[discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
Standards are there for information exchange. Therefore, good practice requires that there are (at least) two independent implementations of the standard. (This is what is severely missing with the OpenDoc (OOo2) standard.) That's what I mean, we've got, what? Two office suites using OpenDocument? And really, neither one is using them for real yet. OOo 2.0 (that great mythilogical beast) *will* use it, but KOffice doesn't yet, and OOo doesn't yet. Eh?? We've been using OOo2 exclusively in our office with essentially ZERO problems for the last 6 months, so don't know where that 'mythological beast' comment came from. The dev builds of OOo2 have been *much* more stable than *any* of the OOo1 builds ever were, at least in our small office of 40 users, and with much less file format compatability issues to boot. And when they do, what is that - maybe 10% of the market share (which I highly doubt, but that number was quoted to me eariler). But that just means 10% of the market share will have access to it - not actually use it in everyday life. I'm just curious... isn't it possible to create third party add-on file filters for Microsoft Office products? Why not simply create an OASIS file filter for Microsoft Office that anyone can d/l and install with just a few clicks of a button? Then, to get *FULL* file format interoperability, all a MSO user has to do is install the filter. Such a filter should be an *official* add-on written and/or approved of by the OOo devs, for respectability purposes. Maybe such a thing is impossible, but I don't really see how it could be any more difficult than reverse engineering the MSO fornmats themselves... -- Charles - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On 9/23/05, Charles Marcus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We've been using OOo2 exclusively in our office with essentially ZERO problems for the last 6 months, so don't know where that 'mythological beast' comment came from. The dev builds of OOo2 have been *much* more stable than *any* of the OOo1 builds ever were, at least in our small office of 40 users, and with much less file format compatability issues to boot. Exactly - you've been using a developer snap-shot beta build for 6 months. A beta build of a program that was supposed to be production ready over a year ago. 2.0 is still very much vaporware. I'm sure 2.0 will be great - if it ever happens. Why not simply create an OASIS file filter for Microsoft Office that anyone can d/l and install with just a few clicks of a button? Then, to get *FULL* file format interoperability, all a MSO user has to do is install the filter. Go ahead. Please feel free to create it. -Chad Smith
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
Chad Smith wrote: On 9/23/05, Charles Marcus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We've been using OOo2 exclusively in our office with essentially ZERO problems for the last 6 months, so don't know where that 'mythological beast' comment came from. The dev builds of OOo2 have been *much* more stable than *any* of the OOo1 builds ever were, at least in our small office of 40 users, and with much less file format compatability issues to boot. Exactly - you've been using a developer snap-shot beta build for 6 months. A beta build of a program that was supposed to be production ready over a year ago. 2.0 is still very much vaporware. I'm sure 2.0 will be great - if it ever happens. And Windows is shipped bug free. :) My experience with Windows products is I am a glorified beta tester that has to pay for the benefit to test the product. I have been using 2.0beta since May and love it. Every person that has tried OOo has found tht they can do things that they cannot do in Word. And this is from Word believers. At least the development team is calling it a beta, unlike MS. As the biggest problem is Words support for graphics and changing page formats without the ability to undo many of the changes. Many around where I work have moved to LaTeX or OOo because of problems with formatting text. Now if Windows XP was as reliable as OOo 2.0, at least for me. :) -- Robin Laing - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On Fri, 2005-09-23 at 15:38 -0400, Chad Smith wrote: On 9/23/05, Charles Marcus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We've been using OOo2 exclusively in our office with essentially ZERO problems for the last 6 months, so don't know where that 'mythological beast' comment came from. The dev builds of OOo2 have been *much* more stable than *any* of the OOo1 builds ever were, at least in our small office of 40 users, and with much less file format compatability issues to boot. Exactly - you've been using a developer snap-shot beta build for 6 months. A beta build of a program that was supposed to be production ready over a year ago. 2.0 is still very much vaporware. I'm sure 2.0 will be great - if it ever happens. You are splitting hairs. OOo 2 is in beta 2. That is not vaporware, vaporware is when someone starts selling advanced orders of something that has never even been written or is under lock and key so no-one has any real evidence it exists. OOo2 exists and can be seen to move to a more and more finished state. In fact no piece of software is ever finished in that all non-trivial apps will have bugs. Its a rather arbitrary line that is drawn as to when something is considered ready to release. Its arguable that some commercial apps never get beyond beta but get released anyway. So on your logic, since MSO 12 is vapourware as its not yet officially released and has a smaller market share than OOo 1.1.4, it is a no hope app. It'll be interesting to see if it ever gets a bigger market share than OOo, it certainly isn't a foregone conclusion. People haven't exactly rushed to upgrade to 2003 from Office 97, 2000 and XP. And for MS, legacy users who pay them no money are about as useful as a chocolate teapot. Why not simply create an OASIS file filter for Microsoft Office that anyone can d/l and install with just a few clicks of a button? Then, to get *FULL* file format interoperability, all a MSO user has to do is install the filter. It already exists, its called OOo. Of course .doc is still not fully known so full file format interoperability can't be absolutely certain any more than with current filters. In fact ODF goes wider than office software - Alexandro gave some examples of why. Internet interoperability is the name of the game and .doc doesn't hack it, its yesterday's technology and MS know it. That is why they are trying to hijack XML and get proprietary lock in to it. Its not just office documents that are at stake, its the whole freedom of the internet. If you want a free and open internet, back ODF. Go ahead. Please feel free to create it. If you have the time and resources, there are higher priorities. -- Ian Lynch [EMAIL PROTECTED] ZMSL - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On Wed, September 21, 2005 23:38, Randomthots wrote: But I'm not quite sure why a Dell would be any more proprietary than anything you could roll-your-own. Lucky you. I can tell you from experience Dell's are way more quirky than others (brand or whiteboxes). They often use exotic hardware no one else will touch because it costs a few cents less and Dell is about cutting corners (for example, if nVidia got a stockpile of problem video cards no one buys it will offload it to Dell at a discount price) Of course what they don't tell you is OS drivers will have no end of trouble trying to handle this later. (Windows and Linux