KOffice 2.0.0 Now Open For Firefox-Like Extensions 165
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."
Asking for a Mile (Score:2, Insightful)
What, no windows packages??
Or is this available via the KDE for Windows installer?
Congrats to the KOffice team! I refuse t use OO (too much Java) so I'll finally have a decent free office suite!
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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.
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It's more likely that his gripe is with the runtime than with the language.
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"I would think he is either a troll or stupid because he makes decisions about software not based on suitability but on whether or not they contain some arbitrary computer runtime."
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I'm not making any claims about OOo, but most applications that use the Java runtime seem to eat up a lot of memory. Whether this is because they are poorly written or because the Java virtual machine itself is just bloated I do not know. Just saying that I think it's a perfectly valid complaint.
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I would think he is either a troll or stupid because he makes decisions about software not based on suitability but on whether or not they contain some arbitrary computer language.
It does help startup time quite a bit (well, it did for me) to disable Java though. I haven't noticed anything missing. Normally I agree with the language thing, but the JVM is so horrible that I, too, actively avoid anything written in Java. Does anyone know what it is doing during startup? Or why it cannot just use the system's memory allocation system, instead of allocating huge blocks?
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Then, on the other hand, it may take some time because the KDE windows installer is not 100% ready yet. We'll see.
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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 mout
"aiming to be ... cross-platform" (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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Replying to myself as I went searching after noticing that article claims that the KDE team has a windows installer that includes KOffice. It would be nice if the KOffice site mentioned this.
Even on the KDE site, it looks like they are pretty far from making this into something that's truly cross-platform. All Windows versions are considered "unstable" and very little work is being done on a Mac version.
Good luck to them in their efforts.
If they really want to take off, they NEED to focus on a good workin
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Thornnburg wrote;It would be nice if the KOffice site mentioned this.
Maybe you missed this in your quick reading of the linked article;
It is possible that the release of binaries for Windows and Macintosh will occur after some time if other packages that KOffice depend on need more time.
Re:"aiming to be ... cross-platform" (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry to disturb the conversation you're having with yourself. But the Windows stuff is pretty good. There is a special windows installer utility that is like a package manager. The Windows stuff can't be 100% because of things like DBUS are lacking, but there may have been some work done to make it close to work. But it's all based on Qt which does a very good job of maintaining compatibility. It's going to be those platform-specifics that get you.
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Everything that relies on Qt4 as the underlying library should work just as well on Windows as on Linux. But over time a lot of Linux-isms have gotten into KDE that they need to get out before it'll be equal on Windows, Mac and Linux. Also you have to use the platform-changing button boxes consistantly to get Win/Mac/Linux button layouts etc. so it's close but not completely there.
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Serious version : think about it a second
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Yawn. I'm not interested in whether or not KOffice is now or ever becomes popular. I'd rather it be good.
KDE 4.0 once again... (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Re:KDE 4.0 once again... (Score:5, Interesting)
It varies from project to project. KDE/Qt and GNOME/Gtk tend to use .0.0 to designate the initial release following a major break in compatibility (in the case of the aforementioned projects, this refers to API/ABI compatibility). Generally, the larger the breakage, the rougher the .0.0 release will be. The x.0.0 means "Ok, from now on, we'll maintain compatibility until x+1.0.0" and carries little information with regard to actual quality.
With other projects - Firefox for example - the major version seems to get bumped pretty often and I'm not really sure what the criteria are, but generally with Firefox one can assume that x.0.0 will be "better" than x-1.a.b.
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Anyway; this is a *platform* release. Distro's, integrators and developers can now get this and use it. There will be users that like it, but TFA is being brutally honest that its not for end users.
I don't understand why you seem to be upset.
Re:KDE 4.0 once again... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not sure where you got the impression that a .0 version is a final "please use this for your mission critical work". That has never been true and nobody every claimed it to be the case. Remember Windows 3.0 ? I don't. I do remember 3.1
Unless you use a special versioning system (like the Linux kernel), any release that isn't marked "Beta" or "Release candidate" should be ready for prime-time... unless the first number is a 0 (i.e. version 0.6.5 is understood to be "Beta" or "unstable"). OTOH, 2.0.0 should be ready for regular use, unless it's 2.0.0 BETA or 2.0.0 RC1.
I agree with the GP, labeling a release 2.0.0 (without saying "Beta" or "RC") and then saying it's not ready for daily use by end users is kind of stupid.
You give Win 3.0 as an example... OK, Win 3.0 wasn't around much, but what DOS versions do you remember? I mostly remember 5.0 and 6.0. How about Firefox, IE, Opera, and Safari? Sure, they had "minor" versions, but Firefox 2.0.0 and 3.0.0 were both considered "ready for use", likewise with IE 6.0, 7.0, 8.0. Opera 9.0, etc. A .0 release DOES NOT signify a "BETA", it signifies a milestone. If it isn't ready for public consumption, it should be market beta, release candidate, testing, or unstable.
