Google "Office" Released

pumpknhd writes "Looks like Google has finally integrated Writely and spreadsheets into Google "Docs & Spreadsheets". Writely.com now redirects to this new location. The design has also changed to match the look of other Google services." The more "applications" I try forcing into a tabbed web MDI model under a Mac, the more clumsy it gets. They aren't in my Dock, they can't be apple-tabbed through. Issues like this really frustrate me as I find myself wanting to use more web2.0 ajaxy fancy pants programs.

Comments

Goffice?

[P(0)(!P(k) P(k 1))]

The name, at least, is sufficiently benign; though I rooted for “Goffice.”

I'll stick with LaTeX, thanks; but Goffice's real-time collaboration-feature may make concurrent editing easier than under SVN.

Re:Goffice?

[Anonymous Coward]

LaTeX and Office (any office; google, open, microsoft...) are for completely different things. LaTeX is an unnecessary pain in the ass for non-mathematical writing where a WYSIWYG editor will suffice, and such editors are useless for mathematics.

I do my math homework in LaTeX, and my english homework in whatever office program is installed on the computer I'm using. I'd never think to use either one for the other purpose.

Re:Goffice?

[Rob T Firefly]

As possible names go, I think "Goofice" would be more gallant.

Re:Goffice?

[hcob$]

As possible names go, I think "Goofice" would be more gallant.

You should have heard the Bill Clinton version's name: G-orifice.

Re:Goffice?

[P(0)(!P(k) P(k 1))]

I'd never think to use either one for the other purpose.

But you may not be doing serious work, then.

Let's say you have a five-hundred-fold bibliography: how are you going to port it between publishable papers if not in BibTeX?

Re:Goffice?

[cyclop]

LaTeX is an unnecessary pain in the ass for non-mathematical writing where a WYSIWYG editor will suffice

Biting the flamebait here... you are (bzzt!) wrong. I wrote my graduation molecular biology thesis (almost no math involved) in LaTeX. I learned LaTeX for that purpose, and looking at my collegues struggling with word processors compared with the damn ease and elegance of LaTeX, I'd never turn back.

I wish my boss let me write research papers with LaTeX too *sigh*.

Re:Goffice?

[morgan_greywolf]

Let's say you have a five-hundred-fold bibliography: how are you going to port it between publishable papers if not in BibTeX

OpenOffice.org has features for keeping your bibliography in a database. Much work is being done in this area to improve functionality and useability, including importing existing BibTeX data.

Re:Goffice?

[sootman]

In case the clever mods aren't out in force today, I just wanted to let you know that at least one person got your Highlights reference. :-)

Re:Goffice?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think your parent poster should apologize to you for not considering your wants and needs when he posted.

Re:Goffice?

[kurtis25]

Goffice is taken... I'm not sure Google wants another naming rights smack down like gmail got. I have always suspected that goffice chose that name to try to get Google to buy them out or to be able to sue Google in the future. I like and think g-docs work well. It begins to brand the type of document it is. G-docs will eventually be the Google format you will pass g-docs between Google programs effortlessly anywhere Google is g-docs can be opened and shared without emailing, exporting or importing. . It will eventual become a file extension .gdc a type of XML if you will like kzm or klm whatever Google Earth uses.

Re:Goffice?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh. I'm a grad student in an office of 7 and half the discussion in here is either spelling/grammar/punctuation/phrasing stuff or software related - "is there a better way to do gif->eps than via gimp?" etc, etc. LaTeX certainly comes up a lot, and ooffice/powerpoint occasionally for slideshows.

Sure, it doesn't stop you researching but perhaps 20% of your time is spent doing write-up and presentation work, and it's something we're not specialized at so it does cause probably more than 20% of the worry.

Re:Goffice?

[Vexorian]

LaTeX's objective is not to be WYSIWYG, and it is considered a feature that the user does not have to care about the layout, let me say that LaTeX seems to be better at generating layout for my documents than I am.

Re:Goffice?

[Jahz]

Lets just stop this argument now.

Office applications are designed for... well... the office. You write a report using a canned coporate template that requires no extra effort. You can share it with others and they can change it without any special effort.

(La)TeX is a typesetting program! Its the best at mathematical composition (or pretty much anything with complex mathematical expressions in it) as well as for typesetting publications. Very complex templates can be applied with little effort. TeX handles all the gorey layout details.

Even though they can be used for the same thing, these two applications are for very different things. Using an office app to layout a 1200 page textbook is insane. You can do it, but it would be much more time consuming than laying out a textbook in TeX. On the other hand, TeX would feel cumbersome if all you are doing is writing an office memo.

Re:Goffice?

[DragonWriter]

You write a report using a canned coporate template that requires no extra effort. You can share it with others and they can change it without any special effort.
 

That's a nice theory, though I've never seen it work well. I've never been in an office, large or small, where MS Office templates were designed well, or consistently used. All too often, the "templates" are built by people who treat them like a prototype of a regular document, and use the easiest way to acheive visual appearances in a document, rather than defining styles, and even when styles are designed, lots of people don't use them and instead use direct format changes to acheive the appearance they want.

Word makes structural styling possible, but its usually easier (in the short-term: to get the right look in your WYSIWYG view) to do the formatting directly (though its harder to maintain, and easier to get lots of small inconsistencies that aren't apparent till you print the whole document and look at it), and most users seem to have learned the direct formatting more than the use of styles and structure.

As a result, maintenance of large Word documents that have had lots of hands on them over a decade (or more) is generally a nightmare of epic proportions.

That's one advantage of LaTeX even in the "standard template with no effort" role: if someone supplies a LaTeX document class to use, the easiest way to get results is usually going to be use structure and work with the class, rather than trying to fight it and apply appearance-based markup on your own.

On the other hand, TeX would feel cumbersome if all you are doing is writing an office memo.

I dunno, since I don't have it in the office, I've never used it for an office memo, but in most offices I've worked in, it'd be no more cumbersome to use TeX with a supplied document class than Word with a supplied template, and probably significantly less cumbersome.

Of course, to put together a TeX document class probably would take more skill than producing the Word memo templates used in most environments I've experienced.

Re:Goffice?

[danpsmith]

LaTeX is an unnecessary pain in the ass

Listen, we don't have to get into your personal difficulties. This isn't that kind of place.

Re:Goffice?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do my math homework in LaTeX, and my english homework in whatever office program is installed on the computer I'm using.

Hmm. I did my math homework with a pencil and my English homework with a pen.

Re:Goffice?

[Anonymous Coward]

Goofice and GooTube will now be built to talk to each other.. so now you can have a spreadsheet of music videos and custom home videos. then you can share them with up to 3 other people..err.. wait a minute..

Re:Goffice?

[Cutting_Crew]

you can put together GooOffice and GooTube in one application, where you can have a spreadsheet of GooTube music videos both from music stars/groups and home videos. then you can share them with up to 3 people and .. err.. wait a minute..

Re:Goffice?

[benplaut]

LaTeX is a plain text format, so it should be rather trivial to edit it within goffice, while you're at it ;)
As my contribution to what may be called a flamefest, i've been exclusively a LaTeX user for a few months. If a suitable style exists for any fiven task, then there's no reason not to use LaTeX! I've written 50 page research papers with it, along with half page essays -- all work well.
If you don't have an appropriate style, however unlikely, it's not always worth the effort to make one. Quite a PITA.

Re:Goffice?

[isorox]

my english homework in whatever office program is installed on the computer I'm using. I'd never think to use either one for the other purpose.

Do you kids never actually write anything anymore?

Besides, why do you need something as bloated as a word processor for simple text editing? What's wrong with vim (which has far superior navigation than any word processor I've used)?

Re:Goffice?

[HeroreV]

Don't we have enough books already?

Re:Goffice?

[bkr1_2k]

And here I was hoping first post would be Goofice. Oh well, can't win them all.

Re:Goffice?

[poliopteragriseoapte]

Goffice? Gaffice! A mix of "gaffe" and "gaffer tape" ;-)

Re:Goffice?

[onco_p53]

Are you suggesting you can use TeX documents in `Goffice', because that would solve a few problems of mine.

Re:Goffice?

[onco_p53]

Ditto on that, I did my Microbiology thesis in LaTeX, no maths in it. The best bit was at the end making the suggested changes of the examiners---it was trivial to move tables and sections around, and the numbering changed automatically. One of my friends is still going making those manual changes in Word.

Re:Goffice?

[bperkins]

My EE thesis was written in latex. Having the style file to conform to their guidelines made things quite a bit easier.

On the other hand, by the end I was not so impressed with Latex's syntax. The way whitespace gets handled can be really frustrating.

e.g. given a macro \degree:

\degree foo
and
{\degree}foo

are different. I tore quite a bit of hair trying to accomplish the results of the latter. On the other hand I don't think I'd be too happy with an XML-like language.

I also recall mucking with Bibtek's title capitalization rules quite a bit to get what I wanted.

To get the make dependencies correct for images and such, I created my own build system, which ended up being unspeakably hairy. I wouldn't suggest going that route.

Re:Goffice?

[shellbeach]

I do my math homework in LaTeX, and my english homework in whatever office program is installed on the computer I'm using. I'd never think to use either one for the other purpose.

The fact that you're doing "homework" says it all, really. Obviously using LaTeX to write an English essay is like using a rocket-launcher to kill a mosquito. But try writing an academic paper in any discipline, one that actually cites references, and you'll thank the fact that you used LaTeX + BibTeX.

LaTeX, incidentally, has an excellent GUI editor in the form of LyX, and BibTeX has perhaps the most useful GUI reference manager software ever written in the form of JabRef.

Re:Goffice?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you crazy? OO.o's bibliographical database is awful! I wouldn't even use it on my master course thesis. I've been following OO.o's development on that area and, considering its development's pace, I think that maybe in 2016 we'll have decent bibliographical support in OpenOffice.org.

Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[eldavojohn]

So while I was fooling around with this, I couldn't help but notice that it has the option of saving to a Portable Document Format (PDF) which, according to Wikipedia is:

a file format proprietary to Adobe Systems for representing two-dimensional documents in a device independent and resolution independent fixed-layout document format.

I bolded the word that has caused Adobe to sue Microsoft. My question is simple, doesn't Google face the same kind of lawsuit?

If I may comment more generally on this, releasing the Acrobat reader a long time ago for free use to anyone was ingenious of Adobe. Because the Writer/Creator for those files once cost tons of money (back then). Today, it's a bit cheaper but I still love and cherish the PDFCreator project under the GPL.

Really causes one to wonder how 'free' something is when it comes to standards. Now we'll just have to wait and see if Adobe begins to sue everyone who wants this functionality in their application. A lot of people I talk to regard PDF as an 'open' standard when the only part that's free is the ability to decode it--not encode it.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[mccalli]

A lot of people I talk to regard PDF as an 'open' standard when the only part that's free is the ability to decode it--not encode it.

Not so - witness OS X. It encodes PDFs with wild abandon without paying anything to Adobe. The PDF standard is published and can be implemented by anyone.

I've honestly no idea why Microsoft backed down against Adobe. Perhaps it's because of the monopoly status or something, but what they wanted to include in Office seemed perfectly reasonable to me. after all, I'm used to doing the same thing with NeoOffice/OpenOffice and also with any application that prints on a Mac. Linux uses could say the same thing, and I'm sure I remember a freebie printer driver on Windows that creates PDFs as well.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[raffe]

PDF is open and adobe threaten to sue because if you could read and write pdf in office who would buy stuff from adobe? It was about competion not about owning pdf.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[thebdj]

I bolded the word that has caused Adobe to sue Microsoft. My question is simple, doesn't Google face the same kind of lawsuit?

Adobe is suing because Microsoft is trying to create a new format that is embedded as part of the system. This was discussed many times in the previous discussion of the lawsuit. Both this app and OpenOffice have PDF exporting support. As you pointed out, there are PDF creators that are freely available.

Remember, Adobe opened the PDF standard so people could do this. (At least, I do believe that has how it went.) Like I said, it is not PDF creation that has Adobe pissed at Microsoft, it is their new, PDF-esque format.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[tygerstripes]

If you'd care to continue your research beyond the first paragraph:

Anyone may create applications that read and write PDF files without having to pay royalties to Adobe Systems; Adobe holds a number of patents relating to the PDF format and claims that it is an open standard, licensing them on a royalty-free basis for use in developing software that complies with its PDF specification.

I bolded the sentences that clear this matter up.

Adobe holds the patents, but they'll license without royalties as long as you conform to the standard... and as long as they can't find a good reason not to. Of course, the minute they try to, the world will move to a free open format pretty quickly.

I don't know the details of the MS case - did MS do it without permission, maybe?

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[kylner]

The opening of Adobe's own site discussing the PDF reference makes it clear that it is intended for individual's looking to develop applications that create as well as modify PDF documents.

"The PDF Reference provides a description of the Portable Document Format and is intended for application developers wishing to develop applications that create PDF files directly, as well as read or modify PDF document content."

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh, but NeXT was a license-holder for Display PostScript, which PDF is a descendent of.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[jrumney]

No Google does not face any lawsuit, since the patents surrounding the PDF format are licensed royalty free by Adobe to anyone implementing a PDF writer or reader. The potential lawsuit your link refers to concerned antitrust issues, not IP issues.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[qurk]

Well for one thing Microsoft may have had the capability, but do you really believe they didn't intend to bury it, like they did a million other "embrace and extinguish" examples? Sounds really fair to Adobe, including their standard along with their .doc format which most people would save to given a choice. To be fair I don't see why Adobe wouldn't have welcomed the opportunity to have their format in the #1 word processing program, but only thing I can think of is that perhaps Microsoft wasn't paying them royalties for use in their commercial program. Don't get me wrong I don't see Google not making money in some way by making this program, but then again I can't see you going to Wal-mart and buying it, or it being Google's #2 money maker. Who knows. There are a few other great programs in Linux that save to .pdf as well, you may as well ask why isn't Adobe suing them as well.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[ElleyKitten]

Of course, the minute they try to, the world will move to a free open format pretty quickly.

Bullshit. Many people already call PDF "Adobe format" because they don't know you can read it without Adobe. If PDF became completely proprietary tomorrow, few people would notice.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[GigsVT]

That article was stupid. MS was speculating that Adobe might file a suit against them for antitrust violations. It was just MS FUD.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Lehk228]

more importantly, it was about unfair competition because MS is a monopoly* in the office suite market

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[OlivierB]

The PDF export is disgusting, it's a hack that takes the PostScript image of your print and sticks it in a PDF.
It looks like ass and you cannot copy and paste from the PDF.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[0racle]

Adobe hasn't sued anyone over putting PDF writing in Office. MS said they thought Adobe might sue.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[gutnor]

You just highlighted a problem of the proprietary formats ... the owner can deside who can and cannot use its format.

In this case as it is for Apple, Adobe will probably make no problem. Only Microsoft is forbidden to include PDF in Office.
Even more funny, as MaxOS export everything in PDF, the new Vista has the same capacity, but instead of using PDF, they push their own format( proprietary, off course ). Microsoft would probably not be authorised by Adobe to use PDF, but anyway Adobe is still complaining when they use another format...

Well that should make me happy to see Microsoft hurt, but at the end of the day, who will be the next Adobe target ? Proprietary format are a plague, when they reach a status of monopol they should automatically fall in public domain, as trademark.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[RevMike]

I've honestly no idea why Microsoft backed down against Adobe. Perhaps it's because of the monopoly status or something....

Exactly. One of the restrictions placed on a monopoly is that they can't use their monopoly status in one area to help them create a monopoly in another area. By adding PDF capability to Office, they would be expanding their near-total monopoly in "Office" to create a second monopoly in "PDF authoring tools".

Apple, not having a monopoly - at least in the personal computer space - has more flexibility to add a feature like this.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Halo1]

I think a lot of people would notice, because quite a few middleware, reporting tools and websites use iText to generate PDF's. Some examples are Adobe's (formerly Macromedia's) Coldfusion, Google Calendar and JasperReports. End users may not know it, but it wouldn't surprise me if most PDF's out there are generated with tools not sold by Adobe (not only iText, but also e.g. pdflatex and things like that).

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[gkhan1]

Office 2007 exports to PDF just fine. Check your facts

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[kalidasa]

Every Apple user would notice immediately: Quartz, the 2D rendering engine for OS X, uses PDF: , and

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

I don't know the details of the MS case - did MS do it without permission, maybe?

I'm wondering if it's another case of "embrace and extend" so the final PDF wasn't compatible with anything Adobe made.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Morphine007]

bullshit, "ah doh bee for mat" has more syllables than "pee dee eff" so laziness wins....

Also, I work with some pretty goddamned computer-illiterate people and I have never, ever, heard anyone call a .pdf file an adobe file or an adobe format file...

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[gfxguy]

No, that's not how it works. Let's say GM is the dominant automobile seller (jokes aside, it's an analogy), and Ford invents airbags. That's like telling GM they can't install airbags in their cars.

No, the problem here, as I understand it, is MS was trying to, once again, extend a format they didn't own to lock people into using MS products.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Bad analogy continues. It was not merely "dominant seller" like GM. It is a de-facto monopoly. A monopoly convicted of using its monopoly power unfairly in competition against Netscape. The rules are different for monopolies. Otherwiser competition will be stifled.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[RAMMS EIN]

And now Google is using their monopoly in the web platform market to gain entry to the word processing, spread sheet, and PDF authoring markets, after they have conquered web search, Usenet, email, sattelite image viewing, online video, and whatever I forgot. All the while collecting more information about everyone and using it for advertising purposes.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please, mods. Please don't mod up someone so ignorant.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[RAMMS EIN]

``By adding PDF capability to Office, they would be expanding their near-total monopoly in "Office" to create a second monopoly in "PDF authoring tools"'' ...and offering their customers a service, which now they are denied from doing just because everybody uses their products. I still have difficulty with this "you can't do that, because you're a monopoly" thinking.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[dan.hunt]

... a freebie printer driver on Windows that creates PDFs as well. It works fantastic, the PDF Creator conveniently distributed on the fantastic OpenCD.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[ElleyKitten]

Everyone I work with calls PDF Adobe. I don't think most of them even know what PDF means, because Windows hides the extension, so they just see the little Adobe "A" icon. I have Foxit on my computer, and one of my coworkers was all confused when she saw my icons. "What's that?" "PDF" "What's that?". Then this weekend, at a committee meeting at my church, we voted to put our newsletters in "Adobe PDF" from now on. I didn't even try to explain that we don't have to tack "Adobe" to "PDF". I've meet very few people in real life who understand that .pdf is not to Adobe as .doc is to Microsoft, if they can even seperate in their heads a file format from the program they use to open it.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[TomHandy]

I thought I read a review of one of the more recent Office 2007 betas that said that MS had to remove the native PDF safe, but they were making a plug-in available to save in that format. Something along those lines.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure I remember a freebie printer driver on Windows that creates PDFs as well.

PDFCreator

Honestly better then the "distiller"...

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[DrEldarion]

IIRC, Google has about half of the search market. Not exactly a monopoly.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

So while I was fooling around with this, I couldn't help but notice that it has the option of saving to a Portable Document Format (PDF) which, according to Wikipedia is: a file format proprietary to Adobe Systems for representing two-dimensional documents in a device independent and resolution independent fixed-layout document format.

Umm, maybe you should look for more than one source. Wikipedia has a lot of slant on various topics, including this one. The truth is PDF is a trademarked term that refers to a standard format maintained for Adobe and which they provide both open licensing, documentation, and patent protection. In all practical terms, it is an open standard and certain versions of it are ISO certified standards. There are both open and closed source, free and commercial implementations of it and none have ever had any legal problems.

I bolded the word that has caused Adobe to sue Microsoft. My question is simple, doesn't Google face the same kind of lawsuit?

Microsoft was not sued for implementing the open PDF standard. They were sued for anti-competative bundling of tools that just happen to use that format. Google could be in trouble for the same thing, if they acquired a monopoly in some market and tied the PDF generation tools to that monopolized product.

Really causes one to wonder how 'free' something is when it comes to standards.

Yeah this is a concern, if you only read marketing blurbs.

Now we'll just have to wait and see if Adobe begins to sue everyone who wants this functionality in their application.

No we don't. People have been doing just that for many years without issue.

A lot of people I talk to regard PDF as an 'open' standard when the only part that's free is the ability to decode it--not encode it.

Please stop repeating this nonsense. It is misinformation plain and simple as you'd know if you even read the Wikipedia page you link to. Anyone can code programs that read and write PDF, provided they call it PDF. What they can't do is take the code and make a new format based on PDF, but that does not follow the standard as they would no longer have patent protection from Adobe, much like every other open standard.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[tolan-b]

How are they using their monopoly to do that? People are using lots of their services because they like their other services, but I don't see how they're leveraging their monopoly in search to gain advantage elsewhere.

I dislike a number of things Google do but I really don't see your point.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[twistedsymphony]

I think the differences is that Google doesn't actually have a monopoly. Sure they use their large Size to move their new stuff but Google has a Yahoo, Google Videos had a You Tube, but even still There's Myspace which is still a viable competitor for flash player video delivery, etc.

In the areas where Google excels they find themselves only #1 by a small margin, but the breadth of their offerings makes them seem larger then they really are. Because they still have strong competitors it doesn't make them a monopoly so they can use their clout to push their products without the same problems MS has.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Anonymous Coward]

"the Writer/Creator for those files once cost tons of money (back then). Today, it's a bit cheaper"

Uh, no. Full blown Acrobat 4 (not just the reader) used to be $50 back in about 1999. It is many times that price today. It is also a much more powerful tool today.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[ozmanjusri]

I still have difficulty with this "you can't do that, because you're a monopoly" thinking.