alike). When you have a labful of Dell boxes the current vanilla Windows or Linux can't boot on you get pretty mad. -- Nicolas Mailhot - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On Wed, September 21, 2005 23:38, Randomthots wrote: But I'm not quite sure why a Dell would be any more proprietary than anything you could roll-your-own. Lucky you. I can tell you from experience Dell's are way more quirky than others (brand or whiteboxes). They often use exotic hardware no one else will touch because it costs a few cents less and Dell is about cutting corners (for example, if nVidia got a stockpile of problem video cards no one buys it will offload it to Dell at a discount price) Of course what they don't tell you is OS drivers will have no end of trouble trying to handle this later. (Windows and Linux alike). When you have a labful of Dell boxes the current vanilla Windows or Linux can't boot on you get pretty mad. -- Nicolas Mailhot - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 16:18:15 +0100, Randomthots [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Alexandro Colorado wrote: On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 16:38:11 +0100, Randomthots [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Nicu Buculei wrote: You will often see people defining the office suite as something including *all* the things included in Microsoft Office, probably this is an effect of Microsoft's clever marketing. The point isn't whether or not MSO has a component but WHY MSO has a component. Outlook is a part of MSO because e-mail, calendaring, and task management are a central set of office-oriented functions. Frontpage is included because web-page creation is at least as important in disseminating information as paper documents, pdf, or presentations. Rod So on this new office suite of today where people do most of their work on web applications, should we all do a Web version of OOo? Just where in my post did you extract this new office suite of today where people do most of their work on web applications? I was only pointing out that the end product of content-creation is as likely to be html as paper. I could point you to any number of web-sites where you have the choice of viewing the content as html or downloading a pdf of the exact same thing to print out. I've also seen a number of sites that offer a Powerpoint, a pdf of the Powerpoint, and an html version of the exact same slides. Since these are technically oriented sites, I *KNOW* you've seen the same sort of thing. At the same time this applications are not very web oriented and alternative has been develop. Take for example the difference between downloading a desktop file vs. the W3C css projector media. They both are builded to have a presentation, but who you think is more 'web-oriented'. Another option is also PDF file vs. what Macromedia is doing with Flash paper. Then again having files on line is not so web oriented since the whole thing is to do work on the browser more than reliying on a desktop application like a PDF reader or a copy of MSO to view that file. In my mind the only real question is *how much* html support is appropriate. Should it be an export to html button akin to the export to pdf? Direct editing of html code with syntax checking? WSIWYG layout like FrontPage, Dreamweaver, et al? Site management? I'm not sure where that line should be, but wherever it is go that far, no further, and do what you do as well as possible. Well one option is to have a server based so OOo saves directly to your website. Another is to make the html more customized like choose encoding type and doctype, that will make it more compliant at least. If you have seen webapplications like gallery that is a webapplication to display images they have manufacture different methods to ease the process of uploading pictures using a java client or an automation of zip files. The more web oriented will mean that the application will know what you want to do and save you steps in the process to publish. I wonder if we should incorporate flash paper as part of the export engine, simply because we already do it for impress (as swf) and flash paper might just need some minor adaptations and also have better formating. Impress tries to be web-oriented using the dynamic applications on ASP and Perl, unfortunately the lack of knowledge of this tool, hasn't make it easy to port it to other web-apps like PHP or Ruby on rails. Should we blog instead of producing documents? Blog instead of producing documents? Why is it an either/or question? I don't know a lot about blogging, but from what I've seen they seem like fairly simple standard web-pages. Nothing fancy; surely within the capabilities of OOo. I'll leave it to others to tell us if the mechanics of posting such a thing could be a reasonable addition to OOo. Well it is fancy, what I mean with that is acknowledging some major blogs API's like the Blogger API. And have an app like gnome blog (http://www.gnome.org/~seth/gnome-blog/) which lets you type on the desktop and automatically post it on the blog with just saving. They are compliants with Blogger, Advogato, Movable Type, WordPress, LiveJournal and Pyblosxom. If there is some more php development we can make a class or component to be able to post to all the custom LAMP blogs. Should we have more compatibility with our Cellphones and PDA and have bluetooth native support? Now I think you're just being facetious. I've seen you post on very technical subjects so I'm pretty sure you know that bluetooth native support is meaningless in this context. While we're at it, lets throw in native support for Wi-Fi, Wi-Max, Ethernet, ATM, Frame Relay, Token Ring, FDDI, and 56K Dialup. I suppose you could include Telegraph, Telex, and Semaphore flags as well. Bluetooth is a Physical and Data Link layer networking technology that is totally
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On 9/22/05, Johan Vromans [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Robin Laing [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [...] you miss one point about standards. They are documented and readable. Standards are there for information exchange. Therefore, good practice requires that there are (at least) two independent implementations of the standard. (This is what is severely missing with the OpenDoc (OOo2) standard.) -- Johan That's what I mean, we've got, what? Two office suites using OpenDocument? And really, neither one is using them for real yet. OOo 2.0 (that great mythilogical beast) *will* use it, but KOffice doesn't yet, and OOo doesn't yet. And when they do, what is that - maybe 10% of the market share (which I highly doubt, but that number was quoted to me eariler). But that just means 10% of the market share will have access to it - not actually use it in everyday life. And, in fact, that is assuming that everyone who uses KOffice and OOo now instantly updates to the latest version (which, historically speaking, not nearly all of them will - how many still have MSO 97 or OOo 1.0?). Single digit market share does not a standard make. -Chad
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
