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KDE Readies KOffice 2.0 As OpenOffice Competitor
Da Massive writes in with a link to a story on KOffice 2.0, the next generation of the KDE office suite due sometime next year. In an interview with KDE spokesman Sebastian Kugler, Computerworld reports that KOffice 2.0 will be leaner, faster, and enjoy a cleaner code base than OpenOffice. It will also feature more applications, including an Access-like database creator, a flowcharter, and an image manipulation tool. KOffice is not yet fully compatible with ODF but the claim is that 2.0 will be.
Even the 1.x versions are noticeably better (at least from a UI perspective). I've really been looking forward to KOffice 2.0 also because with KDE 4.0 it should eventually be available for Windows too...something that's still a requirement if you need to share stuff with other people.
RTFA:
KDE 4's framework is cross-platform.
They plan to release this on Windows as well.
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
The main benefit KOffice 2.0 brings is that it's sleek and fast. Unlike OpenOffice.org, KOffice has a very sensible architecture. Now, part of that is because KOffice is a far newer application. It builds directly on top of Qt, rather than implementing its own UI layer (like OpenOffice.org does). It also has a far more sensible component model, that suffers from only a small fraction of the bloat of the OO.o model.
While OpenOffice.org may have a larger feature set at this point, it just won't be able to compete with KOffice when it comes to being responsive and memory-efficient. Having built the KOffice source code from SVN just last week, I can tell you that you'll notice the difference immediately. OpenOffice.org just feels really damn sluggish, while KOffice is quick.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
OO.o also opens MS docs and MS Office is able to open saved OO.o documents allowing you to more easily share documents with those using MS.
This is good news. I've been looking for a word processor with a good set of features without the bloat. I've been trying KOffice for a little while now, not quite used to it yet, but it is looking to take over, at least for myself. Reading on the features that will be available soon, I'm really looking forward to this release.
i tried 1.6 some time ago -- mostly because i needed something access-like on Linux. the database app on the surface looks a lot better than the horror the ooo thingy, except that it didn't work with pre-existing sql databases. one has to create a database from scratch, and there wasn't an easy (UI) way to even hookup an existing database after one creates a custom one. since my needs were really simple, i gave up, and instead used knoda (http://www.knoda.org/) which is similar, and works nicely for the kind of thing I needed.
:)
the rest of the office implemenation seemed to almost work. of course, it wasn't completely compatible with OO, but i liked the interface better and would have used it if it had a useful PDF output. However the PDF i got out of it was really jagged (the letters jumping up and down around the line), and the opinion on the mailing list was at the time 'it isn't our problem', so I switched back to OO in the end.
I hope 2.0 delivers. I'll give it a try anyway
I'm a Gnome user (after road-testing KDE for a good six months), but I've been infected with the hype about KDE 4, and in particular, Koffice. If it's really as good as they say, there's a good chance I'll switch over. My job uses Macs, and I've found NeoOffice too unstable to use (four crashes in two hours). Supposedly, there will be a Mac OS X-native version of Koffice, which would fit the bill to replace friggin' MS Office.
My fallback -- and I'd just like to take this opportunity to veer off-topic, here -- is to put Ubuntu on a used CPU and run LTSP, with the Macs as thick clients. One way or another, I can't stand to see my office sink any more money into proprietary software.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
You know if you took a few seconds to research something you're writing - or even speaking - about, it may help others think you're not such a dumbass. You might even up your intelligence. Alas, this is slashdot. The barrier of entry for intelligence here is so low, you don't even need to remember your username to post.
Here, check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(toolkit)
(That's a link, you can click it and it will take you to another place on the internet). As you can see, QT4 is ported to Windows, and other non-x11 OSs. In an amazing twist of coincidences, Koffice is written in QT4.
As for this "choice" thing you're talking about. That's the function of the market isn't it? Wouldn't just proprietary software give people "choice"?
If open source didn't give people more choices, would there really be any point to it?
This is my sig.
There's still no "print selection" option in the printer gui interface. This leads me to believe that there will be more of the same gotchas littered all over koffice. Noble effort though. Keep up the good work.
And while you are at it, please work on the print selection thingy sometime eh?
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
KOffice also opens MS docs and spreadsheets, and can save in .doc or .xls format. I don't know how well that is supported in terms of very elaborate stuff, but the docs and spreadsheets readily accessible to me here worked fine.
-- Alastair
Why is it that Kontact does not have KOffice integration and Kerberos support. Kontact+eGroupware would be an Exchange Killer IF Kontact and eGroupware supported Kerberos so that I don't have to setup kwallet with Domain login and passwords for remote Calendars/Tasks/Address Book with XML-RPC.
Why no love of Kerberos!
Because once they realized they'd need a name MORE CLEVER than "Microsoft Office" and "Open Office dot Org", they threw in the towel. Seriously, it's an office suite. Its name doesn't need to elicit feelings of euphoria or anything.
oo
-- QCad
-- -- for flowcharting (if supplied with pre-defined shapes)
-- Pixel
-- -- for painting/photo manipulation
-- Kexi
-- -- for Access-style database management
(Items for illustration purposes only; not an endorsement of any particular package.)
