OpenOffice.org to Get Firefox Extensions and More

I_am_Rambi writes "OpenOffice.org is set to get new features including Firefox-like extensions. From the article: 'Second, and I think that although we have no clear road map for this yet (besides, our version naming scheme is going to change once again ), OpenOffice.org and StarOffice shall include the Mozilla Foundation's Thunderbird and Sunbird (calendaring application) in the future. Besides the inclusion of those two softs inside the office suite, connectors to Sun Calendar Server and Microsoft Exchange will also be developed accordingly.'"

Comments

Questions on Thunderbird/Sunbird Inclusion

[Noksagt]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you want to see Exchange support in Outlook"

I want it removed, thanks very much.

Extension I'd like to see

[Hahnsoo]

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

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

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

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

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.

Yeah, but what I want to know

[overshoot]

... 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.

Re:Yeah, but what I want to know

[TheRaven64]

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.

Why not Evolution

[overshoot]

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.

Re:What Open Office Needs...

[Ant P.]

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

Open-source feature bloat?

[Alan426]

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.

Professional writers

[overshoot]

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.

Re:Professional writers

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

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.

Resistance is futile.

[Kadin2048]

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.

Re:Oh come on...

[ElleyKitten]

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.