Johan Vromans wrote: Robin Laing [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [...] you miss one point about standards. They are documented and readable. Standards are there for information exchange. Therefore, good practice requires that there are (at least) two independent implementations of the standard. (This is what is severely missing with the OpenDoc (OOo2) standard.) OpenDocument. OpenDoc is the name of something else. And there are at least two implementations. -- John W. Kennedy The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. -- G. K. Chesterton. The Man Who Was Thursday - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On 9/22/05, John W. Kennedy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And there are at least two implementations. There *possibly will be* at least two implementations. There is current one, and it's not default. And of the two potential future implementations, one of them is forever locked on a platform that next to no one uses. 3% is nothing to get excited about. And of that 3% that uses Linux, not everyone uses KOffice or OOo. Some actually use MSOffice. -- -Chad Smith
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On Thu, 2005-09-22 at 10:38 -0400, Chad Smith wrote: That's what I mean, we've got, what? Two office suites using OpenDocument? And really, neither one is using them for real yet. OOo 2.0 (that great mythilogical beast) *will* use it, but KOffice doesn't yet, and OOo doesn't yet. Lack of vision. Good job you are not in the Venture Capital business ;-) Single digit market share does not a standard make. MS had single digit market share when WP was dominant. Sony had single digit market share when Sega and Nintendo were dominant. DOS had single digit market share when 8 bit micros were in their hay day. Telephones had single digit market share at the height of the telegraph. Google had single digit market share or less at one time. All of those have become de facto standards at one time or another. The difference here is that ODF, will be ratified as an ISO standard and will be adopted by governments on that basis, not just because it is simply dominant in the market place. Since this has not yet happened its not surprising that Goverments in general have not specified its required so its not surprising the take up is not yet that widespread. Look at the general knowledge criteria for Bronze INGOT. There is a requirement to understand the difference between standards owned by single interest groups and standards that are open and agreed by all. When governments say they won't deal with companies that do not conform to ISO 9000 or whatever, it doesn't matter if at that time only one or two companies conform. If a copany wants to do business with the government they adopt the standard. Even MS is small compared to the Government of even one G8 country, never mind the EU. -- Ian Lynch [EMAIL PROTECTED] ZMSL - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
Alexandro Colorado wrote: SNIP It is and is not, having an option that sends by email could also have a plug-in that sends by bluetooth. I think you see this on Outlooks plug-ins for syncing your palm. SNIP... Oh!! That would be so very nice. :-) SC -- How sweet it is!!! :) - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
Chad Smith wrote: SNIP.. Well, I don't totally agree with you on this. I don't think opendocuments matters at all. I sincerely doubt it will ever take off. It is, and likely will remain, a geek-only format on two office suites, one of which is locked on a geek-mostly very small market share operating system. Maybe I'm wrong. It'd be nice if I was. But whatever, doesn't really matter to me. SNIP. ... Well here is where I disagree with you Chad. I do not think the opendocuments format is geeky. The problem I see with OOo relates to where it is used and who it is exposed to. I feel that once the Biblio thing is straigned out that OOo will get more exposure in academia and takeoff with academisians and professionals. They will become use to using it in school and probably continue to use it after graduation. The folks promoting the OpenDocument format [I do believe it is a worthy cause] need to somehow get the concept out to the general population. They need to do some PR that goes past the so called geeks so the average non-geek person can see the value and economics of the issue. Just my 2Cents on this. :-) SC -- How sweet it is!!! :) - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
Robert Derman wrote:
Robert Derman replies: I just dug out my old Olivetti manual and it was
on the @ cent key just to the right of the :; key, where the ' key is
now. the ' apostrophe and quote marks used to be in the top row. ~
is used for some hosted web pages, so unfortunately we do need it.
However I don't know of any use for the ^ over the 6, that would be a
good place for the cent sign IMHO. Does anyone know what the ^ is for?
It's currently used primarily to denote exponentiation. Like 2 squared
is written as 2^2 and 2 cubed is written 2^3. Prior to that or in other
contexts you might find it subscripted between two characters to
indicate an insertion -- an editing mark.
It's one of those ways that the transition to word processors from
typewriters changed the layout of the keyboard. Other symbols that
didn't used to exist are `, ~, \, |, , , and maybe the [], {} pairs
(except in mathematical typography).
What I don't get is why the cent sign had to go away. It's not like
keyboard designers were averse to just adding more keys; you have the
whole top row of function keys, the Insert, Delete, etc. block, the
cursor keys, and the number keypad. Surely there's room in all that for
the cent symbol.
Rod
-
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[discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
Sweet Coffee wrote: Alexandro Colorado wrote: SNIP It is and is not, having an option that sends by email could also have a plug-in that sends by bluetooth. I think you see this on Outlooks plug-ins for syncing your palm. SNIP... Oh!! That would be so very nice. :-) SC Actually, it already IS very nice. If you have a laptop running OOo sitting next to a PDA, and both devices have Bluetooth hardware and drivers, they can and likely will form an ad-hoc network. Hit File - Save As and you have the option (in Windows) of saving to a network drive. The PDA should appear as a folder or drive that you can save to no different than saving to your hard drive. If I wanted to, I could save a file to my digital camera or to a memory card sitting in the card reader of my multi-function printer via the wireless network. The only question is whether the device at the other end would know what to do with it when it got there. For that you would need some version of OOo that runs on the PDA. Otherwise, it's just a file sitting there that it can't open. Rod - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