Please read the article. First paragraph mentions Windows, Mac OS, and Linux (thanks to QT4)
oo
OfficeSweet.
-Docvert converts MSWord to OpenDocument, clean HTML
Will it work on GNOME or Xfce? I'm currently using Icewm. Do you have to install KDE for this one? Or just the KDE libs? (Would still be a large dl even if just the latter.)
From TFS:
I know I am setting myself up for something here, but isn't BASE an access-like database creator?
I just hope that they don't feel the need to go with K based names. Such as KIM (K image manipulator), Kase (K database), Ksql (Ksicle, kind of like popsicle), etc.
On the other hand, if it has new features, I'm all for it. I, and many others I'm sure, just want something that JUST WORKS. I don't care if it KDE, GTK, so on and so forth. I will go where the features and stability is. And that is the only way to spread FOSS - by getting a true alternative to the other programs that infect corporate culture (and from there, to schools so they can prep for corporate culture, then to homes). If it takes multiple projects to stir each other along, then fine. But if one can do just as well for ease of selection, fine too. Just lose the egos and do what is best for everyone - not just your baby project.
Multi-platform is vital for helping a transition off MS and onto Linux or whatever. I use OO to edit docs and it just does not matter to me whether I use Windows or Linux. In essence all I care about is that it is an OO-capable machine.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
A native port of KDE on windows was started about two years ago; I don't recall seeing anything come of it. Personally, I see no reason for it to be ported to Windows.
remember that Koffice is not new - here they are announcing their goals for their 2.0 release - I run my company on their spread sheet and the occasional times I need to use a word processor it does what I need
reguster domain coffice.com and enjoy the growth.
At least you have been spared the pain of trying to bring credibility in marketing to The Gimp.
KOffice 2.0 will run natively on OS X:
:D ), and iWork 2008 out starting last month, Mac users willing to pay for a good office suite will have even more choice.
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/02/1930232
This will benefit Mac users tremendously, as NeoOffice is too bloated (although making good progress at getting more efficient) and the native version of OpenOffice is probably several months away at best.
There is no lean, simple free and/or open source spreadsheet app for Mac yet. When KOffice 2.0 comes out, cheap Mac users (like me) will have more choice. When MS Office 2007 comes out for Mac in January 2008 (sorry, had to poke fun at Microsoft
This will also benefit the KDE team, as their installed based will expand by one (and possibly two) OS's, giving them more bug reports and feature requests.
Everybody wins!
This space left intentionally blank.
Or how about OSX? I've heard something about QT offering easy porting to OSX... any truth there?
Honestly, I think having good ports on Linux, OSX, and Windows is a big deal. I believe it's part of the reason Firefox has been successful. Users can use the same app on any platform and have the same features, same rendering, same behavior, and roughly the same interface. From an IT standpoint, it's ideal since it cuts down on support/training issues. OpenOffice seems to be the only office suite with that advantage.
And if the task to be done, spreadsheeting and writing documents, letters, and reports is known, then where is the percentage of redoing the whole thing from scratch?
There is a very good reason why MS Office has such a high marketshare: it does the job, without too much fuss, and people are comfortable with it. What job? Well ... day-to-day office jobs. In about 20 year nobody has really identified any additional core functionality they needed over spreadsheet, text-processor, presentation maker, personal database, simple drawing package. Open Office is competitive, KOffice (in my opinion) is (in my view at least) redundant.
Err and when you say you "run your company" on the KOffice spreadsheet, how big an application are you talking about? Anything beyond a straightforward 1-page spreadsheet? Any scripting? Any pulling in of external datafiles? Any graphing? Any database access?
While I'm sure you enjoy being able to prepare and cook your favorite Peking Duck variation while opening OpenOffice, Koffice will provide competition and hopefully some innovation on the code side which is next to impossible to get into openoffice using your standard submit patches procedures. It can be the coolest and tightest integration/innovation in the entire niche and Sun won't accept it unless you kiss their ass. This, and they accept shitty, buggy internal patches from half assed coders from their own staff (but I repeat myself) all the time. You would welcome this change if you had any idea that OO was just a semi-shiny turd.
I've been working on my own Access-killer for a couple of years now. It's a suite of open-source, cross-platform Perl libraries, using Gtk2 for the GUI. The old website ( complete ) is at: http://entropy.homelinux.org/axis/. I'm right now working on a revamped website ( incomplete, but with up-to-date download links and new screenshots ) is at: http://entropy.homelinux.org/axis_new/.
... :)
There are 3 main components: a form object, a datasheet object, and a reporting module ( which exports to PDF via PDF::API2 ). I'm also working on a GUI object builder that exports XML for all 3 objects. Click on the 'future' link to see some screenshots of it in action. Note that I'm also looking for developers to help out, and maybe create a commercial project out of it ( I'm as-yet undecided whether to do this or not ).
I've had a number of large, complex production systems built on these libraries in use for about 2 years now. Please try it out, comment, report bugs, help out
Just run KOffice under Gnome. It's not like either the KDE nor Gnome libraries are particularly large or anything by today's standards; the resource requirements of a large app (or just the Java vm) is totally dominant by comparison.
