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RedOffice 4.0 Beta Updates OpenOffice UI
Johannes Eva writes "As IBM Lotus Symphony shows its first public version 1.0, the Chinese OpenOffice.org derivative RedOffice offers the first beta of its new version 4.0.
The open source RedOffice gets a new UI inspired from Microsoft Office 2007, with a vertical 'ribbon.'
Is this the future of OpenOffice.org?"
Here's the short answer: no.
Here's the long answer: every derivative of OO can make its own UI if they choose to, such as in this case from windows. This doesn't mean all OO will do so. Therefore, no.
imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?
Really, I seem to remember some of these GUI changes from the KOffice GUI design contest a year or two ago. So who exactly are they copying?
Ignore this signature. By order.
Seeing the screenshots, I realize that displaying the tools vertically on each side of the screen is the only good way to smartly use your screen space, as long as your document is in "portrait" mode and that most of the screen these days are more large than high...
Lock the wife and the dog in the boot of the car.
Return one hour later.
Who's happy to see you?
Arranging all toolbars as "vertical ribbons" with the current OOo is possible and I kind of like it.
Communism/totalitarianism == top down control of people and the economy
Capitalism/Democracy == Emergent economy, and bottom up determinacy of government.
Commercial software develop sounds more like communism, and OOS sounds more like capitalism. It's all about perspective.
For what it is worth, Yugoslavia under Marshall Tito worked out fairly well. He took several ethnic groups that wanted to kill each other, and kept the peace by trying to enforce a semblance of equality between the groups. After his death, it all went to shit, there was some genocide, and Yugoslavia no longer exists. But the communist rule of Tito in Yugoslavia wasn't a bad thing.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
To tell you the truth, I think it is dependent on how willing the person is to learn new things. Here's what I found out with a small sample (probably not representative). I was tasked with rolling out Office 2007 as a trial to a group of 185 college students and ~70 faculty. From our informal survey, approval over 2003 after initial 1 hour exposure: Students: 62.1%; Faculty: 42.8%. After 1 month, Students: 82.1%; Faculty: 54.3%. From the students and faculty that said they were not familiar with Office, the majority preferred 2007. And as expected, those who considered themselves experts, mostly preferred 2003.
Back when I tried the Alpha version of Lotus Symphony, I really liked the UI and the fact that I could import WordPro documents (as we're standardized on *shudder* Lotus WordPro here at work). What I didn't like was that Symphony would change all OpenOffice.org file associations to itself when it was installed and every time it was run. There was no option to leave the file associations alone. (Much less an opt-in to change them in the first place.)
Since then, I've kept a wary eye on Symphony. Their latest release notes state: "It is now supported to change the file types to be associated with IBM Lotus Symphony during installation." In addition, the notes talk about a "File Type Associations panel." Hopefully, this means that they realized the error in the Alpha version and have made the file associations opt-in both on install and on program launch.
(If anyone knows for sure, I'd be happy to hear what the latest version does with file type associations.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Lock the wife and the dog in the boot of the car.
Return one hour later.
Who's happy to see you?
Lock the wife and the dog in the boot of the car.
Return one hour later.
Who's happy to see you?
What's particularly interesting is that China will be a huge proponent of OSS, as the government is very suspicious of closed-source software, especially ones developed in the US (*cough* Microsoft *cough*).
The people might not respect copyrights (the culture certainly doesn't have any interest in the concept of "intellectual property"), but the government will have to at least pay lip service to it, and that usually means playing by the GPL.
It's ironic, but it also makes sense that "open" governments have to hide their dirty laundry, while governments that have no need to maintain the pretense of being democratic and free can actually openly air their dirty laundry.
At the end of the day, the goal of governments, and the people working for them, is controlling the governed, and it's not only unrealistic, but naieve to think otherwise. The US government is just as guilty of this as Iran or North Korea, as we've been witness to over the past few decades since the witch hunt of the 50's, the difference being that the US government's limits are more in line with our expectations, and the Iranian government's limits are not. That and what we define to be within the boundaries of "good" appear to be more productive than what North Korea defines to be "good."
