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?"

Comments

Microsoft

[dintech]

Oh dear. More evidence for the Microsoft "fact"-sheet that open source is indeed communism.

Re:Microsoft

[bloodninja]

Oh dear. More evidence for the Microsoft "fact"-sheet that open source is indeed communism. Be that so. Although some Russian leaders have ruined the idea of communism for many people, much of what we love about FOSS software could be seen as communist (or, at the very least, Marxist) ideas. That said, I love the MSO 2007 interface. Although I've used several different office products over the course of the years, I do not consider myself proficient in any of them. Nor do I want to invest the time to get proficient. In the rare times that I've used MSO 2007 at the university (at home I run Kubuntu), I've found that I can do my work quicker in MSO than in OpenOffice, which I am more familiar with. I would love to see the ribbon as an alternative UI in OOo. I don't see any reason that the program cannot have two UI's, other than lack of programmer time developing it.

Re:Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Here, let me correct that for you:

"Although some Russian, Chinese, Cambodian, Cuban, Yugoslavian, Romanian, and Polish leaders have demonstrated the ultimate outcome of communism for many people..."

Re:Microsoft

[ShieldW0lf]

Be that so. Although some Russian leaders have ruined the idea of communism for many people,

Who supplied you with all your news about what was going on in those Communist states? Was it Stalin, or was it your own national news?

It's not communism-the-economic-model that's the problem, it's totalitarianism-the-political-model. You can't dissociate the two in your mind because your own nation has been brainwashing you to think of them as inseparable, most likely since the time you were born.

Both democratic capitalist states and totalitarian communist states have carrots and sticks.

In the democratic state, you are dominated through economics, but liberated from autocratic government, in totalitarian communist states, you are dominated by government, but liberated from dynastic capitalist empires.

Capitalism is the same as Totalitarianism, Communism is the same as Democracy, ain't nobody free on this hunk of dirt, and very few who even know well enough how to even ask for freedom in the first place.

Re:Microsoft

[jaxtherat]

Whoever modded that 'Flamebait' should have moded that 'Insightful'.

Speaking as someone who used to live behind the Iron Curtain, and DAILY thanks his parents for emigrating to Australia.

Re:Microsoft

[Tranzistors]

Well, communism works great, if there is abundance. And in case of software, there is abundance.

Capitalism works on axiom "there is infinite human needs and wants, in a world of finite resources", and it can't normally work in world where production (copying) and distribution is very cheep, so it must make resources scares artificially (DRM and such).

Anyway, what these communist countries did wrong was what Software vendors and MAFIAA did - applied good paradigm in wrong situation.

Re:Microsoft

[Jonny_eh]

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.

Re:Microsoft

[Enderandrew]

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.

Re:Microsoft

[halivar]

Some of us like FOSS because of its capitalist and free market ideas.

Re:Microsoft

[xappax]

This is a common misconception. Communism does not imply authoritarian control of the economy.

Large-scale implementations of communism have tended to use authoritarian control to force a communist economic model. This was, in my opinion, an astonishingly bad idea.

Communism simply means that the economy is managed by the community. If the community government is totalitarian, communism will be enforced through totalitarianism. If the community government is a decentralized direct democracy, then the economy will be managed through direct democratic involvement by all the people.

This is in contrast to capitalism, in which the economy is ostensibly managed by nobody, and in practice managed by those who control the lions share of money or resources. This commonly leads to a small number of successful capitalists gaining effective centralized control of the economy.

Since a capitalist economy cannot be managed by the community, there is no recourse should the economy become dominated by a small number of centralized companies or people. Despite the democratic, emergent properties of the community government, the economy can still easily slip into a model that is centralized in all but name.

Re:Microsoft

[bloodninja]

Well, communism works great, if there is abundance. And in case of software, there is abundance. Thank you, that describes exactly the situation in as few words as I've yet seen.

Re:Microsoft

[bloodninja]

For what it is worth, Yugoslavia under Marshall Tito worked out fairly well. As do numerous small communes throughout the world, most notably the Israeli kibbutzim.

Re:Microsoft

[steelfood]

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.

Re:Microsoft

[CAIMLAS]

Here's the thing about software Marxism. Unlike real-world Marxism, nothing is prohibitive: you're still able - anyone is still able - to leverage the "communal" product for personal gain, with enough ingenuity and effort.