That said, for wp I much prefer Abiword; it's not nearly as full-featured, of course, but apart from the lack of real handling of Japanese fonts and input (it works but is a hassle since you need to switch to a capable font manually) it does everything I ever use. Gnumeric is the best spreadsheet of the ones I've tried, and Inkscape is also plenty good enough (though not without its problems of course).
The one thing I'm missing is a presentation app. And no, Impress is not, well, impressive. You breathe at the wrong time and the thing drops your formatting, or destroys half your slides, or just refuses to work in several dozen unintuitive, frustrating ways. Seriously, drop the thing. Start over. It's hideous. That is one area were I actually prefer the hassle of using Powerpoint on my secondary machine at work rather than doing it on my main computer.
The presentation issue is really frustrating actually. No solution is really there yet. If, for instance, Inkscape had more solid text tools (so the association between text and a frame was actually stable for instance, and so you could flow text from one frame to another) you could make slides there for instance, but as it is, it's not good enough.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Because once they realized they'd need a name MORE CLEVER than ..
This isn't about clever.
Its name doesn't need to elicit feelings of euphoria or anything.
No, but its name shouldn't elicit feelings of mediocre, lower quality, and bargain basement cheap.
In Canada and much of the US at least, the store "K-mart" is a widely known 'walmart-like' store that's known for being a 'cheap/bargain department store'.
And he's suggesting a K-"product" like KOffice picks up on that K association. Sort of like naming it McOffice might resonate with the lower quality cheap McDonald's food (or McFood).
At least that's where I think he's going, I don't personally have that much of an association with the letter K. But then, I didn't live near a k-mart most of my life either.
I print selection more often than I print [the whole document].
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
"K-" IS a Katchy Komputer Konvention.
Now if you'll excuse me, the Kleagle has kalled me to the Klavern.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
What a lot of people miss is that you can run the kde apps on gnome and vice versa. You can run Koffice without changing anything else. Both gnome and KDE have good and bad points. I have a few people stuck on base RHEL3 at the insistance of the vendor of a commercial app that needs a lot of support and with that release gnome is very unstable so those users are on KDE. More recent versions of gnome are a lot better and people run a variety of kde applications on their gnome desktops.
While I can't speak volumes about Gnome and GTK. I can say that you views of KDE and QT do not appear to be based on facts, but more assumptions and preconceived notions.
:(
KDE is NOT simply QT plus bloat, the goals of the KDE library are to provide a consistent API to applications to work well with the KDE desktop. In the grand scheme of things it is actually very light as far as things it adds to QTs very complete API. For example, it will provide a KPushButton which inherits from the QPushButton class to add a few small integration features. Also KDE offers many common widget combinations as a reusable widget in itself, this is good library design as a whole. Making libraries of reusable code is a GOOD THING.
Don't mis-interpret this as KDE zealotry, I imagine that Gnome provides some sort of API to help applications integrate well with the desktop as well.
And what is your general issue with using c++ and moc? I hate to break it to you, but moc IS "real c++". There is nothing wrong with having utilities to generate code, there is huge gain to doing it with moc instead of templates...runtime bindings. moc just hides these details for you, and to be honest, you usually don't even have to worry about it at all if you use the QT build system.
As for what is wrong with GTK + C? Well nothing is wrong with it but it's not the only choice. One thing to keep in mind though is that graphical displays usually consist of conceptual objects "windows", "buttons", "listboxes", "textboxes", etc. These are all "things" which to be honest, creating code to describe "things" is what object oriented programming excels at.
You will never see a port to GTK of KOffice because it would not be a port, but a litteral re-write as the whole code base is built around the KDE/QT libraries.
And why not start with AbiWord? Heh, this statement is a shinning example of a preference not based on the merits of what you want, but instead on an arbitrary dislike for the competition. You are of course entitled to your opinion, nothing is perfect. But you provide no real reason why something built on KDE libraries is inherently bad. Secondly, Abiword is a single word processor application with no integration into an "office solution". KOffice is looking to provide the whole shebang.
I imagine you are going to reply with "KDE is bloated", "KDE is slow". But these generalizations aren't really based on real facts. KDE is actually quite lean (and KDE 4.0 is going to be leaner because QT 4.0 is a vast improvement of 3.0). Its memory usage is nothing crazy, the reason for this is that there is a LOT of code reuse. Using the KDE libraries is effectively "free" as far as memory usage goes because modern operating systems do code sharing of dynamic libraries and the whole damn desktop uses these libraries! There are benchmarks that show that Gnome and KDE are actually quite comparable: http://ktown.kde.org/~seli/memory/desktop_benchmark.html
I'll even not go so far as to say KDE is better than Gnome in memory usage because I know that there are many factors and a single set of benchmarks by one person doesn't really prove much...but it does show that they are at least in the same ballpark.
All in all, I find your argument against using a modern library not founded in facts
proxy
In 2009, I will ship my office suite, Stork Office. It will be fully open source, be even leaner than koffice, and not have the stupid Access-like tools. Then, if KDE isn't finished their 4.0 desktop, and fix the register view in KDevelop, I may just write my own GUI and IDE to go with it, for release in 2009. Oh, and I'll have Duke Nukem Forever as a game that ships with my system!