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I agree with the GP, labeling a release 2.0.0 (without saying "Beta" or "RC") and then saying it's not ready for daily use by end users is kind of stupid.
Its a platform release. For developers and integrators. They want a release too, you know :)
End users are not the only reason to release software.
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Its a platform release. For developers and integrators. They want a release too, you know :)
Right, I'll just wait for the KOffice 2.0 End User release then. Oh, right...
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Its a platform release. For developers and integrators. They want a release too, you know :)
End users are not the only reason to release software.
That's not a problem at all. Just give it a number that reflects what you want it to be. Say perhaps 1.9.0. Everybody knows what that means without explanation. People will even assume it has most or all the functionality of 2.0.0 but without the misleading assumption that it is ready for end users. Then those that want to try it and use it can, and those that don't want some thing for devs only don't need to bother.
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I agree with the GP, labeling a release 2.0.0 (without saying "Beta" or "RC") and then saying it's not ready for daily use by end users is kind of stupid.
Its a platform release. For developers and integrators. They want a release too, you know :)
End users are not the only reason to release software.
2.0.0-dev then ... I have to agree with the parent post - this was incredibly annoying with KDE4.0 why did they then decide to annoy everyone again with their development non-release worthy code labelled as a release.
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IE was never "ready for use"
Ok, you win that one.
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Remember Windows 3.0 ? I don't. I do remember 3.1
And what about Windows NT 1.0 - or 2.0 or even 3.0 for that matter?
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What about Windows NT 4.0. Er, wait...
Okay, what about Windows NT 5.0? Possibly the least lame Windows EVAR.
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Huh. Sorry, that's complete bullshit. While everyone knows that a .0 version may have bugs, it's also expected that a .0 version *will* be ready for prime time. If it's not, it should have an alpha or beta moniker.
I appreciate your opinion, and I even understand your point of view. Do you understand that releasing software may be something that is not just for your benefit? There are integrators, developers and others that need this release. And you should try it, you might even like it. Depending on how many features you actually use from an office suite.
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I appreciate your opinion, and I even understand your point of view. Do you understand that releasing software may be something that is not just for your benefit? There are integrators, developers and others that need this release.
What the hell do you think alpha and beta releases are for, exactly?
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Not that KDE are the only one to do that... I remember when I used to use RedHat (around versions 5 to 7) and as a rule of thumb you would have to wait to .1 or .2 to actually have a not so broken, usable version.
Yes, *but*... RedHat didn't put their .0 version out there with the caveat that, oh, by the way, this thing will be unstable, so normal users probably shouldn't actually use it.
Again, should you expect a few bugs in .0 releases? Yes, of course. But a .0 release says to the world that the product
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The issue isn't stability. KDE 4 was quite stable in my experience. The issue is feature completeness.
That's splitting hairs. KDE 4 was incomplete. Period. It could not serve as a sufficient replacement for KDE 3, and the damn well knew it when they released it. It was *not* ready for prime time. But the version number said, to all sane, normal people out there, that it was, and that was a gross error on their part.
A "beta" or "RC" product indicates instability, not feature incompleteness.
Bullshit. a
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It did until KDE decided to change the definition. But yeah, you're right, I'm sure all the users who bitched about KDE4 were just confused about what "4.0" actually meant (ie, "it's not really done but we're gonna pretend it's done so that we can finally say we got KDE4 out the door, and then when people complain we'll tell them it's a .0 release, and it's their own fault for not realizing that we really meant it was a preview release of an incomplete product").
Re:KDE 4.0 once again... (Score:4, Funny)
Ubuntu uses year.month.
Linux doesn't seem to ever change the major or minor version, using 2.6.x, seemingly for values of
KDE/KOffice apparently uses:
x.0 for alpha
x.1 for beta
x.2 for release candidate
x.3 for useable
x.4 for deprecated, only working on y.0 now
AdBlock Plus (Score:5, Funny)
Sweet! Now I can block ads in documents!
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And using KnoScript I can stop those pesky macros from running whenever I bring up a new spreadsheet.
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funny, but I can see addins that give a right click option to preform some standard spreadsheet function or an addin for firefox that shoots the contents of a webpage to koffice that then runs an addin to massage the data.
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I see the day coming when this will no longer be funny.
Koffice (Score:2)
KOffice 2.0 is just great, brilliant software. The same done right. But I wonder how KOffice can be moved towards the cloud?
What happens when Microsoft plays foul with ODF?
etc.
