RedOffice 4.0 Beta Updates OpenOffice UI 224
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?"
Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
"Although some Russian, Chinese, Cambodian, Cuban, Yugoslavian, Romanian, and Polish leaders have demonstrated the ultimate outcome of communism for many people..."
Re:Microsoft (Score:5, Informative)
Speaking as someone who used to live behind the Iron Curtain, and DAILY thanks his parents for emigrating to Australia.
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Re:Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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That, or they will just leach and give nothing back. Why would they bother?
Government has to keep good appearances, otherwise it will be re
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That, or they will just leach and give nothing back. Why would they bother?
Have you seen written Chinese?
Perhaps you've seen some of the foreign language attempts at putting warning labels in English on their products? Google for it, it's fun.
Language and dialects will ensure that they will contribute at least as far as making software compatible with their own language. Google translate does not make good foreign language error messages, and totally mangles the man pages. So, efforts like RedFlag Linux http://www.redflag-linux.com/chanpin/eindex.php [redflag-linux.com] just read their web site Engl
Capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 n
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Actually, Capitalism can work in the situation you describe, it's just that we've never tried it. What people refer to as "capitalism" in today's world isn't really Capitalism.
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Re:Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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
Re:Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Communism not a problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
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. ;)
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Your sociopathic outlook makes you a perfect businessperson, but questionable human being.
By force or by enticement? (Score:3, Insightful)
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 straigh
Re:By force or by enticement? (Score:4, Insightful)
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
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That is a falsehood. The arbitrary nature of planning comes from a lack of democratic process in determining leadership, not from the nature of the economic system. If a responsive democratic process were in place, this would not happen.
To be blunt, you are wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
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 th
Selfishness is predictable (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Which rock are you living under? (Score:2)
I can't dissociate the two in my mind because practical experience has amply demonstrated that the economic model of communism needs a totalitarian state to work. Can you cite one single example of a country that adopted a communist economy under
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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.
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Oh yeah, it sure is great how we in the USA have such excellent representation in government. By golly, our system 'just works!'
/sarcasm
Re:Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
The GP makes the fundamental mistake of assuming that capitalism is somehow freeing, and intimates that all participants are on an equal footing:
This is patently false, as anyone paying attention to the development of the US economy and US politics should be aware.
Meanwhile, the parent has correctly recognized that capitalism works on the principle of capital concentration, meaning that very few participants actually ha
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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
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What breaks "communism" is evil human nature. What makes communism work is good human nature.
And the exact same thing can be said for capitalism and democracy. We are witnessing the destruction of both because the loss of reasonableness and good will by corporations and people of power.
wait a minute.... (Score:2)
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With talk of Wikipedia as Maoist and Linus's "communist roots", I'm not looking forward to the cultural backlash on all things "Open".
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OSS is NOT communism:
1. Nobody HAS to contribute according to their means.
2. Nobody HAS to receive according to their need.
3. Everybody does what they want.
4. ???
5. Profit!
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Of course, because there are so many ways to do a word-processor... and also, of course, we all know that MS came up with the whole concept and design and interface all by themselves. Ah, the nerve of FOSS!
The only excuse for your attitude is extreme youth---something like less than 6 years old...
Short and Long answer (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Bizarre Screenshot From Writer (Score:5, Informative)
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Article conclusion (Score:2)
innovation? or ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: innovation? or ... (Score:5, Funny)
Language Confusion? (Score:5, Funny)
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)
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Re:Language Confusion? (Score:5, Informative)
Fuck.
Just More Language Confusion? (Score:2, Insightful)
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...
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Aehgts, they have a special bench for people like you... :-)
To avoid being totally off-topic, let me say that copying Office 2007 is not the swiftest move in the universe. I don't hate Microsoft the way MOST people around here do, but for the life of me 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.
And now there is a version o
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Reading that I can't decide whether I feel better about having abandoned word processors when Word killed WordPerfect years ago, or smug that I've been happily using LaTeX ever since.
I'd settle for smug, but then I'd be the fool if I didn't recognise that it's what happens in the corporate world (at least in the area of office software) that sets the rules and standards the rest of us are obliged to follow.
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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 i
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The 2007 interface is not that revolutionary as much as it's using a well-studied paradigm (web browsing) in a context (complex desktop applications) where it's traditionally not seen due to inertia, even if it would make sense.
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To be fair, the Office 2007 UI is actually one of the more impressive things MS has done recently. They put a lot of effort, thought, and UI research (user studies) into that design, and while the outcome is a bit polarizing, the feedback I've heard has been largely very positive, even from within Slashdot.
Yes. Absolutely yes. I've been using MS Office for a long time and although the changes took a little bit of time to get used to, never again must I browse 18 menu levels down to find the stupid superscript option.
MS Office 2007 is worth the cost of upgrading (unlike Vista).
MS Office or KOffice? (Score:3, Interesting)
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... (Score:2, Interesting)
Its not gonna make it.... (Score:4, Informative)
count me out (Score:2)
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I do prefer ribbonish UIs over menu bars though. I'd like to see more apps get on the bandwagon so some refinement can happen. Something as simple as making all of the panels quick to
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Vertical toolbars FTW! (Score:3, Interesting)
Arranging all toolbars as "vertical ribbons" with the current OOo is possible and I kind of like it.
OOo menus are very popular (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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Big Red (Score:2, Funny)
The trouble with Chinese OpenOffice (Score:2)
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What ribbon? (Score:2)
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Hope the future of OOo is better than it's past (Score:2)
When OOo came, I was thrilled to hear there was an alternative to MS-Word. It turned out to be a bloated MS-Word clone, just orders of magnitude slower, and filled with bugs.
For somoeone who hated Word, it was the same but worse.
I sure hope the future of OOo is NOT to continue (badly) cloning MS-word. I have not tried Office 2007 yet, but I still hope that some day OOo can offer a real alternative and be different.
(In the
Word processors are dead, I fear. (Score:2)
Indeed. EVERYONE seems to be cloning the worst features of Word, because that's apparently by far the easiest way to create a program that can roundtrip to Word and back without losing formatting. And that's apparently the only critical feature.
So I've given up. By preference I write documents in HTML+CSS now. I'd use Docbook or somethi
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Have you tried AbiWord? Certainly it's a Word clone, but it's small, and fast, and free.
Lotus Symphony (Score:4, Interesting)
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.)
Microsoft may hunt those down (Score:2)
Office UI licensing site [microsoft.com]
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Can you explain (legalese is not my thing)?
In China, (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Red... (Score:5, Funny)
User: Arrgghh!!!
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p.s. -- no offense to BadAnalogyGuy
Re:Oh no... (Score:5, Funny)
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I believe that the Mandarin in Firefly was mostly a fun way to get curses past the USA censors.
Having just typed that sentence, I think I've blown my mind.
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"dog ten"[bleep]
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It would've been really sweet if they actually used curses, but no, the worst was something like, "your mom's a dirty pig" or something along those lines.
They also used Mandarin, which doesn't quite have the colorful and often amusing phra
Re:All your documents are belonging to us... (Score:5, Insightful)
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It is a shame because I like the Ribbon. FOSS should have come up with this years ago instead of just copying Microsoft.
Okay, I'm going to throw away the mod points I already used in this thread. And I don't mean this to be flamebait.
You admit that you like the Ribbon, but you wish FOSS developed it first so they didn't have to copy Microsoft? Why?
Sites, this one specifically, will be ripe with comments begging Microsoft to actually innovate rather than follow the trends of companies that do.
If you enjoy the UI, why does it matter who adopted it first?
If Microsoft had adapted the UI from OpenOffice there would b