This is my sig.
Because if it doesn't start with a "K" us KDE folk won't recognize it as oK to use.
"At least it's not OpenOffice!"
Last time I used KOffice, it messed up the letter spacing and made my paper hard to read when printed. If they fixed that, I'd probably use it. I'm still using M$ office because I just can't stand using OpenOrifice.
One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces.
iOffice!
Seriously, anyone remember those krappy khrysler k-cars?
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
And just to expand on that, there are really several different things going on:
:D.
1) Qt 4, the underlying system library is now dual licensed GPL/commercial on the Windows platform by Trolltech, before only commercial on Windows.
2) As a result, the kdelibs (the core KDE libraries) for KDE4 has been made cross-platform. Like KDE4, they're still unreleased (at beta 2 still I think) but I did manage to get a KApplication compiled and running on Windows.
3) Since the KDE libraries are going cross-platform, so is all KDE applications that doesn't have additional *nix-specific dependencies. Note that KDE is trying to be a complete application framework not just an UI library, so this should be true for most.
4) Since the move from KDE3 to KDE4 is major, most applications like KOffice are also doing major rewrites not only because of the framework changes but also "if you want to change and break something, now's the time".
End result? Well it's always though to say with unreleased software but the general idea is that it'll be a three-pronged attack:
1. It's now cross-platform, so new markets
2. All applications should see a 20-30% speed improvement because of library improvements
3. Major new version with new features
Only downside is that it's taking quite long - Qt 4.0 was released in June 2005, though in personal experience it was a poor release but none the less it's taken a few years and KDE4 is still in development. The release of KDE4 is scheduled for December 11th, and I'm very much looking forward to it. It should bring the Gnome vs KDE flamefest to new heights
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I cannot quite understand how you cannot see what Access is used for. When you need a databse application with a GUI, what do you build the GUI with? HTML? That's fine for many tings, as the web demonstrates. But for a real desktop GUI application, what do you suggest instead of Access? Perl/Tk? C++? Visual Basic?
Despite it's horrible VBA scripting, Access is a great tool to build GUI frontend applications. In fact, I think Access is the main reason why many people cannot move from Windows to Mac or Linux. They have a vital Access application, and there is no easy way to replace it. I have several clients with such applications. In some instances, I moved the data to PostgreSQL on a Linux server, but the forms are still in Access.
I'm very much looking forward to an Access alternative.
http://ranger.users.finkproject.org/kde/index.php/Home
viola
Yes, I've run early alpha versions of KDE 4 apps on OS X. You can google for build instructions, but a word of warning - they are still in heavy development, so there will be problems. Simple apps like KEdit work fine though. After KDE 4 is released, there will be dedicated OS X builds for these apps and KOffice that will be simple to download and install.
;)
Wait until the New Year, and give them a try
I haven't missed that (JanneM, take note). I've done it... I just wasn't that impressed with KOffice as it is currently. It isn't bad, it just isn't better than OOo, and it doesn't yet support ODF. That's why I have high hopes for 2.0, because I'd love to have a cross-platform suite that supports ODF.
Heck, I hardly use an office suite at all. I spend most of my time in Firefox, Scribus, and Inkscape. My officemates, on the other hand, use Word and/or Excel all day, every day. It's really them I need to convince. I'm happy with Google Docs.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
I'm going to try prosper for my next presentation. I've given up on WYSIWYG document creation.
Has a nice ring to it, better than *Kough*ice
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Vague drivel in the form of vulgarities and petty name calling?
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
I actually knew someone who definitely needed "print selection". He had never heard of the concept of files, much less folders. He had ONE Word document on his Mac desktop, and only ever typed into that. Then he would select the part he needed and print that. I'm not kidding! Luckily, I was in a hurry and was able to refrain from getting into helping him. Anyway, he didn't want or need help. I have no idea how it ended, and whether eventually someone showed him the light. But maybe he wouldn't have been interested. It worked for him, with all his writings in a single huge Word file...
while i was mostly kidding, DBIx::Class is a neat ORM framework. you may want to take a look at how it is integrated into the Catalyst framework -- it is quite a pleasure to use the combination.
I'm sorry to hear that current Office software fails you. Now if you could only describe how and why the software you use doesn't measure up to your expectations that might be valuable input for developers.
But it's a totally different approach from the gushing: "Gee lets redo the whole darn thing, lets code the interface in Qt4 and gosh lets rejoice over what a nice quick application we have" approach we see with KOffice. Sure, Open Office is slow. But as long as the it processes my keystrokes faster than I can type them what's the rush?
I still feel that KOffice is a "me-too" thing that starts at the wrong end of the problem ... and hence is a largely unproductive use of time and effort.
K-Mart didn't actually come to my mind when this topic was brought up. Actually, I starting thinking about how Apple adds "i-" to virtually every product they've released since the original iMac.
