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OpenOffice Could Soon Become Web-Based Apps
An anonymous reader writes "Via Linuxtoday.com, a message from the OpenOffice Dev mailing list in which a new company is introducing the GravityZoo OpenOffice porting project. The unusually named group aims to bring OpenOffice to the Internet as a series of online apps. 'When OpenOffice.org is GravityZood, it will become a suite of productivity applications that are always available, online, via a broad range of devices. It will be possible to share and collaborate in real-time, to switch from one device (e.g. a PC) to another (Mobile) device. There will also be no need to save data, because everything you produce is saved automatically on the network. There is no need to download, install or update, the latest version is just available and accessible from any GravityZoo enabled client.'"
You appear to be under the mistaken assumption that you are a serious user.
But anyone who would use any part of microsoft office but excel and perhaps outlook is by definition not a serious user.
Powerpoint has support only for crap low resolutions. Word is a pathetic joke in terms of layout and typesetting ability and publisher frankly is not noticeably better. Access? Don't fucking get me started.
If you want to do a presentation that anyone is going to care about, you're producing a video, not a powerpoint presentation. If you're trying to create a document for external release, like advertising or documentation, neither word nor publisher can help you. You must use something real, like Framemaker, InDesign, et cetera.
Office is a sad, pathetic Joke. OO.o does everything that office does well, but not as well as office does it in some cases. But in terms of casual use of an office suite, which is all office is good for anyway (again, with the exception of excel, IMO Microsoft's only worthwhile program period full stop) there is simply nothing significant missing from OO.o.
Anything office does that OO.o doesn't, office does a horrible job with.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Ok, we all kind of understand that there will come a time when bandwidth allows profile concepts to be moved to a universally accessible secure location. But it will have to be a highly secured and trusted service or user created server service. (i.e. A home BSD box or even Windows Home Server for example for home users.)
However, I don't want my personal documents stored on their servers, and I know most business policies will not allow documents to be stored in this manner.
Also, why are they 'reinventing' the wheel with patented technology to do this? There are many known and secure remote app technologies that could be already put into place for something like this.
I'm open to ideas here, but I don't see how this is 'Open' or a good thing...
Have you ever used Google Applications? Because I have and I have to say they enable collaborative editing in a way I have never experienced with bolt-on products. I'm not sure that the first iteration of this would accomplish that kind of ability, it seems more an alternative to Citrix, but I'm fairly confident if it's open source something similar will eventually be added.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Too little, too late. I'm pretty sure that Google Docs is using OpenOffice code for a large portion of Google Docs functionality. (Take a look at the Google spreadsheets help and also note the producer tag on its pdf output.)
That said, any spreadsheet application needs to be able to perform regression and factor analysis at a minimum to be useful to me. Google Docs has no such advanced statistical functionality, Excel is satisfactory, and SYSTAT is preferred. Fancy formatting be damned, it's actual functionality that matters to me. Hell, a CLI is all that is really required; I started with MINITAB and SAS on a monochrome VAX/VMS connected terminal about 15 years ago, it worked just fine and little, if anything, since has improved on it. I'm betting it would not be too hard to turn VMS apps into web services...
If SSI ever does web-based applications then colour me interested.
Most small companies cannot afford to battle big players in endless patent suits. The problem of the broken patent system is that you need patents to cover your arse from the big players who have the money to do so.
The whole RIM debacle actually is more an exception to the rule. Verizon v.s. Vonage is how the real game is played. If Vonage had filed for some trivial patents which were abused by Verizon, they could have counter sued and settled without ever going to court.
The current IBM seems to be good example of the ass-covering method applied to a big player. You sue me over some stupid patent infringment? Let's see, we've got a patent for this little shiny button in the left corner of yours and by the way, we also patented your arse. So still want to challenge us?
Am I glad to see you guys. Two other people who think this is a lame idea.
First, can you imagine how much javascript code it would take to replicate OOo online? Ack! That's a lot of non-compiled code running on a multitude of platforms. So you are on your freeBSD / KDE box using Konqueror, happily typing away at your 65K "word" doc, and crash! Not fun. As someone who does a lot of AJAX development (w/prototype), I have to say I love ajax. But making an html document/javascript app (or whatever you want to call it) behave like a desktop app? The mere thought makes me shudder. Forget who would want to use it -- who would want to develop it?
Second, just as you said...besides a perceived cool factor, what is the point? Does anyone share documents so stinking much that eMailing them or sticking them on a pen drive won't suffice?
Then there are the privacy concerns you bring up.
No thanks.
blah blah blah
Ok, it seems to me that the single biggest draw for these online desktop-like apps is to have access to your files from anywhere. Assuming that is correct, they why aren't we seeing more traditional apps that are capable of drawing from a common network data store such as Amazone S3? I know Amazon provides an API. Seem like you could extend OpenOffice to talk to S3 (or similar) directly and you'd have your "documents just about anywhere" feature that everyone (on Slashdot) seems to think is so useful. Really, it is such a relatively simple solution considering compared to trying to coerce a web browser into doing things God never meant it to do.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Putting a web app front-end on Open Office makes good sense, especially if the application server is already in your pocket. We currently tote around several electronic gadgets, and yet can only access "serious" applications through stationary desktops and bulky laptops. As electronics shrink, all of this must converge to a single platform. Since pretty much all applications require comms, and mobile phones provide this, they will probably end up being the platform that we converge onto. They will carry the files we're currently working with, like a level 1 cache, and swap out the ones we haven't touched for some time to server farms. They will give us dinky interfaces into their apps while we're on the move. When we need the big screen experience, they will deliver their apps to ubiquitous, big screen docking stations (a.k.a. browsers) via local wireless. So we will need to web-enable most of our important apps over time. See http://trevors-trinkets.blogspot.com/2007/02/after -desktop-what.html and http://trevors-trinkets.blogspot.com/2007/03/mobil izing-mobiles.html for how.
...when it was called ThinkFree Online. Oh wait, we have to hate ThinkFree because it's written in Java. Even though it works well, lets you use your own fonts and printer, opens and saves real MS Office docs, and installs into the JVM cache faster than an MS Office or OpenOffice install.
Oh well, trying to write an Office suite in Ajax has kept people busy for a few years, now they can try to get the native OO.o app working in a browser. Maybe next we can port it to Flash. That'll be fun.