Graham wrote:
On Friday 24 November 2006 21:30, Kay Ramme - Sun Germany - Hamburg wrote:
Hi there!
Hi John,
John McCreesh wrote:
On Thu, 2006-11-23 at 10:29 +0100, Kay Ramme - Sun Germany - Hamburg
wrote:
John,
I would like to request for the UDK project as what Ingrid requested for
the Chart. The UDK already is available as a 'standalone' component,
namely as the URE (Uno Runtime Environment).
The point I would like to repeat because I think that it was overread by
some on this thread is that the "UDK already is available as a
'standalone' component'".
What this basically means it that what we do have here is a "second
product" besides OpenOffice.org itself that is offered here and IMHO it
is a very valid request to make this second product visible on the MAIN
page. If we´d be a company "selling" two products we´d be stupid to not
show both of them on our companys main page; same thing should apply here.
I haven't got a URE icon on my "Start" menu ... or to put it another
What is the "Start" menu? ;-)
The user audiance for this "second product" and the user audiance for
the "main product" - OpenOffice.org itself do only overlap a little bit
and it´s not "simple application end users only" it´s developers of
extensions for OpenOffice.org and developers developing their own
software totally in no relationship with OpenOffice.org which might make
use of this "second product" and than there is also a subset of users
which do create complicated documents with our "main product" which are
enhanced by programming in various available programming languages which
can make use of this "second product". This "second product" consist
mainly of a technolgy (UNO) used inside the main product together with
stuff like documentation and programming libs etc. If we would be
talking about a house building company we would basically be talking
about the bricks we use here. Now well we would like others to provide
things for our houses other than those that we do currently offer
ourselfs and to make those other things fit with the rest of the houses
we offer they would be using our bricks. On the other hand our bricks
are very good bricks and other things than houses (OpenOffice.org and
OpenOffice.org extensions) can be build with it, that´s why we want to
sell them seperatly [ well of course we are not selling anything, we
give that away for free as well as anything else ;-) ]
We want others to develop and offer extensions for OpenOffice.org and we
do also want to allow that technology to spread into other software.
Basically what´s being asked here for is to get those bricks which are
our "second product" on the main-page. Can we do that please?
way:
$ ls /usr/bin/oo
oobase ooffice oomath oowriter
oocalc oofromtemplate ooo-wrapper
oodraw ooimpress ooweb
If you want an executable, just search for uno.bin / uno.exe.
Well searching for executables was a useless think to do anyway because:
We are talking about the "second product" and installed was another
product that makes just use and contains parts of it.
The think is people don´t even know about the "second product". And why
not => because it´s not present on the main page.
And well for what the user audiance of that "second product" would have
looked for on the harddrive would have been documentation and
programming libraries mainly not executables anyway.
where is ooure?
Basically the "second product" to download is here:
http://api.openoffice.org/SDK/index.html
URE (Uno Runtime Environment) is just an abbreviation for a collection
of tools and libraries OOo depends on. Unfortunately names have not been
chosen well (UDK, URE etc.), so I am planning to fix this.
I understand what John is saying here and for the majority of the users of the
website what he says is bang on the money.
The majority of users would benefit much if there was a bunch of
OpenOffice.org extensions. But that will only happen if we start
"selling" our other product which will enable that to happen.
As I said, Uno (URE) is the foundation of OOo, if you do not know about
it, that is sad :-(
The technology I am talking about is being described here:
http://udk.openoffice.org/
This page in turn contains the link to the other page with the download
link for our "second product" mentioned above.
That´s why we should get a link to http://udk.openoffice.org/ on the
main page.
Heh, well be sad for me too, because I have little idea about such ethereal
matters either
That´s probably because you´ve probably never had the need to enhance
documents with Basic Macros or tried to enhance them using other
programming languages or wanted to offer extensions for OpenOffice.org
but maybe it could also be that you didn´t know that you could do that
because we do have a lack of "marketing" for our "second product".
Anyway if you are not interested in that other product fine, but I am
quite sure others out there could be intrested, but only if we tell them
of course.
I know that by using words like "ethereal matters" you try to get kind
of sarcastical and want to underline the point that typical end user of
OpenOffice.org is not really interested in the inner workings of the
program. But I on the other hand think that the information about that
we do have a technology that enables creating extensions in various
programming language is even of interest to everyone and would it only
be for the typical OOo end-user to jump to searching for such available
extensions from knowing that there is a product available helping others
to create them.
My impression is, that you basically think you are the only one allowed
to have an opinion how users and contributors etc. are to be guided
through the main page.
That's a bit harsh, John was offering his opinion, an opinion which is as
relevant as anyones
From my point of view OOo is build up by its
accepted projects, so these accepted projects very well have the right
to attend to interest.
I'm sorry, I don't understand this
Message here was I think that the OOo community does not only contain
end-users and marketing folks but also a lot of other "accepted
projects" besids marketing doing well "work" and that those others do
try to voice their interests is only natural.
[ ... snip ...]
The text I do reply to next was talking about a different topic
"attracting developers" to contribute to OOo. But it fits well with the
"second product" thing so I am just repurposing it:
I know that marketing is probably a dirty word amongst developers but what we
have here is the need for simple marketing procedures
Identify your market
1.) Developers ( OpenSource as well as commercial ISVs ) which do want
to create extensions.
2.) Developers of other Software ( OpenSource developers as well as
commercial ISVs )
which could make use of a component technology that enables them to use
different programming languages at the same time or some other technical
features UNO offers inside their own product.
3.) Creators of complicated OpenOffice.or documents which do enhance
those documents by using OpenOffice.org´s Application Programming
Language Interface together with one of the programming languages that´s
currently supported by UNO the technology inside OpenOffice.org that
besides doing other things allows end-users to do just that use
programming to enhance documents.
4.) ISVs that want to incorporate OpenOffice.org into some specialized
solution for their customers.
5.) Developers who are searching for a challenging OpenSource topic to
contribute to
Identify their needs/desires
1.) They need documention and libraries which enables them to do their work.
We do already have that, it´s our "second product"
http://api.openoffice.org/SDK/index.html
2.) Some of them might need more detailed information about the new
extension mechanism of OOo which is currently on
http://extensions.openoffice.org and IMHO not yet prominent enough too.
Identify how we can fill those needs/desires
Simply by offering that "second product".
and tell them.
Which we currently don´t do agressivly enough. Because IMHO the very
basic thing is missing: there´s not even a reference on the main page
that hints to it.
As Kay said part of the success of a competitors product is a wide range
of available extensions for it. To be able to compete we should more
agressivley market our "second product" which is the enabler for the
future availibility of more OpenOffice.org extensions. Availibilty of
specialized extensions is a benefit to OOo end-users.
Having that "second product" being used in other software would also be
a good thing because this would most likely result in more developers
wanting to participate in enhancing that "second product" istself which
is an integral part of our "main product" benefiting everyone again.
So can we somehow get that "second product" on the main page and
probably start some other marketing efforts for it?
The thing that the team working on that thing likes to find ways to
attract potential developers better like every other team also does is
of course also there and as valid as for every other team. But the thing
that the UDK project is offering a "second product" makes that distinct
and makes it even more urgent to have this project become prominent on
the main page.
cheers
G
Kind regards,
Bernd Eilers
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