OpenOffice.org to Get Firefox Extensions and More

LJ Talked More About Extensions by Noksagt · 2006-09-20 05:19 · Score: 3, Informative

LinuxJournal ran an article on OpenOffice.org Extensions a couple of months ago. They link to the project wiki and summarize a few extensions, including a grammar checker, Wikipedia integration, and a blog posting tool.

Questions on Thunderbird/Sunbird Inclusion by Noksagt · 2006-09-20 05:21 · Score: 4, Informative

OpenOffice.org and StarOffice shall include the Mozilla Foundation's Thunderbird and Sunbird (calendaring application) in the future.

This is an interesting move. I am Thunderbird and Sunbird user, so am not opposed to this change. I certainly know a lot of people were clamouring for Outlook-like functionality and integration for OO.o. I do wonder why these were chosen over Evolution, which is more like Outlook & already has integrated calendaring. I also wonder why Sunbird was selected--while I'm happy with it, it hasn't yet hit a 1.0 milestone. I still use it in production, but I know others avoid it & I think Mozilla would discourage it. And why Sunbird, rather than Mozilla Lightning, which integrates into Thunderbird?

Finally, Thunderbird seems to release updates more rapidly than OO.o. Does anyone know how updates will work? Will those who installed it through OO.o immediately get Thunderbird updates? Or will they wait until the next OO.o version bump?

Re:Questions on Thunderbird/Sunbird Inclusion by cynicalmoose · 2006-09-20 05:27 · Score: 2, Informative

Moreover, Evolution already has (slightly limited) support for MS Exchange. That's important, because Exchange uses a weird and undocumented version of extended MAPI to interact with clients (i.e. Outlook), which makes building interfaces with it hard. If you want to see Exchange support in Outlook, vote for bug 128284 (bugzilla rejects links from slashdot).

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Exercise your right not to vote. thinkoutside.org
Re:Questions on Thunderbird/Sunbird Inclusion by Ashe+Tyrael · 2006-09-20 05:29 · Score: 2, Insightful

Why not Evolution? Put simply, the windows port of Evolution is still in the "we're trying to get it to work properly" phase, whereas the others are all the same pretty much across all platforms.

This isn't to say I'm not waiting and hoping for the windows port of Evo, but if they need something there "now" to base their integration on, then they have to choose something thats there.

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"How fine you look when dressed in rage."
Re:Questions on Thunderbird/Sunbird Inclusion by Anonymous Coward · 2006-09-20 05:46 · Score: 4, Funny

"If you want to see Exchange support in Outlook"

I want it removed, thanks very much.

Extension I'd like to see by Hahnsoo · 2006-09-20 05:23 · Score: 4, Funny

Toss in an automatic Term Paper writer extension, and I'm in! Wait, crap, I'm not in school anymore. *sigh* I always felt that I was born a decade too early.

Re:Extension I'd like to see by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · 2006-09-20 05:40 · Score: 4, Interesting

But seriously, Is there a plugin similar to the 'APA referencing Macro' for MSOffice?

I'm a little concerned by the plug-in trend for applications. I think it is implementing functionality at the wrong level. How much work does it take to create a plug-in to make references like this that work with Word's macro feature. How much effort to make it work with OpenOffice's plug-in system? How much work to implement it once for every application you might want to use references within?

Mac OS X has introduced system services. One plug-in that works on all text that uses the standard APIs in any program. There exists one for automated formatting of references, by the way. If other OS's would just adopt a similar system, or better yet adopt a standard for all of them, we could remove so much duplication of effort and users would get to choose the best of breed for anything they wanted. I mean one spell checking plugin for Firefox, one built into Word, one built into InDesign, one built into Eudora, and none available for photoshop, IM, IRC, and your favorite text editor is a serious waste and failure to properly use the resources put into these tasks. I'm very unhappy with this trend towards application specific plug-ins when what is really desired is modular plug-ins that can be used anywhere.
Re:Extension I'd like to see by AuMatar · 2006-09-20 06:10 · Score: 3, Insightful

This idea has been tried, and tried, and tried, and tried. It was called COM, DCOM, CORBA, etc. In reality it just doesn't work- someone doesn't like how the default works and writes their own service, with a new improved API. The user base splits. The end result is everyone writes their own "system level" service. Its a nice idea thats utterly impractical and fails every time.