I don't care what bells and whistles are added, what shiny new GUI paint is applied, how much faster the app runs, etc, etc, etc. Office 2007 is on the street, and we are going to be hit with a barrage of OOXML files that can't be opened by anybody who's not running Microsoft. Any contender in this space needs to address this problem, and right now.
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This is what standards are all about, [N] groups using 1 standard makes for *competition* may the best ideas win!!
I would use more KDE applications if they didn't insist on starting up half the KDE desktop environment, starting up slowly, and printing all that crap. I don't want "kio" or "ksycoca" or whatever running in the background just because I'm editing a text file. And often,
Why the hell can't KDE (and Gnome, for that matter) do this stuff in-process?
> While I can't speak volumes about Gnome and GTK. I can say that you views of KDE and QT do not appear to be based on facts, but more assumptions and preconceived notions.
...
My views are based on my experience with KDE.
I was a KDE and supporter from the start.
I switched to XFCE. I have tried GNOME, but it's not for me currently.
> KDE is NOT simply QT plus bloat, the goals of the KDE library are to provide a consistent API to applications to work well with the KDE desktop.
> Don't mis-interpret this as KDE zealotry, I imagine that Gnome provides some sort of API to help applications integrate well with the desktop as well.
It's one thing to provide extra functionality possibly missing from the toolkit underneath.
It is quite another if the library ties the application to a specific desktop and ties to other random daemons.
Example: run konsole in non-kde, and it launches random things like the arts sound daemon.
I would not expect that a Qt Console would launch a sound daemon. I don't think kdelib has any constrained purpose. (except the vague purpose you stated: "to work well with the KDE desktop").
My problem with KDE was that there was no clear boundaries for dependencies.
The daemons that are not desktop specific, should not be part of the desktop. Sound daemons, printer daemons, and other daemons should be independent of the desktop.
No, the dependency problem is not unique to KDE, but KDE"s kitchen sink packages, like kdebase do not help my impression of it.
I am in favor of separate packages for individual apps and libs. The kitchen sink approach masks dependency problems.
I use XFCE because it is simple and functionally complete for me. The bonus side effect of using XFCE is that it is not easy or natural to use apps that have funky dependencies on gnome or kde.
Perhaps KDE4 has fixed some of the dependency problems. If I can install konsole without installing or launching the kitchen sink, then I will look at it again.
What is wrong with the development tech behind the new KOffice?
Well, speaking as a C++ developer, the first problem is that the new QT is a serious attack on the C++ standard. Yes, I know that everyone will say that the C++ standard is bad and that QT4 has done it better, but that's what the MS people always said when they ignored standards. Standards don't always represent the best solution for you, but sticking to the standard benefits everyone. Now that the QT people have decided to do things their own way some of my C++ skills and all of my C++ code is useless in the KDE world.
So, I doubt I will ever develop using Qt/KDE.
I agree with your point though about C++ being better suited to GUI development then C.
Unfortunately OOo supports Office 2007 (via plugins) while KOffice currently doesn't and isn't going to support it natively. So unless KOffice also gets its own plugin, people will be stuck with installing wither both KOffice and OOo or just OOo.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
At least it doesn't have a URL for a name.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
Whenever I hear KOffice or KMail I do not think of K-Mart. Guess it isn't as ingrained as you think. It'd be like saying GMail is a bad name because it makes people think of gangsters.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
They're competing over which free word processor get the most downloads? What do they have to gain? At least OO.org and Lotus Symphony have .exes on their site. KOffice is gonna miss a huge chunk of the Windows market when users are presented with tarballs.
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
Actually, it'd be more like GMail being a bad name because it brings to mind gtk or, even worse, gnome.
The Farewell Tour II
I've never heard of such a thing and I've used Word all my life (just checked and sure enough there it is). I've always put stuff on its own page and printed those page(s).
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
I can't imagine any professional with an office suite than can't open a Word doc.
Which is one great reason to keep OpenOffice around. It opens MSWord documents that MSWord can no longer open.
You do realize that object oriented programming can be done in C?
Can you elaborate on how Qt3 is an attack on the C++ standard? Note that I'm a C++ programmer of some 17 years, with a fair amount of Qt and some KDE development (as well as a ton of other toolkits), but I haven't looked at Qt4 yet.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
surely, in fact, the linux kernel uses object oriented programming in things like the VFS layer. The thing is, doing OOP in C is no more efficient than C++, it really is just a matter of syntax. And if you have a language which gives you OOP and is generally efficient..then why not use it.
It's just another tool in the toolbox, i like using many languages and it's just a matter of choosing the right tool for the job.
I don't find it to be an attack on the C++ standard at all. In fact, all of the QT containers have STL compatibility. You can use them with STL style iterators and can use STL algorithms with them as well.
Really the only issue i could possibly see if I were to look at it from your side, then it would be the containers which already have equivalents in the c++ standard library. Well, too be honest, most (all but std::queue/std::stack/std::priority_queue?) don't give protected access to the underlying implementation. This makes the preferable option (inherit and extend) a non-option.
I have always though that it would have been nice if QString inherited from std::wstring or something, but it doesn't, we move on. It's not meant to replace the standard, it's meant to complement it.