Alexandro Colorado wrote: I don't understand how an office suite is bluetooth enabled - isn't that an operating system thing?). It is and is not, having an option that sends by email could also have a plug-in that sends by bluetooth. I think you see this on Outlooks plug-ins for syncing your palm. That's still Application Layer stuff, getting Outlook to talk to the Application Layer of the Palm OS. The actual communication is via lower level protocols in the OS. Outlook doesn't know and doesn't care if the communication happens via Bluetooth, USB, Serial port, or Infrared. Rod - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On 9/21/05, Sweet Coffee [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well here is where I disagree with you Chad. I do not think the opendocuments format is geeky. The problem I see with OOo relates to where it is used and who it is exposed to. By definition, anyone who understands what an file format really is, and why it may or may not matter (beyond, can I open this thing), would be a geek. End users think that when the file associations are changed (like when OOo is installed with the Office file associations turned on) that you somehow changed the actual file itself. For evidence of this fact, simply read the thread that pops up daily on the users mailing list about OPEN OFFICE ATE MY HOMEWORK or YOUR STUPID SOFTWARE TOOK OVER MY FILES! or some other ignorance. You tell me that an open standard file format means *anything* to ignorant end users like that. (Ignorance meaning lack on knowledge, not stupidity.) File formats are a geek thing. Nobody with a Dell cares about file formats. I feel that once the Biblio thing is straigned out that OOo will get more exposure in academia and takeoff with academisians and professionals. They will become use to using it in school and probably continue to use it after graduation. The folks promoting the OpenDocument format [I do believe it is a worthy cause] need to somehow get the concept out to the general population. They need to do some PR that goes past the so called geeks so the average non-geek person can see the value and economics of the issue. OpenDocuments is a useless thing as far as I am concerned. There is already a standard file format in place - it's called DOC. Every office suite on the planet can open and edit these things. You don't need to give penny one to Microsoft to use it. And you don't need to steal from Microsoft to use it. Get you a free (both meanings) distro of Linux with a free (both ways) word processor, and boom, there you go. GnomeOffice (AbiWord), KOffice, and OpenOffice.org *ALL* read, create, and edit Word DOCs. If anyone in the world with a PC can open and read your files, what possible motivation is there to switch? I will always *ALWAYS* have access to all of my Word Docs. Nothing Microsoft can do to change that. Nothing anyone can do will change that. OpenDocuments is a geek-only, free-as-in-speech-software-java-is-satan-freak-only, conspiracy-theorist-only issue. And no, Massachusetts doesn't convince me otherwise - it's just a ploy to get cheap/free copies of MS Office/Windows. -Chad Smith
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 16:45:33 +0100, Randomthots [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sweet Coffee wrote: Alexandro Colorado wrote: SNIP It is and is not, having an option that sends by email could also have a plug-in that sends by bluetooth. I think you see this on Outlooks plug-ins for syncing your palm. SNIP... Oh!! That would be so very nice. :-) SC Actually, it already IS very nice. If you have a laptop running OOo sitting next to a PDA, and both devices have Bluetooth hardware and drivers, they can and likely will form an ad-hoc network. Hit File - Save As and you have the option (in Windows) of saving to a network drive. The PDA should appear as a folder or drive that you can save to no different than saving to your hard drive. If I wanted to, I could save a file to my digital camera or to a memory card sitting in the card reader of my multi-function printer via the wireless network. The only question is whether the device at the other end would know what to do with it when it got there. For that you would need some version of OOo that runs on the PDA. Otherwise, it's just a file sitting there that it can't open. Rod Yes is true, but this is an automation issue, I mean you are not really innovating the whole work space by saving the guy time to open a new email click on add-attachment. Is more like a toy as it saves you those extra steps. Another cool thing with OOo is similar to the phishing going on in Konqueror where it understands more than http and can do different protocols such as mount etc. OOo has an http address bar (Open URL) it could be used to open also ssh, ftp, and things like that. Gnome can do that under gnomevfs-mount: http://gnomedesktop.org/node/1981 -- Alexandro Colorado CoLeader of OpenOffice.org ES http://es.openoffice.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
Ian Lynch wrote: Your average Dell user will probably not understand how a car might be able to run on something other than gasoline. Would you quit with the Dell nonsense? I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering and am working on a Master's in IT. My Dell has been a good little machine for me. And I perfectly well understand how a car might be able to run on a variety of fuels and why you can't just throw ethanol in your average gas-burner. Nobody with a Dell cares about file formats. I do. And I understand why it matters. Fortunately, these people have virtually no influence in determining technological change. Hmmmph! - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On Wed, 2005-09-21 at 13:15 -0500, Randomthots wrote: Ian Lynch wrote: Your average Dell user will probably not understand how a car might be able to run on something other than gasoline. Would you quit with the Dell nonsense? :-) Chad started it. I don't use Dell. I'm assuming in his greater knowledge of such things that with billions of users, the average Dell user is not a Mechanical Engineer. I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering and am working on a Master's in IT. My Dell has been a good little machine for me. And I perfectly well understand how a car might be able to run on a variety of fuels and why you can't just throw ethanol in your average gas-burner. So you are not a typically average Dell user based on Chad's definitions ;-) Nobody with a Dell cares about file formats. I do. And I understand why it matters. Fortunately, these people have virtually no influence in determining technological change. Hmmmph! Actually you me and Chad probably have no great influence. What I mean is, think of those that do and their attitutudes. I had a meeting with one of the UK's main government IT agencies on Monday. I can assure you that they do have an interest in standards such as ODF. -- Ian Lynch [EMAIL PROTECTED] ZMSL - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On Wed, 2005-09-21 at 15:46 -0400, Chad Smith wrote: Sorry Rod - I had no idea that you used a Dell. My point was that most geeks don't use Dells, and most people who use Dells aren't geeks. I'd say statistiacally that most people using Dells aren't Geeks but I bet there is a sizeable minority who are (based on the Chad definition). My point is that its not actually the majority that lead technological change. The leaders are by definition a minority - a minority that has greater influence than sheer numbers. Who knows what computers such leaders use. Are they geeks? Maybe, maybe not. Are they politically well connected, probably. Are they joe sixpack? Almost certainly not. -- Ian Lynch [EMAIL PROTECTED] ZMSL - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
Chad Smith wrote: On 9/21/05, Randomthots [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Would you quit with the Dell nonsense? I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering and am working on a Master's in IT. My Dell has been a good little machine for me. Nobody with a Dell cares about file formats. I do. And I understand why it matters. Sorry Rod - I had no idea that you used a Dell. My point was that most geeks don't use Dells, and most people who use Dells aren't geeks. Geeks like to roll their own and therefore, a propriatary computer - the most common being a Dell - would not normally ebe something they would have. It wasn't meant to be taken as a 1-to-1 equation, just an illustration. Sorry to offend. I had no idea you were so attached to your computer hardware maker. -Chad My ire, wrath, and outrage were tongue-in-cheek, I hope you realize. But I'm not quite sure why a Dell would be any more proprietary than anything you could roll-your-own. Mine came with an Asus motherboard, Maxtor hard-drive, Sound-Blaster audio, NVidia graphics card, Conexant modem, and Harman/Kardon speakers. The only parts that actually say Dell on them are the case, keyboard, mouse, and monitor. The first three items are long past the point of being commodities and you know Dell didn't actually build the monitor either. All they do is assemble components; no different than any white box mfr or roll-your-own hobbyist. They build decent machines for a good price. Works for me. Rod - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
