Slashdot Mirror
KOffice 2.0.0 Now Open For Firefox-Like Extensions
jakeb writes "After a massive three-year development effort KOffice 2.0.0 has been released (packages for Kubuntu are available) aiming to be a lightweight, cross-platform office suite that supports third-party apps and extensions. With its new design (everything, including the core components, is a module) and bindings, you don't need to know C++ to hack on KOffice, as extensions can be written in Python or Java, among others. TechWorld has an interview with KOffice marketing coordinator Inge Wallin about the vision for an easy-to-use office suite that supports click-to-install extensions like Firefox. Will this be the key to KOffice rising above all other free office suites? The KOffice devs think so. An online repository of extensions, templates, and content for KOffice? I like the sound of that."
Don't bother saying anything about KOffice or any other Office product becoming popular until it can be installed on Windows with a setup.exe or an MSI.
Most of us here love Linux and/or BSD, but no office suite is going anywhere without a fully functional, easy to use Windows version.
From TFA:
Our goal for now is to release a first preview of what we have accomplished. This release is mainly aimed at developers, testers and early adopters. It is not aimed at end users, and we do not recommend Linux distributions to package it as the default office suite yet.
Why don't they release this version as KOffice 2.0 BETA? Funny that they put the 0.0 number to kind of "inform" that it is the very very first version...
It seems to me that it is official, Open Source .0 versions = beta
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Sweet! Now I can block ads in documents!
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I refuse t use OO (too much Java)
You can use OO.o just fine without any JRE. The very few parts that are written in Java are features most people don't need. You're must either be a troll or stupid since OO.o is a C++ application.
They are all completely different. Gnome Office isn't really even a suite. It's just Abiword and Gnumeric. OpenOffice doesn't need to be "ported" to Gnome or KDE. It doesn't use QT or GTK but that doesn't make it inoperable on a KDE or Gnome desktop.
Time makes more converts than reason
Sorry, this is wrong. KOffice is *from* KDE (i.e. the KDE community). It's for all major desktops, including Gnome.
But yes, it is a different code base than the others.
Then, on the other hand, it may take some time because the KDE windows installer is not 100% ready yet. We'll see.
I don't think anyone is expecting KOffice to take over the world. That's really not the point. What the KOffice team has accomplished is creating a set of tools that some people will use and others will extend, and the extensions will bring more users. Making creating useful extensions easy is critical for an open source application - it's how you allow the community to implement needed features without central planning and control. That the KOffice team gets it doesn't need to be derided, they should be congratulated, and now that I have a word processor & spreadsheet I can extend, I'm going to have some real fun. Oh, and saying there is nothing novel here, well, you need to go read up a little. The KOffice team has done a yeoman's job on this one.
-- $G
I went ahead and installed it (160 mb for the entire kde runtime... lightweight, right) and it wouldn't run.
kword(4657) KServiceFactory::findServiceByDesktopPath: "findServiceByDesktopPath: Office/kword.desktop not found"
That's enough screwing around with KDE, at least until I get a new computer. I swear the devs are all running 4+ gb of Ram on multicore machines. Granted, this old thing is a 4-year-old celeron 2.8ghz, but still. Abiword runs fine. Granted, Abiword doesn't faithfully reproduce the full bloated complexity of the modern .doc, but I really don't want to.
Bloat for you and me is a necessary feature for someone else, and vice-versa. The real issue is this: is the interface intuitive enough to not overwhelm the user, and is it spaghetti code or modular enough that unneeded/unused parts do not have to be loaded into RAM at run time?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Bloat? == Functionality.
I will give you a specific example, from among thousands.
Open/Star Office handles - easily - RTL languages and the alternative typefaces and ligatures used with them. It has a fantastic facility for mixed, RTL/LTR documents. The toolbar icons even dynamically swap orientation for indenting, justifying, etc., when switching text direction.
As someone who has struggled with the crap support for this in MS Word on Windows NT through 7, and the NONEXISTANT RTL capability of Word on OS X, I am very happy that OOo can do this handily, with consistant functionality - regardless of OS.
OOo has been a superior tool for at least 3 years. MS has given up polishing the core turd, and is adding business/technology value in collaborative computing and advanced document management, rather than refining core text handling capability. They know where the Enterprise dollar will come from.
So, whinge about bloat as you will, with your Terabyte-sized SATA drive!
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
What's with this obsession people seem to have with extensions all of a suddenly. I don't want to manage a pile of extensions all the time I want all the core functionality built in. I don't care too much about bloat, memory is dirt cheap and even the lowest spec (desktop) machine I would ever use now is more than a match for a full on office suite. I can't help feeling this is yet another situation where choice and configurability is being touted as a good thing when actually it's a problem because there is simply too much of it.
IMHO the worst feature of Firefox is extensions. It's great that you can tailor it to your own needs but the constant updates (colourful tabs I'm looking at you) drive me round the bend and a fresh install on a machine means half an hour finding and downloading all those extensions again. Perhaps it would be more acceptable if there was a way of just indicating that updates should be automatically installed and providing a simple list of extensions to install on first execution.