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I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Re:Extension I'd like to see by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · 2006-09-20 06:26 · Score: 4, Insightful

The end result is everyone writes their own "system level" service. Its a nice idea thats utterly impractical and fails every time.

...except it works on OS X right now and has been working for years. It is probably the second most important reason Linux is not my primary workstation OS. I keep reading how Linux is "catching up" on the desktop, but every time I use it I find it is still behind in vital areas such as this, because no one cares to implement these right and all the people that need or really want these features have moved to OS X and abandoned Linux except for servers. Maybe having one company that can just do it is always going to be the reason Linux lacks functionality. All I know is unless I can use my spell checker, grammar checker, translations, scripts, statistical analysis, dictionary lookups, thesaurus, online resource lookups, text manipulations, biblio reference formatting/creation, and other services in all my major applications and without having to configure preferences separately, I'm unlikely to ever move to Linux.
Re:Extension I'd like to see by AuMatar · 2006-09-20 06:40 · Score: 2, Insightful

YOu can do that in linux today- use CORBA and/or a shared library. For example, the 2 big libraries for spell checking are ispell and aspell. THe fact is that in practice noone does this. The reason is that when you don't have 1 company driving that "Everyone must use application X", people use what they think is best. Guess what- people differ on what is best. So you end up with an array of products instead of one- for example 4 or 5 major desktops, each with their own API. Its less integrated, but in the end the competition creates better software. The "thou must use X" philosophy only works so long as there's tight central control, and either all software is pushed out new versions simultaneously or you never update the functionality of the core libraries. Works for Mac now because APple writes 90% of the software used. If it actually had 3rd party support, that functionality would die overnight.

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I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Re:Extension I'd like to see by wrook · 2006-09-20 07:27 · Score: 2, Interesting

Didn't someone mention a Wikipedia plugin?
Re:Extension I'd like to see by abigor · 2006-09-20 08:12 · Score: 2, Informative

In KDE they are called KParts, and any KDE application can load and use them. For example, spellchecking is used by many apps via a KPart, including the khtml component, which is itself a KPart - so KParts can even use other KParts.

Yeah, but what I want to know by overshoot · 2006-09-20 05:25 · Score: 5, Interesting

... is whether they're even considering items that have been highly-voted on requests for several years.

Examples: Gallery import between versions, or the all-time champion outline view -- the longest-lived request with a huge votecount, declared by quite a few professional writers and educators as the show-stopper keeping OpenOffice.org out of their offices and schools. Apparently the team has other priorities.

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Lacking <sarcasm> tags, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."

Re:Yeah, but what I want to know by TheRaven64 · 2006-09-20 05:33 · Score: 4, Insightful

Speaking as a professional writer, I don't see the advantage that an outline view has over the current Navigator (in case you haven't used it, it's a floating outline view that can be used for quick navigation). But then, speaking as a professional writer, there is no possible way in which you could convince me that a WYSIWYG word processor is the right tool for any jobs I have; they are toys for people who have grown out of finger painting, not tools for people who deal with large quantities of text.

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I am TheRaven on Soylent News

Why not Evolution by overshoot · 2006-09-20 05:29 · Score: 4, Interesting

I do wonder why these were chosen over Evolution [gnome.org], which is more like Outlook & already has integrated calendaring.

If it were me, I'd say it's because Evo is a toad, complete with hard-coded URLs. Gag.

However, it's not me -- it's Sun. And for Sun, the deal-breaker is that Evolution is GPL-licensed. The Mozilla license is much more suited to their private-branding model.

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Lacking <sarcasm> tags, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."