Your point about dependencies is actually a good point. You can however build konsole without arts support. There are many configure options to manage these things, and if you aren't using the whole desktop, well then you probably want to finely tune things a little more than just "./configure"
Oh well, like you said, perhaps kde 4.0 will bring more control over such options.
THE Office ?
Each of the apps could have a nice 'assistant', like le microsoft thingy everyone loved so much, but with an extra twist: each module's assistant would have the personnality of one of the series' characters. Pamela gets the drawing tool, that's a no-brainer ^^
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Well, at the moment there's still not a lot of Office 2007 out there, and KOffice works fine with the pre-'07 stuff.
In theory, if ODF and MSOOXML were reasonably well defined, it'd be possible to create an XSLT sheet to transform one to the other. I won't hold my breath on that, though, and I have my doubts as to how well what MSOffice 2007 uses matches what is defined by the MSOOXML spec. Given the size of that spec, the XSLT stylesheet would be huge.
-- Alastair
"While I can't speak volumes about Gnome and GTK. I can say that you views of KDE and QT do not appear to be based on facts, but more assumptions and preconceived notions."
Who would have thought there would be an argument lacking facts and based on assumptios and preconceived notions on slashdot. Next you'll be telling me people don't read the articles.
You do realize that object oriented programming can be done in C?
Sure, and it can be done in assembler or possibly even APL too. But why?
-- Alastair
Converting a PDF document into an editable form is like taking a screenshot of slashdot and trying to reconstruct what the HTML and CSS was.
Postscript, the precurser to PDF, is basically a layout system; draw a string here, draw a string there, etc. It is very good at preserving layout. However, some information is lost. Consider an embedded table, for instance. In the original document, a table might be defined with
-table
-row
-Firstname
-Lastname
-row
Jack
Bauer
-row
Anonymous
Coward
-endtable
Once converted to pdf, it might be represented by
Drawline(200,200,400,200)
Drawline(200,300,400,300)
Drawline(200,400,400,400)
Drawline(200,500,400,500)
Drawline(200,200,200,400)
Drawline(300,200,300,400)
Drawline(400,200,400,400)
PaintString("Firstname", 200,400)
PaintString("Lastname", 300,400)
PaintString("Jack", 200, 300)
PaintString("Bauer", 300, 300)
PaintString("Anonymous", 200, 200)
PaintString("Coward", 300, 200)
The difference lies in the Qt4 licensing versus Qt3.
Qt3 was available with a GPL license only for X11, so the previous effort to port KDE to windows had to reimplement a GPL version of Qt for win32 from scratch, which is quite a big undertaking.
Qt4 is available under the GPL for every platform, so that big roadblock is cleared. And the KDE project is officially supporting and ecouraging the win32 port this time.
Also, some other things like KDE switching to a much nicer and cross platform build system than autoconf/automake (cmake) probably helps a lot too.
The reason a port is useful is because there are some very good applications in KDE that really deserve more exposure. And I suspect there are quite a few people like me who have to use windows at work and are frustrated to be unable to use some of those nice KDE apps at work.
However, it still doesn't explain to me why a ground-up rewrite is needed instead of, say, a highly customisable interface plus bug-fixing.
But Ok, I take your point. KOffice started as Open Source text processor before StarOffice did. So KOffice isn't a me-too response to Open Office. I'll take that back.
However ... I still think that as in terms of adoptation Open Office is so far ahead because (a) in terms of features (features that I've come to expect) Open Office offers a lot more than KOffice and (b) as a "drop-in" replacement for MS Office, Open Office is viable right now, that it makes it at least unclear why we need a ground-up-different product like KOffice.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I really only care about having office suites these days that have a really good user interface and a standard format that can be opened in the future. I hope Koffice will be that suite as I am a KDE user and I have been disappointed occasionally with Koffice, OpenOffice and StarOffice in their current states.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
An effort was in fact started... I think it was abandoned when the new policy for QT 4 was announced.
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
I've been using KOffice since mid-2002, and it's definitely getting there -- every release is noticeably better than the one before. And KOffice has two definite advantage over OO.o.
- KOffice was written Open Source from the ground up. So everybody on the development team is intimately acquainted with the code; UNLIKE OpenOffice.org which began as a closed-source, proprietary application and featured the kind of gross misuses that would have had any CompSci student failed on the spot. It's amazing, the sort of crap people will come out with if they don't think anyone will ever see it.
- KOffice is unabashedly ploughing its own furrow, NOT trying just to replicate MS Office -- so it won't get a whole star knocked off every time it dares to do something ever-so-slightly differently than MS Office.
If it can live up to the promise I've seen so far, KOffice could actually end up taking over from OpenOffice.org.Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Why on earth would anyone be interested in you? You're far too self-centred to ever become important.
You do realize that object oriented programming can be done in C? usually you end up in a code bloat mess that way, if you use oo it is always better to use the tool geared for the job instead of trying to use a hammer for everything. The argument that you cannot bind non oo languages to pure is not really true, you just would end up in the same code bloat in those languages you had upfront if you would push oo into functional or procedural languages. But the main advantage is you at least dont have the code bloat on the oo code side of things which reduces pure locs and the number of errors as well as it simplifies the coding interfaces!