Chad wrote: To stay current (read *AHEAD* of Microsoft) we need a functional, working, easy-to-use, standards-compliant, WYSIWYG HTML editor. Upgraading the HTML output to HTML 4.01 + CSS 1.0 would be a good start. But we could get rid of the useless ones like ` and ~ . The tilde is significant for modem connections, and some websites on a LAMP platform. soon (and it's already started happening) you'll be able to make up your own keyboard layout. On Linux, that ability hs been around since around 1990. I don't remember when that ability first became available on Windows. If you are refering to programable keyboards with 128 keys, those have been available for at least a decade. xan jonathon -- Does your Office Suite conform to ISO Standards? - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On 9/21/05, Jonathon Blake [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Chad wrote: soon (and it's already started happening) you'll be able to make up your own keyboard layout. On Linux, that ability hs been around since around 1990. I don't remember when that ability first became available on Windows. If you are refering to programable keyboards with 128 keys, those have been available for at least a decade. I mean where I can actually change what shows up on the keyboard - and not with stickers or paint, but through software - as well as what the keys do. Some even let you put the keys anywhere on the board you want - not just in the standard lined-up formation. These, I believe (and could be wrong) are fairly new. Type 1 - http://www.engadget.com/entry/123473059478/ (Please notice the date) Type 2 - http://www.ergodex.com/content.php?id=12 -Chad Smith - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
T. J. Brumfield wrote: I'll file an official request. Most open source WYSIWYG HTML editors are rather simple ones however designed to allow someone online to edit a page. I was hoping to see a Frontpage replacement, especially since Frontpage uses proprietary extensions for its widgets and gadgets. A script wizard that helped you put together simple tools for your website using say PHP or CGI would be far more useful and less proprietary. Frontpage also doesn't do much necessarily to support developing with CSS. -- T. J. This is a bit like guilding the lily. OOo is already a humongous package. If this is done, I suggest that other languages than HTML be included, eg. Python. Neil Hodson's Scintilla is an excellent multi-programming language multi-os open source package: http://www.scintilla.org/ Colin W. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
Alexandro Colorado wrote: Python for web editor? Even if it's intereting we went away from the end user and into the developer space. In theory Basic interface can be used to use Java. But the problem is that if we want to put every single application we end up with a 3GB program. I think the future is more about componetize and break up the modules. At least the URE is already away from the OOo program. On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 13:59:37 +0100, Colin J. Williams [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: T. J. Brumfield wrote: I'll file an official request. Most open source WYSIWYG HTML editors are rather simple ones however designed to allow someone online to edit a page. I was hoping to see a Frontpage replacement, especially since Frontpage uses proprietary extensions for its widgets and gadgets. A script wizard that helped you put together simple tools for your website using say PHP or CGI would be far more useful and less proprietary. Frontpage also doesn't do much necessarily to support developing with CSS. -- T. J. This is a bit like guilding the lily. OOo is already a humongous package. If this is done, I suggest that other languages than HTML be included, eg. Python. Neil Hodson's Scintilla is an excellent multi-programming language multi-os open source package: http://www.scintilla.org/ Colin W. Alexandro, I agree with your comments about the probable desirability of modularizing OOo. Python is used for writing macros and thus my suggestion that, if the editor is to allow for the syntax of HTML, consideration should also be given to Python. I understand that Python is also used in the context of GCI. Scintilla handles both HTML and Python (and many other languages). Colin W. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
Chad Smith wrote: This thread (and particularly this email) sounds very familiar. It seems we have had this conversation many times already, and people are refining their arguments each time. It IS familiar. It's bothered me ever since Daniel C. made an argument against including an Outlook style component in OOo. I remember another argument that was against a full-fledged Access-style database component that ran along similar lines. interesting blog stuff snipped My answer is - who cares? Why does it matter if it is a Blog or an online newspaper? Why does it matter if an office suite is defined a certain way or not? What we need to decide is, not what some mythological architypical OFFICE SUITE should or should not contain - but what should OpenOffice.orgcontain. Exactly. It seems to me that these decisions should be based on more pragmatic arguments. Particularly, What have users of office suites come to expect? and What is do-able given the existing infrastructure and resources? The fact (opposed to the philosophy) is that OOo already *does* include an HTML editor - one that sucks. It needs to be fixed. Whether that fixing comes by rewriting the exisiting code, tweaking the existing code, or removing the exisitng code and adding a pre-existing outside source of code, like Nvu or something, is up for debate. But the question of whether or not an HTML editor should be included is moot. It should because it is. And because it's expected by the end users in a corporate environment. There is real productivity value in having these different components that have the same look-and-feel, the same nomenclature, similar menu layouts, etc. UI consistency makes learning to use the different components much easier. Now, if you start to bring in, as Colin did, other languages - then you get into what should OpenOffice.org (again, not the grand ideal OFFICE SUITE, but the very real OOo), contain. In my personal opinion, OpenOffice.org does not need to be a programming software suite with editors for Perl and Ruby and Python and CGI and C++ and all this other coding stuff. That's what emacs is for, which, by the way, those of you who need and like it are welcome to it. It's a terrible general word processor, but a damn fine tool for coding. What OOo does need to add are things like a DTP program, a bitmap editor, and include a OOo-skinned version of Firefox and Thunderbird (at least as an optional download) that is formatted (with extensions and/or plug-ins for both OOo and Ff/Tb) to work together directly - (so like an Email this document button that opens Thunderbird, or a preview my webpage button that opens