Such principles work in software, because there is (theoretically) infinite supply, whereas every single item in the real world requires production costs by nature. The infinite capacity for being copied, duplicated, and modified (cheaply!) negates the negatives of the philosophy much more thoroughly than it introduces more issues (ie, the effective resistance against monopoly).

Re:Microsoft

[MightyYar]

Everyone knows that frozen heads can't explode.

Re:Microsoft

[bloodninja]

(the culture certainly doesn't have any interest in the concept of "intellectual property") What culture does?

Re:Microsoft

[R2.0]

"For what it is worth, Yugoslavia under Marshall Tito worked out fairly well."

For a while - until he died and the lid blew off.

One of the reasons that Yugoslavia "worked" is that Tito ruthlessly suppressed sectarianism and ethnicities. While it appeared to be a good thing, especially to the eyes of Western liberals who regard religion as evil, it had the effect of building a pressure cooker which blew apart in the 90's, causing violence far in excess of whatever Tito did. Iraq is the same way - Saddam suppressed the Kurds and Shia, and "kept the peace". But in doing so, he set the seeds for the situation we see now, with the US popping the cork prematurely.

You can't take large populations of ethnically and religiously diverse populations, put them in close contact, and tell them "Get along - or else". It just doesn't work over the long term.

Re:Microsoft

[Anonymous Monkey]

Maybe he means his head will freeze and the water expanding inside will cause his skull to crack.

Re:Microsoft

[LizardKing]

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.

Re:Microsoft

[rbanffy]

While there is a great deal of overlap between communism and police states with aggressive dictatorships, they are not synonyms.

Often, the flag of communism is used as a bait to induce an unsatisfied population to help a group to rise to power and as an excuse to create mechanisms for repression of the previous government and, ultimately, to betray those ideals and the people who supported them as soon as their help is no longer necessary or their cooperation can be obtained by other means.

It's indeed a tragedy. But let's not confuse things. Neither non-communist countries are automatically paradises of civil rights nor communist countries are inevitably police-states. Things are a lot more complex than that.

Re:Microsoft

[tehcyder]

Speaking as someone who used to live behind the Iron Curtain, and DAILY thanks his parents for emigrating to Australia.

Well, to paraphrase Terry Pratchett, at least there are no poisonous snakes there - the spiders have eaten them all.

Re:Microsoft

[Fred_A]

What culture does? There's a faint possibility that the people recently revealed in the Amazon basin actually do, but since nobody from the outside is allowed near them we can't be sure. However, one sign is that none of them appears to be running Linux.

Re:Microsoft

[R2.0]

The Albanians and the Serbs have been fighting over Kosovo for HUNDREDS of years.

"If you hold it together that long, you create a new cultural identity."

Suppression increases the tendency to identify with one's religion or ethnicity - it doesn't just "go away" in 4 generations. Children are raised on the stories of how horrible their grandparents had it, and great-grandparents, and ancestors. They internalize that, and the division continue.

I don't disagree that people CAN come together blurring ethnic and religious lines; only that it cannot be forced.

Short and Long answer

[poetmatt]

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.

Bizarre Screenshot From Writer

[Airw0lf]

http://www.johannes-eva.net/images/2008_05_27_redoffice_review/2008%2005%20-%20RedOffice%20-%20Screenshot%208%20Format%20Templates.png That text in French says "One should eat the cat hot. When it's cold it's disgusting..." Whatever happened to the "quick brown fox?"

Re:Bizarre Screenshot From Writer

[larry bagina]

Must be ancient chinese recipe.

Re:Bizarre Screenshot From Writer

[tijmentiming]

The Quick brown fox is the sentence to show all the available characters in the english language. Every other language has it's own sentence. It's called a Pangram: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangram

innovation? or ...

[ionix5891]

imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?

Re: innovation? or ...

[mrbluze]

imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? China is one of the greatest flatterers out there by that measure!

Re:Red...

[morgan_greywolf]

Is it ribbon or tape?

RedOffice Assistant: I can see that you're trying to create a table. Please wait 14-21 days while the RedOffice Table Committee meets to determine if we'll allow you to do that.
User: Arrgghh!!!

Language Confusion?

[Aehgts]

An article written in English showing a Chinese program being installed on a French OS.
I'm sure the new UI is fantastic, based on the eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs
with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was.

Makes me want to install RedOffice and blog about it.
And then three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people installing RedOffice and blogging about it.
They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,
I said fifty people a day installing RedOffice and blogging about it.
And friends they may thinks it's a movement.