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What happens when Microsoft plays foul with ODF?
This actually may help some, if the news can be gotten to the right people.
Although I'm sure they would have found another excuse, it was in fact a bug in OpenOffice that they turned into the reason they had to be incompatible (OpenOffice does something really stupid when a string is used in an expression, it turns it into zero, rather than either producing an error or seeing if the contents of the string look like a number [Excel and every other ODF program d
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Although I'm sure they would have found another excuse, it was in fact a bug in OpenOffice that they turned into the reason they had to be incompatible (OpenOffice does something really stupid when a string is used in an expression, it turns it into zero, rather than either producing an error or seeing if the contents of the string look like a number [Excel and every other ODF program do the second one]). They used this as a reason that Excel had "different" formulas, or that the formulas were "undefined" (they are in fact defined by "do what is obvious, if not obvious then copy Excel").
While I agree that showing an error may be the best in that situation, I think that automagically changing a string into a number is a far worse error than assigning no value to the cell. (I believe that a cell in OOo has text and number value attirbutes; if you type text into the cell, the default 0.0 value is not changed)
In reality, the issue was that ODF 1.1 did not specify formulas and ODF 2.2 is not yet finalized; so rather than making the obvious choice of following the 2.2 spec and allowing for som
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That explanation makes no sense. What Microsoft decided to do is be incompatible with both current ODF files and with the 2.2 spec, as (unless they are idiots) the 2.2 spec will use the same namespace everybody (except Microsoft) is using right now, since otherwise it would be impossible to read/write these files in an upwardly compatible way (of course that is the goal of Microsoft so that is what they did).
Oh FSM more extensions (Score:4, Interesting)
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).
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The other problem I find with extensions is the way they break package managers.
This is one of the areas the package managers can improve. I think of something like one big base repository, and several sub-repositories for each program that has extension support, where each item can be installed system-wide (requires admin) or per-user. APT could even connect to the official extension sites and create packages on the fly. That would be cool.
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I think extensions for office suites make quite a bit of sense, actually. If you're deploying in an enterprise, extensions can make it much easier to integrate the suite with current applications and workflow. Say you've got some kind of accounting or auditing system that you want your spreadsheet to interface with. With KOffice you now have a couple of options, scripting or writing an extension. The better solution depends on the particular case, of course, but that kind of customization makes an offic
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I agree that something as complex as an office suite needs some sort of API which third parties can use to interact with it but making core features extensions doesn't, to me, feel like the correct way forward.
Anyway, having stuck the boot into one idea I'd like to say that the way KWord handles images in documents is fantastic - why can't all word processors work this way? Or more to the point why, when I insert an image into an MS Word document (and OOo) does it immediately think that I want to obscure a
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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
Would you rather not have the extensions? Or would you rather have extensions you don't want forced on you?
Perhaps it would be more acceptable if there was a way of just indicating that updates should be automatically insta
It's because of MS Office (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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Extensions can be handy but a trap. (Score:2)
In some programs extensions can modify the behavior of other extensions; programs often don't provide impenetrable barriers between extensions. In my experience writing and using extensions for various programs, it's best never to develop strong dependencies on extensions because they often aren't upgraded to work with the latest version of the base application (when the extensions no longer work with the latest base software, the features those extensions provided will vanish. This is particularly true i
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First of all, you want all the core functionality build in, but what core functionality is depends per user. Try any forum on any important software package and you notice people fighting to get "core features" integrated in a product. For me a good download manager is a must, but I know for sure that my aunt would be lost within the functionality.
Which brings me to the second point. Memory is cheap yes, but if you have more functionality your GUI may take a beating as well. It might do the same when too mu
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The problem is what happens when you and I have a completely different view of what constitutes "core functionality"? Should we just build every concept and feature directly into the application? Somehow I think your tune would be a lot different if Firefox came with its 1000+ extensions built right into the browser and enabled
Kriminy Kill the Kiddie K!!! (Score:2)
This whole "K" thing has gone on too far. Sounds like a "K" iddie Mar"K"eting effort, and undermines everything they do.
I wish they would do something with KDevelop.
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Like MS Office?
FTFY.
Finally! (Score:3, Interesting)
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.])
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Oh. I'm sorry for not RTFA. Seems they already are *very* close to that. Man, *finally* an office suite with an UI that makes sense!
Klippy! (Score:4, Funny)
Allow plugins, and somebody is bound to do it, plunging the FOSS world into a deep and evil darkness.
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Yes, but what OpenOffice also has, that Koffice currently lacks, is bloat. Lots and lots of bloat.
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Yes, but what OpenOffice also has, that Koffice currently lacks, is bloat. Lots and lots of bloat.