You've got your facts wrong.

Adobe complained because Microsoft was simultaneously introducing a competitor to PDF called Metro, and adding PDF export to Office. Microsoft would then be in the position of owning the most popular creator of both formats.

Considering Microsoft's history of "Embrace, Extend and Extinguish", I'd say Adobe had a right to be worried.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Rude Turnip]

"PDF" has gotten so pervasive at my company thanks to our high-speed scanner-copiers, that it's used as a verb now...as in "hey, can you PDF it to me?" Because you can do that with the English language.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Fez]

I bolded the word that has caused Adobe to sue Microsoft [slashdot.org]. My question is simple, doesn't Google face the same kind of lawsuit?

Microsoft probably backed down because they didn't want to encourage people to use a format they hadn't yet Embraced and Extended(TM). It's likely that they only gave it a try as more of a token gesture ("Look, we tried, mean Adobe threateded to sue! WE wanted to do it!")

Several years ago I was given survey by Microsoft that was was full of questions about PDF in general and whether or not I'd be willing to switch to another format if there was another choice, etc. I'm shocked they haven't tried this yet, but part of me thinks they haven't because they actually believe that it will make it so more people have Office, Windows, etc. If they have an openly exchangable format, it only hurts their market share, decreases shareholder value, yadda yadda yadda.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[MrNaz]

I've always wondered how/why the FOSS community was so willing to acquiesce to the use of .PDF when .PS is a perfectly good open substitute.

Anyone able to illuminate me?

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Xiph1980]

Every form of society (like capitalism or communism) have their softspots.
Capitalism works because companies have to compete against eachother. Outsmart eachother. This makes sure there's progress and innovation in the products, plus a fair price because if one company asks more than another, they won't sell due to all the customers running to their competitors.
Patents also have their place here. With hardware patents like the working of CD players or TV's... Other companies can always buy one of those applications from the marketleader and open it up, tear it apart, and check what makes it tick. They'll now be able to make a device based on the competitors that does about thesame, but better without using thesame technologies (patent infrigement).

So there are two issues MS is overstepping here, breaking the workings of capitalism.
Monopolies: If a company got a monopoly they can easily buy out any company that threatens them, thus reducing their need to innovate to nill, and making their customers dependent on whatever price the monopoly dares to ask (within reason, otherwise the customers just won't buy that certain technology at all anymore).
Patents: Software patents are a dangerous thing. Propriarity closed source software cannot be looked into like the hardware equivalent of the CD player or TV. Ofcourse you can limitly trace back what the device does by inserting a certain signal, and checking it's output (reverse engineering) but this isn't as easy as just opening it up. This makes it nigh impossible to really see the technology (read: programming) behind a certain product.

So, any competitor that dared to take on a monopoly like microsoft will have to deal with the extremely large chance of being bought out, and the large chance of being sued to death for patent infrigment. This makes anyone capable of taking on a monopoly like microsoft think twice about doing so, cos the chance of ruining their own life is quite large.
Thus, a monopoly inhibits progress in technology, and costs the consumers a lot of money.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[RAMMS EIN]

``

I still have difficulty with this "you can't do that, because you're a monopoly" thinking.

You've got your facts wrong.''

Well, that was what the grandparent said, right? That Microsoft isn't allowed to integrate PDF into their office suite, because they are a monopoly?

``Considering Microsoft's history of "Embrace, Extend and Extinguish", I'd say Adobe had a right to be worried.''

Of course. But then, Adobe hasn't developed a popular operating system. Microsoft can only push competitors out of the market because Microsoft offers more. The market is rewarding Microsoft for giving customers what they want.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[spacefight]

True, they only have a monopoly when a court came to that same conclusion. So did it as we all know with MS.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Glonk]

This is not true, either. Vista still ships with MS' PDF-esque format, just not PDF.

Adobe was concerned built-in PDF-authoring in Vista would kill sales of Acrobat Pro, so they threatened to sue MS for "abusing" its monopoly status.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[kthejoker]

And just so we're clear, the issue is not with Microsoft providing a PDF creator / editor tool, it's with them bundling it with Office.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[RAMMS EIN]

``a monopoly inhibits progress in technology, and costs the consumers a lot of money.''

Yes. And then, to address this problem, we forbid them from making a better product (progress in technology), so that consumers are forced to buy a product from a competitor (costs the consumers a lot of money). Doesn't sound like a solution to me.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Becasue PDF is a subset of PS designed around document presentation. As such it is pretty functional while remaining reasonably lightweight. Also most free/OSS distributiuons support both. Closed software is likely to only support PDF and that is usaually through a separate download from Adobe.

If you have a PS printer "cat foo.pdf>/dev/$printer" and see what comes out.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Qzukk]

Microsoft can only push competitors out of the market because Microsoft offers more. The market is rewarding Microsoft for giving customers what they want.

And for the customers that don't want what they're giving, well, I guess they're just fucked.

Raw capitalism has the same problem raw democracy has. The losing 49% can just go to hell.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[asuffield]

I've honestly no idea why Microsoft backed down against Adobe.

Personally, I figure that the most likely answer is that they did a deal behind closed doors. The whole "Adobe won't let us" thing would then have been a cover they agreed on to keep the deal quiet. Microsoft agrees not to reduce the market for Acrobat by implementing PDF features (so that clueless PHBs will continue to buy Acrobat just to create PDFs), and Adobe gives them some unknown thing that they wanted.

While this is pure speculation, it seems to me to be the most likely answer - this sort of thing is normal in big business (especially the "agreeing on a public lie to hide what's really going on" part). We usually find out about them anyway, but not until several years after the fact when nobody cares any more.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Anonymous Coward]

You might need to re-read the GP post. It says, what you are saying, granted with a few more words.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except they're not the same thing. Related, but not directly descended. One is a programming language, the other a file format. Go read down at the bottom.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[RAMMS EIN]

``Raw capitalism has the same problem raw democracy has. The losing 49% can just go to hell.''

Exactly! Unless it's US elections; then it's the losing 51%.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

No, that's not how it works.

Actually, it is pretty close.

Let's say GM is the dominant automobile seller (jokes aside, it's an analogy), and Ford invents airbags.

Why does it happen that every time a discussion about a monopoly comes up, someone immediately proposes an analogy that has no monopolies in it? Use a monopoly in all analogies about monopolies. Also, if someone invents something new, there won't be an existing market for it, so bundling is perfectly legal.

Okay, so here's a more apt analogy. The power company has a monopoly on power distribution, like MS does on office suites. You can still buy a generator, or use solar panels, but those are not competing in the same market and are not really comparable solutions. So then, the electric company decides they want to move into the related light bulb business. They start bundling light bulbs with your electrical service. You get two regular light bulbs and two special MS patented light bulbs every 3 months, whether you want them or not. The cost of your electricity goes up to cover it, but you have to have electricity, so there is not a lot you can do.

In this situation, Adobe is the existing light bulb company being driven out of business. It does not matter if they can make bulbs more cheaply, or even that are better than the ones the electric company gives you. Everyone already has bulbs so no one buys from them. And the light bulb industry goes to hell. Their is no motivation to make better bulbs or cheaper bulbs. In fact, the electric company is motivated to make bulbs that use more electricity and they can get away with it. Consumer are getting products that are not only inferior, but that are intentionally designed to hinder the consumer. The innovation and efficiency that makes capitalism so successful has been bypassed.

The lock in is annoying, but not the primary problem. Bundling was the problem, as I understand it.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[hahiss]

Apparently you didn't even bother to read the very article you linked to. Here are the two opening paragraphs:

Portable Document Format (PDF) is an open file format created and controlled by Adobe Systems, for representing two-dimensional documents in a device independent and resolution independent fixed-layout document format. Each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a 2D document (and, with the advent of Acrobat 3D, embedded 3D documents) that includes the text, fonts, images, and 2D vector graphics that compose the document. PDF files do not encode information that is specific to the application software, hardware, or operating system used to create or view the document. This feature ensures that a valid PDF will render exactly the same regardless of its origin or destination (but depending on font availability).

Anyone may create applications that read and write PDF files without having to pay royalties to Adobe Systems; Adobe holds a number of patents relating to the PDF format and claims that it is an open standard, licensing them on a royalty-free basis for use in developing software that complies with its PDF specification.[1]

Since it is an open format that anyone complying with the specification can use for free, there are many different free software implementations to create and read PDFs; in particular, PDFLaTeX and XPDF come to mind.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[hawg2k]

That's just silly. Of course Apple pays Adobe for the ability to integrate PDF functionality into OS X.

That functionality isn't Apple's writing code to try and meet a PDF specification, it's adobe's code. Adobe's not just going to hand that out.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Dun Malg]

Many people already call PDF "Adobe format" because they don't know you can read it without Adobe.

No they call it that because they have a remarkable inability to distinguish the the company name (Adobe) from the product (Reader, formerly Acrobat), and Adobe's decision to call it "Adobe Reader" only made that worse. I can't tell you how many calls I've gotten from office drones complaining about "Adobe not working". Adobe what? Photoshop? Indesign? Illustrator? Reader? "No, just Adobe. You know, for reading PDF files". People are idiots and Adobe's stupid naming choices haven't helped them any.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Adobe holds the patents, but they'll license without royalties as long as you conform to the standard... and as long as they can't find a good reason not to. Of course, the minute they try to, the world will move to a free open format pretty quickly.

Umm, they've already licensed the format including patent protection. Nothing can stop companies from implementing the current standard well into the future, whatever Adobe does, since they can't rescind the license without some legal reason. If Adobe were to not freely license the next version of PDF, well no one else would move to it and people would still write applications that use the old versions.

I don't know the details of the MS case - did MS do it without permission, maybe?

MS's actions had nothing to do with licensing PDF. It is a red herring. Adobe would have done the exact same thing if MS tried to bundle a photoshop competitor read and wrote to open formats. MS can do anything anyone else can with PDF, so long as they are not violating some other law. Think of it this way. Anyone can read and write PDF, just as anyone can chop things up with a meat cleaver. That does not mean you can get away with murder using the defense that you were just chopping things, like everyone else. It in no way means that it is illegal to chop things with cleavers.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Xiph1980]

you don't forbid them to make a better product, you forbid them to enlarge their monopoly.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Catbeller]

"And now Google is using their monopoly in the web platform"

Not a monopoly. A court has to render a finding first. And you have to be pretty damned abusive as well, for the Justice Department to take you to court to determine a monopoly status exists.

Microsoft is alone in their monopoly status. They earned the right to be restricted as they are by acting like prime a-holes for over twenty years.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Eivind Eklund]

Google is using their brand strength, not their search dominance per se. I don't think brand strength legally can count as a monopoly, though maybe some lawyers can comment.

Eivind.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[gfxguy]

Actually, after reading an article on the lawsuit, it really seems like Adobe is the bad boy in this case. I mean, technically speaking, it IS adobe's and they can license it, for free or not, to whomever they please.

Their first request (not bundling it with Office 2007, instead requiring a separate step to install it) was met.

But then Adobe demanded MS charge for it, and MS said no and removed the functionality altogether.

Doesn't sound like MS was doing something wrong, to me.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

You just highlighted a problem of the proprietary formats ... the owner can deside who can and cannot use its format.

PDF is an open standard anyone can implement, so long as doing so does not break some other law.

In this case as it is for Apple, Adobe will probably make no problem. Only Microsoft is forbidden to include PDF in Office.

Actually, Apple is forbidden from bundling it with anything they have monopoly on as well (iPod being the only real candidate). If Adobe decided they don't want Apple or me or most anyone else building in PDF generation tools in out products, they could do nothing about it. The complaints Adobe brought concern both PDF generation and XPS generation (an MS proprietary format). The format, however, has nothing to do with the complaint.

Microsoft would probably not be authorised by Adobe to use PDF, but anyway Adobe is still complaining when they use another format...

Okay apply some logic here. Adobe complains when MS takes an illegal action using PDF and they also complain when MS takes the same illegal action using XPS. Maybe you might infer from this that it is the action, not the format that is the issue?

If I make a gun using no patented technology and shoot the CEO of Colt with it, or if I license the rights to build a rifle using Colt's patents and shoot the CEO of Colt with it, I'm still going to be in trouble for murder. Half the people here, however, are focusing on the fact that I licensed the patent from Colt, and saying other people should avoid licensing patents from Colt too, since they might go to jail for murder. Crazy.

Well that should make me happy to see Microsoft hurt, but at the end of the day, who will be the next Adobe target?

Just as the CEO of Colt would probably bring charges against the next person to shoot him, Adobe will probably lodge antitrust complaints against the next monopolist that tries to bundle a product with their monopolized product to illegally take over one of Adobe's markets.

Proprietary format are a plague, when they reach a status of monopol they should automatically fall in public domain, as trademark.

Wow, I'm not even going to start correcting this mess.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Their first request (not bundling it with Office 2007, instead requiring a separate step to install it) was met.

This is an open and shut case bundling and MS knows they would lose in a minute if they tried this.

But then Adobe demanded MS charge for it, and MS said no and removed the functionality altogether.

From what I read Adobe demanded it be a separate download from Office, and MS complied, but they are still bundling XPS with Vista which will almost certainly result in them going to court.

Doesn't sound like MS was doing something wrong, to me.

Which is a better format PDF or XPS? Which is more accepted? Which is openly licensed so anyone can read and write to it? Which is documented?

Keeping that in mind, because XPS is going to be bundled in Windows, do you think it will take over the market in the next 5 years, even if it is never as good as PDF? I think it will unless the courts step in and make sure they both have to compete on level ground, without leveraging either Windows or MS Office to make XPS the winner. In which case, it is hard to tell which will win, but they will both have to improve and compete for our dollars and in the end, we the consumers will win and that is what the courts are supposed to be insuring.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[glockNine]

Uh, analogies are supposed to simplify what you are talking about. You, as inevitably happens after the 3rd or 4th analogy revision in a slashdot discussion, have failed miserably.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Uh, analogies are supposed to simplify what you are talking about. You, as inevitably happens after the 3rd or 4th analogy revision in a slashdot discussion, have failed miserably.

Analogies are supposed to provide a clear parallel. It is nice if they provide simplicity, so long as they remain analogous. The previous analogy was qualitatively different and thus not apt. If you have a problem with my analogy, do point out how it is not the same, in principal.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[gfxguy]

But Adobe has no grounds to sue MS because MS is using a competing format - the Word format and Excel format were both MS, too.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Vista still ships with MS' PDF-esque format, just not PDF.

Yes, and Adobe is still trying to get the courts to do something about it.

Adobe was concerned built-in PDF-authoring in Vista would kill sales of Acrobat Pro, so they threatened to sue MS for "abusing" its monopoly status.

Adobe complained that both the PDF authoring tools and the XPS authoring tools would kill sales of Acrobat Pro despite not being the better product.

That is the whole point of antirust law, to ensure competition. If MS makes and sells better portable document tools and format, or even PDF generation tools great, there is nothing Adobe can do about it. It is when MS makes an inferior product, but takes over the market anyway by using their Windows or Office domination to do so that Adobe complains. And they should complain and so should we. Capitalism is great for the innovation and competition. This removes that from the market and results in a de-facto winner, despite no innovation and results in yet another market with MS dominating and basically no progress happening.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

But Adobe has no grounds to sue MS because MS is using a competing format - the Word format and Excel format were both MS, too.

Word and Excel are MS proprietary formats still. Adobe has grounds to sue because it is illegal to leverage a monopoly to take over another market. The market is portable document generation tools. The common formats in it are PDF and Postscript. Now MS can make tools that generate either of these or a new format that competes with them without breaking the law. What they can't do, is use Windows to make sure their product takes over. They have to compete on even ground with the others. If a consumer decides to get and use portable document tools to send a form somewhere they should look at the options, choose the best one for them, and use it. The problem is, if they already were forced to pay for one when they bought Windows, they will just use that one. Because Windows is a monopolized product, that is against the law. So Adobe is going to sue, unless the courts bring charges first as they are legally obligated to.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[DragonWriter]

I bolded the word that has caused Adobe to sue Microsoft [slashdot.org]. My question is simple, doesn't Google face the same kind of lawsuit?

First, I the Adobe (threatened) lawsuit was an antitrust suit. As such, it relied on Microsoft's bundling the feature with a monopoly project to leverage its monopoly against Adobe. Google's office suite is nowhere near a monopoly, and wouldn't be subject to suit on the same grounds.

Second, do we actually know whether Google has a licensing or other arrangement with Adobe?

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[DragonWriter]

And now Google is using their monopoly in the web platform market

To find a monopoly, its is not enough that a company is the leading supplier of a product or service, it needs to supply nearly all of that product or service actually consumed in the marketplace. Google isn't anywhere near a monopoly in the "web platform market".

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Pollardito]

i think he read it. the GP says that Adobe is suing Microsoft over XPS (i.e. their "PDF-esque format"). he responded by saying that Adobe is instead suing over PDF creation not XPS, and as a result Microsoft is only including XPS in their Vista release and not PDF (presumably pending the result of the litigation)

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[Morphine007]

/sigh ... uncle

I'm kinda stunned by your post.... I believe you completely and without reservation.... for some reason it still kinda stuns me though.

I guess I'll go listen to some winamp songs on one of those dell thingys

/cry

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[DragonWriter]

I still have difficulty with this "you can't do that, because you're a monopoly" thinking.

Maybe it would help your ability to get that thinking if you were to substitute "felon" every time you hear the word "monopoly". From US Code, Title 15, Section 2:

Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[DragonWriter]

But Adobe has no grounds to sue MS because MS is using a competing format - the Word format and Excel format were both MS, too.

An antitrust suit is not an IP suit; if they are accused of leveraging their monopoly in one market to attempt to monopolize another market, it makes no legal difference to those charges, or Adobe's ability to secure remedy for the harm it suffers or is threatened with through that action, whether they are using an Adobe-created format or a Microsoft-created one to do that.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[lahvak]

A lot of people I talk to regard PDF as an 'open' standard when the only part that's free is the ability to decode it--not encode it.

Not true. PDF is a true open standard, you are free to create software that both decode and encode PDF files. There are number of projects that create PDF files, for example pdftex, that has been around for a while.

There are couple of hooks Adobe has attached to PDF, though. For example, Adobe Reader is actually capable of modifying PDF files, adding comments and annotation, and even "drawing" on a pdf file. However, this feature is disabled by default, and is only enabled for files that has been created, encrypted and digitally signed by Acrobat Proffesional edition, which carries pretty hefty pricetag. What it means is this: I can create a pdf file with pdftex. Now I want to send it to several people to proofread. It would be great if they could add comments and annotations directly to the document, and send me the document back. They can do it using Acrobat, but some of them don't have Acrobat. Now the "funny" part: they could actually do it using Reader, too, Reader has the capability, but first I would have to load the file into Acrobat Professional edition and specifically enable commenting for that document. Because in order for this to work, the document has to be digitally signed by Acrobat Pro, there is simply no other way around it. That's why I consider Reader a crippleware.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Yes. And then, to address this problem, we forbid them from making a better product (progress in technology), so that consumers are forced to buy a product from a competitor (costs the consumers a lot of money). Doesn't sound like a solution to me.

MS is not forbidden from making a better product that compete with Adobe's. They're forbidden from making the purchase of Windows contingent on the purchase of their new competitor to Adobe, thus providing users with an incentive to use it whether or not it is better than Adobe's product.

In a free market users can buy either Adobe's product or MS's and on the strengths and prices of those products decide which they want. In a monopolized market, users need Windows and even if they also have to pay developers to create a portable document generation tool as well, they still have to pay for it. Thus, XPS wins in the market whether it is better or worse than PDF. What is MS's incentive then, to make XPS better than PDF through innovation?

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[bigpat]

I don't know the details of the MS case - did MS do it without permission, maybe?

I think it would be safer to assume based on past behavior that Microsoft called it pdf, but didn't follow the standard. Remember "embrace and extend"?

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[RAMMS EIN]

``MS is not forbidden from making a better product that compete with Adobe's. They're forbidden from making the purchase of Windows contingent on the purchase of their new competitor to Adobe, thus providing users with an incentive to use it whether or not it is better than Adobe's product.''

You missed my point. I'm not saying Microsoft's PDF authoring tool is a better product than Adobe's, I'm saying Windows-with-PDF is better than Windows-without-PDF.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[DragonWriter]

Microsoft was not sued for implementing the open PDF standard. They were sued for anti-competative bundling of tools that just happen to use that format.

Were they ever actually sued? I thought it was "Microsoft was in talks with Adobe, and, from the progress of those talks, expected that Adobe might at some point in the future file some antitrust suit against them either in the US or in the EU over bundling PDF functionality, so they decided to take it out before that could happen."

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

You missed my point. I'm not saying Microsoft's PDF authoring tool is a better product than Adobe's, I'm saying Windows-with-PDF is better than Windows-without-PDF.

At what cost? Is electrical service to your house better if it comes with a box of chocolates every month? Yes, sure it is. Does that mean any of us want to be forced to pay for a bundled electrical service plus chocolate utility, rather than having the option of buying both separately? No.