Firefox.) +1 I'm not saying philosophical stuff is bad - it's just getting really old. I honestly think this exact email, almost word for word (Rod's not mine) was posted like a year ago, and like six months ago, and like a year and a half ago. This endless defining of an ideal OFFICE SUITE is redundant and boring and doesn't change anything about the very real code of OpenOffice.org. -Chad Smith Now, Chad, I'm on YOUR side. But before we discuss the addition of entire components to the suite, my vote would be for addressing some long-standing inadequacies to the basic functioning. For example: 1. Issue 3910, posted in April of 2002. I'll skip the details but this concerns the behavior of Writer when you wish to insert a manual page break and have the page numbering restart at 1. The current behavior is un-intuitive, surprising, and downright obnoxious. I thought for sure it was a bug when I first ran across it. There's a work-around, but you basically have to trick OOo into doing what you want. 2. Anyone ever try to make a run-in heading? You can do it manually, of course, but there is no way to do it via Styles and no way to have such a heading interact properly with the TOC maker-thingy or the Navigator. Maybe such a beast doesn't exist in German writing? 3. Quit changing file associations for users with MSO installed! Whether or not it SHOULD be confusing is a moot point; the fact is that it IS confusing for a fair number of new users, and even worse, it's ALARMING to them and makes a poor first impression. Windows users are accustomed to having to worry about viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, adware, and all other sorts of nasties. Any program that does something totally unexpected to them is immediately VERY suspicious (and destined for the Recycle bin). 4. A full-frontal assault on the bibliography project. The current system is good for exactly one citation/bibliography style and totally worthless otherwise. Just my $0.02 worth (BTW, when did the cent symbol disappear from keyboards? Where did it used to be?) Rod - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
on 09/20/05 10:04 'Randomthots' wrote: Chad Smith wrote: My answer is - who cares? Why does it matter if it is a Blog or an online newspaper? Why does it matter if an office suite is defined a certain way or not? What we need to decide is, not what some mythological architypical OFFICE SUITE should or should not contain - but what should OpenOffice.orgcontain. Exactly. It seems to me that these decisions should be based on more pragmatic arguments. Particularly, What have users of office suites come to expect? and What is do-able given the existing infrastructure and resources? I think *both* viewpoints ought to be considered if we are to continue to please existing OOo users and attract new users. The fact (opposed to the philosophy) is that OOo already *does* include an HTML editor - one that sucks. It needs to be fixed. Whether that fixing comes by rewriting the exisiting code, tweaking the existing code, or removing the exisitng code and adding a pre-existing outside source of code, like Nvu or something, is up for debate. But the question of whether or not an HTML editor should be included is moot. It should because it is. And because it's expected by the end users in a corporate environment. There is real productivity value in having these different components that have the same look-and-feel, the same nomenclature, similar menu layouts, etc. UI consistency makes learning to use the different components much easier. I'm not certain an HTML editor is *expected* by office suite users in a corporate environment. It might be used by a limited few, but I don't know if I would attribute expected to the functionality. I'm not saying philosophical stuff is bad - it's just getting really old. I honestly think this exact email, almost word for word (Rod's not mine) was posted like a year ago, and like six months ago, and like a year and a half ago. This endless defining of an ideal OFFICE SUITE is redundant and boring and doesn't change anything about the very real code of OpenOffice.org. -Chad Smith 3. Quit changing file associations for users with MSO installed! Whether or not it SHOULD be confusing is a moot point; the fact is that it IS confusing for a fair number of new users, and even worse, it's ALARMING to them and makes a poor first impression. Windows users are accustomed to having to worry about viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, adware, and all other sorts of nasties. Any program that does something totally unexpected to them is immediately VERY suspicious (and destined for the Recycle bin). I need to strongly disagree here. I think giving the users the option (which is what OOo does - not perfectly, but it does it) is the right approach. That some users *REFUSE* to read the instructions is not something we can solve. In my opinion a lot of the users who post in a panic that OOo has broken MS Office (usually in ALL CAPS and with way too many exclamation marks) need to switch to decaf. I think the point is that users need to read the instructions - I don't care if it is a VCR, fire extinguisher or software. On the other hand, we could do a better job in [users] with a standard (and gentle) template with the instructions for how to reassign the icons. There's a bit too much undue frustration that surfaces too often on that topic. 4. A full-frontal assault on the bibliography project. The current system is good for exactly one citation/bibliography style and totally worthless otherwise. Just my $0.02 worth (BTW, when did the cent symbol disappear from keyboards? Where did it used to be?) I think it was somewhere on the right-hand side of the keyboard, perhaps as a shifted \ symbol - I don't remember exactly and my manual typewriter is too far back in that dark, scary closet right now. ;) SJK - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 15:55:11 +0100, Colin J. Williams [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Alexandro Colorado wrote: Python for web editor? Even if it's intereting we went away from the end user and into the developer space. In theory Basic interface can be used to use Java. But the problem is that if we want to put every single application we end up with a 3GB program. I think the future is more about componetize and break up the modules. At least the URE is already away from the OOo program. On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 13:59:37 +0100, Colin J. Williams [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: T. J. Brumfield wrote: I'll file an official request. Most open source WYSIWYG HTML editors are rather simple ones however designed to allow someone online to edit a page. I was hoping to see a Frontpage replacement, especially since Frontpage uses proprietary extensions for its widgets and gadgets. A script wizard that helped you put together simple tools for your website using say PHP or CGI would be far more useful and less proprietary. Frontpage also doesn't do much necessarily to support developing with CSS. -- T. J. This is a bit like guilding the lily. OOo is already a humongous package. If this is done, I suggest that other languages than HTML be included, eg. Python. Neil Hodson's Scintilla is an excellent multi-programming language multi-os open source package: http://www.scintilla.org/ Colin W. Alexandro, I agree with your comments about the probable desirability of modularizing OOo. Python is used for writing macros and thus my suggestion that, if the editor is to allow for the syntax of HTML, consideration should also be given to Python. I understand that Python is also used in the context of GCI. Scintilla handles both HTML and Python (and many other languages). Colin W. Then again, there is different ways of supporting python for example using mod_python would be a different way than php-python or cgi. So is not the same support for every python too. Versions matter a lot more in python. -- Alexandro Colorado CoLeader of OpenOffice.org ES http://es.openoffice.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