Anyway, I digress.
As soon as they get their act together, we should be seeing more OSS initiatives from China. After all, they wouldn't want the NSA hiding keyloggers in the export versions of Windows or Acrobat or PowerDVD or WOW or stuff like that. China will want control of the software that gets installed in their government computers, and oddly enough, the only way to do that without reinventing the wheel is to release control of the software.
Of course, proprietary software is still useful for making surveillance tools, but that's something we get to choose to install on our systems--for now at least.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Would this be a patent enforcement? I don't understand how a software license can enforce something like this.
Can you explain (legalese is not my thing)?
... only old people use RedOffice. Well seriously, although RedOffice is rarely used even in China (most of us use OO or MS Office), it's worth a try. As far as I know, the RedOffice is part of the Red Flag OS, a Redhat-based Linux desktop OS aimed at the business desktop market. One thing I don't like about the Red Flag, apart from the name, is their tradition of copying MS's UI design. It's desktop environment (GNOME if I remembered correctly) looks notoriously like Windows XP. Several years ago Red Flag lost to MS in the bid of providing desktop OS for the Chinese government. Not surprisingly, since you know there's nothing MS can't corrupt AND the government IS corrupt. Since then I thought Red Flag was dead. It's somehow a little surprising to see they made a Slashdot front-page story. One thing good about Red Flag, though, is the Chinese language support. BTW If I had time I'd write a new OO UI that closely mimics EMACS. No toolbar/menu/ribbon/tape/etc. Use C-n and so on to navigate through the doc. All EMACS key bindings works in the expected way. Dialogue windows are invoked by M-x. ;)
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
For what it is worth, Yugoslavia under Marshall Tito worked out fairly well.
Hmm, and that would have nothing to do with the lack of free elections, state controlled media and secret police would it? It also was decidedly not a Communist state, more of a totalitarian one with a Socialist tinged economy, as it had a limited free-market economy. As for "going to shit" after Tito died, it was already headed that way with the Croatians openly protesting against the Federal Republic since 1971 (read up on the "Croatian Spring" for example). The 1974 constitution granted increased autonomy to the federal states, but this would only appease the non-Serbians for a short while, and even gave the legal right to secede which eventually triggered the collapse of the Federal Republic.
The reason I have still not switched with Office 2003 is the ribbon.
There is a disconnect between the way often raucous FOSS projects run themselves and most Asian cultures. I read of an Chinese embedded system manufacturer who didn't want to submit patches or participate on the LKML because of "flaming". Indeed they do flame there but Western geeks tends to be upfront if they think something sucks. Although Western cultures have a concept of "honor", they really don't have a concept of "face" which if far more encompassing. To have one's words and works torn apart as they are on large FOSS projects entails a loss of face. The Eastern way is generally to praise in public and criticize in private. This generally isn't too compatible with how things are done in mostly Western run FOSS projects.
I'm not sure if my school's network ate my original reply, so here goes a potentially duplicate reply:
Maybe you misunderstand the vague evil that is "capitalism." We in America do not have it, per se - we forked from the standard "unbridled capitalism" branch for our own "regulation" distro, which lets us see such improvements as clean air and water. It also permits the introduction of artificial scarcity - DRM on MP3s on our example - which, although needed by some traditional business models, is not needed by "capitalism."
Traditional economics predict that given a lack of scarcity, supply will be infinite and cost will be zero. This lack of scarcity was uninteresting to the pre-digital philosophers and economists of the 1700s, which is why classical economics focuses almost exclusively on the study and implications of scarcity.
You cite "Try selling breathing air on Earth and you'll find it won't get you very far" as a failure of capitalism? Sounds like the good ol' invisible hand's working to me.
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"Communism does not imply authoritarian control of the economy."
But it does not work without it. My mom once said to me - soviets crashed because people were no longer afraid so much that they will work for nothing.
Than happens when my grandparent's generation retired. They were the one living through Stalin, wars, Holodomor. Our parent did not experience those things so they were not afraid enough.