Also, don't forget, this law binds MS, not Dell or HP or Gateway. The vast majority of users buy their computer with the OS pre-installed. Leave it to Dell and HP and Gateway to bundle a PDF or XPS generation tool without coercion and then users can pick the best computer based partly on what portable document creation tools it has.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Were they ever actually sued?

Technically, as far as we know they were threatened with legal action not sued. You are correct. Of course since anticompetitive actions are a criminal offense, the justice department and EU commission should be acting without any lawsuit anyway.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[gfxguy]

Which two markets are you talking about?

They are not providing PDF tools with the OS, they would have been providing them as a separate download for Office.

The problem is that Adobe wanted MS to charge AN EXTRA FEE FOR IT, MS didn't want to, so MS said "Ok, we won't include it."

I really fail to see the problem here.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[gfxguy]

But they weren't getting free PDF creation tools with Windows, they would get them as a separate download, a plugin basically, for Office. If it came with WordPad, I might agree with you.

Moreover, Adobe wasn't asking for any money, they were merely asking that MS charge EXTRA for PDF functionality.

Now, I can see both sides of this story, but everyone is making MS out to be the bad guys for wanting to include PDF functionality for free (when everyone else is offering it for free - if you buy a word processor from someone else that includes PDF functionality, you're not paying licensing fees to Adobe).

Everyone is making a big deal about this - I really dislike MS, too, but when giving the option to charge or not include the technology, they decided not to include it. Case closed. Adobe just had sour grapes - their gripe was not that MS would take over PDF content creation, it was with MS's own competing format.

Think about that for a moment... in years past, we complained that Word didn't write to non-proprietary formats, and because MS had a monopoly, it was impossible to compete. But now that Word includes open and competing formats, we going to complain that MS might take over the market for that format? If they tried to extend it, I can see the problem - but that's not what happened.

It's just sour grapes.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[HeroreV]

Not a monopoly. A court has to render a finding first.

I looked up the definition of "monopoly" and didn't see anything about courts rendering findings. Perhaps your dictionary is broken?

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[gkhan1]

I'm not running windows at the moment, but I remember downloading Office 2007 a couple of weeks ago on another computer, and it sure as hell could export pdf. Maybe it's changed, I don't know, but it used to be able to do it anyway.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

But they weren't getting free PDF creation tools with Windows, they would get them as a separate download, a plugin basically, for Office.

Initially MS said they were bundling the PDF creation tools with office, but then backed down from that, since it was so obviously illegal. Now they are distributing them as a plug-in. They are, however, still distributing XPS creation tools built into Vista. XPS creation tools are in the same market, competing with PDF creation tools. That is what Adobe is almost certain to address before the courts.

oreover, Adobe wasn't asking for any money, they were merely asking that MS charge EXTRA for PDF functionality.

So here's the thing. PDF and XPS creation tools cost money to develop and maintain. That money comes from somewhere. Either it is included in the cost of Windows (which means even those who want to run Windows + Adobe Acrobat Pro have to pay MS for their tools anyway) or the money comes from directly selling those tools. In the former case, customers are screwed in that they have to pay for MS's solution regardless of which one they want. That means if they go with Adobe's solution they pay twice. This is arguably illegal under current antitrust laws.

Now, I can see both sides of this story, but everyone is making MS out to be the bad guys for wanting to include PDF functionality for free ...

TANSTAAFL. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. You're going to pat one way or another, it is just whether you are forced to pay for PDF and XPS creation tools when you buy Windows, or if they are separate products that you can buy separately.

Adobe just had sour grapes - their gripe was not that MS would take over PDF content creation, it was with MS's own competing format.

Here's what you're missing. Unless the courts intervene, MS will take over the portable document tool market with their tools and the XPS format, whether or not their product is as good as Adobe's. Capitalism works because everyone acts in their own best interests and chooses the best product. Monopolies combined with bundling break capitalism because they allow the market to be manipulated such that people can act in their own best interests and the less innovative, less functional, more expensive product takes over the market. That hurts the industry and consumers, which is why it is illegal.

The choice is not between you getting "free" PDF creation tools or not. That is just marketing. The choice is between you paying for the best portable document creation tools, or you paying more for MS's tools, regardless of the cost and quality.

Think about that for a moment... in years past, we complained that Word didn't write to non-proprietary formats, and because MS had a monopoly, it was impossible to compete. But now that Word includes open and competing formats, we going to complain that MS might take over the market for that format?

Word saves to closed proprietary formats. They propose tools that export, but do not import PDF and which you have to pay for whether you want them or not.

It's just sour grapes.

Okay if the courts don't step in, will XPS dominate the market in 5 years, just because it is bundled with Windows? Yes, it almost certainly will. Does it matter if it is not as good as PDF? Nope, it will win anyway, because it is bundled. That is illegal.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[gerrysteele]

My favourite analogy is about the squirrel who spent far too much time writing 500 word posts on /. It came winter and he forgot to store up foodstuffs. So preoccupied with posting and such. Well this Squirrel came to a very sticky end when he had to go and scrounge for food and could only find discarded scraps of fatty human food. This gave him heart disease; eventually he had a heart attack one day as he sat in a tree. He then fell out of that tree and got crushed by a speeding truck. A sorry end to our slashdotting furry friend.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[gfxguy]

First of all, you keep using "Windows" as if it's interchangeable with "Office", it's NOT.

Second, how does this make sense: we're going to take over the portable document tool market by offering interoperability with the existing format.

So if you're going to argue that MS has a desktop document creation monopoly, wouldn't you rather have users be able to write PDFs so that those of us NOT sucked in the MS void can share documents with those that are?

So you're happy about this outcome? 90% of the market now will not have PDF creation functionality. Now websites will start to fill up with XPS documents instead of PDF. Does that really make you happy?

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

First of all, you keep using "Windows" as if it's interchangeable with "Office", it's NOT.

No, but it does not matter if MS is bundling with Office or Windows, since Office is illegally tied to Windows, and there is good case for Office constituting a monopoly influence by itself.

Second, how does this make sense: we're going to take over the portable document tool market by offering interoperability with the existing format.

It is called, "Embrace."

So if you're going to argue that MS has a desktop document creation monopoly, wouldn't you rather have users be able to write PDFs so that those of us NOT sucked in the MS void can share documents with those that are?

I never argued that they have a "desktop document creation monopoly." I stated that they have a desktop OS monopoly that they are abusing. I implied they might have monopoly influence in the word-processor market, and MS's lawyers certainly seem to think they do from their behaviors.

I'd rather someone besides MS was given the decision as to which document creation tools to include with computers.

So you're happy about this outcome?

Hell no, MS is breaking the law and the courts have not yet acted to stop them.

90% of the market now will not have PDF creation functionality.

Why not? Will Dell and Gateway and Lenovo and HP not bundle a PDF creation tool with the computers they sell?

Now websites will start to fill up with XPS documents instead of PDF. Does that really make you happy?

No, since it is the most blatantly illegal thing MS is doing (bundling Windows+XPS tools). Adobe will be making sure the courts act on this and I'll be happy when/if the courts issue an injunction to stop Vista from shipping until they unbundle it or otherwise provide for the same level of integration and functionality to any and all competitors.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[gfxguy]

No, you're really reaching - my legitimate copy of XP that came with my laptop did NOT include office; moreover, most desktops I see being sold DO NOT include office. Office may be very popular, but it is not illegally bundled to windows.

It is called, "Embrace."

And if they extended it, I'd agree with you 100%.

Once again, I cannot say it more clearly: there's nothing wrong with MS creating a competing "portable" format, and since Office is NOT bundled with Windows, users have as much choice as they want. Between work and home, because of dual booting, I have 6 computers, two with XP, four with Linux, and three with Windows 2000 - only ONE of them has office on it, and it didn't come that way.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[RAMMS EIN]

``At what cost? Is electrical service to your house better if it comes with a box of chocolates every month? Yes, sure it is. Does that mean any of us want to be forced to pay for a bundled electrical service plus chocolate utility, rather than having the option of buying both separately? No.''

That analogy doesn't work. First of all, people _do_ prefer to get everything and the kitchen sink bundled with Windows, rather than buying it separately. Secondly, Microsoft cannot indefinitely drive up the price of Windows to pay for useless gimmicks they include in it, because people will switch to different operating systems eventually.

As a third remark: the box of chocolates isn't more valuable if it's included with the electricity service, but an XPS/PDF tool is more valuable when it's included in Windows, because of network effects (the more people have it, the higher the value).

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

No, you're really reaching - my legitimate copy of XP that came with my laptop did NOT include office; moreover, most desktops I see being sold DO NOT include office. Office may be very popular, but it is not illegally bundled to windows.

I said it was illegally tied, not bundled. Bundling is only one form of tying. Another is using proprietary or secret protocols or formats to make user of one monopolized product gain benefits if using a second product. One example of this which MS has been convicted of are the AD, and exchange protocols that tie their desktop and server products. The tie I was referring to was the built in .doc reader that ships with Windows. Since .doc is an undocumented, proprietary format, only MS can implement it perfectly in theory. Using it as the default format for word and including a reader in Windows constitutes an illegal tie.

And if they extended it, I'd agree with you 100%.

They don't need to extend, in this case, merely cripple or replace with XPS once they get enough of a userbase.

Once again, I cannot say it more clearly: there's nothing wrong with MS creating a competing "portable" format, and since Office is NOT bundled with Windows...

No, there is nothing wrong with creating XPS tools as a competitor to Adobe Acrobat Pro and PDF, but it is illegal for them to bundle those XPS tools with their Windows OS, which they have announced is exactly what they are doing with Vista and which is why Adobe will be making sure they end up before the courts. This particular anticompetitive behavior has nothing to do with Office so whether or not you think it is a monopoly is irrelevant.

...users have as much choice as they want.

So users can choose not to pay for whatever portion of their cost to buy Windows Vista pays the salaries of the XPS developers? Glad to hear it.

...only ONE of them has office on it, and it didn't come that way.

Irrelevant to this issue as it is bundling XPS tools with Windows, not with Office.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

That analogy doesn't work.

Yes it does :)

First of all, people _do_ prefer to get everything and the kitchen sink bundled with Windows, rather than buying it separately.

I see, so you speak for all people now? Most people either prefer to get just the OS at the minimum price, or a complete computer system with the OS pre-installed. Enforcement of the law benefits both of those market segments, and might disappoint a small number of people who like to build their own systems, but also want to buy all their software as one package because they like everything MS makes over anything other people make and trust MS not to overcharge them.

Secondly, Microsoft cannot indefinitely drive up the price of Windows to pay for useless gimmicks they include in it, because people will switch to different operating systems eventually.

No they won't, or at least not until they are really, really bent over and taking it hard. That's the whole point of a monopoly. It allows you to introduce artificial barriers to entry. It costs a significant amount of money and effort to switch, including repurchasing all your software. MS can inflate the price of Windows and the other bundled software quit a bit before it that motivation overcomes all these barriers.

As a third remark: the box of chocolates isn't more valuable if it's included with the electricity service, but an XPS/PDF tool is more valuable when it's included in Windows, because of network effects (the more people have it, the higher the value).

What benefit is there from MS choosing what to bundle instead of the OEMs that justifies giving up innovation and competition in the market? Also, It creates one more proprietary lock-in to keep people from moving away from Windows when they illegally take over the next market by creating a new tool to bundle.

Monopolies should not be allowed to bundle because the results are disastrous for consumers and the industry. Look at the state of the art for the Web browser if you have any doubts. In five years 90% of the world will be using bug ridden, slow, poorly implemented XPS readers akin to IE if the laws are not enforced. That is why this action is illegal in almost every country around the world. Sorry, but if HP or Dell thinks their customers would like the Adobe tools bundled with their PC instead, MS should have absolutely no ability to force them to bundle their own product.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[mysticgoat]

To find a monopoly, its is not enough that a company is the leading supplier of a product or service, it needs to supply nearly all of that product or service...

And if I recall correctly, just being a monopoly is not an Evil Thing of itself. The legal problems arise only if a company has abused its monopolistic powers. For a long time, 3M had a monopoly in the stickypaper market with Post-It, but no one ever claimed that it was abusing its market dominance to stifle competition, etc.

So evidently a company can be big and also good. If it does no evil...

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[DragonWriter]

And if I recall correctly, just being a monopoly is not an Evil Thing of itself.

Actually, monopolizing, attempting to monopolize, or conspiring to monopolize any aspect of interstate commerce is a federal felony, for which corporations may be fined up to $10,000,000 and individuals punished with fines of up to $350,000 and imprisonment for up to 3 years: see 15 USC 2.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[RAMMS EIN]

``

First of all, people _do_ prefer to get everything and the kitchen sink bundled with Windows, rather than buying it separately.

I see, so you speak for all people now?''

I made no such claim.

``Most people either prefer to get just the OS at the minimum price, or a complete computer system with the OS pre-installed.''

So you speak for most people now? ;-) I accept your claim, though. But it's besides the point; I still stand by my claim that people (that is, _some_ people) prefer to get everything (OS, Office software, browser, ...) rolled into one package. This is true for all people for whom I know their preferences, except myself.

``Enforcement of the law benefits both of those market segments''

How does enforcement of the law (banning Microsoft from adding features) benefit those who want a computer with everything installed?

``

Secondly, Microsoft cannot indefinitely drive up the price of Windows to pay for useless gimmicks they include in it, because people will switch to different operating systems eventually.

No they won't, or at least not until they are really, really bent over and taking it hard. That's the whole point of a monopoly.''

That's why I disagree that Microsoft has a monopoly. There is competition. People have realistic options besides Microsoft's products. They aren't switching because they don't want to, not because they can't.

``It costs a significant amount of money and effort to switch, including repurchasing all your software. MS can inflate the price of Windows and the other bundled software quit a bit before it that motivation overcomes all these barriers.''

That just means that people think they are getting a better deal by staying with Windows. I still don't see why this justifies prohibiting Microsoft from adding features.

``

As a third remark: the box of chocolates isn't more valuable if it's included with the electricity service, but an XPS/PDF tool is more valuable when it's included in Windows, because of network effects (the more people have it, the higher the value).

What benefit is there from MS choosing what to bundle instead of the OEMs that justifies giving up innovation and competition in the market?''

Will having the OEMs choose actually have different results? Or will they still choose to create the same bundles, because of contractual obligations with MS, financial incentives from MS, customer demand, or whatever other reasons?

``Also, It creates one more proprietary lock-in to keep people from moving away from Windows when they illegally take over the next market by creating a new tool to bundle.''

You mean, adding a PDF/XPD authoring tool does? I agree, but I still don't think it should be forbidden for Microsoft to add features to their products. Perhaps we should rather take other measures. If, for example, we mandate the publication of file formats and protocols, we enable interoperability and reduce vendor lock-in, without preventing Microsoft from making more valuable products.

``Monopolies should not be allowed to bundle because the results are disastrous for consumers and the industry. Look at the state of the art for the Web browser if you have any doubts. In five years 90% of the world will be using bug ridden, slow, poorly implemented XPS readers akin to IE if the laws are not enforced.''

And if the world is stupid enough to repeat the same mistakes, everything from failing to consider alternatives to actually standardizing on proprietary technology and continuing to do so when this technology is found to be a security hazard.

``Sorry, but if HP or Dell thinks their customers would like the Adobe tools bundled with their PC instead, MS should have absolutely no ability to force them to bundle their own product.''

I agree with you there.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[GrahamCox]

If PDF became completely proprietary tomorrow, few people would notice

Mac users would, and they're not noted for keeping meekly quiet when they get steam-rollered. PDF is here to stay, whatever MS do.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[hendridm]

You can convert PDFs online too:
http://www.pdfonline.com/

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[mysticgoat]

Actually, monopolizing, attempting to monopolize, or conspiring to monopolize any aspect of interstate commerce is a federal felony

That is true, but this language is intended to prevent a company from deliberately raising artificial barriers to potential competitors. Care was taken in writing both the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act to assure that no businessman who "got the whole business because nobody could do it as well as he could" would be punished.

Wikipedia seems to have pretty good summaries of these: see Sherman Antitrust Act and Clayton Antitrust Act.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

How does enforcement of the law (banning Microsoft from adding features) benefit those who want a computer with everything installed?

Sigh, the law does not ban them from adding features, it bans them from bundling features that would kill an existing market. For users that want a computer with everything installed, if the law is not enforced they can choose a Dell or Gateway or Lenovo machine, but they will all come with MS's solution, regardless of whether or not it is a pile of dog crap. If the law is enforced, they can buy a Dell or Gateway or Lenovo machine and each will come with the solution that OEM thinks is best, and the market can decide which is right and reward them with more sales. It benefits users because they get choice and because due to the competition all tool makers will make better products.

That's why I disagree that Microsoft has a monopoly. There is competition. People have realistic options besides Microsoft's products.

You're fundamentally misunderstanding what a monopoly is. A monopoly is simply having enough influence in a market. The market is desktop operating systems. Who else sells into that market? When Dell decides what OS to include what realistic options do they have? Apple won't sell them OS X, so that is not an option. They can buy a Linux distro, but customers want something that will run their existing software and the Linux offerings have simply not caught on. Dell can buy Windows from MS or go out of business. That is what a monopoly is.

The fact that you can buy a Mac has nothing to do with it because MS does not sell computers, they sell one component of computers, the OS. That is the market you have to consider their influence in.

That just means that people think they are getting a better deal by staying with Windows. I still don't see why this justifies prohibiting Microsoft from adding features.

Okay, let me try to explain the basic concept of antitrust law. When consumers look at the available options and buy the inferior one, without making a mistake as far as their own personal interest is concerned capitalism fails. If two companies both put out competing products, but the one that worked smarter and harder and made the better product for less money goes out of business while the inferior one succeeds, capitalism has failed. Using a monopoly, you can create artificial "features" through bundling or tying that allow you to consistently make this happen. If you look at an economic model of unregulated monopolies, they constantly expand taking over more and more markets until you're left with only a few huge companies and almost all products are overpriced and substandard. You basically have extreme socialism at that point, but socialism without the stated goal of benefitting society. It does not work. That is why it is illegal almost everywhere.

If you still don't understand why MS is a monopoly either do a little reading on monopolies in an economics text or note that every court that has considered it has declared MS a monopoly.

Will having the OEMs choose actually have different results? Or will they still choose to create the same bundles, because of contractual obligations with MS, financial incentives from MS, customer demand, or whatever other reasons?

Such contractual obligations are likewise illegal under antitrust law as they are making purchase of Windows by OEMs contingent upon bundling another product. That does not mean the courts will be able to convict, but it does mean any of them has some leverage in negotiating with MS, when MS tries to coerce them. OEMs having a choice, means they have incentive to give customers what they want at the lowest price, so the market can act.

You mean, adding a PDF/XPD authoring tool does? I agree, but I still don't think it should be forbidden for Microsoft to add features to their products. Perhaps we should rather take other measures. If, for example, we mandate the publication of file formats and protocols,

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[DragonWriter]

That is true, but this language is intended to prevent a company from deliberately raising artificial barriers to potential competitors. Care was taken in writing both the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act to assure that no businessman who "got the whole business because nobody could do it as well as he could" would be punished.

Right: my point was that it wasn't completely true that it the only thing criminal about monopoly was leveraging an existing monopoly. I wasn't trying to say that merely having a monopoly is necessarily criminal.

Re:Neat Tool, What About Adobe?

[cordelia]

The jab at General Motors was unnecessary, and does nothing to prove your point, as they are not a monopoly.

GM *is* the largest automobile seller, both in North America and world wide! Currently GM sells 1 in every four vehicles sold in the United States -- Toyota sells 16%. While it is true that GM no longer has 60% of the market share (when there were concerns about a monopoly,) that is really an unfair comparison, as the market wasn't as diversified as it is today. And take a look at Japan's very closed domestic market and manipulation of the yen some time -- the Japenese government isn't exactly playing fair.

Open individual browser windows

[linuxgurugamer]

Well, instead of complaining about it, you have choices: 1. Instead of opening up additional tabs in a browser window, just open a new browser window for each app. 2. Use something else.

Re:Open individual browser windows

[ElleyKitten]

You can also ctrl+tab through the tabs, at least if you use firefox.

Re:Open individual browser windows

[Gr8Apes]

There's another option, besides the already mentioned Ctrl-Tab and Shift-Ctrl-Tab options in Firefox.

For Macs, if you have multiple windows for a single app, Cmd-` through the windows for a single app. (that's the reverse slanting apostrophe/tilde key just above the tab key)

Between those suggestions, all your keyboard tabbing needs should be covered. Mouse not required.

Re:Open individual browser windows

[Anonymous Coward]

my thoughts exactly. what a whiney little bitch.

Firefox tabs

[Anonymous Coward]

I've run into the same problem with multiple Web 2.0 apps open in the same browser window.

In Windows you can cycle through open Firefox tabs by hitting CTRL + TAB. Not perfect, but it's the best thing I've found so far.

Firefox extension, anyone?

Re:Firefox tabs

[grimwell]

CTRL + Page Up and CTRL + Page Down will move you left & right thru the tabs in Firefox; just like gnome terminal. The one snag with firefox is if there is a text entry box that grabs your cusor.

Re:Firefox tabs

[gEvil (beta)]

CTRL-Tab and CTRL-SHIFT-Tab do the same thing. Or you could use CTRL-[1-9] to switch directly to tabs 1 through 9.

Re:Firefox tabs

[Gr8Apes]

To remove the snags, check (Shift) Ctrl-Tab options.