Nicu Buculei wrote: You will often see people defining the office suite as something including *all* the things included in Microsoft Office, probably this is an effect of Microsoft's clever marketing. The point isn't whether or not MSO has a component but WHY MSO has a component. Outlook is a part of MSO because e-mail, calendaring, and task management are a central set of office-oriented functions. Frontpage is included because web-page creation is at least as important in disseminating information as paper documents, pdf, or presentations. Rod - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 16:04:03 +0100, Randomthots [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Chad Smith wrote: This thread (and particularly this email) sounds very familiar. It seems we have had this conversation many times already, and people are refining their arguments each time. It IS familiar. It's bothered me ever since Daniel C. made an argument against including an Outlook style component in OOo. I remember another argument that was against a full-fledged Access-style database component that ran along similar lines. interesting blog stuff snipped My answer is - who cares? Why does it matter if it is a Blog or an online newspaper? Why does it matter if an office suite is defined a certain way or not? What we need to decide is, not what some mythological architypical OFFICE SUITE should or should not contain - but what should OpenOffice.orgcontain. Exactly. It seems to me that these decisions should be based on more pragmatic arguments. Particularly, What have users of office suites come to expect? and What is do-able given the existing infrastructure and resources? The fact (opposed to the philosophy) is that OOo already *does* include an HTML editor - one that sucks. It needs to be fixed. Whether that fixing comes by rewriting the exisiting code, tweaking the existing code, or removing the exisitng code and adding a pre-existing outside source of code, like Nvu or something, is up for debate. But the question of whether or not an HTML editor should be included is moot. It should because it is. And because it's expected by the end users in a corporate environment. There is real productivity value in having these different components that have the same look-and-feel, the same nomenclature, similar menu layouts, etc. UI consistency makes learning to use the different components much easier. I think this is only because we used to experience vendor trainning driven by products. So there is a value on trainning people in a common suite, since the more the suite include the more value the trainning provide. But when it comes to linux it changes since we are not attached to a single solution so for example a trainner can configure the trainning based on solutions rather than products. INGOTs is a very good example since they don't teach you office or browsing, but it will take you through a family of 'standarzie' open source tools commonly founded in Linux. So a trainnning in gnome will touch OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, Gaim, Galeon, etc. Now, if you start to bring in, as Colin did, other languages - then you get into what should OpenOffice.org (again, not the grand ideal OFFICE SUITE, but the very real OOo), contain. In my personal opinion, OpenOffice.org does not need to be a programming software suite with editors for Perl and Ruby and Python and CGI and C++ and all this other coding stuff. That's what emacs is for, which, by the way, those of you who need and like it are welcome to it. It's a terrible general word processor, but a damn fine tool for coding. I can't think of any serious programmer coding in word either :) What OOo does need to add are things like a DTP program, a bitmap editor, and include a OOo-skinned version of Firefox and Thunderbird (at least as an optional download) that is formatted (with extensions and/or plug-ins for both OOo and Ff/Tb) to work together directly - (so like an Email this document button that opens Thunderbird, or a preview my webpage button that opens Firefox.) +1 That sounds perfect unless people don't use firefox so then is back to step one. Then again UI is NOT the skin of the application but it's the way i'ts structure. At the same time this was already made possible in gnome where my OOo looks like the rest of my gtk applications. I'm not saying philosophical stuff is bad - it's just getting really old. I honestly think this exact email, almost word for word (Rod's not mine) was posted like a year ago, and like six months ago, and like a year and a half ago. This endless defining of an ideal OFFICE SUITE is redundant and boring and doesn't change anything about the very real code of OpenOffice.org. -Chad Smith Now, Chad, I'm on YOUR side. But before we discuss the addition of entire components to the suite, my vote would be for addressing some long-standing inadequacies to the basic functioning. For example: 1. Issue 3910, posted in April of 2002. I'll skip the details but this concerns the behavior of Writer when you wish to insert a manual page break and have the page numbering restart at 1. The current behavior is un-intuitive, surprising, and downright obnoxious. I thought for sure it was a bug when I first ran across it. There's a work-around, but you basically have to trick OOo into doing what you want. 2. Anyone ever try to make a run-in heading? You can do it manually, of course, but there is no way to do it via
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
Hi Rod SNIP... 4. A full-frontal assault on the bibliography project. The current system is good for exactly one citation/bibliography style and totally worthless otherwise. SNIP... The biblio folk are trying very hard to address the issues you raised in your Point 4. In the end, OOo will hopfully offer a more extensive and functional Biblio tool as well as have the ability to allow for other programs like Biblioscape plug in easily for use. If you have a moment check out the threads on the Biblio mailing list. http://bibliographic.openoffice.org/ HTH SC -- How sweet it is!!! :) - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On 9/20/05, Randomthots [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Exactly. It seems to me that these decisions should be based on more pragmatic arguments. Particularly, What have users of office suites come to expect? and What is do-able given the existing infrastructure and resources? The fact (opposed to the philosophy) is that OOo already *does* include an HTML editor - one that sucks. It needs to be fixed. Whether that fixing comes by rewriting the exisiting code, tweaking the existing code, or removing the exisitng code and adding a pre-existing outside source of code, like Nvu or something, is up for debate. But the question of whether or not an HTML editor should be included is moot. It should because it is. And because it's expected by the end users in a corporate environment. There is real productivity value in having these different components that have the same look-and-feel, the same nomenclature, similar menu layouts, etc. UI consistency