. Since I only had Linux at home and was hard-pressed with the deadline, I had to deliver it like that...that cost me something in my grade, let me tell you.
Just yesterday I booted a Ubuntu live CD. I checked OO.org. Guess what: I can't write "~", as in São Paulo. This renders it useless for Portuguese (my native language).
I don't know how these guys think they have production software. As far as i'm concerned, it's *beta software*. Don't let anyone lie to you.
All those governments saying they'll swap MS Word for OO.org (hello, Brazil!) *be warned!*
And please, don't flame me. I don't care about your opinion about how "OpenOffice rulez, dude!" I've used, I've pushed it to its limits, and it failed me miserably.

Re:OpenOffice is beta software

[Gumshoe]

Just yesterday I booted a Ubuntu live CD. I checked OO.org. Guess what: I can't write "~", as in São Paulo. This renders it useless for Portuguese (my native language).

I don't know anything about Ubuntu but I find it hard to believe the installed fonts don't have a "ã" character defined. If you're having difficulty finding that character on the keyboard, goto the "Insert" menu and select "Special Character...". It doesn't stand out but it's character number 227 in the list. Quite simple really and if memory serves me correctly, this is as near as dammit how you solve the problem in MS Word.

Re:My my my...

[AndrewRUK]

And how is that different to OpenOffice or Word, both of which allow you to specify styles? That people don't always use styles is a criticism of the way people use word processors, not of word processors themselves.

Re:My my my...

[Christopheles]

If you're not trying to write a document and merely want to put words on a page, how about not using a word processor? Saying that TeX does a bad job of making arbitrary text layouts is kinda like saying that modern cars do a bad job of flying so everyone should use gliders.

The first program that comes to mind is Adobe Pagemaker, but any vector drawing program like Inkscape or a layout program like Scribus would be much better.

Re:Nonverbal Learning Disorder

[Doc Ruby]

Moderation -2
50% Flamebait
50% Overrated

I offer free clues: the definition of the acronym the poster requested, the ease with which they can find such answers themselves, and the impact on the competent people of asking a dumb question when the answer is easily found. That's flamebait? Overrated? Next time, get your clues yourself.

Maybe not. Re: Aqua on Mac OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

I switched to AppleWorks not long ago because OOo using X was so bad, so I agree there needs to be a change.

I've checked out Camino, which is a Mozilla branch with Aqua UI, but it gets less development time and less features. The costs seems to outweight the benefits when development effort is split up like this.

So why not stick with one solution for all platforms? I'm thinking XUL or SWT, like Firefox or Azurues.

Re:My my my...

[m50d]

It's there for emphasis, but I think that's a visual thing. It adds to the whole reading experience, without being directly informational. And I don't think it would translate well into speech synth etc. If it would, then why can't the synth interpret it in the way the user wants? After all, they probably have a better idea of what the blind equivalent of bold is than me.

Acronym Finder

[TPFH]

Personally, I find Acronym Finder to be most effective for looking up acronyms.

Re:My my my...

[(void*)]

I care enough about this idea war that I will not voluntarily use MSWord. It's my work that forces me to use it.