Re:Why not Evolution by shoegoo · 2006-09-20 06:10 · Score: 3, Informative

I'd guess another reason for choosing Thunderbird/Sunbird is that they already have working ports on other platforms (granted Sunbird is still not of great quality). The last I heard about the Evolution Windows port was that it was finally compiling...
Re:Why not Evolution by Kunta+Kinte · 2006-09-20 06:25 · Score: 2, Insightful

And for Sun, the deal-breaker is that Evolution is GPL-licensed.
Oh yeah, Sun hates the GPL

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Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Re:Why not Evolution by gkhan1 · 2006-09-20 16:15 · Score: 2, Informative

While this is true, GTK not only looks strange on windows, it even looks quite bad. Let's face it, ported GTK applications are not pretty. They look great on Gnome, simply because that was what they were made for, but on windows...shudder...not so much.

Re:What Open Office Needs... by Ant+P. · 2006-09-20 05:33 · Score: 4, Funny

Would you like to point out the bugs you've filed for those usability issues, or would you like to STFU? :)

Re:What Open Office Needs... by kfg · 2006-09-20 05:34 · Score: 3, Funny

What Open Office really needs is not Firebox plug-in, but a complete code rewrite so that it is not a bloated whale of an application.

Ooooooooh, I don't know. My instinctive reaction to the story was, "Cool! Now all they have to do is embed an OS and it'll be done."

Could use a decent text editor though.

KFG

Open-source feature bloat? by Alan426 · 2006-09-20 05:34 · Score: 5, Insightful

Is anyone else worried about this becoming a gratuitous push to add new features? Why should OOo include Thuderbird? If I want that application, it's not difficult to install the latest version from their own distribution. It seems to me that refining the core functionality and compatibility of the office applications should be a higher priority than bloating it up with unrelated features.

Re:Open-source feature bloat? by ElleyKitten · 2006-09-20 06:01 · Score: 2, Insightful

OpenOffice wants to take marketshare from Microsoft Office. One block in convincing people to switch is the lack of an Outlook equivalent. Sure, people can go to Mozilla.com to get Thunderbird, but it's hard to convince people that OO is an MS Office replacement when it doesn't have an equivalent to their most-used program.

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"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.

Professional writers by overshoot · 2006-09-20 05:41 · Score: 4, Informative

But then, speaking as a professional writer, there is no possible way in which you could convince me that a WYSIWYG word processor is the right tool for any jobs I have; they are toys for people who have grown out of finger painting, not tools for people who deal with large quantities of text.

I quite agree that if your output is primarily text, you're much better off with LaTeX or the like. Gorgeous results without the constant distraction of formatting.

However, there are a lot of professional writers who have to integrate high proportions of graphics into their work, and for them a WYSIWYG tool is quite appropriate. The ability to restructure a document (the big missing feature in the Navigator) is a serious handicap there.

I'm not a professional writer, I just sleep with one.

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Lacking <sarcasm> tags, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."

Re:Professional writers by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · 2006-09-20 06:19 · Score: 4, Insightful

I would say the opposite. It is much more important that you don't use a WYSIWYG tool when you've got graphics. You want to be able to say "I don't know what page this is going on, but when it gets there, put it in the upper right corner and cause the text to flow around it seperated by a 10 point border." ...or other things like that.

If you've ever used Framemaker or Quark or InDesign, you'll know those are WYSIWYG tools designed exactly to address this issue and there is a reason almost the entire publishing industry uses them.

WYSIWYG editors are very bad at this. Especially Word.

Word is WYSIWYG, but it is not really a layout tool at all. If you're trying to use it for the wrong task, you'll have a lot of problems. Now go try a real WYSIWYG layout tool and notice how easy it is.

Adding new things and reformatting takes forever due to Word's horrible reformatting problems.

Here's an exercise. Take LaTeX and Adobe InDesign and go build a 50 page magazine including five or more graphics on each page, with good, but unique layout and colors on each page. Note that they are both using the same layout engine, but one of them offers a WYSIWYG mode in addition to a text/XML editing mode. Notice one of them lets you insert, scale, set transparencies and filters on graphics easily and one is a huge pain in the ass.

You don't have to be a graphic designer to appreciate the difference. Even working with highly technical explanations of engineering manuals that follow a very formulaic layout, you can't deny that Framemaker is simply easier to use, make edits and use all those crazy features like graphics, color, and hyperlinks that are hacks in LaTeX.

and a lot of those people cringe in fear at the thought of actually doing anything at all outside of a WYSIWYG. So a WYSIWG, while much worse at actually getting things done, is the only thing that they can use.

