Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.