(Apologies to Arlo)

Re:Language Confusion?

[bloodninja]

An article written in English showing a Chinese program being installed on a French OS. No. It's an article written in English showing a Chinese program being installed on a French virtual machine running in a Spanish OS.

Fuck.

Re:Language Confusion?

[TuringTest]

I can't explain why they changed the UI so much for Office 2007.Stuff I've known how to do since the 1980s in Word and Excel are suddenly difficult to do. I assume the functions are still there, I just can't bloody find them.

The interface has been changed so that the people who couldn't find all the options that where hidden in a 2nd-level tab under the 3rd-level menus, now can bloody find them more easily. For the first time and against all MS tradition, they have boldly broken backwards compatibility in introducing this new interface layout, with the rationale that most of those hidden functions were not used by many people to begin with.

MS Office or KOffice?

[cp.tar]

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?

Probably a good idea...

[corpsmoderne]

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...

Re:Oh no...

[BiggerIsBetter]

In future, we all speaka the Chinese?! Damn dude, didn't you watch Firefly?

Its not gonna make it....

[tecker]

The server is bleeding bad. Less then 20 Posts and its already down. Be Kind and use the cache

Vertical toolbars FTW!

[bazorg]

I for one welcome... using less toolbars at the top and bottom edges of the screen. I've been trying to find an add-on for Firefox to allow just that, as there is plenty of empty space on the sides of my "wide screen" when I'm not watching films.

Arranging all toolbars as "vertical ribbons" with the current OOo is possible and I kind of like it.

Just More Language Confusion?

[Andor666]

You forgot something...

That Windows is running on a virtual machine (Virtual BoX) over a Linux OS configured on spanish... so...

English article about a Chinese RedOffice installed on a french Windows XP running on a VM on a spanish Linux...

Now THAT'S difficult...

OOo menus are very popular

[flyingfsck]

So many people have thanked me for installing OpenOffice.org to replace the totally unusable MS Office 2007, that I really hope this remains a Chinese feature.

MS Office 2007 ribbons is the best thing MS could have done to promote OOo adoption. We should all send 'thank you' letters to uncle Steve for that.

Re:OOo menus are very popular

[RootWind]

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.

Re:OOo menus are very popular

[pdusen]

Oh, where to begin. I have not met a person who has used Office 2007 and chose specifically to go back to 2003 (And this is a university setting here, with all sorts of stupidity and entitlement flying around.) The fact is that Office 2007's interface is totally superior to that of earlier office versions, and to OpenOffice.org. The only issue that ANYONE can cite is that it is different. But unlike other application UI changes, if you sit down with the new ribbon for five minutes or less (and I have complete confidence in this), you will quickly be doing everything you could do before and more, because the layout is far more logical and natural.

Big Red

[Gothmolly]

Does it automatically inform the authorities when you commit thoughtcrime ?

Communism not a problem?

[Nerdposeur]

It's not communism-the-economic-model that's the problem...

So removing people's monetary incentives to work harder or learn difficult skills is not a problem? You must have a lot of faith in people's unselfishness.

Your naive outlook makes you a perfect target for domination. ;)

Re:Communism not a problem?

[xappax]

So removing people's natural desire to work together or share knowledge about difficult skills is not a problem? You must have a lot of faith in people's selfishness.

Your sociopathic outlook makes you a perfect businessperson, but questionable human being. ;)

Re:All your documents are belonging to us...

[pembo13]

Seriously? This China related alarmism on Slashdot is really saddening

Re:Oh no...

[Falstius]

Considering how badly they pronounced the Chinese, it would have gotten past the Chinese sensors.

"dog ten"[bleep]

By force or by enticement?

[Nerdposeur]

So removing people's natural desire to work together or share knowledge about difficult skills is not a problem? You must have a lot of faith in people's selfishness.

Touche. But I read the parent poster's comment to mean "Communism is not inherently worse than capitalism." I disagree. While there are clearly people who will create FOSS merely for their own satisfaction, there are plenty of unpleasant/difficult jobs out there, and you either have to force people to do them, or entice them. The most straightforward way to entice them is to offer more money until the demand rises to meet the need.