I like vi. I hack PHP and a little C together and build custom XML formats and help systems. I prefer to do my HTML work in a text editor instead of a WYSIWYG. That does not mean WYSIWYG is better or exclusively what I want to use for all, or even most word processing and layout tasks. It's time to stop speculating as to why those poor incompetent "graphics people" are using WYSIWYG tools and actually evaluate them and notice that they are the best UI for some jobs.

APA Style by overshoot · 2006-09-20 05:44 · Score: 2, Interesting

Also, if anyone knows of a free alternative (apart from learning them), I'd be interested.

You can always give LyX a try -- it's LaTeX based and has APA styles that let you fill in the blanks for publication-quality output.

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Lacking <sarcasm> tags, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."

Now, OpenOffice viruses! by Animats · 2006-09-20 05:48 · Score: 2, Insightful

A new attack vector!

OpenOffice should not have plug-ins. Why copy Microsoft's mistakes.

Re:Now, OpenOffice viruses! by VJ42 · 2006-09-20 06:59 · Score: 2, Insightful

Why copy Microsoft's mistakes.

I think they are looking at it from the point of view of copying Mozilla's sucesses.

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If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me

Resistance is futile. by Kadin2048 · 2006-09-20 05:50 · Score: 4, Funny

It's just the natural order of things, as expressed by Zawinski's Law of Software Development:

Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

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"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."

I think you mis-read by brunes69 · 2006-09-20 05:51 · Score: 2, Interesting

They don't mean they want to run OO.org *on top of* Eclipse or XUL

They mean they want to re-structure OO.org to be modularly based and run on a GUI framework, *like Eclipse and XUL do*.

Re:I think you mis-read by Goaway · 2006-09-20 06:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

He did not mis-read. They say exactly what he read it as. Maybe they meant something else, but that is not what they actually wrote.

Re:Oh come on... by ElleyKitten · 2006-09-20 05:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

You don't have to be a programmer to file a bug report. If you want to complain about the usability of OO (or anything open source), then complain to the people who can actually fix the problems. It would be mroe productive than whining on a message board.

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"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.

Really weak vision by Anonymous Coward · 2006-09-20 06:16 · Score: 2, Insightful

I think that this is a really weak vision. Integrating a calendar and mail program doesn't really do any big wonders for the office workers. People can already use existing mail and calendar applications and some of them integrate ok with OpenOffice.org. What I'd like to see is features for collaborative work and other groupware features.

I also fear that the code base for OpenOffice.org is too heavy and difficult to work with. I foresee a long time when almost nothing will happen while they rewrite the core. This is exactly what happened to Netscape and for the same reason: The code base was so convoluted that it wasn't possible to work with.

Seriously, I think that KOffice is the future of free office suites. It is developing incredibly fast and they have far more apps in the suite already. I read an article at the KDE news site that some students had implemented pretty advanced stuff in just some short Google Summer of Code projects, and I don't believe that could happen for OpenOffice. When they release 2.0, it will run on Windows AND OS X and from then on it's just a matter of more features. Mark my words... You read it here first.

Re:Still have a mark... by kfg · 2006-09-20 06:18 · Score: 3, Interesting

Well it would help if either of you would go on to describe what you do use and what you do with it.

I did that -- when I got the mark. I'll give it another shot, but promise not to hit me.

I favor vim myself, but your milage may vary. The point being that when I am writing I concentrate on . . .writing. The words. Formating for printing is a completely seperate thought and physical process and should be treated seperately with tools specialized for the job.

Back in the day I was an advocate of the development of WYSIWYG editors. I thrilled when I actually first got to use one. It turns out I was wrong. It happens. I was especially wrong about wanting black on white. That really sucks when you're spending long hours at the monitor. I neglected the fact that paper reflects light and a monitor emits light. Live and learn.

WYSIWYGs add nothing to the writing process, often serve as a distraction and are poor at actual desktop publishing functions.

They have their place; and I use them (in fact I use Open Office), but that place is really for simple letters and such, not for either serious writing or serious printing. A middle of the road "toy" tool for middle of the road "toy" jobs.