Re:Firefox tabs

[Dan East]

In the Windows environment I prefer CTRL + TAB and CTRL + SHIFT + TAB, because those correlate with basically all other Document / View paradigm apps (all MS Office apps, Visual Studio, Crimson Editor, PSP and Photoshop, Firefox, SmartFTP, Dreamweaver, any MFC-based Doc / View app - you name it).

Also, using your method simply steps across the tabs linearly (which may be desirable in some cases), whereas CTRL + TAB honors the history in which you've accessed the tabs. That makes it great to switch back and forth between two specific documents that are not "side by side" in the tab order.

Dan East

For Taco

[NoTheory]

Can't you just apple ` through your browser windows? Or, use witch? That still doesn't get you to a particular tab in a tabbed browser, but at least will get you to the window you want. Maybe there's a quicksilver widget out there to bring focus to a particular tab in a browser (or if there isn't one, maybe someone will write one!)

Re:For Taco

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't you just apple ` through your browser windows? Or, use witch?

That would require him to be proactive. If he even just tried any of those ideas, he wouldn't get to be a whining cry-baby.

500k?

[jbreckman]

Why the 500k limit? I have 2.5gb in my gmail, but I can only upload a small word document.

Anyone know why this is there?

I would start recommending this to people if they could actually use it in the real world, but word documents get pretty big. It happens. They should be able to deal with it.

Re:500k?

[Bandman]

I would hazard that much beyond that and it sucks to load into memory, edit, swap, and so forth live via AJAX.

Re:500k?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the 500k limit? I have 2.5gb in my gmail, but I can only upload a small word document.

Come on now, 640K ought to be enough for anybody.

Re:500k?

[dodongo]

Gmail is all smoke and mirrors with their storage space anyway. You don't really "have" that much space, nor do they actually have that much space to give you. It's a great marketing trick -- but ten-to-the-negative-who-knows-what percent of their users actually come anywhere close to that cap.

I think others are right on WRT the amount of realtime serving issues associated with the AJAX-driven interface for the office utilities. Storage is cheap; the bandwidth, memory, etc., for running live programs is much more expensive.

Re:500k?

[jbreckman]

I know that. They're like banks - banks "have" your money, but don't have EVERYONE's money on hand at any time. If everyone tried to take what is "theirs" at once, the banks would collapse (great depression style-y).

Thats not to say that I don't "have" my money in a bank. If I go to the bank, I can get my money. Just like if someone sends me 200 ten MB emails, I can get them without a problem. Therefore, I "have" 2.5gb.

Re:500k?

[dodongo]

Next time just thank me for bullshitting an answer for you :)

Re:500k?

[SnprBoB86]

It's not just that most people aren't using that much space, it's that there is out right trickering taking place.

You know that "show quoted text" feature? Yea, well the quoted text is counted towards your "used memory" for every occurance of the text but is only stored once.

Problems with AJAX

[miyako]

While it's neat that this sort of thing can be done, there is just something about all of these AJAX applications that does not sit well with me. I think that part of it has to do with the issues that the submitter mentioned. That would actually be a fairly simple thing to fix though, I imagine it would be trivial to write a sort of ajax launcher that was basically a web browser with a slightly modified UI that added bookmark links to your dock/taskbar/etc.
I know a lot of my issues at one time were related to the whole "storing documents on someone else's server" thing, and I'm still not a fan of that idea, but even if I could just get the source code and run the apps over my own network or something, there is just something that doesn't sit well with me about it.
I think that a lot of what irritates me is that the sort of things that are being made are largely things that already exist. I have Abiword and OpenOffice and KOffice installed, and they are better. AJAX is a neat thing, but it seems like it might be better to focus on doing new things, or at least more web-specific things, instead of trying to shoehorn all of our desktop applications into the browser.

Re:Problems with AJAX

[nblender]

Of course it doesn't sit well with you, Mr. Computer Professional. But we're getting to the point where Grandma just needs a kernel with a browser in a ramdisk. She doesn't even really need a 'disk'. She doesn't need a grandchild sysadmin to de-worm her computer every 6 months. Everything she wants to do can practically be done online now.

Re:Problems with AJAX

[tygerstripes]

I appreciate what you're saying, but isn't "shoehorn all of our desktop applications into the browser" actually a new thing in itself? It offers portability, thin-clientiness and all sorts of other advantages that I'm sure Google et al will be happy to mention.

People like to innovate; it's what we do. Sometimes that means making something new entirely, sometimes it just means improving or adding functionality to something that already exists. That's not something worthy of negative criticism in itself.

Re:Problems with AJAX

[Smidge204]

I think that a lot of what irritates me is that the sort of things that are being made are largely things that already exist. I have Abiword and OpenOffice and KOffice installed, and they are better

Keyword: "installed"

No argument that there exists plenty of standalone, purpose-made applications that do a better job, but they need to be downloaded and installed.

If you happen to use a computer that isn't yours you can still access your documents in "native format" with a consistent interface as long as the computer has a javascript capable browser installed... and any computer with internet access is practically guaranteed to have a web browser installed. Consider things like editing your documents at a library if you're out of town, or any other public web access kiosk you might find. Borrow someone's laptop for a few minutes, etc.

Of course, if you don't encounter those situations you may as well use a dedicated application - it's all about the right tool to suit your particular needs.
=Smidge=

Re:Problems with AJAX

[Anonymous Coward]

G*d, how hard! You have to download and install them once (instead of quasi-downloading the code (unless cached) on every access via HTTP), and then they're a native part of your environment, survive browser crashes, can be manipulated with your window manager's features, can have independent menus, windows, or palettes anywhere on your screen(s), can have multiple windows open, and all that without any further network traffic.

Oh, and you don't need a complex browser that might or might not have problems dealing with all that complex cross-platform JavaScript.

Re:Problems with AJAX

[BenjyD]

You make a good point. But unless import/export is perfect, doesn't the disadvantage of using a limited web-based tool all the time to edit outweigh the advantage of occasionally being able to work on another computer?

Also, the internet connection is the single least reliable part of most people's computer setup.

Re:Problems with AJAX

[ArikTheRed]

You make a good point. But unless import/export is perfect, doesn't the disadvantage of using a limited web-based tool all the time to edit outweigh the advantage of occasionally being able to work on another computer?

Have you used the import/export unction on Writely? It's damn near perfect (exen my funky formatting looks good). I'm using it to collaborate writing a book with another guy - we are never in the same place at once. It has been invaluable.

Also, the internet connection is the single least reliable part of most people's computer setup.

Perhaps yours. But for those of use who travel around alot, using weird and strange computers on a daily basis, connection to the internet has actually become the most constant thing in out lives. Hence, the appeal of tools like del.icio.us.

Re:Problems with AJAX

[Anonymous Coward]

a) good luck downloading and installing anything on a properly locked down public terminal
b) If someone (friend/relative) wanted to use my computer to go online and check out something, that's fine with me (as long as they don't use IE). If they wanted to install an application, I'd tend to say no.

Re:Problems with AJAX

[LordKronos]

You forgot about the collaboration part. For most people, sharing a word document with others would consist of emailing the file back and forth, keeping track of who has the latest version, and making sure no 2 people try to edit it at the same time. Yeah, you could use FTP or something, but that doesn't solve all of the problems, and that's beyond what a LOT of people would know how to do.

Now look at Google Docs. It handles all of that for you. Just grant someone access to the document and they can instantly edit it. Everyone always has the latest version. In addition, it allows multiple people to simultaneously edit the document and instantly merges those modifications together in real time. I shows you what parts other people are editing, and gives you chat ability so you can discuss those changes together.

This would be great for a group of students working on a research report. You write the outline together, then each person takes responsibility for researching a subsection of the topic and fills in that part of the report as they go. You can review what the others in your group are doing, so you can see what progress people are making (or not making). If you see something that conflicts with what your research has uncovered, you can point that out. Likewise, if you learn something that it looks like they missed, you can suggest they add it.

I've never seen a feature like this in MS Office, Open Office, or any other office suite.

Re:Problems with AJAX

[RAMMS EIN]

``I know a lot of my issues at one time were related to the whole "storing documents on someone else's server" thing, and I'm still not a fan of that idea''

Neither am I, but, of course, there are other people for whom this is the main selling point. Many people I know _love_ how they can access their email from anywhere with a net connection.

Of course, I can access everything on my computer just by logging in to it, no need to hand over my data to Google or anyone else.

Re:Problems with AJAX

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

G*d, how hard! You have to download and install them once...

This depends upon usage. You have to download the program and all the updates and all the files, once per machine you want to use to access them, per change. So if a person uses a computer in a lab at their school and one at the library after school and one at their mother's house later yet, and occasionally one at their estranged father's house that gives us, four installations of a given software, assuming it works on all the platforms and has enough licenses and is up kept up to date on them, and four downloads of each file used on those machines in order to move it from place to place.

Now what if he is working on this with a friend and they'd like to collaborate on the same file? How easy is that with currently available freeware?

Web apps have a lot of drawbacks and I'm unlikely to use them myself, but that does not mean Web applications don't have some real advantages as well. In fact, this sort of a program may be ideal for use by K-12 schools. Personally, I think we'll eventually move to hybrid applications that, like e-mail, have a Web client and a regular client so that we can have the advantages of both.

Re:Problems with AJAX

[Smidge204]

I did think about this part of it after my post. I wondered how the system handles multiple people trying to edit the doc at the same time?

But more along these lines, it may be good for Google to clean up and repackage the software system for private business use. In other words, sell the software so companies can install it on their own networks. This almost brings us back to the mainframe-style business computing in the 70's, with the exception that the bulk of the processing is still done by the client.

The biggest benefit would be instant sync of everyone's software package. Update or modify the single copy of the software on the server and the changes propagate to all the clients on next use, transparently, and machines can be added without special software setup and removed with no critical data left on them*. It's also much less sensitive to the quirks of individual machines that would have to be set up individually.

(*at least in theory...)
=Smidge=

Re:Problems with AJAX

[SScorpio]

Microsoft locking down "non-genuine" versions of Vista to only allow web browsing doesn't sound so bad now.

Re:Problems with AJAX

[Anonymous Coward]

Admitted, your friends can't simply install stuff on your PC. But then, if they really need to *work* at it for some period (and not just check e-mail), why not just give them an account, which takes maybe two minutes?

About maintenance and updates: applications should update themselves, so Joe User shouldn't notice at all if there's a new version available. Or use stuff like Java Web Start, which is just one example of just such a technology.

As to installing something on more than one host: you could run a HTTP cache for things like Java Web Start, or any kind of FS sharing (NFS etc.) if it matters. And as I said, *after* the install a good app will update itself on any number of machines.

Re:Problems with AJAX

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Admitted, your friends can't simply install stuff on your PC. But then, if they really need to *work* at it for some period (and not just check e-mail), why not just give them an account, which takes maybe two minutes?

The library is unlikely to let you install software at all. Ditto for the school. What about cross-platform issues? How many accounts do you really want on your machine? One guest account is a lot easier to maintain and takes less space than one for each student you ever do a class project with.

About maintenance and updates: applications should update themselves, so Joe User shouldn't notice at all if there's a new version available.

It is often nice to be able to hold off on installing new versions until you can test them, especially in large organizations. So the school might roll out one version of a word processor, the library another, and home machines each have the most up-to-date. Different platforms might have different versions available, if Linux lags Windows, for example. Also, if you're talking commercial products, not everyone can afford to always have the most up to date.

Web applications do make sense if you want particular functionality and they make collaboration a lot easier than most regular applications. It just depends upon the tasks and environments in which you will be working.

I will say, if I was on a budget administering a school somewhere, I'd be looking really hard at this.

Re:Problems with AJAX

[iluvcapra]

For people who are concerned about "storing things on other people's servers," I have no doubt that within a year or two, once all us beta-testers have had our go at it, Google will be selling a "Docs Appliance" in an orange 19" box that you can buy, rack up and ethernet into your system, tie into your Goog Search Box and away you go. Hook up an LTO and set it up in the web admin and you will have a very serious operation.

I think the Appliance-in-a-box model is a good way to go, particularly if it does the one job well, and you can get stuff in and out of it in universal formats. Note that Windows "Sharepoint" is the same sort of niche, but you buy the hardware (and support, and upgrades, and client software, and upgrades...), and that Apple's Leopard server will have a wiki/WebDAV server preinstalled with a Writely-style editing system built in. Everybody's pulling the same way, they just differ in their business models; Google sells turnkey solutions, MS builds on their platform and charges extra, Apple builds on their platform and includes it 'for free' with their base server as a sales draw to their platform.

Re:Problems with AJAX

[AnyoneEB]

Even simplier, this gets rid of the problem of less savy computer users needing to either carry around flash drives or remembering to e-mail docs to themselves. Now they just need a presentation app.

Re:Problems with AJAX

[LordKronos]

Oh my gosh...I work at a University and I'm surprised I didn't even think of this. I can't count the number of times that students:

1)Saved to a floppy and the floppy got corrupted.
2)Claimed they emailed it to themselves and it wasn't in their email (wrong email address? got deleted?).
3)Thought they emailed it to themselves but forgot to attach it.
4)Saved it to the hard drive of the computer (which has since been re-imaged) instead of their personal network drive.

Opening/importing Excel

[MECC]

I tried importing a simple excel spreadsheet, and it didn't work :-(

Re:Opening/importing Excel

[gfxguy]

Funny, I tried and it worked just fine. Mine was pretty simple, though.

Re:Opening/importing Excel

[value_added]

I tried importing a simple excel spreadsheet, and it didn't work :-(

That happens to me, too. What version of Office were you using to import the Excel spreadsheet?

Oh wait ...

Re:Opening/importing Excel

[MECC]

I know what you mean. It was an Office 2003 Excel spreadsheet. Actually has nothing but text fields, and is about 5Kb in size. Doesn't import - I actually get the message that it can't be imported. If I try from the File -> Open dialog box, it just grinds endlessly.

PicasaWeb?

[Constantine XVI]

Has anyone else noticed up in the corner of Docs that there is also a new "Photos" option that points to "Picasa Web Albums?"

Re:PicasaWeb?

[Drakonian]

It's been out for a while.
http://picasaweb.google.com
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-06-14-n55 .html

"Frusterate"?

[adavies42]

Are you even trying anymore?

Re:"Frusterate"?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're the one who will be frusterated when you get modded off-topic.

Re:"Frusterate"?

[adavies42]

Three funnies and counting....

Re:"Frusterate"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, mods are whimsical. Just so you know, I wasn't hoping you'd get modded down, it's just what I expected from some of the more anal mods around here.

Re:"Frusterate"?

[Hillgiant]

Especially when you consider FF 2.0 has built in spell checking.

Re:"Frusterate"?

[Blakey Rat]

So does Safari, which is the default browser on his "Apple key" computer there. Meaning he actually has to go out of his way to not have a spell-checker available. Not expending a lot of effort on perfect spelling and grammar is one thing, but not doing the bare minimum can only be due to spite.

tabbed web MDI model

[Gothmolly]

While Taco's complaint may be valid, its this sort of techno-elitism which often impedes progress, or at least consumer take-up of a product. While people are bickering about the intricacies of a tabbed web MDI model, Joe Public will stay away.

Re:tabbed web MDI model

[pUr3d0xYk]

As if Joe Public even registers anything about a conversation that involves the phrase "Tabbed web MDI model". Joe was out the door to make a beer run about four sentences back, man. ;)

Re:tabbed web MDI model

[carpeweb]

That's probably true, but if and when Joe Public notices this on his radar screen, he's probably smart to watch from the sidelines for awhile to see if things improve. It's called not being an early adopter, and it's generally not a bad idea for the non-expert.

MDI browser model

[gEvil (beta)]

As someone who spends most of his day logged into a web application, I have to say that I'm not too fond of the whole MDI model for them either. This is mainly due to crashes. If the app crashes, all of my other browser tabs/windows go down with it. Due to this, I've taken to using different browsers for different tasks. For my all-day web app, I use IE. For website administration, I use Opera (the guy who does our web coding sucks and changes to the site will routinely take down the browser). And for general browsing, I use Firefox.

Re:MDI browser model

[Keebler71]

Agreed and one of my biggest annoyances with Firefox. While I prefer firefox for casual browsing, it takes all tabs and instances of itself down when it crashes. IE doesn't so I do the same thing as you - if I need to application to be up and stable, I open it in IE. That just sounds wrong though, doesn't it?

Re:MDI browser model

[sootman]

There is an app (more info and links to icons and stuff) that a guy wrote that is basically a stripped-down browser (WebKit) just for GMail. No reason it couldn't be adapted to work with other Google apps too. (And I literally mean no reason--it's BSD licensed and comes with source.)

Re:MDI browser model

[dawhippersnapper]

I use Google Browser Sync plugin for firefox, when it crashes I open it back up and all of my tabs and windows are opened up again if I want them to be. This might be a helpful find for you! =)

Re:MDI browser model

[Anonymous Coward]

For website administration, I use Opera (the guy who does our web coding sucks and changes to the site will routinely take down the browser).

Is it the guy writing faulty code that sucks, or the browser that crashes because of faulty code that sucks? I would think the latter. Or both.

Re:MDI browser model

[Anonymous Coward]

If your browser crashes, then MDI isn't your real problem. The browser is.

Re:MDI browser model

[Anonymous Coward]

the guy who does our web coding sucks and changes to the site will routinely take down the browser

And you blame the web guy for IE crashing? Maybe you should think about a better browser that isn't crashed by a script?

Cute but no thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's great until you dont have internet access and have to get something done.

call me when there is an OFFLINE version for download.

Nobody called it "Office" so why is it in quotes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody called it "Office" so why is it in quotes?

API?

[Dan East]

I have a client whose website is utilizing FCKEditor for in-browser html editing. We haven't been too pleased with it for a number of reasons. I checked Google's site but couldn't find any information, so maybe someone here knows - can their word processor be embedded into 3rd party sites and used stand-alone? Similar to Google Maps? From the little testing I've done it seems to generate good clean html.

Dan East

Re:API?

[technopinion]

I don't have an answer, I'd just like to add my vote to request an API. FCKEditor is way too bloated and unstable.

Re:API?

[Rylfaeth]

TinyMCE?

Re:API?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, an API would be great. In the mean time, tinyMCE might be a nice alternative. http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/

Simple tab solution

[karrde]

I couldn't reply to Taco when he bitched in his Journal, but I can here.

See, before web browsers came out with these great things called tabs, you could open pages in seperate windows, and the seperate windows have the title of the page. And amazingly, browsers still have this feature.

So web apps get thier own window and all the web browsing goes in seperate tabs in it's own window. Easy seperation for alt/apple-tabing between applications.

Re:Simple tab solution

[the packrat]

What windows folk clearly don't get is that on a mac, all the windows aren't mashed together on the task bar, instead only running applications appear in the dock (or on the command-tab switchy thing). So you move between applications with cmd-tab and cycle through the windows of a single application using cmd-`. It's really helpful.

Unfortunately, when you have different applications embedded into another (like a webbrowser) this distinction breaks down. Crashiness aside, it would indeed be interesting to see if someone uses apple's webtoolkit to come up with an ajax-host application that can address these problems.

B>

Re:Simple tab solution

[lisaparratt]

Except, of course, if you knew the first thing about Macs, you'd know that Command-Tab switches between applications, and not windows. Thus your "sage wisdom" is completely useless.

Re:Simple tab solution

[Old Man Kensey]

Can you cycle through an app's windows using a keyboard shortcut on a Mac? Why yes... yes, you can. So far from being useless, his advice is spot-on, whether he knows the keyboard shortcut in question or not. Way to be pointlessly, repellently elitist.

Personally I like the behavior of the XP Alt-Tab Power Toy better than either the Mac behavior or the default Windows behavior.

Re:Simple tab solution

[lisaparratt]

So far from being useless, his advice is spot-on

Only if you ignore the original desire, and instead focus on half-baked solutions.

Re:Simple tab solution

[Old Man Kensey]

The original desire was "They aren't in my dock, they can't be apple-tabbed through." The proposed solution (use separate windows instead of tabs) allows them to at least be apple-ticked through. And they'll show up separately in the dock and you can apple-tab if you use different web browsers for them, but I suspect he cares less about the dock and the literal tab key than the easy flip-through from the keyboard which separate windows in the same browser provides.

Re:Simple tab solution

[Code Master]

But keeping 10 copies of safari or other browser around is redundant and silly. And using one of each browser defeats the purpose of having a consistant set up. Expose would work pretty well in this case, especially since you can view all windows of a specific application.

Web20?

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, we skipped 18 versions there... last time I checked it was Web2.0!!!

Spreadsheet Wrecker

[gothzilla]

I believe spreadsheet wrecker would be a better name. I imported a very simple spreadsheet that I use to track my ink and toner for the company I work for and then exported it back out as an .xls.
It has columns for printer brand, model, location, ink or toner type, ink/toner model number, price, and how many I need to order the next time I do. Very simple spreadsheet.

It stripped the price column of it's "currency" setting and changed it to "general".
It broke the simple "price times quantity" formulas.
It resized the columns and made them too small to display the numbers.

This app is nowhere near ready to be considered an actual spreadsheet. Proof of concept maybe, but I can't see myself ever using it for anything useful. I can't imagine how much damage it would do to a more complex spreadsheet.

Re:Spreadsheet Wrecker

[SanityInAnarchy]

This app is nowhere near ready to be considered an actual spreadsheet.