First, this is /. - not GNOME forums - you do not have to drop your whole DE just to run a KDE application.
Second, it is not "as good as they say." It is just competitors are so much worse.
Beyond simple text editing OO.o is barely usable. OOWriter is OK for tech documentation which would be later converted into PDF. Making nice looking document - impossible. HTML import/export are completely unusable. AbiWord is absolutely strange beast - I wasn't being able to create a single 2+ page document without hitting some snag. Import/export better be described as defunct - anything more complicated than plain text (e.g. tables) just not supported.
In KOffice 1.5 I had created bunch of documents w/o problems - mostly text documents and one spread sheet. Though trying to import (least edit) them in OO.o was pretty unsuccessful: lost formating or worse completely screwed up formating shows up. (I had a ridiculous situation when OO.o was showing text in font size of about 7pt, while style claimed that it was in fact (as it should be) 13pt). Problem with font name unportability had also beaten me very often.
From my experience, you have more chances of OO.o -> KOffice import than KOffice -> OO.o. So I personally rate KOffice higher just on that ground. It still misses some features, but for smallish documents it is already in near perfect shape.
[ Funnily, for large documents, OO.o remains better: it is more stable right now than KOffce or M$Office. I had crashed OO.o only on few occasions. KOffice 1.5 crashed on me pretty often - especially on import/export. (I reported some bugs and last I heard they were fixed in 1.6). M$Office on large documents not only crashes, but has extra feature: it hangs on large documents open from network. [ AbiWord crashed on me constantly in past. ] ]
P.S. Though vector graphics application in KOffice is as useless as one from OO.o. None of them support any kind of standard notation. Drawing even simple decent UML or network chart is experience not for weak-hearted. Updating/maintaining it - mission impossible and it is quicker to redo whole drawing anew.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
That's a whole lot of bloat to install just to type up a paper. Try AbiWord.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I am a definite fan of KDE and many KDE based apps, with the notable exception of Koffice: my favourite spreadsheet is Gnumeric, for word processing I use Open Office for short documents and Latex for long ones.
I have also tried Gnome (though not for as long for six months)
As you seem to have almost exactly opposite likes to mine and you ave actually tested the alternatives, it seems worth asking why you prefer Gnome?
My preference for KDE is relatively straightforward: Konqueror, various little apps (panel applets like the quick file browser, Katapult, Klipper), I use slightly more KDE than Gtk apps, and various KIOslaves.
Just what is it that slashdotters find so interesting about medium sized stringed instruments?
Cogito, ergo sig.
In theory, I'm not sure if it's possible; how well does XSLT support bitmasks, for example?
When KOffice 2.0 is released in 2008, it won't be the only competitor to OpenOffice - if you haven't already, check out Lotus Symphony, another open source, ODF-compatible office suite that is expected to come out of Beta in 2008.
It gives you HTML that you can then import in word (from latex, not the PDF)
Really? Problems with Impress? I've used it for all of my course slides when I teach, and also for presentations at a couple of conferences, and never had a problem.
.png file, no transitions or sounds or anything. How are you killing it?
I'm using pretty simple formatting and stuff, though; mostly text, the occasional static
--saint
Kexi IS open source; however, there is a company that builds it for Windows and charges you for it (I'm not sure how that works if it's GPL licensed but ...). Similar to what RedHat etc do with Linux
Try put both Japanese and English text in it. Or try to make a slide template and use it. Or any of a dozen other ways you can trigger weird formatting bugs, or lose content.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I haven't tried to use Japanese text (I don't know the language, so it's really never been an issue) but slide templates have always worked fine for me. Odd. What distro were you having problems with? I'm just curious... I run a really simple WindowMaker on Debian desktop, and I don't seem to get bitten by a lot of the application bugs that people complain about.
--saint
I don't know what exactly are they doing now, but many MS Office features appear first on the mac versions :) MS Office 2008 for Mac will probably have a *different* feature set than MSO 2007 for Windows, including some not on the Windows version.
Still, I'll give KDE 4 a try.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
Yes a closed source program that is downloadable as part of the Google pack. So your code goes into a FREE application and into a proprietry application. If you can live with the Sun executives get fat off all those Google pack downloads its not such a downside to contributing to OpenOffice.org.
how well does XSLT support bitmasks, for example?
Not well, but it can be done using arithmetic operators and constants that are powers of two. (Ugly, though.)
Which is yet another argument against MSOOXML as a standard -- new XML definitions shouldn't include bitmasks.
-- Alastair
I propose we adopt a new standard. Viola is getting old.
Cello!
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
Just a little bit...
Seriously, every language has similar constraints. I'm confused that nobody ever complains about having to have a semicolon at the end of every line, even when it's obvious to the compiler/interpreter that it is the end of a line -- yet when you're told to indent your code the way you should anyway, it's oppressive? What?