The other problem I find with extensions is the way they break package managers. Hopefully as KOffice is a core package there will be some common sense applied. If you look at the Eclipse packages some extensions are packaged but most aren't pretty much defeating the whole point of using the distro package repository (and they are horribly out of date).
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Open Office is a large, very feature completeness attempt at replacing MS Office. It does very good import/export and is very cross platform, making it a good general solution if you have lots of RAM (512 MB +). OO.Org has fairly good Gnome integration, not sure on KDE.
KOffice is done by the KDE team, it is designed around the KDE libraries and as such it integrates very well. KOffice2 makes very good use of KDE4 allowing for a very nice interface of docking/floating toolbars and widget manipulation boxes (don't know a better word for it). I actually REALLY like the interface for KWord2.
GNOME Office is simply a collection of applications that use the GNOME libraries (or used to be anyway). It is Gnumeric (my favorite Linux spreadsheet, and Abiword, the best truly lightweight word processor I have used, maybe Dia (diagramming counts as a part too?). It does not feel at all like an Office suite, just some nicely done programs.
I personally use Open Office in GNOME, and KOffice on KDE, occasionally using Gnumeric on either because I like it.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
The KOffice team has done a yeoman's job on this one.
Dammit. Now you've got me thinking about Janice Rand again !
Squirrel!
One person's bloat is another's core functionality. At least I think that's what the old saying is... anyway, handling RTL languages is "bloat" to me as I'm unilingual (and not always even that many). That said, I'm not decrying it - I recognise that it's core for others (at $work, we get to support 30 languages, including RTL's and double-byte languages). Honestly, I only buy the "bloat" argument from those who have Pentium III's with 128MB of RAM and 50-100GB of disk space where this starts to get significant. My box is large enough that I can merely concern myself with "does it do the job I need it to do?" and ignore the cruft. i.e., it's almost big enough to run Vista.
I'm glad to see that we have so many software options for even the most basic computer functions that Average Joe User needs to hire a personal assistant to make intelligent decisions about what software packages to install.
Most of us here genuinely are, or should be. The more ICT jobs there are, the better.
Right. I can see her now. Short uniform, cut low on top, exposing her cleavage as she leans over her walker.
Having MS Office and IE objects be scriptable via COM is one of the great success stories in Windows. It's funny though, now that everyone in the Windows world has moved on from Office scripting, everyone in the Linux world, who used to mock interpreted language bindings, suddenly now has to have it.
This is my sig.
Not exactly, they all use goffice libs which links them together and if You check http://live.gnome.org/GnomeOffice You will see that it's not just abiword and gnumeric. And why do You expect all the "office suites" to be just like M$ counterpart ?
I've been waiting for the Firefox extensions idea to spread to other software since it came out!
Sadly I have no time, to realize my dream, of re-implementing the coolest UI features of Lotus WordPro in KOffice. (Eg. InfoBox, but with keyboard-only control. [To minimize the keyboard-mouse switches, but maximize the usability trough showing what's available.])
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Dammit. Now you've got me thinking about Janice Rand again !
--
Why yes, I am an MS shill - I earned US$10 for this post alone !
OK Mr. (or Ms.) MS shill, how do you get Microsoft to pay you $10 for posting about Janice Rand? Do they need any more posters?
un-ALTERED reproduction and dissimination of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED
(Not the GP, but...) I can't argue with your first paragraph. KOffice's implementation of ODF, while improved dramatically in this release, is not fully compatible with OOo, and that's a pain in the ass.
Having said that, though, I'm really glad that KOffice isn't "joining the club with .doc and .xls." OOo seems to concentrate entirely on interoperability, and in a way they suffer for it. Whatever else OOo is, it ain't "cool" or "fun." KOffice, OTOH, has been focusing this development cycle on some pretty radical changes, both in the interface and the codebase itself. You know, actually developing software. I know this is a radical concept wrt office suites, but it's true.
If you haven't used the 2.x branch yet, you should at least have a look. It's unlike any other office suite. I don't like all the changes, it might not be your cup of tea, and it's a work in progress, but for cryin' out loud, at least somebody's trying. God knows it's not OOo.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
Well, I can see that you have a problem with that, but what with you being an Anonymous Jerkoff and all, why the fuck should anybody care?
Yes, it says "not aimed at end users." On the front fucking page. If that's you, then this is not for you. Nor is it for you to piss and moan about.
When KDE 4.0.0 came out, people were bitching that it wasn't clear enough that it was not an end-user release. Now they're putting a big disclaimer right there, front and center, and you still find some reason to run your mouth. Die in a fire.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
Allow plugins, and somebody is bound to do it, plunging the FOSS world into a deep and evil darkness.
I get your point, but without at least the ability to import legacy documents, it's never gonna get used anywhere near the level it deserves (even if it's a great, new, innovative suite).
There's a reason we all still use QWERTY keyboards, and I'd argue the lock-in there is less onerous than the lock-in of billions of legacy documents. And I'm not one of those who claims that legacy (i.e. MS) import needs to be 'perfect'. Good enough is a great thing. But part of good enough is some level of compatibility with the past.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...