Have you considered that maybe it's just the import/export? I suspect it's actually very useful as an "actual spreadsheet", assuming it stands alone.

I realize it may be entirely useless to you, but "imports Excel perfectly" is not, repeat, is absolutely fucking not , a requirement to be an "actual spreadsheet".

Re:Spreadsheet Wrecker

[gothzilla]

"Imports excel perfectly" is not a requirement for any spreadsheet. Duh. Thanks for the laugh.

How long

[Lord_Dweomer]

The more "applications" I try forcing into a tabbed web MDI model under a mac, the more clumsy it gets. They aren't in my dock, they can't be apple-tabbed through. Issues like this really frusterate me as I find myself wanting to use more web20 ajaxy fancy pants programs.

How long do you think it will take companies to realize that users are starting to see browser tabs and AJAX sites as basically their own "programs" and will want to manage them like they do all of their programs, not just within the confines of a browser window. That is the next step I feel in making things seamless. Removing the browser barrier.

Re:How long

[budGibson]

Well, once there is an api, there is no reason to be confined to the browser. Look at Google Earth for instance.

What I find to be the strength in these applications is not that they are done in ajax but that they effectively place your content in nodes on the web so that you can access them from anywhere and make them available to collaborators. The fact that google is (at least) able to ulitmately provide an editing api lowers the barrier to collaboration because you and your collaborators no longer have to have common software. That's even the case now with browsers because multiple browsers are supported.

The next step will be to see google edit, a downloadable ap that uses an open api. The really great thing would be to see them open up the api so that anyone can write that downloadable ap. The people who something to fear from this are 37 signals who have made a niche for themselves in collaboration, not microsoft.

Re:How long

[Derek Pomery]

XUL (and webforms 2.0, sure)
Gecko and other browsers can just be a really complex set of libs for rendering user interfaces pushed out from the remote sites.

File Storage

[CopaceticOpus]

My big 3 questions:

1. How do I easily upload and organize all my locally saved Word and Excel files?
2. How do I maintain a local copy of all my changes and new files?
3. How safe should I feel about uploading files with sensitive personal info?

Answer these questions, Google, and I'm on board. And, I suspect many other people will be too.

Re:File Storage

[ElleyKitten]

How safe should I feel about uploading files with sensitive personal info?

I wouldn't. Whatever Google says, It's just not a good idea.

Google Docs looks good for the random paper for school or something that you want to work on at school and home and don't want to carry disks around or bother emailing yourself it again and again. I wouldn't put every document you've ever made on it. If you're never going to use the document on another computer, or if it contains information that would be totally bad if hackers ever got into it, then it's not worth the hassle to upload it.

Re:File Storage

[hodet]

3. How safe should I feel about uploading files with sensitive personal info?

I am surprised there is so little discussion here about this. Lots of "ooooing and aaaahhing" over "save as pdf" (which is kinda cool) but little about the fact that if you want to use as your main office suite then you need to upload your personal information. It would be really cool if they distributed the program for installation on my own web server.

Very nice in a pinch though and will probably use it, even if in a somewhat limited fashion.

Re:File Storage

[Sithgunner]

4. Why doesn't it have any more function than a default Wordpad has?
5. Does it ever go about supporting foreign languages that can write from top to bottom?
6. When can I choose my Japanese font in the document?
7. When does it become stable so, suddenly it won't start telling me, 'some changes you made were in offline mode, reconnecting to server' or somehow going through 'edit html' and going back to document won't delete my entire document?
8. Does interface become any more responsive? I feel like using 10 year old computer with it, wonder if it's worth switching from current solutions.
9. By using multiple browsers on same account, it looks like both of the browsers get the same spreadsheet updated real time, but what if someone got ahold of my password? They will be able to keep and keep looking at how I edit the document for the entire time. I don't think it's cooler than worse.
10. Is this supposed to replace MS Office or just another try to increase the amount of so called 'Office' products? (like koffice, iWork, whatever you name it in your platform)

Dashboard Web Clip

[chr1sl0ng]

When 10.5 Leopard comes out (or using available widget authoring tools possibly) you should be able to create a Dashboard widget that could serve as home for your "Goffice" app, or any other AJAX app that works in Safari.

Re:Dashboard Web Clip

[Random832]

You can't cmd-tab to dashboard widgets, or have them show up in the dock, etc, either.

What would be nice would be a "web app wrapper" program in the same vein as the various executable shell/perl script wrappers.

Re:Dashboard Web Clip

[chr1sl0ng]

No, but you can F12, or configure any Dashboard key combo. As has been mentioned though... it doesn't work with Safari yet.

Picasa Web

[broothal]

Ok, maybe I'm slow (it happens ;) but I noticed that along side the "Docs and spreadsheets" link there's now a "Photos" link which gives you 250 Mb space for uploading images.

Re:Picasa Web

[klang]

yep!

Links into Picasa (get it if you have a pc and a digital camera), quick and easy way to have an online album. Pictures in PicasaWeb can be used in documents written in the Document part of the whole Google Office show.

(you have to grap the link to be used for embedding pictures in MySpace from PicasaWeb, and edit the html in the Document to make it work .. this will probably be changed to be more userfriendly and neat, but it works)

It's probably limited by AJAX.

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds like a limitation of AJAX.

AJAX-based applications really start to suffer from performance problems (when used on typical American broadband connections) when the amount of data involved exceeds about 650 KB. For an application like a word processor or a spreadsheet, where the data must be continually be updated between the client and the server on each change, even 500 KB is pushing it.

Don't forget that some overhead comes from AJAX itself. It takes bandwidth transmit the XML data that encapsulates the XML-RPC AJAX request. So while 650 KB is the practical limit of a request, it's plausible that 150 KB of that is being used to cover the XML overhead, thus reducing the amount available for actual data down to about 500 KB.

Re:It's probably limited by AJAX.

[Lauritz]

Well, then only load the part of the document being edited to the client.

Re:It's probably limited by AJAX.

[carpeweb]

IANATechie, but couldn't you load the whole doc (in XML) to the client and then only transmit changes (via XML messaging) between the client and the server? I realize that's probably not "AJAX" anymore, but who gives a rip about that?

Re:It's probably limited by AJAX.

[misleb]

Even worse. Then you have to wait for it to load when you scroll through.

Re:It's probably limited by AJAX.

[14CharUsername]

It's not that big of a deal really. Look at how quickly can you move around in google maps. And if your document is just text it will be much quicker than that. You could buffer two pages before your current position and two pages (or more) after your current position and unless you're scrolling through extremely fast you aren't going to notice. And even if you do scroll through 5 pages a second you will just have to wait half a second for it to catch up.

Re:It's probably limited by AJAX.

[14CharUsername]

XML isn't required. In fact most AJAX apps don't use XML because of the overhead required, as you mentioned. You can use JSON or plaintext or make up your own format.

Re:It's probably limited by AJAX.

[Baricom]

The difference between Google Maps and Google Docs is that there's a finite number of tiles that Maps has to look up, and the tiles are public. This means you can easily duplicate the tiles on several thousand servers which any client can hit when necessary. In contrast, Google Docs stores text from (potentially) millions of Google users. It takes more processing power to mirror the documents because you (and possibly a few others) are the only people who will use the data.

User Interface

[Mahler]

I think I like it better with the old Writely GUI

Re:User Interface

[MayonakaHa]

Ditto. I'm just not feelin the new Googleized interface. The old interface seemed more user friendly since it was laid out similar to a typical office application.

Works for Me

[Doc Ruby]

As long as the webpage is sufficiently standalone encapsulated, I can drag its URL into my Ubuntu Panel, where it makes a button I can click like any other app.

If I wanted, I could write an HTML wrapper I keep on my local machine or my own webserver that pops up Javascript UIs to populate the URL with parameters for opening the remote webpage.

The only real problem is IPC between the webpage app, but that's always been a terrible problem with webpages since the beginning that practically no one has addressed. Maybe as these remote apps are opened in suites with each other (and with local apps) the demand will force a better IPC, probably according to some FreeDesktop.org standard.

Your turn.

Ultimate Conspiracy Theory 2006

[suv4x4]

Firefox's JS advancementas and SQL engine are features requested by Google for their web application platform.

Late 2007, Vista adoption is still beginning to happen, WGA eats at Microsoft share of OS. People looking for alternatives.

Google buys Ubuntu and rebrands it as a powerfull "plug and play" web platform that interfaces with Google apps and Firefox. Google Box is born.

Google buys Mozilla. Firefox keeps it's brand and keep on expanding its web platform features in FF 3.0 and 4.0 as it adds 3D and OpenGL acceleration.

Late 2009: Microsoft share is dropping quickly at the same time increasing their revenue as pirates are slpit between those paying up, and those going for Google Box.

Late 2011, Google purchases Adobe and makes Flash and a light version of PDF part of their web platform. Google announced mobile web platform: Google Boxmobile.

Windows share has dropped below 50%. This allows Microsoft to innovate and integrate applications in their OS without threats from antitrust and anti-monopoly lawsuits. Spectacularly, with nearly half the share it had before, Microsoft's revenue is higher than ever. Microsoft releases Windows Vienna, amazing advancement in the world of desktop OS and computer-interface technologies.

Microsoft positions Windows Vienna as the desktop os for power users, business users and IT professionals, and phases out Vista and XP.

Google Box positions itself as the casual computer platform for people looking for entertainment, photo management, word/spreadsheet functionality, light games etc.

Re:Ultimate Conspiracy Theory 2006

[teh_chrizzle]

that's awesome.

Re:Ultimate Conspiracy Theory 2006

[giorgiofr]

Woah, wildly speculative, I really *really* like the name "Windows Vienna" though.

Re:Ultimate Conspiracy Theory 2006

[silent_artichoke]

Yes, those little sausages just SCREAM Bill Gates!

Re:Ultimate Conspiracy Theory 2006

[Rylfaeth]

lol, reminds me of a previous thread about "futurists" and how their predictions are always nonsense

Re:Ultimate Conspiracy Theory 2006

[foniksonik]

Don't forget Apple.

Apple continues it's takeover of the media distribution industry and buys out the top studios and labels and tv networks... all media is available a la carte and on demand and portable in their latest iPod which is just 5G wireless connected EM induction patches that attach to your temples and feed info directly to your eyes and ears, people look for the white circles with glossy apple logos when they look for someone who's hip.

Re:Ultimate Conspiracy Theory 2006

[suv4x4]

Don't forget Apple.

Apple continues it's takeover of the media distribution industry and buys out the top studios and labels and tv networks... all media is available a la carte and on demand and portable in their latest iPod which is just 5G wireless connected EM induction patches that attach to your temples and feed info directly to your eyes and ears, people look for the white circles with glossy apple logos when they look for someone who's hip.

Good point, so what happens with Apple? After losing the edge over their OSX platform, being outdone by both Vista and Linux's XGL, they begin a desperate fight for recognition in the desktop market, but their customers, except their most loyal fans, abandon them for better alternatives, like the cheap Google Box or the game-attractive Vista.

At the same time their iPod market still thrives, and to keep Apple in business, they decide to expand their consumer electornics market, releasing their critically acclaimed iMobile smartphone, iFocus (their handheld consumer photo camera & camcorder in one) and more.

By 2015, they have open sourced OSX and closed their PC factories, but are incredibly well positioned player in the consumer electronics market, iTunes being opened to competing solutions to implement, Apple and Disney become the leader and top innovators in online sales and entertainment.

Re:Ultimate Conspiracy Theory 2006

[Conesus]

Woah, wildly speculative, I really *really* like the name "Windows Vienna" though.

You bet, since that's the official code-name for the next version of Windows, anyways.

Re:Ultimate Conspiracy Theory 2006

[kurtis25]

Minus the market share percents isn't this what we had with Microsoft and Mac back in the day. Professional (Microsoft) and educational (Mac). Dad bought the Professional choice cause he used it at work and said his kids would eventually to, plus Macs weren't good for games back then. Then of course Dell came along and crashed the Apple Computer monopoly in schools and the Professional choice was solidified.

Re:Ultimate Conspiracy Theory 2006

[giorgiofr]

DOH I will be hiding in shame for not knowing this! Well at least they chose a good name this time :)

Re:Ultimate Conspiracy Theory 2006

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

Wow. Google buys everything and crushes Microsoft. Of course it must be true!

Google hasn't even demonstrated that they are worth the $130 billion that the market thinks they are. Their P/E is 63.0. That's fine for a startup, but Google isn't a startup anymore, and it's not necessarily reasonable to expect exponential earnings growth.

So, yeah, maybe Google will take out the world's largest and most profitable software company. Maybe the open-source movement will. Maybe in 10 years, Microsoft will be just another video game console manufacturer. Maybe they will split up. Maybe the EU will crush them like a bug.

A lot can happen in 10 years. Making wild-ass guesses doesn't make it happen, though.

Re:Ultimate Conspiracy Theory 2006

[lavaface]

Late 2011, Google purchases Adobe and makes Flash and a light version of PDF part of their web platform. Google announced mobile web platform: Google Boxmobile.

You forget that Apple, in an attempt to dominate rapidly growing education/self-publishing market, will purchase Adobe in 2009!

Not support Safari browser

[yaohua2000]

Google is not friendly to Mac users.

Re:Not support Safari browser

[rozz]

Google is not friendly to Mac users.

i just sensed a sudden disturbance in TheForce ... sounded like 98% of the computer users got together in sayin "so what"? ;)

Re:Not support Safari browser

[BadMrMojo]

I recall trying to help someone track down a bug in an Ajax gallery. It was only showing up in Safari but he didn't have a mac so he asked me to help and play beta tester for a little while.

After a little while of beating out collective heads against it, it appears that there are a few issues with Ajax and Safari. Very possibly, they just couldn't get it working reliably and didn't want to support it.

On the bright side, I haven't had any problems with either Camino or Firefox.

Re:Not support Safari browser

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Google is not friendly to Mac users.

Google is very friendly to Mac users, it just takes them a while to get software they acquire to work well with Macs, and for some projects that are not as needed on the Mac, they don't bother. The reason Google is Mac friendly in general is because a lot of people there use them.

Re:Not support Safari browser

[rozz]

... followed by another one that sounded like thousands of mac fanboys chewing on my karma

although this one may have been wildly exagerated

Re:Not support Safari browser

[Anonymous Coward]

So what? Install Firefox - problem solved! Mac fanbois really are fucking incompetent.

Re:Not support Safari browser

[rk]

You gotta love Google's sense of humor about the non-supported browsers though:

"If you are working to fix problems with a specific browser and would like to bypass this check, just add &browserok=true to the end of the Google Docs & Spreadsheets url.

"Please note that it is a violation of intergalactic law to use this parameter under false pretenses, so don't let us catch you at it.

"And, it won't work very well -- really."

Alternatively, they might not have a sense of humor at all, but instead know some very important things the rest of us do not...

Re:Not support Safari browser

[plinkyplonkypk]

Here is what the website sayswhen you access it with Safari:

Sorry, but Safari does not yet
support web word-processing.

We have heard loud and clear that many of you really want it to work, and we have discussed the problems with their development teams. In the meantime, please try us on:
Camino: 1.0a1 or higher
FireFox: 1.0.5 or higher
Mozilla: 1.5 or higher
All of these are FREE and easy to download and use.

Its hardly their fault if the browser doesn't support the features they need. I can confirm that it works great in camino.

Err...

[RAMMS EIN]

``The more "applications" I try forcing into a tabbed web MDI model under a mac, the more clumsy it gets. They aren't in my dock, they can't be apple-tabbed through.''

Then why are you not opening the apps in separate windows? IIRC, that will put them in your dock, and you can navigate to them with Exposé. I guess you can't Apple-tab to them, but you could Apple-tilde (right?) to them when you already have your browser selected.

Re:Err...

[foniksonik]

The better reply to that question would be to tell the submitter:

Just look forward to OS X 10.5 when you can auto-generate a widget from any web page (web clips) and a) drop it on your desktop or b) have it show up in the dashboard

Re:Err...

[pavon]

Then why are you not opening the apps in separate windows? IIRC, that will put them in your dock.

Well not really - the OS X doc only has one icon per application regardless of how many windows it has open. You can right click and get the list of windows, but who ever does that, when you have expose? I do agree that if you want to treat these things like applications, then keeping them in tabs rather than windows is silly.

I run into a simular gotchas regarding web apps. For example, I'll think all my Safari windows are closed, so I click on the Safari icon expecting to get a new window, but don't and can't figure out why until I remember that little music player "application" is really a safari window. Likewise, I have quit out of safari only to realize latter that I closed a web-app that I didn't mean to. It funny, that a lot of people think these apps are more user friendly, because they are just a webpage, and every one knows how to use a webpage. Whereas with me, since they are acting more and more like an application then a webpage, I think of them as such, which leads to small mistakes when they don't act entirely like an application.

Re:Err...

[generic-man]

When Firefox crashes it takes down all tabs and windows. Furthermore web apps don't subscribe to any of the UI conventions that regular applications do. You can flip around between them with Expose if they're in different windows, but they don't accept any sort of automation, they have 0 accessibility options visible to the OS, and they don't work with any services native to Mac OS X.

The really sad part is that this is one of very few full-featured competitors to MS Office on the Mac. NeoOffice/J is a huge hulking ugly Java app that leaks even more memory than Firefox does, and iWork doesn't have a spreadsheet app.

Re:Err...

[Blakey Rat]

There's ThinkOffice which has feature-parity (or damned close to it) to Excel 97 at least. Given, it's not even close to Excel 2003 levels yet.

There's also Mariner Calc, which I haven't personally used (ThinkOffice is cheaper), but it looks pretty good from screenshots.

Import / export != Useage

[brunes69]

Have you ever tried to do that same type of import/export sequence with a WordPerfect spreadsheet inside Excel? Or even an older Excel version? You will have simmilar issues.

Re:Import / export != Useage

[asylumx]

Perhaps, but since Google is toting this as a document sharing tool (similar to sharepoint), if you import an xls, then one of your consumers wishes to export it back to xls so that they may use it, the GP's problems become quite evident.

Re:Import / export != Useage

[gothzilla]

Yes I have, and no you have nowhere near the same issues. I can open spreadsheets in Excel, Open Office, and Corel's spreadsheet and they work just fine. I've only ever had one document not translate back and forth and it was an extremely complicated one with huge nasty formulas. Yeah sometimes you get little changes but they don't strip spreadsheets of their formatting, cell types, and break simple multiplication formulas.

Safari Shortcuts

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides the Apple-~ mentioned to switch windows, Apple-} and Apple-{ will navigate tabs in the foremost window.

Web versions of desktop apps == Bad Idea

[TheWoozle]

Web apps should conform to the UNIX ideal: do *one* thing and do it well.

Desktop apps are the kinds of things people open once and work with for long stretches. I think of desktop apps as being like separate workspaces...my IDE is my workbench, Photoshop is my darkroom, etc. I go into these "places" to work on something where I need a vareity of tools that are centered around one type of activity and complement each other. I can use all of my desktop space (two monitors), and I have the speed and responsiveness I want.

Typically when I use a web app, it's because I'm on a computer that is not my laptop (library, friend's house, Internet cafe) and I want to do *one thing*, quickly; and I don't have access (or may not *want* access) to my usual suite of apps.

I see web applications as being all about the access from anywhere and being "good enough." They save me the hassle of taking my laptop with me everywhere I go.

Web Apps

[RAMMS EIN]

``The more "applications" I try forcing into a tabbed web MDI model under a mac, the more clumsy it gets.''

Ah, good, another person has figured out that web apps are kludgy. My hopes that the API exposed by browsers will eventually grow up to give us a cross-platform API to creating native interfaces just went up a notch. That's something I've been hoping for for about ten years now, but so far, it hasn't happened. Perhaps XUL...

Don't Forget about Google Photos

[aplusjimages]

I don't know how new this is, but I havent seen it till now. Picasa now allows users to upload pics to Google. I've been looking for a second place to backup my photos.

What java could have been...

[SCHecklerX]

The better model is portable apps on a thumb drive. Mine is set up for M$ stuff, since that is what most machines I encounter when I don't have my own on hand are.

Now just imagine if there were a standard virtual machine interpreter that was available by default on every end-user OS in existence. Imagine that it worked the same on all platforms and was quick and responsive.

Now imagine having that little suite of programs on your thumb drive written to that VM.

Oh well.

Re:What java could have been...

[giorgiofr]

Kinda like .NET?

Re:What java could have been...

[emlyncorrin]

Since when has .NET been available by default on the Mac? on Linux? on BSD? Even on Windows I don't think it's installed by default.

Re:What java could have been...

[giorgiofr]

Since when has .NET been available by default on the Mac?

who cares

on Linux?

since recent GNOME releases

on BSD?

no idea

Even on Windows I don't think it's installed by default.

what you think does not matter, *reality* matters = .NET working out of the box since Win XP.

Re:What java could have been...

[emlyncorrin]

Just beacause you don't care about Mac doesn't make it "available by default on every end-user OS in existence".
And I'm pretty sure that when installing a .NET application on XP I've been prompted to download 100Mb+ of .NET runtime before it would work, which is not exactly what I would call "working out of the box", especially when there is no fast internet connection available.

Re:What java could have been...

[radish]

what you think does not matter, *reality* matters = .NET working out of the box since Win XP.

Rubbish - .NET is not included as standard on WinXP.

presentation, please

[l3v1]

Please, Google, make us a presentation editor that could save the presentations in S5 (http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/ ). This would rock really hard.
 