If you think that lots of people will spend 4 years in college, 4 more years in medical school, and 3 years in residency to become a doctor who gets 4 a.m. emergency calls, then be happy making the same amount of money as their hamburger-flipping comrades, I do think that's naive. I wouldn't want a doctor who went into the field *only* for money, but yes, money is a factor in nearly everyone's career decisions.

Re:By force or by enticement?

[shywolf9982]

Okay, we're going a bit offroad here. Medics were paid more (in a way or another) even in the communist states.
The fundamental difference between capitalism and communism was that capitalism was an ecosystem with different needs and actors, each pulling for its own side, and this combined "pulling" made the system reach a stability (it's a natural stable system).
Communism, on the other hand, called for totally arbitrary pre-planning of economy (you couldn't really go and tell people "do what the fuck you want"), which were the infamous Quinquennial plans of the Soviets.
The communist approach did had one highlight: the quick electirifcation and modernization of Russia. However, on the other hand, any single mistake from the "big bosses" in the Kremlin had catastrophic consequences.
With a capitalist system, we can afford having completely dumb leaders :D.

Lotus Symphony

[Jason Levine]

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.)

Selfishness is predictable

[Nerdposeur]

P.S. - I *do* have a lot of faith in people's selfishness. And I like it when I can plainly see that their selfish motives will compel them to do something that benefits me.

When someone says "I want to give you free money for no apparent reason," I see no reason for them to be so selfless and I am suspicious. When someone says "I want to do the dirty work of fixing your car in exchange for big bucks," I understand their motives and think it's safe to trust them.

I know some wonderfully unselfish people, but when dealing with strangers, I do not assume that they're wonderfully unselfish. Do you?

Re:Microsoft may hunt those down

[D Ninja]

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)?

In China,

[gzipped_tar]

... 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. ;)

Capitalism

[Z34107]

Just to nitpick, capitalism works just in a lack of scarcity. DRM and DMCA is a government and legislation thing - capitalism is an economic system.

Traditional Adam-Smith-Invisible-Hand-esque capitalist economics say MP3s should be free.

Re:Capitalism

[Z34107]

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.

To be blunt, you are wrong.

[blueZ3]

The problem with "planning" an economy for some ridiculously long period of time (say anything over 30 days) is not a lack of democracy. They didn't get a failure of planning because people couldn't "vote" on what the plan should be.

The problem with centralized planning is much more basic than that: with current science/technology it is impossible to predict future conditions with the degree of accuracy necessary for such planning to work. A "planned" economy cannot react to crises or the unforeseen with the same speed and efficiency as capitalism.

There are many failings in the capitalist system as currently implemented in the West, but centralized planning is not a solution to any of them.

Cultural problem

[domatic]

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.

Invisible Hands and Public Goods

[duyn]

Just to nitpick, capitalism works just [sic] in a lack of scarcity.

Depends on what you mean by "works". Sure, you can apply the principles of private ownership to situations of lack of scarcity. It's just that the outcomes tend to not be so great.

Traditional Adam-Smith-Invisible-Hand-esque capitalist economics say MP3s should be free.

And that's a problem. If they were free, how are you ever going to make back the costs in going from nothing to the final MP3? If you can only sell MP3s at marginal cost, how will you make back the recording band's wages, the studio hire and the cost of lunch for the crew?

The problem with software and music lies in the ease with which they can be copied by others. Traditional economics (Adam Smith's Invisible Hand) doesn't like people using your stuff without permission. When it comes across non-excludable goods (like ideas) or goods which are easily copied (like MP3s), traditional economics fails miserably. You get an under-supply of non-excludable goods because not everyone who's going to use them will chip in to the cost of producing them. You get a lack of innovation where goods are too easily copied because the innovators can't make back the costs of creating new products.

The only solution people have come up with to deal with these situations is remove the problematic characteristics of these goods. With non-excludable goods, the solution tends to be a liberal sprinkling of property rights to make them excludable (eg. patents). With easily copied goods, the solution tends to be measures which curb copying (copyright law, DRM).

Neither of these is optimal, but at the end of the day someone has to pay the costs of coming up with an idea. If nobody pays, the original creator won't have any incentive to develop these ideas. If only some people pay, the response will always be "why me?". If everybody pays, the price will be above the marginal cost and thus not optimal. The traditional view, as reflected by the institutions in our current society, tends to be that it is better that some people miss out because of high prices than everybody missing out because there is no incentive to create such products.

That's not to say that communism is better, just that capitalism with its private ownership has problems with these classes of goods.