Which makes it a reasonable tool for the actual, average job.

KFG

Re: Exchange support in Mozilla by bunratty · 2006-09-20 06:36 · Score: 2, Informative

On the other hand, if you want Exchange support in Mozilla, vote for bug 128284.

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What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.

Oh NO! by c6gunner · 2006-09-20 06:40 · Score: 2, Funny

They CAN'T bundle firefox with openoffice! The grammar and spelling nazis will die of loneliness!

Speaking as a power editor: OO SUCKS! by Tsu+Dho+Nimh · 2006-09-20 06:45 · Score: 2, Insightful

For the people whose text I edit, OO may be adequate. But it's not yet, and maybe never will be, a tool for serious editing. Speaking as a professional writer and editor who has used both the MSWord and the OO outline views, MSWord's outline is orders of magnitude better. I see a measurable difference in productivity when I have to do substantive editing on a document in OO, not just the spelling checks and wording tweaks that some people call editing.

MSWord lets me reveal levels, open and close paragraphs or entire sections full of paragraphs, drag and drop sections, promote and demote sections, and edit text all in the same window. That violates the principle of "don't make the user switch focus when they are in the groove" concept of GUIs. It is the main reason I'm still using Win2000 and MSOffice, and why I am reluctant to recommend OO to anyone who will need to do substantive editing. It's awkward as hell.

The enhancement request for a better outline view - specifically a request to make it work just like MSWord's outline view, has been in the request queue for years and has a lot of comments explaining exactly why it is a good enhancement. Don't tell me, "It's open source, go ahead and do it". If I could have fixed it, I would have fixed it you gits. But, it's easier for me to stay with MSWord than learn to program ... for which the folks in Redmond are undoubtedly grateful.

Similarly, a request for the ability to do overbars on text as easily as underlining has been in the queue for several years, requested by people who write the datasheets for the chips in computers the OO programmers work on. Forget the equation editor, its contents can't be searched or replaced like text.

Why doesn't the OO team (or almost any other FOSS project team take other professionals seriously when they tell you what features they need the mnost? Yes, MSFT is also of the "we'll tell you what you need", but at least they gave me a decent outlining tool ... it's one of the things they got right early on.

recipe for disaster by hswerdfe · 2006-09-20 07:22 · Score: 2, Insightful

recipe for disaster:

Take Massive One Highly Bloated And Slow Open Source Application
Mix well with Second Highly Bloated Open Source Application.

Stir and run.....then wait.....

seriously OOo is way slow an bloated.
Useful yes, but SLOW!

This Is not a good idea, I generally don't like half ass attempts at "Integrating" programs.

either build the Program from the ground up as an API and integrate them fully.
or don't do it at all.

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--meh--

Being ignored by Tsu+Dho+Nimh · 2006-09-20 07:28 · Score: 2, Interesting

You don't have to be a programmer to file a bug report. If you want to complain about the usability of OO (or anything open source), then complain to the people who can actually fix the problems.

I have. I have been ignored. And so have the other non-programmer professionals who have had the same requests for improvement.

Re:Still have a mark... by melandy · 2006-09-20 07:50 · Score: 2, Interesting

Formating for printing is a completely seperate thought and physical process and should be treated seperately with tools specialized for the job.

You're preachin' to the choir here. A while back my parents wrote a novel, and went to one of those self-publishers. The publisher required that work be submitted in MS Word format. Why, I don't know, but those were the rules.

They also required that you use the margin and indentation controls within Word to control formatting. Sounds like a reasonable rule (to me).

Unfortunately, mom and dad quickly forgot that rule, and thought that as long as it "looked right" on the screen, then it must be OK. They had some paragraphs that used the margin controls, some that used tabs, and some that even used *cringe* a bunch of spaces to control indentation.

Same thing for page breaks. Sometimes they used page breaks, sometimes a bunch of CRLFs!

AAAAAARRRRGGGGHHH!!1!11!11one

Bet you'll never guess who got the happy chore of helping them fix it.

They are talking about writing a sequel. I told them that unless they write it in notepad, I'm not helping.

-melandy

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