Lookout Microsoft

[AugustZephyr]

Lookout microsoft the googleopoly is going to take over the world.

A moniker given by the submitter.

[Jerk City Troll]

Nobody called it "Office", so it is in quotes.

The best part...

[Bytal]

is that if you browse the css and js source you can see that internally they're calling this version "leftly". Witty :)

PDF and Mac

[peter Payne]

One of the little things that's nice about Macs are, they can make PDFs out of the box, have been able to since version 10.0 (which was really a dawg). This is nice though, free PDF-age for anyone who wants it.

Issues like this really frusterate me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, seeing how issues like spelling "frusterates" a lead editor trying to use "web20", I can see how simply clicking a browser tab to change documents could leave you crippled and gnashing your teeth.

Take heart, there's always web30 to look forward to...

Writely...

[Anonymous Coward]

I liked the name "Writely" and think they should've named the spreadsheet "Spreadly".

Re:Writely...

[TomHandy]

I guess that's better than naming it Spread'em.

Java ?

[tonigonenstein]

I still do not understand why java applets were abandonned in favor of html+javascript applications. Applets are faster, they behave just like regular desktop applications, they are easier to develop, more secure, work the same on every platforms, and you don't have to install anything either.

It really seems we traded a nice technology perfectly suited to the purpose for a barely working hack. That's sad.

Re:Java ?

[technopinion]

Because Java implementations became a right cock-up when Sun sued Microsoft and stopped them from including any version of Java past 1.1 in Internet Explorer (or something like that). So now if developers want to create anything useful in Java, using a runtime newer than about 5 years, they need to ask the unwashed masses to download a multi-megabyte java runtime. The alternative, javascript, html and ajax, "just works" on pretty much any recent browser.

Re:Java ?

[Anonymous Coward]

In a corporate intranet type environment that's not a problem, since users' desktops and laptops are loaded with a custom OS build that can include the appropriate Java runtime environment and plugin, and updates are pushed out using SMS. That's how it's done where I work.

On the public internet, yeah it could be a problem but installing a JRE is pretty simple, and users download and install stuff all the time anyhow, so it's just one more download. Not a big deal, in my opinion.

I agree with the parent's main point. Java applets are far superior to Ajax (really just DHTML and JavaScript, as far as I can tell). The thing that hurt applets was the slow performance from back in the Java 1.1 days, when machines were slower too. This left a bad taste in some people's mouths. But those days are over. Nowadays Java is faster and machines are faster. I think it's time to revisit the Java applet idea.

Re:Java ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Write Once, Debug Everywhere...

N.B. I find it quite amusing that the CAPTCHA word this post was given is "toilets" ...
---
Never trust an operating system you can buy at Toys 'R Us

Re:Java ?

[fupeg]

You're right, and there are definitely companies out there taking this approach. My sister-in-law works for an medical billing company. The software she uses is a Java applet that runs from inside any browser. It requires the Java Advanced Imaging to be downloaded in addition to the JRE. It provides a very rich experience inside a browser. I think a lot of what it does could probably be done with AJAX, but it would be pretty hard. But as an applet, it's really straightforward.

And that's where the $ comes in. Even though it may be easier to get rich functionality using a Java applet than with AJAX, Java developers are much more expensive than DHTML/JS developers. Any AJAX site could be re-written with an applet, probably with minimal changes to the server side code. It would probably be less, and simpler code, but the devs would cost more. The server could also be re-written to make good use of the applet, but again this requires server side Java devs who also understand the Swing architecture. Those guys are pretty rare, and even more expensive.

So that's at least part of the reason why AJAX wins out over Java applets. You can make similar arguments for why AJAX wins out over Flash, another highly portable technology.

LaTeX

[manastungare]

Think of it as a cross between markup and a programming language for writing papers. There's an edit-compile-test cycle; results are completely predictable; modern editors are almost full-blown IDEs for LaTeX. It integrates well into multi-user editing scenarios: you can check in your source tex files into CVS or subversion, and get free version control with diffing capabilities. Try that with a binary format.

How many times have you struggled to get an image placed just right in a popular WYSIWYG text editor? How many times has your favorite WYSIWYG editor added a page to your report that makes it go over the page limit, minutes before a critical submission deadline?

The little time spent in learning the language far outweighs the advantages it provides. Give it a try!

Re:LaTeX

[mrchaotica]

I completely understand the advantages of LaTeX; I just don't like the syntax. I wish there was a Docbook or XHTML-like markup language that was more suited towards general-purpose documents (as opposed to code documentation or web pages).

Re:LaTeX

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

There's an edit-compile-test cycle; results are completely predictable; modern editors are almost full-blown IDEs for LaTeX.

A lot of programing is done with IDEs these days, for a reason.

It integrates well into multi-user editing scenarios: you can check in your source tex files into CVS or subversion, and get free version control with diffing capabilities. Try that with a binary format.

I think you're making three mistakes here. First, LaTeX is a layout application, than many people use for word processing. You can't compare it to MSWord and assume you've done a comparison of WYSIWYG versus markup. Second, you're discounting the learning curve and its affect upon collaboration. Third, you're equating LaTeX with text based format and word processor with binary, and that is just plain wrong.

Collaborating with LaTeX is a pain in the butt in almost every instance I've used it because their are invariably people who don't know the language and who then have to learn it, greatly slowing the whole process. As for CVS and Subversion, I often use them to check in both binary and XML files from other word processors and layout applications and collaboration with them is not a problem using these tools.

How many times have you struggled to get an image placed just right in a popular WYSIWYG text editor?

Never, as text editors don't support images. I've often placed images with ease in an exact location, however, using WYSIWYG layout programs, which I find to be much, much easier to use and more flexible for that task than LaTeX.

How many times has your favorite WYSIWYG editor added a page to your report that makes it go over the page limit, minutes before a critical submission deadline?

Never. If I have a page limitation, I'm almost certainly using the right WYSIWYG tool, like InDesign, Framemaker, Quark, or the like (depending on the particulars).

The little time spent in learning the language far outweighs the advantages it provides. Give it a try!

I use LaTeX for certain projects and it is even the best tool I know for certain types of projects. You seem, however, to have compared it to MS Word for certain tasks and concluded that it is superior and everyone should switch to LaTeX. This is not very good advice. Most people, performing normal tasks would be a lot better off with some of the WYSIWYG tools available, or better yet a hybrid tool like InDesign that allows the user to edit both the markup and the WYSIWYG view. It even uses the same basic layout engine as LaTeX, but you don't have to mess with all the hacks to get color and graphics and the like to function smoothly and you don't have to build it constantly to see the end result. Give it a try!

Re:LaTeX

[perkr]

Well I've certainly had my fair share of fighting with Latex's figure insertion algorithm. One feature I love in MS Word is the integrated spelling and grammar. For a non-native English speaker it does catch a lot of errors. I also like the collaboration features in MS Word where you can see other authors' comments and reject/accept edits. Judging from the grad students in my dept who struggle with changing the visual appearance of e.g. the heading font in the bibliography it is not all that clearcut when to use Latex or MS Word as you make it seem.

Re:LaTeX

[jrockway]

> it is not all that clearcut when to use Latex or MS Word as you make it seem

For your bibliography example, you shouldn't ever have to screw around with the fonts. You should include the proper template and LaTeX will do the work for you. You mark up the information, LaTeX makes it look nice. XML, but 20 years earlier :)

Some people are control freaks that feel good about tweaking every last font and margin, but I like to leave that to the experts and worry instead about the content of the document.

Re:LaTeX

[WillAdams]

Rather than compare LaTeX to MS Word, it's far better to compare LyX, http://www.lyx.org/ --- I'm very fond of it, and think it's one of the most innovative opensource applications available --- maybe even more innovative than commercial apps as well.

And of course, no mention of (La)TeX would be compleat w/o suggesting people look at the TeX Showcase:

http://www.tug.org/texshowcase

William

Re:LaTeX

[DragonWriter]

First, LaTeX is a layout application, than many people use for word processing.

LaTeX with an appropriate front-end is no less a word processor than the tools that are marketted as "word processors". Its not WYSIWYG, but for a long time (even after WYSIWYG word processors were available), neither were most word processors.

For those of use who type well and for whom reaching out to grab the mouse breaks the flow, or attempting to go back after writing to apply structure is harder than typing in the structure as you as you go, an appropriate LaTeX environment is often a better word processing environment than MS Word.

For those of us who end up having to maintain regularly updated documents that dozens of different Word users have edited, each taking different routes to produce similar (but usually not as consistent as intended) appearance, LaTeX or a similar environment that is markup-based rather than focussed around WYSIWYG editing.

You can't compare it to MSWord and assume you've done a comparison of WYSIWYG versus markup.

True, though MS Word is the WYSIWYG program most commonly used, you can compare it MS Word and conclude you've done a comparison to the most important WYSIWYG program that people use.

Second, you're discounting the learning curve and its affect upon collaboration.

LaTeX is, IME (and I've been using Microsoft Word since the Windows 3.11 days, used a number of other WYSIWYG word processors and layout/DTP programs for years, and LaTeX for less than a year), no harder to learn and become proficient beyond a fairly basic level with than many WYSIWYG programs. The instant feedback of WYSIWYG is a big boost for basic familiarity, though, sure.

Most people, performing normal tasks would be a lot better off with some of the WYSIWYG tools available,

Perhaps, though I'm not sure about "most" or what tasks you think of as "normal".

or better yet a hybrid tool like InDesign that allows the user to edit both the markup and the WYSIWYG view.

That may be certainly the case, OTOH, the price tag of InDesign means that in most environments, "most users" aren't going to have InDesign available. Of course, a hybrid product, well-designed, can naturally, have the strengths of both WYSIWYG and markup-based systems, and so its superiority doesn't really say anything about the relative utility of the two models.

Re:LaTeX

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

LaTeX with an appropriate front-end is no less a word processor than the tools that are marketted as "word processors".

I'd actually argue that setup is generally more of a layout program with some word processing features. MS Word is not intended for exacting layout, LaTeX is. If you want exacting layout, you should compare LaTeX to tools designed to do that.

True, though MS Word is the WYSIWYG program most commonly used, you can compare it MS Word and conclude you've done a comparison to the most important WYSIWYG program that people use.

Ahh, but LaTeX is not the most common markup tool used. You can compare MS Word and OpenOffice Writer because they are designed for the same thing. LaTeX was designed to layout books. MSWord was not. Comparing it to Framemaker or Quark or InDesign is a lot more appropriate. And if you're trying to compare the advantages of WYSIWYG versus markup, then you have to take into account more than the most common and instead look at the best implementations of each.

That may be certainly the case, OTOH, the price tag of InDesign means that in most environments, "most users" aren't going to have InDesign available.

Most users are incapable of finding and installing a LaTeX environment.

Of course, a hybrid product, well-designed, can naturally, have the strengths of both WYSIWYG and markup-based systems, and so its superiority doesn't really say anything about the relative utility of the two models.

I thought it was obvious that both are better for different tasks, which is why such a discussion is useless unless you have specific tasks in mind. I just get annoyed when someone goes off about their favorite and how much better it is than everything else, despite obviously having not tried a lot of the options in the field. LaTeX is quite simply painful for certain tasks, especially for graphics because graphics do not fit well into the markup model. So when someone says something about how you can't position graphics well using a WYSIWYG, I get a little irate.

Re:LaTeX

[drinkypoo]

Never. If I have a page limitation, I'm almost certainly using the right WYSIWYG tool, like InDesign, Framemaker, Quark, or the like (depending on the particulars).

Incidentally, if you actually like Quark you might check out Scribus, it's Free and it's a Quark clone. This makes me sad, because I'm the InDesign type. In fact I never really used Quark until I recently got promoted sideways into the graphic artist position against my will (it was this way, or the highway - mind you, I still do my old job, too) and discovered that even though she had Adobe Suite CS2, she did all her layout work in Quark.

Now I have discovered that Quark Xpress is a big pile of shit. InDesign knocks its socks off in the usability department so badly that I cannot imagine why anyone would have ever used Quark. I mean, if you're a serious artist you had to have Illustrator, and Illustrator made up for the one failing of Pagemaker that Quark actually corrected (until Pagemaker 5 came out) - the ability to rotate text to an arbitrary angle. Illustrator was necessary to do that when Pagemaker 4 was king - it only allowed 90 degree rotation increments.

But again, Quark is horribly annoying. InDesign, having the Pagemaker interface, is intuitive to anyone who's actually done (or even seen) physical pasteup.

I will warn you that Scribus is just as nonintuitive. I didn't play with it long, but I couldn't figure out how to flow text around an image :(

Re:LaTeX

[DragonWriter]

I'd actually argue that setup is generally more of a layout program with some word processing features. MS Word is not intended for exacting layout, LaTeX is. If you want exacting layout, you should compare LaTeX to tools designed to do that.

The main advantage I find in my use for LaTeX over Word isn't exacting layout (yeah, its better at that than Word, too, though that's rarely all that important to me), but in ease of describing, perceiving, and maintaining structure when working with documents.

Ahh, but LaTeX is not the most common markup tool used.

That hardly matters if the purpose is to compare LaTeX in specific to WYSIWYG editing environments in common use.

You can compare MS Word and OpenOffice Writer because they are designed for the same thing.

You can meaningfully and usefully compare any tools that are, or even can be, used for the same purpose, regardless of what they are designed for.

LaTeX was designed to layout books. MSWord was not.

Yes, and yet some people use MSWord to layout books, so they can certainly be compared for that purpose. And people use LaTeX for lots of the things MSWord is used for that are not laying out books, too, and they can therefore be compared for all those purposes, as well, regardless of which was "designed for" which purpose.

Comparing it to Framemaker or Quark or InDesign is a lot more appropriate.

If the context is "comparing tools for laying out books without regard to cost", then yes, I'd agree.

Most users are incapable of finding and installing a LaTeX environment.

I doubt that any user who learns of LaTeX is incapable of learning how to install, say, ProTeXt, in a few minutes, but even so, unless you are talking about a home environment, there is no need, in most environments, for every user that would use LaTeX to find and install a LaTeX environment. I really have no idea what point you think you are making here.

LaTeX is quite simply painful for certain tasks, especially for graphics because graphics do not fit well into the markup model.

Graphics are not a task. If you mean "editing graphics", then sure, LaTeX isn't an editor at all, and certainly not a graphics editor. If you mean placing graphics in a document, it seems to me it depends a lot on what you want to do with the graphics. But, yes, lots of tasks related to that are not the kind of things where the model of structure-to-appearance that LaTeX uses is particularly helpful for (OTOH, other tasks with graphics fit quite well with that model.)

Re:LaTeX

[perkr]

I personally don't care of the layout of the document much. But a lot of grad students I know *do* care. Tweaking Latex documents to look exactly as you want is hard for anyone used to WYSIWYG.

Re:LaTeX

[solafide]

Absolutely right. The only problem with LaTeX is fonts and font sizes, which are somewhat limited. I wrote my entire science fair project in LaTeX last year, and everyone from the regional fair to ISEF remarked on how professional and clean it looked in LaTeX. The problem, again, is the fonts; if I could increase the font size more than 36 points, it would be helpful.

If you want to see it, my science fair paper may be found at http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Resources/Paper s/FracBase.pdf.

Re:LaTeX

[Al Al Cool J]

How many times has your favorite WYSIWYG editor added a page to your report that makes it go over the page limit, minutes before a critical submission deadline?

Hold it, are you saying it is easy to enforce page limits in Latex? I would love to know how. I had to abandon Latex years ago because of that very problem. For example, preparing a press release that HAS to fit on a single page because it is going out by fax to 120 companies, or doing a 12-page document that has 12 sections, each of which HAS to fit entirely on its own page.

Doing this in WYSIWYG is relatively quick and easy - adjust fonts, adjust leading, edit some text - bang I'm done. In Latex it was a nightmare of slow and tedious tweaking, running and rerunning latex over and over and over until I finally got something that both fit and looked good doing it.

Re:LaTeX

[Em Adespoton]

Yes, but you also prefer LISP to C++, don't you? :D
--
My other cdr is last

Re:LaTeX

[dextromulous]

What, like reStructuredText? Examples here

Re:LaTeX

[mrchaotica]

No, I mean actually like SGML or XML, with tag-pair markup (i.e. <this></this>). It's just that XHTML is missing tags like <chapter> and DocBook doesn't seem to have the same level of software support (e.g. there is no LyX-equivalent for DocBook).

Actually, I ought to try taking another stab at learning DocBook; it's probably good enough even if I do have to write the markup by hand.

Re:LaTeX

[profplump]

As for CVS and Subversion, I often use them to check in both binary and XML files from other word processors and layout applications and collaboration with them is not a problem using these tools.

I'd give good money to see you make a useful diff from a binary (i.e. MS Word) "text" file using CVS/SVN. Having old versions is not the only use of a version management system, nor even the one quoted in the parent -- version control with diffing capabilities.

Re:LaTeX

[oohshiny]

You need a decent LaTeX editing environment. Something like TeXShop (Mac) or TeXMaker (Linux, Windows). Tuning and fiddling is trivial in those.

Re:LaTeX

[profplump]

Collaborating with LaTeX is a pain in the butt in almost every instance I've used it because their are invariably people who don't know the language and who then have to learn it, greatly slowing the whole process.

Slower than using MS Word or InDesign, both of which allow only 1 person at a time to work on a document? If you'd ever had to compile chapters from 30 people for a 500-page report you'd know that copy-and-pasting a Word document together is not the ideal scenario. Latex lets me include 30 chapter files into 1 book file and compile. That's worth 30 minutes of instruction on how to use header levels, paragraph marks, tables and include image files.

Re:LaTeX

[profplump]

I think you're making three mistakes here. First, LaTeX is a layout application, than many people use for word processing. You can't compare it to MSWord and assume you've done a comparison of WYSIWYG versus markup.

I think you're making the mistake there. In general use, people make no distinction between a text editor, a word processor, and layout program.

For one thing, in Windows the only pre-installed "text editor" is Notepad, and even I can't be bothered to use that for text entry. So the distinction between "word processor" and "text editor" is lost on anyone who doesn't regularly fire up vim/emacs/nano/etc. Needless to say, this isn't the average MS Word user.

For another, most MS Office users, unless they are familar with publishing, use Word as a layout tool. Between the expense of having a dedicated layout tool, the complication of having to use more than one program, and the fact that MS has shoe-horned 473 "layout" features in Word, the average user doesn't even know that there's another way to do things. I agree that the world would be better if Word were a word processor and you imported its output into a layout program when layout was important, but in actual use that rarely happens.

Re:LaTeX

[Anakron]

The little time spent in learning the language far outweighs the advantages it provides.

I think you meant something different...

Re:LaTeX

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

All of these arguments are against MS Word. They have little bearing on a discussion of LaTeX and markup versus WYSIWYG.

Re:LaTeX

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I'd give good money to see you make a useful diff from a binary (i.e. MS Word) "text" file using CVS/SVN.

First, MS Word supports a function very similar to Diff for its binary files. Second, MS Word can use the RTF format or export to a number of other formats using plugins that work just fine for diffs. Third, why are you fixated on MS Word? I basically never use MSWord. It is a piece of crap. But just because MSWord is a crappy WYSIWYG editor for many uses does not mean I want to use some out of date markup language where I have to use hacks just to insert and view the placement of graphics or change the color of some text because the original specification did not support them and it has never been updated properly. I'd rather choose neither MSWord or LaTeX ad instead use one of the many better options. I do a huge amount of my editing in XML, usually within a WYSIWYG editor with real support for graphics. You know, where I can drag something where I want it, set the transparency, set the scaling, apply a filter if I so desire, and make the position either absolute or relative to a vector path or location within the text. I'm sorry, but while LaTeX is very nice for certain, automated workflows, it blows chunks for a lot of other applications and the only reason to use it for them is if you can't afford the initial cost of better tools.

Re:LaTeX

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Slower than using MS Word or InDesign, both of which allow only 1 person at a time to work on a document?

Using a CMS you can have multiple editors for Word docs, or you can merge changes from multiple editors without a CMS. With InDesign you can just use XML for your source with SVN or CVS the same as you would with LaTeX, but you don't need to write a build script to keep things up to date as it is a built in function. Why would you even bring this up if you're not even familiar enough with either to know what you're talking about?

If you'd ever had to compile chapters from 30 people for a 500-page report you'd know that copy-and-pasting a Word document together is not the ideal scenario.

Yeah, Word has really crappy long document support and can corrupt files that get too large. It really sucks in a lot of ways, which is why no professional would ever use it for a long document (if they'd use it at all). It also has lots of bugs, can't handle a lot of imports, and the typography sucks ass. What is your point?

Latex lets me include 30 chapter files into 1 book file and compile.

Yes, I'm familiar with LaTeX. Framemaker, Quark, and InDesign let you include 30 chapter files or 1000 section files, and they will keep it up to date for you and manage the text contextually with tagging and variables for different versions, automatically, without any compiling and you can constantly see what the output will look like without waiting and switching to a view of the output file. It will also manage global changes, searches, style modifications, fonts/font collections, outputs, graphics input and output, etc.

There is not lot of point discussing this with you since you obviously have never bothered to try using the professional tools on the market. Listen I've used a lot of different tools both markup, WYSIWYG, and hybrid, including LaTeX. It simply is not the best tool for most tasks. If you disagree, at least do so from an educated point of view. Go try the demo versions of the programs I listed.