Except that wasn't what the marketing was saying was going to propel it past all the other office suites. It was touting an online repository of extensions as if it was some novel feature that KOffice just invented.
Re:Color me not impressed (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Color me not impressed (Score:4, Funny)
The KOffice team has done a yeoman's job on this one.
Dammit. Now you've got me thinking about Janice Rand again !
Re:Color me not impressed (Score:4, Funny)
Right. I can see her now. Short uniform, cut low on top, exposing her cleavage as she leans over her walker.
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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?
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I agree.
KOffice 2.0 is an excellent effort for a *.0 release.
I installed it from the Kubuntu 9.04 repositories without any problems.
However, it still has some show stopping bugs. On my laptop KWord cannot open a txt file but it has no trouble with ODT files. Krita can't open any file.
I played with it for a while and then removed it.
After I removed it I noticed that the menu items for the major components were not removed, so I had to remove them manually.
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Having the possibility to implement easily, in another app, those few small ideas that I have for my perfect writing app sounds like fun.
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Google knows all...and the answer is usually at the wikipedia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeoman [wikipedia.org]
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Even I, jaded as I am against all things marketing, can't honestly say they're trying to tout it as if they invented it when they said "This is very much like the Firefox extensions system"! That's so far removed from "we invented it" that it's just laughable to claim it. If anything, this is their marketing saying, "We get it, people. Extending things without having to actually modify our source code has value to our users, and we're providing it." This should be applauded, not lauded.
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This should be applauded, not lauded.
So I should praise it but also not praise it? Huh?
Re:Color me not impressed (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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Unless bloat translates to slow and unresponsive, I don't care if it eats another 100MB of memory or not. Dead code that's not actually called unless you use the function has nearly zero performance hit, but running stuff through a dozen enterpricy layers does. The worst user experience I get is still from the applications that still haven't worked out how to use a worker threat for anything non-trivial to keep it responsive, but it has nearly no impact on code size.
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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
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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 sign
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That's total nonsense.
"Bloat" suggests unnecessary code, often called "code bloat". One person's "bloat" is another person's indispensable feature.
The more functions and capabilities a package has the larger its code base will be.
A better definition of "bloat" is a section of code that none of the developers know what it's for, and removing it causes instability. Windows is the dictionary reference for bloat because a lots of its code base is ambiguous, and even Microsoft agrees, but only because it was
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I'm not going to install Java (and most OO.o extensions are in Java) just to have some fancy bit of extra functionality.
Neither KOffice nor FireFox require me to install 250MB of Java bloat (in addition to one already packaged with OO.o) to simply access the functionality.
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I'm not going to install Java (and most OO.o extensions are in Java) just to have some fancy bit of extra functionality.
Did you miss the part where the KOffice extensions can be written in Java?
Neither KOffice nor FireFox require me to install 250MB of Java bloat (in addition to one already packaged with OO.o) to simply access the functionality.
250 megs? Lie much? I have 2 versions of the JRE on my machine and they only clock in barely at 100 megs combined. Unless you are installing the full JDK (and why would you be installing the JDK if you only need the JRE?) there is no way you are installing an extra 250 megs.
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Well apparently it's still the in thing to troll Java.
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Re:Color me not impressed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Color me not impressed (Score:4, Informative)
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.
It's the document formats, stupid (Score:2)
And if all these things fully supported ODF, you could actually use all these apps 'when you feel like it', keeping your data in ODF documents. I'm not sure you manage to mix apps this way today? Or do you use one app consistently for a given set of data? Doesn't sound like a great solution to me.
I sure hope somebody writes a nice plugin for MSOffice pre-OOXML files (since they support J
Re:It's the document formats, stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
(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.
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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
Gnome Office?!? What Gnome Office?? (Score:2)
A I see (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Office) a couple of independent program jumbled together. Typical GNOME...
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
office suites /= application collection (Score:2)
I don't expect all office suites to be like M$. But I do have expectations when the word "suite" is used. In fact I found M$ office suite a disappointment here. For example Visio looks different then the other applications - no Ribbon, no way to get rid of that ugly baby blue.
I expect something like OpenOffice - each and every part has the same look and feel and of course OLE (or equivalent) works absolutely flawless.
Everything else is a misuse of the term suite.
Re:Color me not impressed (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Anybody got functional debs for Jaunty? (Score:2, Insightful)
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 bloa
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
KDE 4 added a lot of eye candy. They are slow on old hardware because they have lots of UI polish activated by default. Try to set some simpler theme, for example.
P.S. The error message looks to me more like an error find a shortcut to the application. Try starting "kword" from Katapult or terminal.
Re: (Score:2)
Ahem,
http://rdieter.livejournal.com/14133.html [livejournal.com]
Enjoy. :)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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.