As for your app, assuming you are actually using object-oriented development under the hood -- the fact that you were scared by an "everything is an object" language scares me, frankly -- it looks like it could be VERY interesting. Any plans for a web interface?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
their spell-checkers like them
the more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the pipe
My issue is with QT4 using it's own alternative to the STL. The STL has become an important part of the C++ library and of most C++ code.
It's a good thing it is competing against OpenOffice. OpenOffice barely competes against MS Office. KOffice would be slaughtered in that arena. This is like the Yankees (real major league) against the Seattle Mariners (third-tier major league) against the Modesto Nuts (triple-A minor league).
Sure, the Mariners (OpenOffice) can put in a good year, but some years, they could be beaten by the Nuts (KOffice), and the Yankees (MS Office) are hated by most, but still trounce the competition most of the time. Hell, half the time, the competition is just in awe to be in their stadium.
October rules.
Even if this is not a Yankee year. It most certainly wasn't the Mariners'.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Yes, the containers and the string. These are fundamental parts of C++. Where-ever possible I use cross-platform code but this code almost always depends on the C++ containers. So now Qt/KDE code is incompatible with regular C++ code. Between that and moc it's like they are trying to put up barriers.
As to sacrificing usability... i find stuff like kioslaves far more "usable" than the brain damage that is inflicted by the gnome usability team...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I don't really understand that point of view. If you're happy with the stl classes, then use them by all means. The point of the Q classes is that they are much more useful if you're building a modern GUI application. Using them doesn't make you incompatible with c++ code. As has been mentioned, the containers in Qt are compatible with the stl, and you can easily create QStrings from std::strings and vice versa.
So in your application you can use either (although I can't think of a reason to use the stl classes over the Qt ones), and if you're talking to a library, converting types is trivial. Qt is cross platform, so any Qt classes you write will work fine on any platform you want to deploy to. You won't have any advantages by choosing to use the stl classes.
Oh, if that's all, then I don't much care. I like the C++ standard library containers, etc., but I've used dozens of such libraries over the years and don't have a problem with using others. The standard libraries are nice in some ways but the Qt libs are nice in other ways (particularly with respect to handling automatic cleanup).
Also, this isn't a particularly large change from Qt3. Qt3 also had its own collection types. Qt4 has improved them, and has added Java5-style iteration (you can still do STL-style iteration if you prefer), but I don't see this as a reason to avoid Qt4. You an still use STL collections if you want, just as you could with Qt3, and you can still use STL-style iteration on Qt4 containers if you want.
Not a big deal, IMO. Actually, I quite like the Java5-style iteration, so I may choose to use Qt collections where I might have chosen to use STL collections (my Qt3 code uses both).
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Yeah, because iMac, iPod, iPhone and iLife all equate to mediocre products in people's minds. Or do you just have something against the letter 'K' specifically?
http://www.mhall119.com
At least I know what KOffice does by looking at the name. WTF is a "Skype"? Or a "Google"? Words gain meaning as they're used. I think that if KOffice turns out a great product, it'll just become a "known" brand. There's nothing inherently bad about it.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Now that the QT people have decided to do things their own way some of my C++ skills and all of my C++ code is useless in the KDE world.
None of your C++ skills are useless. Anything important you learned about C++ is still applicable when using Qt with C++. Think of Qt as a superset of the features available in C++ and the STL. You can still use all your old stl based code if you want, nothing is forcing you to abandon it. Qt simply provides an alternative that many people find better than the STL.
This is nothing like a Microsoft standards extend and extinguish tactic. It's just another library, like any other library you might use in your project. Your code will interoperate just as well with others whether you use Qt or not.
Try comparing the boot times of a Windows system that doesn't have MS Office and a similar system with MS Office. With current hardware and versions of MS Office, I usually see about five seconds of extra lag during boot. If you have the OpenOffice quickstarter loading, that extra five seconds is visible to the user as it loads after the user has signed in. If you don't use the quickstarter, then you see it when you first load OpenOffice manually, as you say.
KOffice, in my experience, loads significantly faster than either MS Office or OpenOffice, and doesn't impact boot time. On the other hand, its support for ODF and the way it treats text styles are practically the definition of suck. I have very high hopes for 2.0, though, and will certainly give it a shot when it's available.
Sorry but I disagree. I don't know Approach, but I have seen many times what happens when "end users" are given an easy to use database (it was always Filemaker). The result is much worse than what the other users do in Excel (because they don't have an easy DB). In Excel, they realize much faster that it doesn't really work and that they need to ask someone for help. With Filemaker, they do not realize it for years. They just keep adding fields and layouts, until nobody can make any sense of it.
Normal "end users" cannot develop databases. The only way to help them is to let them know early enough that they need the help of someone who understands databases. I mean at a very basic level. The problem is that the way humans normally think is completely incompatible with the mechanical rigidity of computer databases.
Yes, Access is for "power users". It's the minimum requirement to build a half decent version of very simple database. They can then do the forms which the end users will see. And they will (hopefully) see quickly enough when they need someone else.
And then edit the .ps file with Gimp?
Learn the postcript language and edit it with emacs?
Editing PDFs like MSWord sounds more than good enough to me to mention it.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
To be fair, there is gtkmm and PyGTK which are both awesome ways to do GTK development.