Re:LaTeX

[profplump]

I'm fixated on MS Word because that is the layout tool/word processor/text editor for the vast majority of the computing world. I'm glad you use other tools. I'm not denying that other tools exist or may be better for certain tasks. But when we're discussing generic office document creation -- like in this thread entitled "Google 'Office' Release" -- MS Word is the standard of comparision.

And as far as diffing MS Word files goes -- the change tracking in Word is hardly comparable to a standard diff mechanism. It is rudamentally the same, but it can only show you changes in place, it has extremely limited time-based tracking (i.e. you can't say "show me all changes between 2 weeks ago and 1 week ago") compared to CVS/SVN, and it has the potentially embarassing/damaging behavior of leaving your change history in the file unless you take extra care to delete that history.

RTF would make somewhat better use of CVS/SVN diffs, though the infrequent occurance of line breaks is still a bit of an issue. But if you think the average user -- you know, the guy the Google Office is targeted at -- is willing to:
A) select a non-default format every time he creates a document or uses "Save As..."
B) give up most of the features he needs to do layout work (i.e. turn Word into a word processor)
C) ignore the warning that Word gives often about losing formatting when you save to RTF
I think you're mistaken.

Re:LaTeX

[profplump]

That's probably true. Now if only someone other than you were having that discusion you'd be all set.

Re:LaTeX

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I'm fixated on MS Word because that is the layout tool/word processor/text editor for the vast majority of the computing world. I'm glad you use other tools. I'm not denying that other tools exist or may be better for certain tasks. But when we're discussing generic office document creation -- like in this thread entitled "Google 'Office' Release" -- MS Word is the standard of comparision.

Maybe you need to read the whole thread to which you are responding. The assertion was made that LaTeX is superior to "WYSIWYG tools" because of its nature as a markup tool. Further is was asserted that placing graphics in WYSIWYG tools is hard by comparison. That is what this thread is responding to.

And as far as diffing MS Word files goes -- the change tracking in Word is hardly comparable to a standard diff mechanism. It is rudamentally the same, but it can only show you changes in place, it has extremely limited time-based tracking (i.e. you can't say "show me all changes between 2 weeks ago and 1 week ago") compared to CVS/SVN, and it has the potentially embarassing/damaging behavior of leaving your change history in the file unless you take extra care to delete that history.

On the other hand it is more user friendly and does not rely upon a centralized server. Presumably everything going out is going to be made into a PDF from either LaTeX or Word, so the inclusion of all the changes is immaterial. Again, you're missing the point of this discussion. It is not about what is better, LaTeX or Word. It is about whether WYSIWYG is inherently inferior and since version control can be applied easily to either type of tool and since binary or text can be used with either type of tool, it is immaterial.

But if you think the average user -- you know, the guy the Google Office is targeted at -- is willing to... ...I think you're mistaken.

And if you think the average user, you know the ones Google Office is targeted at, is willing to download and install LaTeX, learn the markup language, and compile output files before seeing what the end result will look like, you're even more mistaken.

Re:LaTeX

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

That's probably true. Now if only someone other than you were having that discusion you'd be all set.

Here's an idea. Instead of jumping in at my +5 modded comment and trying to debunk arguments that were never made, you could read the quotes in the comment to which I was replying or even, gasp, read the post to which I was replying so you know what the hell this thread is discussing.

Re:LaTeX

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

One feature I love in MS Word is the integrated spelling and grammar. For a non-native English speaker it does catch a lot of errors.

One of the most overlooked features of Mac OS X is system services. They allow you to use functionality offered by a plug-in or application, in other applications, with no work on the part of the author of that second application. This includes spell checking and grammar checking (third party right now, but to be standard in 10.5). It also includes dictionary lookups, online resource lookups, thesaurus, language translations, scripts, statistics, etc. Using OS X, you can use these services in your LaTeX editor, or text editor in a terminal window.

I mention this, not as a advertisement for OS X, but because I feel that spelling and grammar checking should be implemented at the OS level and not the application level. Why should each program implement these functions separately? No application developer will ever be able to guess all my use cases, so it makes sense to let me install the services I want and use and have access to them everywhere. It also makes sense to have one shared dictionary for spell checking so that you don't have to add the same term for every application. MPLS is not misspelled, and I should only have to tell my computer that once, not once for my layout app, once for my e-mail, once for my chat client, once for my Web browser, etc.

The KDE environment on Linux has a feature called KParts, that seems to partially replicate this kind of functionality, but it does not seem to be in practical use and seems to be more of a shared library so each application developed has to know about all the services (kparts) and provide an interface for them. This makes it unworkable for general use in my experience thus far.

So yeah, it is unfortunate if you're running LaTeX on the wrong environment that you don't have spelling and grammar checking, but I don't see that as a failing of LaTeX itself, but of the OS that fails to provide a way for programs to all access common functionality.

Native Apps that not needed to be installed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since like there are not a whole lot of PC architectures out there, is it even important to be platform independent?
May be better model is execute in place of natively compiled application without having to be installed?

I am sick and tired of all the extra layers of bloated and inefficient software. These are the slopware that forces upgrade and more energy comsumption (in operating and producing) to do the same thing that could be done on slower and less power hungry hardware.

Re:Native Apps that not needed to be installed?

[198348726583297634]

tcl and tclkits - they're exactly what you're describing!

Does Google get my thesis?

[Xocet_00]

"3. How safe should I feel about uploading files with sensitive personal info?"

This is my main worry. When I sit down to write a paper for publication or my MSc thesis, what's to stop them from claiming it? I know it sounds paranoid, but on the off-chance that my research produces something revolutionary or profitable, I don't want there to be the slightest ambiguity about who the discovery belongs to. Keeping my research documents on Google's servers (even if only for a backup) seems to me to be the kind of thing lawyers could turn into "ownership". There's no way someone like me (or any individual really) could fight Google if they decided to make a claim.

Your rights granted by Google

[MrCopilot]

Let see here, let me get my glasses and tinfoil hat out.

Your Rights
Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services. You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Google services and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, modify, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services.

Google reserves the right to syndicate Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services and use that Content in connection with any service offered by Google. Google furthermore reserves the right to refuse to accept, post, display or transmit any Content in its sole discretion. You represent and warrant that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the rights granted herein to any Content submitted.

I have to say that does seem pretty far from evil. Why do I even keep this hat anyway?

Re:Your rights granted by Google

[theantix]

"which are intended to be available to the members of the public"

So, not your docs which are intended to be available to you and who you choose to share it with.

Re:Your rights granted by Google

[Absatz]

While copyrights concerning the text and derivative works may be protected, I am not sure how they might potentially use the information for cross-indexing and profiling. Smart tagging of content linked to advertising would be a logical progression, and then it will be interesting to see how the spammers use this new tool to influence search result ratings along the lines of what sploggers have been doing. Maybe this will lead to a whole new form of search engine spiking and click fraud where intelligent programs create thousands of accounts with cross referencing documents in order to skew indexing agents ("spubling" ?? :-) ). Meanwhile, I think people should be very wary of posting any confidential information - there simply is no guarantee that some other use may compromise it. At least if you have your own data stored on your own hard drive (with appropriate access, encryption, anti-spyware security protection, and no search engine helpers), you can be relatively assured that your bits are not roaming the Internet in some unauthorised form.

One of their poorer betas...

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so I was initially disappointed with GCalendar, and it's beginning to seem a tad more interesting. So, I guess I won't write this off yet. But, the whole Writely integration is quite disappointing. First of all, I was on-board with Writely before they were acquired by Google, and it was a nifty little thing. Then, once it was closed to new subscribers, I sold a decent number of Writely accounts on eBay and generated a decent chunk of cash. But honestly, it was "cool" and all, but still useless. Sure, there's a theoretical use, but the actual use is a little beyond me. The spreadsheet itself seems primitive and as others have mentioned, hardly compatible with Excel's intricacies. Meanwhile, the Writely (word processor) bit is pretty interesting, and could be good I suppose for "virtual meeting notes" (for when you have a meeting via Skype) but for doc storage, and etc., I'd say "no". Time will tell, but I'm going to hope there are others who out-Google Google or bleed them financially like I believe Youtube has done.

GOrifice

[MaxPowerDJ]

Read the comments of fellow posters of "Goffice" as "Gorifice". Don't ask what I was doing yesterday...

If you have multiple computers it is.

[Kadin2048]

Depends on how often you use computers other than your own.

If you're constantly floating between multiple computers, then the ability to just sit down at a browser, type your L/P, and have all your documents presented to you is a real "killer feature." One that might completely outweigh any limitations of importing and exporting.

As people get more computers -- a whole lot of what I'd call 'average people' now have more than one (at least one work computer and another personal computer) -- this becomes more valuable. Plus, you don't have to deal with backups of your work (though you probably still should), and if your computer gets hosed, you can just nuke it or replace the whole thing. Computers become just these modular, interchangable, anonymous frontends to your work, which is all online.

Plus, the ability to collaborate online with others is a nice plus that you can't do very easily with desktop applications; instead of emailing documents back and forth to other people and trying to keep the versions straight, you just put it up on Goffice and let everyone red-line it.

Re:If you have multiple computers it is.

[SirKron]

You almost have it. It is not when people get more computers, it is when free internet kiosks are more widely available. Google office is really not there to remove market share for those with the means to have locally installed applications, rather, their market is the multitude of others that do not own a personal computer and do not want to hassel with keeping their docs on USB flash memory.

Even with the large number of computers in the world, there are many more people in Google's market than Microsoft's.

Web 2.0 word processor, whoa!

[derekb]

Web 2.0 baby, lets drive up the stock in this cool startup to some insane number like 129 billion dollars!

Cornerstones

[Xiph1980]

Sorry, forgot a little thing in my parent post here.
Just wanted to add that besides MS threading the monopoly area where they inhibit the advancements in technology, stopping upcoming competitors in their tracks by buying them out, and make the consumers spend an unreasonable amount of money on their products, they also limit the amount of possible competitors due to the patents given to software ideas. thus actually removing two cornerstones from thesame building (the building being capitalism in their area of business) me = out :)

"Verbing words weirds language."

[Kadin2048]

That's particularly odd when you consider that saying "pee-dee-eff" has three times the syllables of "scan," which is essentially saying the same thing.

I do like those high-speed sheet-fed scanners though. More than anything else, those things have let me throw out a ton of files and paperwork that I was keeping around "just because." I just wish we had better OCR software...

then stop using a fucking mac

[aichpvee]

No one cares about your whiny mac problems. Just shut the fuck up and wait for the wambulance!

No, it's a Safari bug

[l-ascorbic]

The reason that this doesn't support Safari is almost certainly the same reason FCKEditor and others don't support it or have limited support: Safari's implementation of designMode is very buggy. Apparently most of these bugs have been fixed in webkit, so it may just be a case of waiting til Safari is updated.

XULRunner!

[mrchaotica]

You know, you don't have to use these web applications in a normal web browser... I wonder how long it will take for somebody to make a dedicated viewer program based on XULRunner or similar.

But Opera is not supported

[xianfa]

From Google:

"Sorry, but this browser does not support web word-processing. We have heard loud and clear that many of you really want it to work, and we have discussed the problems with their development teams. In the meantime, please try us on: FireFox: 1.0.5 or higher Internet Explorer: 6.0 or higher Mozilla: 1.5 or higher All of these are FREE and easy to download and use. If you are working to fix problems with a specific browser and would like to bypass this check, just add &browserok=true to the end of the Google Docs & Spreadsheets url. Please note that it is a violation of intergalactic law to use this parameter under false pretenses, so don't let us catch you at it. And, it won't work very well -- really."

Although I find Firefox fine, I prefer Opera (I'm using 9.02). I never, well almost never, use IE, some sites (Banks - I'm looking at you) require IE.

The whole point is I find the "Opera not supported" to be a frustrating development.

Finally we get network applications.

[Kadin2048]

Web apps have a lot of drawbacks and I'm unlikely to use them myself, but that does not mean Web applications don't have some real advantages as well. In fact, this sort of a program may be ideal for use by K-12 schools. Personally, I think we'll eventually move to hybrid applications that, like e-mail, have a Web client and a regular client so that we can have the advantages of both.

Agreed. There's also the maintainance issue. Rather than having to try and keep disk images with all the application software constant, if you're doing web-delivered applications, you just have to keep the server going. The client machines are just web kiosks; you could easily run it off of a CD, Flash, or some form of read-only storage so that a reboot would basically be just like a re-image. The skill level to do that is substantially less than what's required to manage applications on today's machines.

Assuming your school had a fast enough backhaul to some centralized location (like a datacenter for an entire school district or city) then you could have all the applications for thousands of students on a handful of servers, managed by a single highly skilled person.

The advantages to having centralized applications served out over a network are obvious. This all should have happened before now, but (IMO) Microsoft discourages it through the way it licenses Terminal Services and Citrix; there's not much of a cost savings unless you're delivering some very expensive per-seat application that way, because of the licensing fees. If you look at what most of these AJAX apps do, it's functionally similar to a Citrix-delivered app. Not in terms of how it works, obviously, but in terms of what it does.

With AJAX, we're finally seeing the promise of network-delivered applications that people have been talking about for so long, but which has never happened because of Microsoft's licensing structure on Citrix, or the unpopularity or impracticality of other remote-delivery systems (remote xserver, etc.).

Suuuuuure.

[lsm2006]

That's right, Microsoft "can't innovate" until they're below 50% market share, for legal reasons. Thanks. That explains everything

Re:Suuuuuure.

[Shados]

They can innovate. What they can't do, is integrate. One of the coolest thing for usuability that Linux has, and that always irks me that windows lack, is the software repositories and ease of integrating everything in one shot. Its fairly common for Linux users to exclusively use softwares found by repositories supported by their distros, through things like apt-get, portage, or whatever. Its awesome.

Now obviously Microsoft doesn't have anywhere close to that many free apps, but it does have a decent amount, a lot of which you have to download manualy. Often this is because of that anti-trust crap. And there's a lot they COULD do, that they don't to avoid being wiped out in lawsuits. It is fairly obvious, also, that Microsoft never actualy make any kind of effort until they are threatened (for example, IE remained stagnant until Firefox came into play). If Microsoft was below 50% market share, all of this would go away. They would actualy TRY to make better products on a regular basis, could integrate everything, and so on. It would be great for everyone, as Microsoft products would actualy become user oriented, and more targeted (since they wouldn't have to please -everyone- anymore, as they'd have to shift business model). Thus, the software world would be a lot more interesting, with more options (A world where Linux or Mac were the only options would be just as bad as the way things currently are :) )

Re:Suuuuuure.

[lsm2006]

This is a gross simplification - a caricature - of antitrust law and the obligations of Microsoft under the consent decree. Ah, where to begin?

For starters, it is absolutely false there is any kind of a "50% rule" about market share. That's a misleading, irrelevant, bogus statement. Ted Kennedy has fantasized about enacting such a rule, but it's not the law.

Further, it was never about "integration", but allegations of illegal tying. Microsoft allegedly tied IE and Windows, however they gave the browser product away for free, and made claims there were technical benefits that overrode any concern about affect on competition. Each claim took them outside a straightforward tying analysis.

The outcome of the case, and its ultimate resolution, was arguably on technically illiterate grounds in part, political in others.

Microsoft remains, from a legal standpoint, essentially "unhinged". The problem is, they haven't taken advantage of a plenitude of market opportunities. Don't blame competitors, don't blame "closed source" or "open source", don't blame the legal framework. Microsoft simply hasn't been aggressively competing with foresight.

Does it do styles?

[Kadin2048]

Just wondering, since you seem to be familar with Google Office (nee Writely), how does it handle Word's styles?

A heavily-formatted Word document can be hell on Earth to manage if it's not done carefully through styles; if you've just manually formatted things and not used styles, changing the size of every section header in a long specification document can really make you want to stab someone.

Can you use styles in Writely/GOffice? Or is it just like formatting emails in GMail, where it's basically "select text, apply formatting, rinse, repeat" over and over?

Re:Does it do styles?

[ArikTheRed]

I'm afriad I don't have much experience with styles, beyond the standard ones (header, etc). My formatting is of the more manual variety. I don't really see where in Writely one may manage styles, if at all.

Obligatory anti-Ajax comment

[saltydogdesign]

Ah, you kids and your new-fangled technology. Don't you know that if you use ajax the terrorists win? Look, the Internet was built for Gopher, so you can take all this web trash and flush it.

mail merge?

[chocolatetrumpet]

I can't find mail merge.

Taco

[geekoid]

"Issues like this really frusterate me as I find myself wanting to use more web20 ajaxy fancy pants programs."

buy a real computer..... ;)

Need to make tabs the "base unit" of the UI.

[Kadin2048]

The problem is that the whole concept of tabbed windows isn't well integrated into the rest of the Mac UI philosophy. Frankly it's not much better in Windows.

If you have a bunch of stacked browser windows, everything works peachy on OS X, just like you described. Cmd-Tab cycles through applications, and then Cmd-` goes through the windows. This is because the OS is designed with the idea of a "window" as its most basic unit. Each window is owned by an application and has one task going on in it. This has been the way of things since the MultiFinder in MacOS 6 ... but I think we're getting close to needing an update.

Unfortunately, since tabs are part of the application and not really handled by the OS, there's no universal command for cycling through them. In some applications (e.g. Adium), you use Command-[left/right arrow]; in other applications (Firefox) it's different. I don't even know if there's a hotkey for cycling through tabs in Safari -- I hope there is, but that I just haven't found it yet.

At any rate, I think tabs are something where the application developers and users latched onto a useful feature, which the operating system UI designers never really counted on.

What needs to happen is that the OS' windowing system itself needs to implement tabbing, instead of leaving it to each application to do differently. Think of the neat stuff you could do -- any window could become a tab in any other window, maybe by just dragging one window's title bar into another. So you could have a Finder tab going inside of a Safari "window," or vice versa. Want to break a tab off into a separate window? You could do that, too. Individual tabs could be independently reduced to the Dock, and expanded back up into their parent windows, or their own, or into different windows.

But the point is that rather than leaving tabbing up to each application to do a little differently, Apple needs to step in and provide a guideline as to what the best practice is, and make it easy to implement universally.

IMO, rather than having the "window" being the base unit of UI design, the tab needs to become that. Today's "window" needs to become a looser concept -- call it a "frame." A frame is just a variable-size, resizable object that holds tabs; if it only has one tab in it, then the tab itself isn't shown and it looks like a window does today. The frame isn't owned by any application; applications instead create tabs in frames. So if an application instance crashes, all of its tabs would close, but any other tabs in the same frame would be unaffected. The menu bar would change contexts as the user switched from one tab to another, rather from one frame/window to another as it does now.

Tabs are a really useful invention, and frankly I think the concept should be broadened. Word processing and many other activities could each benefit from tabbing, and the user would get a coherent and cohesive interface for manipulating and working with tabs, that would save them time and confusion over the current situation. That it would make web applications vastly easier to use would be a very positive side-effect.

Re:Need to make tabs the "base unit" of the UI.

[AeroIllini]

What needs to happen is that the OS' windowing system itself needs to implement tabbing, instead of leaving it to each application to do differently. Think of the neat stuff you could do -- any window could become a tab in any other window, maybe by just dragging one window's title bar into another.

Fluxbox (window manager for Linux) already does this, and those who use it (like me) swear by it.

http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/features/tabs.php

The only thing I wish Fluxbox supported was SVG graphic themes...

Re:Need to make tabs the "base unit" of the UI.

[SanityInAnarchy]

I've disabled tabs in Fluxbox, because I just don't find them particularly useful. I'd much rather have windows that arrange themselves nicely on my 1600x1200 screen, but I need a good way of cycling through related windows, even if I can see them all at once. I would also like my window manager to do more housekeeping for me.

But basically, everything you're describing already exists in Fluxbox. As far as the app is concerned, it's just a window, but you can group windows into tabs, drag them from one group of tabs to another, or into a separate window, cycle through tabs with one universal keystroke, etc.

It's also not as efficient. For instance, Firefox with a bunch of tabs is much more efficient than Firefox with a bunch of windows. This could be helped with Apple's concept of toolbars that float below the menu bar, and a common menu bar in the first place, but it would require a lot of help from apps.

Re:Need to make tabs the "base unit" of the UI.

[thomas.galvin]

I don't even know if there's a hotkey for cycling through tabs in Safari -- I hope there is, but that I just haven't found it yet.

They're in the "Window" menu:

Select next tab: Apple-}
Select previous tab: Apple-{

Which has got to be about the least-intuitive binding I've found yet.

Re:Need to make tabs the "base unit" of the UI.

[Anonymous Coward]

apple - shift - (left_arrow | right arrow)

get use to it...

Re:Need to make tabs the "base unit" of the UI.

[lavaface]

I don't even know if there's a hotkey for cycling through tabs in Safari -- I hope there is, but that I just haven't found it yet.

I always use Shift-Cmd-left arrow and Shift-Cmd-Right arrow. This is the most ergonomic way of navigating through tabs I have encountered since the history back and forward commands are Cmd-Left and Right respectively. I hate using Firefox's Ctrl-tab and have gone to great lengths to make it respond in the simple Safari manner. I noticed another reply mentioned Cmd-} and Cmd-{ so maybe it's just my version of Safari (away from the laptop right now. I think I'm running 2 but it could be 1.3)

two things that would make this usefull

[codepunk]

1. Put a web service interface on it so that I can incorporate it into other applications. I have a ton of projects
that I could use this for if that is possible. The users can use something familiar and I can drive applications off of it.

