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KOffice 2.0.0 Now Open For Firefox-Like Extensions
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu May 28, 2009 09:00 AM
from the i-got-yer-extension-right-here dept.
from the i-got-yer-extension-right-here dept.
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."
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Submission: KOffice 2.0.0 now open for Firefox-like extensions by Anonymous Coward
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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!
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Then, on the other hand, it may take some time because the KDE windows installer is not 100% ready yet. We'll see.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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...
Re: (Score:2)
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?
Re: (Score:2)
What about Windows NT 4.0. Er, wait...
Okay, what about Windows NT 5.0? Possibly the least lame Windows EVAR.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
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
Parent
AdBlock Plus (Score:5, Funny)
Sweet! Now I can block ads in documents!
Re: (Score:2)
And using KnoScript I can stop those pesky macros from running whenever I bring up a new spreadsheet.
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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.
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).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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
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.])
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Parent
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 !
Parent
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.
Parent
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?
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
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
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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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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.
Re:Color me not impressed (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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.
Parent
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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
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.
Parent
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: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.