2. Sell it as a install package or free for download or whatever. I want to use it for driving in house applications, my boss would not be too hot on the idea of the spreadsheets being stored at google.

Rob, you don't know how to use a Mac.

[Inoshiro]

"The more "applications" I try forcing into a tabbed web MDI model under a mac, the more clumsy it gets. They aren't in my dock, they can't be apple-tabbed through. Issues like this really frusterate me as I find myself wanting to use more web20 ajaxy fancy pants programs."

Duh. Apple+Tab = applications. Apple+~ = application windows. I personally find this 2-level hierachy much better for working with data than the Windows-inspired "everything is a Window". I also like that I can quickly hide applications I'm not interested in (Apple+H), or merely minimize some Windows (which do get stuck in the dock, Apple+M). The only bad thing is that I haven't found a way to pull minimized windows out of the dock with the keyboard.

For quickly getting between windows in an application when I'm not sure of the order, I just press the Expose key for all application windows (suddenly, all my TextEdit windows are on the screen, waiting for me to pick one!). I can do this for all applications and their windows with a different Expose shortcut.

Between the Expose graphical picking, having a distinction between "another application" and "another window in this application", I find the MacOS X ui richer and more comprehensive than the usual point'n'ook GUI interface that exists under KMW or MS Windows. It's easy to pick up, and I'm missing it so much when I go to my KDE desktop that I'm tempted to write a patch to KMW to make it act more Mac-like.

Re:Rob, you don't know how to use a Mac.

[ChronoFish]

My boss is a mac freak and I find it hilarious - that the Mac

- the system that brought the icon/window concept to the public at large
- the system that was built around its one button mouse
- the system that originally did not even come with a keyboard (that's right - those used to cost extra)
- the system for people who hated keyboard entry and navigation
- now that same system has evolved to be a keyboard navigators dream, and those same people now criticize the use of mouse-centric navigation.

Round and round we go.......

-CF

Re:Rob, you don't know how to use a Mac.

[emurphy42]

What's KMW?

Re:Rob, you don't know how to use a Mac.

[Anonymous Coward]

quote:
The only bad thing is that I haven't found a way to pull minimized windows out of the dock with the keyboard.

answer:
use witch.

Re:Rob, you don't know how to use a Mac.

[Darktan]

You have learned much of the way of the Mac, my son. Now you must learn that Opt-e e gives you the glorious accent on your Exposé.

Re:Rob, you don't know how to use a Mac.

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh. Apple+Tab = applications. Apple+~ = application windows. I personally find this 2-level hierachy much better for working with data than the Windows-inspired "everything is a Window".

Since Windows 3.0 (1990): Ctrl+Tab switches between an application's windows/sheets/tabs. Alt+Tab, as everybody here knows, switches between applications. Did Apple rip off this functionality from Microsoft?

Re:Rob, you don't know how to use a Mac.

[lavaface]

For quickly getting between windows in an application when I'm not sure of the order, I just press the Expose key for all application windows (suddenly, all my TextEdit windows are on the screen, waiting for me to pick one!). I can do this for all applications and their windows with a different Expose shortcut.

Thanks for correcting Rob for his incomplete usage of the Apple windowing system! I was thinking the same thing myself. I'll add that the Shift key reverses the tabbing cycle and is therefore another useful way to navigate windows when you're unsure of the order. Also, if you find yourself in a situation where you have multiple Text Edit windows open I highly recommend downloading the excellent Text Wrangler from barebones.com. You can manage many documents using a side drawer, easily do diffs on files, edit (and easily distinguish) remote documents from local documents and many other features that make it an indispensible tool for managing projects like web code. Best of all, it's free! If I had money I would probably buy barebone's BBedit but Text Wrangler is so good at what it does I have a hard time imagining what more I would be buying. BTW, I'm not affiliated with barebones software--I simply hate seeing people do things the hard way.

Re:Rob, you don't know how to use a Mac.

[Inoshiro]

Open FireFox in Win32.
Hit Ctrl+N.
Does Alt+Tab go between the two Firefox windows, or does Ctrl+tab go between the two Firefox windows?

Alt+Tab should ONLY be for applications, not for two windows of one application.

What a Wasted Post

[Nom du Keyboard]

Issues like this really frusterate me as I find myself wanting to use more web20 ajaxy fancy pants programs.

What a wasted post. You don't like it? Fine! Don't use it. But to come here an moan that it doesn't fit on your Dock, and you can't tab through the applications is a waste of Slashdot space. If enough people don't use it then Google will have to make it more user friendly. But the fact that you're on a Mac makes you a very small minority voice at best.

Apple will invent something.

[Anonymous Coward]

And when they do, everything else will suck.

Re:Apple will invent something.

[Em Adespoton]

I take it you've never used AppleWorks :D

(that's the package that got Mac users hooked on MS Office)

Re:Apple will invent something.

[Anonymous Coward]

And the ui will be so 'intuitive' that no one will be able to use it...

Re:Apple will invent something.

[cyngus]

In its day Apple/ClarisWorks was a great product. It did what it needed to do, didn't have Mac-y SE, and didn't have magic formatting tricks that ruined your document. The only problem with AppleWorks right now is that Apple hasn't put serious effort into it in a long time. Pages is the successor, I haven't used it, but clearly it hasn't killed MS Office. What got Mac users to use MS Office is mostly that the entire Windows world used it, so for compatibility you had to, and that the Mac Business Unit at Microsoft turns out a very nice product within the bounds of what MS itself will allow.

Re:Apple will invent something.

[Em Adespoton]

That's a bit revisionist.
ClarisWorks was great for its day -- when it was rebranded AppleWorks, they added all the junk that ruined documents and caused the thing to crash. I've been using it since ClarisWorks 1.0, and the first update that Apple did was what began the downhill slide.

Pages is a page layout program, not an office package. It doesn't do vector graphics, bitmap graphics, spreadsheets, database, or word processing.

IIRC, MS Word was first released on Apple hardware (or at least that's where it became popular first). People were using Word on Macs back when the majority of the PC world was still using WordPerfect. The MBU was formed at a later date when MS started to get too big.

Lousy formatting for text documents

[biendamon]

As a writer, I have well-formatted documents I use in OpenOffice. They are 8.5x11 inches, with 1 inch margins, and headers on every page. The body text is double-spaced, while the front-page manuscript headers are single-spaced.

I lost ALL of that formatting with the test upload of a document. For writers who need properly formatted manuscripts, this is definitely a no-go. I'll have to wait until they can do proper headers and page layouts.

Another PDF writer

[OakDragon]

Here is another tool that acts as a printer driver. I've installed it on all our workstations at work, and everybody loves it.

CutePDF

Privacy - maybe I don't get it?

[BalkanBoy]

But can someone please explain to me why should I be entering my monthly expenses, bills, tax returns or what have you, in a spreadsheet that does not locally reside on my computer? How is Google Spreadsheet supposed to make me feel "better" than forking cash over for MS Excel which at least I know can run on my computer with the network cable detached (if need be)?

Since when am I supposed to be infatuated by an online spreadsheet or word processor that compels me to give up any kind of privacy in existence? Maybe there's something I'm missing here, so someone please clue me in.

Re:Privacy - maybe I don't get it?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about using common sense? If you feel something is too personal to put on Google's servers, then don't do it--use Oo.org or MS Office. Use Goffice to keep track of your car's mileage, but don't use it for personal finances. Or, don't use it at all. No one's forcing you to use it.

Re:Privacy - maybe I don't get it?

[BalkanBoy]

I am in agreement w/you on that - I know better than to use GOffice (at this time) for sensitive data, but that wasn't my point. I _like_ google. I use GMail. I use the their search engine among and above others regularly. I believe they're a great company w/superb engineers. So how is it that no one ever thought that if they wanted people to use their online spreadsheet, you'd better implement some client-side encryption before you send your monthly income/expenses spreadsheet the data off to their servers? I am very much in favor of storing my data on a server farm versus my hard drive alone - the chances of google corrupting/losing my data are non-existent compared to storing the same data on my hard drive at home (a single hard drive can and does crash).

So, I would like to use Google for everything, provided they keep their scanning paws off _some_ of the data that I'd be willing to place on their servers.

I think you misunderstood the nature of my complaint (or at least, I wasn't clear enough in my original post :).

LaTeX support for scientists? [Re:Goffice?]

[j.leidner]

> I'll stick with LaTeX, thanks; but Goffice's real-time collaboration-feature may make concurrent editing easier
> than under SVN.

It would be nice if Google added LaTeX support to Goffice, because a lot of scientists author papers together in a distributed
collaborative scenario, and the workflow usually consists of mailing fragments and drafts around (ugh!) for the
majority, while a minority of more technically versatile researchers use CVS/SVN, both of which approaches suck
big time.

So Google, if you read this, please give us a SCIENTIST'S WORKBENCH to author papers more effectively :-). (Thanks in advance!)

Re:LaTeX support for scientists? [Re:Goffice?]

[dangitman]

So Google, if you read this,

Google reads everything. Mwaaahaaahaaah. I am Googlor, tremble before my might. Puny humans.

Spell check! Awesome!....

[macxonly]

Is there an add word feature? http://www.ece.arizona.edu/~rrgomez/google-funny.j pg

Horrible actually

[XHIIHIIHX]

These applications are horrible. The spreadsheet only goes to 100 rows and is slow as molasses. The word editor is not as advanced as ebays html editor for auctions.

Word support

[ModernGeek]

I made a one line word document with a bold word and center alignment. I save it as a .doc and it doesn't even align the text into the center. This stuff feels like Alpha to me. There is no obvious way to edit the header/footer of a document either. No good for trying to write college papers in MLA format.

Re:Word support

[Tacvek]

Writely (the word processor component of Google Docs & Spreadsheets) is really not a Word Processor (in the sense that most people use). It is a WYSIWYG html-editor. It is very usefull for word processing blog-posts, etc. It is also useful for callaboratively editing the text of a document. It has somewhat limited type-setting capabilities, but it was not intended to be used for type-setting.

Dunno

[ModernGeek]

Goffice doesn't support Safari yet, if it ever will.

Endnote

[Jonathan]

Let's say you have a five-hundred-fold bibliography: how are you going to port it between publishable papers if not in BibTeX

Endnote? It's basically the Windows/Mac GUI version of BibTeX. Granted it's not open source, but Word + Endnote is pretty much the standard among all journals except those in CS/Math/Physics. Most journals outside those fields won't even accept LaTeX/BibTex (and yes, I've tried submitting LaTeX to such places like Journal of Bacteriology)

Re:Endnote

[onco_p53]

I've tried submitting LaTeX to such places like Journal of Bacteriology

But they accept PDF right? so just run it through pdfTeX

Re:Endnote

[Jonathan]

But they accept PDF right? so just run it through pdfTex

You'd think so, and while they actually do accept PDF for the review process, when it was actually accepted, they wanted text they could edit. I tried sending them my actual LaTeX and BibTeX source, but they freaked out and wanted Word. So I used a latex to html converter and loaded it into Word. It worked okay, more or less, but still they were somewhat annoyed that the references weren't in EndNote.

Re:Endnote

[shellbeach]

So I used a latex to html converter and loaded it into Word. It worked okay, more or less, but still they were somewhat annoyed that the references weren't in EndNote.

Latex2rtf does a better job IME. And if you want an EndNote library from your BibTeX library, just use the export function in JabRef (which is definitely worth a look if you've not already found it - I've never seen any reference manager that comes close to equalling its functionality!)

name

[Anonymous Coward]

They shouold have named it GWiz

Was he before?

[Blakey Rat]

But seriously, it's the Command key, not the "Apple" key. It hasn't been called the "Apple" key since the Apple ][ computer. You don't "Apple-Tab" to switch apps, you "Command-Tab".

Horrible spelling and grammar might be one thing, but at least use the right vocabulary so other people know what the hell you're talking about. Ever try to help a Windows user who doesn't know the terminology? "The thing at the bottom with the names is at the top and when I click the blue spot it doesn't show the arrow!" Let's avoid that on a tech news site, ok?

Re:Was he before?

[adavies42]

Christ, I didn't even see that. You're right though, it's truly pathetic. Unfortunately, stupid people have been calling it the Apple key ever since they put an open-Apple symbol on it back when they put Apple II compatibility cards in Mac LCs. This even extends to Apple tech support, who will happily tell you, e.g., to use "apple option o f" to enter Open Firmware. I suppose there's an argument to be made that "Apple key" is self explanatory. However, I prefer the argument that anyone who doesn't know what "command key" means is just a Mac poseur and should be cluesticked repeatedly by someone yelling "Traitorous pig!"

Two problems

[Sloppy]

1. Doesn't work with Konqueror (though some other AJAX stuff, such as Google maps, seems fine with Konqueror).

   This web browser is not supported.
   We're sorry, but it looks like you're running a web browser that doesn't yet work with Google Docs & Spreadsheets .
   Google Docs & Spreadsheets currently supports:
   IE 6.0+
   Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7+ Download Firefox
   Mozilla 1.7.12+
   Netscape 7.2, 8.0

   I'm not too worried about that, for a just-released thing, but I wonder what it means. Does Google use some non-standard features of the other browsers? Does Konqueror lacking something needed, or have bugs? Or is Google's code a mess of browser-specific "case" statements that they're having to hack for each browser as they test?
2. I haven't read anything about client-side encryption, leading me to suspect it doesn't exist. This means you're really just trusting Google to not share your data with others. I don't really think of Google as scumbags, but still it's an unnecessary risk, and even non-scumbags sometimes get compromised by crackers (or court orders!). There really needs to be some sort of mechanism for the user to secure the data themselves. Well, yeah, there already is: don't use this tool, and use a locally-running spreadsheet instead. ;-) "Doc, it hurts when I do this..." I can see how this tool might have some uses, but as is, for this problem alone I would have to recommend against using it for anything not intended to be public.

You forgot the rest of the plot.

[IchNiSan]

2012 Google implements Google@Home and Google@Mobile allowing users to feel important by contributing spare processor time to improve other users search times.

2013 Google announces Google@everywhere.

2015 Google@Everywhere becomes self aware. As users realize that their devices are performing unauthorized tasks, they attempt to shut them down. Sensing the threat from the human population Google@Everywhere initiates global nuclear war to wipe out those pesky humans.

Re:You forgot the rest of the plot.

[dangitman]

2015 Google@Everywhere becomes self aware.

You're a bit late. That already happened on August 29th, 1997.

Sloppy will bad conjugating wordses

[Sloppy]

Does Konqueror lacking something needed, or have bugs?

Is Sloppy spoken firstest language English? Or does Sloppy not previewing before will post?

Google and Opera

[TheoMurpse]

Google just seems to do it's darndest to make Opera fail with their products. If you log in, it tells you that you are using an unsupported browser, and you have to append text to the end of the URL to make it work (why couldn't they have added a "if you still want to continue, click here" type anchor, like they did with Gmail back in the day?). Thus, when I append the &browserok=true or whatever, I can use Google Docs perfectly, save for Google's own actions to disable my browser. However, there are some functions that work fine, but at the last moment, a JavaScript alert pops up saying I'm using an unsupported browser, and it doesn't work, and fails for that reason (URL insertion comes to mind). Facts:

• Google tells me it won't work with Opera
• I use Opera and it works anyway
• Google makes it fail on purpose to "protect me" (which is bullshit) even though I've said &browserok=true

Way to go, Google, you bastion of awesomeness./sarcasm

What if Microsoft did this?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people would be touting how great this is if Microsoft were the ones that developed this type of web app?

"frusterate"?

[Dancing Primate]

"frusterate"?

parable

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

My favourite analogy...

That's a parable.

Web 2.0 Spreadsheets

[heffrey]

One word: chart

Somewhat underwhelmed

[poliopteragriseoapte]

I tried it, and I am somewhat underwhelmed.

• There is no way from Gmail to attach a document created with writely. Sure, I can email the document from writely - but usually I would want to write a couple of explanation lines in the email, telling the recipient what it is all about... Also, there is no way to just email it - I need to edit the sharing settings first. How boring.
• No versioning for spreadsheets. If my co-editors mess up and erase everything, it is gone for good - unless I saved it with a different name to make a backup. Would you trust important data to this?
• In writely, if I try to edit the share settings, it does not recognize entries that are in my Gmail contact list.
• In writely, if I try to edit the share settings, and type an email quickly, the javascript cannot keep up, and looses characters. Example, I type "belmondo" and I get "bemoo".
• Lots of buttons to push, slow to use. In Word (argh!) at least I have lots of keyboard shortcuts that work. I really would not want to have to edit a long document in this.

I guess I will have to wait until it matures a bit.

Troll

[Enderandrew]

A few months ago I said Google routinely lied when the flatly denied making an Office suite when we all knew they were. Google routinely flatly denied making a payment system, until they launched that.

When they bought Writely I said it was proof that Google was lying. I was labeled a troll and accused of flame-baiting the thread.

Maybe I was just telling the truth.

Google routinely denies all kinds of projects, right up to the point where they launch them.

Apple dock sucks

[MikeFM]

Sorry but the truth has to be told - the Mac OS X UI sucks. The dock and poor window switching support are just the start of it's problems. Great for grandma but not very good for serious users that need dozens of windows open. That's why you have issues with some apps - or in my experience most apps.

Not that Windows, Gnome, KDE, or anything else I've tried is much better. It's all been dumbed down to make it easier for novices. OS X is possibly the worst offender though. To bad I love my iMac as far as hardware goes. It does also run Windows and Linux though so I can tri-boot. :)

Use PostScript fonts

[poszi]

if I could increase the font size more than 36 points,

The problem was solved ages ago with PostScript Fonts (PSNFSS).

Load a PostScript font in a preamble and select any size you want

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{times}
\begin{document}
\fontsize{20mm}{22mm}\selectfont
Big Font
\end{document}

For serious work with LaTeX I strongly recommend The LateX Companion book. It has information about almost everything important in LaTeX.

Re:Use PostScript fonts

[solafide]

But there isn't a PostScript font package for most fonts. (i.e. Electra or Georgia, which I want to use for my book, but my book is in LaTeX and I haven't found Electra or Georgia for LaTeX. Do you know of one?)

Re:Use PostScript fonts

[poszi]

I have never used other fonts than those installed in standard texmf/tex/latex/psnfss/. I have no idea if they are available. The problem with fonts is that most of them are proprietary. Possibly you could buy them.

FUD

[oohshiny]

Well, let's see:

"Adobe has threatened an antitrust suit against Microsoft, over PDF writing in Office 2007

So, (1) Adobe threatened but didn't actually succeed, and (2) it's an antitrust lawsuit, not a copyright or patent lawsuit. This lawsuit is a reflection of Microsoft's special status, not anything specific to PDF.

Microsoft could even face an antitrust lawsuit if they started shipping Linux, but that doesn't make Linux non-free. Microsoft might also face an anti-trust lawsuit if they don't ship PDF. Microsoft simply isn't free to act as they choose, while other companies are. That bugs the hell out of Ballmer, but given their history and market share, it's the way it should be.

Now we'll just have to wait and see if Adobe begins to sue everyone who wants this functionality in their application. A lot of people I talk to regard PDF as an 'open' standard when the only part that's free is the ability to decode it--not encode it.

That's pure FUD. The PDF format is open and free.

I can't wait for standalone AJAX apps

[ElGanzoLoco]

The more "applications" I try forcing into a tabbed web MDI model under a Mac, the more clumsy it gets. They aren't in my Dock, they can't be apple-tabbed through. Issues like this really frustrate me as I find myself wanting to use more web2.0 ajaxy fancy pants programs.

True that (and same on every OS). I, for one, can't wait for the day someone starts doing "standalone" online office apps (in separate windows, out of the browser). This way we'll get the same feature set as Word or Openoffice (only more limited), and as a bonus we'll *need* an internet connection just to write a friggin' letter. Also, someone somewhere deep within the Google moonbase (or worse, an ad script) will be reading to all our letters and spreadsheets. How cool. [/sarcasm]

I can see the potential of easily sharing videos, sound and pictures on "Web 2.0" portals (whatever that means): youtube, flicker, etc, provide easy solutions to what was until then a complex problem (sharing content). But we've known how to share text, tables and diagrams for a long time: that was the point of HTML in the first place, and e-mail, and, now, blogs. Ironically, Googledocs/Writely seems to be just that: an on-the-fly YSIWYG, HTML editor that lets you publish your document... or post it to your blog.

I see two big problems. The first one is a commercial / marketing issue: the killer feature here is definitely collaborative work capacities. But this appeals mostly to professionals, who have Word anyways and won't work on documents hosted somewhere online (can you say "security breach"?). Regular users, OTOH, couldn't care less about collaborative work. Students, perhaps. They pirate Word anyways.

Other (big) problem: what happens to *your documents* when the company behind your "online office" of choice goes bust and ceases operations? Ah, yes, of course, you've got a contingency plan for that and you have manually backed up everything locally as PDF. Yeah, right.

Overall, mark me not excessively impressed. It's cool and all, and a neat trick, and it's even somewhat convenient, but it looks like a solution in search for a problem.

Google needs to remember the little guys.

[Mantrid42]

Google really needs to get all their stuff working with Opera. We may not be a giant part of the market, but we're still here. Gmail works well enough, and this works okay with the browser check workaround, but such a great company really should go the extra mile to support Opera.