makes learning to use the different components much easier. OpenOffice.org does not need to be a programming software suite with editors for Perl and Ruby and Python and CGI and C++ and all this other coding stuff. That's what emacs is for, which, by the way, those of you who need and like it are welcome to it. It's a terrible general word processor, but a damn fine tool for coding. Exactly. +1 OOo is not a programming tool - it's an office suite. There is a difference. HTML is less about programming (emacs) and more about creating content. Blogger is an example of this. Thousands of people creating tons and tons of web (HTML) content without ever coding a thing. What OOo does need to add are things like a DTP program, a bitmap editor, and include a OOo-skinned version of Firefox and Thunderbird (at least as an optional download) that is formatted (with extensions and/or plug-ins for both OOo and Ff/Tb) to work together directly - (so like an Email this document button that opens Thunderbird, or a preview my webpage button that opens Firefox.) +1 snip Now, Chad, I'm on YOUR side. I realize that, Rod. It's just I want to nip the philosophical debate about the definition of the word is and all the flavors of meaning of an office suite and the endless banter of OOo is NOT an MS clone. vs I know, but MS does somethings right. vs Who cares about MS, what should OOo be doing, regardless of MS. (The later of which is my personal opinion, but that doesn't really matter.) But before we discuss the addition of entire components to the suite, my vote would be for addressing some long-standing inadequacies to the basic functioning. +1 there, but I'd want to qualify that OOo's HTML component is one bug ol bug that needs to be fixed. Let me explain what I mean. I just got back from a conference of web developers, and all but the very noobish ones said that they code all their HTML and PHP by hand. They said the WYSIWYG stuff is for non-developers (and I would hardily agree.) However, non-developers are making a huge impact on what the internet is all about. The biggest and easiest example of that is the Blogosphere. How many tens if not hundreds of thousands of people now have a voice online without knowing what p/p does or means? To stay current (read *AHEAD* of Microsoft) we need a functional, working, easy-to-use, standards-compliant, WYSIWYG HTML editor. Not Nvu. Nvu breaks a lot of code. Not Frontpage - good Lord, please nothing like Frontpage! Something like Blogger.com http://Blogger.com. Something with a simple set of about 10 - 15 buttons like Bold, Italics, Underline, Bullets, Listing, Alignments (left, center, right, justify), Increase font, decrease font, color, insert graphic, link, and spell check. Add in some basic tabling abillity, and you're all set. Just my $0.02 worth (BTW, when did the cent symbol disappear from keyboards? Where did it used to be?) I've wondered that myself. I don't know where it used to be, but I wish I had it. It may have been were the @ is now. And, of course, the @ is more important. But we could get rid of the useless ones like ` and ~ . Some day soon (and it's already started happening) you'll be able to make up your own keyboard layout. -Chad Smith
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On 9/20/05, Alexandro Colorado [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So on this new office suite of today where people do most of their work on web applications, should we all do a Web version of OOo? A web version of OOo would be awesome. There are a few attempts at this (an online office suite) that are already out there (Thinkfree Office, EI Office, Office Hero) - they are all mostly out of Asia, so their English interface isn't that great. And none of them are from huge companies (like Sun, IBM, Microsoft, or Corel), so the development on the backend isn't that great. ThinkFree Office may even be based on an older version of OOo - it uses some of the same names for the different modes. But none of these are open source. A web-based OOo that ran in Java or Flash would be great. Completely cross-platform, and would work on any machine with internet access - even PDAs, PocketPCs, cell phones, Blackberries, and Palms. A web-based OOo would solve a *heck* of a lot of problems. It would, of course, cause a few others, though. Should we blog instead of producing documents? Depends on the audience, sometimes yes, most times no. But you can produce printable documents from an online editor. The printing would be handled by the browser. You can save to different file types from an online editor as well, Adobe Reader inside of a web browser is proof of that - and it's just a reader - not an editor. Should we have more compatibility with our Cellphones and PDA and have bluetooth native support? That would be nice. A web-based version would solve that, (except for the bluetooth thing, I don't understand how an office suite is bluetooth enabled - isn't that an operating system thing?). In the web-based version, the server would be handling some of the load - especially the HD space - so you wouldn't need to downsize OOo as much. It can still be streamlined - no doubt, but the size wouldn't hurt portable devices as much if it were available online. -- -Chad Smith
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 20:13:44 +0100, Chad Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 9/20/05, Alexandro Colorado [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So on this new office suite of today where people do most of their work on web applications, should we all do a Web version of OOo? A web version of OOo would be awesome. There are a few attempts at this (an online office suite) that are already out there (Thinkfree Office, EI Office, Office Hero) - they are all mostly out of Asia, so their English interface isn't that great. And none of them are from huge companies (like Sun, IBM, Microsoft, or Corel), so the development on the backend isn't that I know we recently asked them about opendocuments to this people and they actually said that if they had a filter they will do it. naturally we supply them with all they needed: http://www.writely.com/ great. ThinkFree Office may even be based on an older version of OOo - it uses some of the same names for the different modes. But none of these are open source. A web-based OOo that ran in Java or Flash would be great. Completely cross-platform, and would work on any machine with internet access - even PDAs, PocketPCs, cell phones, Blackberries, and Palms. A web-based OOo would solve a *heck* of a lot of problems. It would, of course, cause a few others, though. Then don't use OpenOffice.org the important thing here is the opendocuments really. If you have a completly new slim Web word processor that support opendocuments you will have the best of both worlds. Should we blog instead of producing documents? Depends on the audience, sometimes yes, most times no. But you can produce printable documents from an online editor. The printing would be handled by the browser. You can save to different file types from an online editor as well, Adobe Reader inside of a web browser is proof of that - and it's just a reader - not an editor. Should we have more compatibility with our Cellphones and PDA and have bluetooth native support? That would be nice. A web-based version would solve that, (except for the bluetooth thing, I don't understand how an office suite is bluetooth enabled - isn't that an operating system thing?). It is and is not, having an option that sends by email could also have a plug-in that sends by bluetooth. I think you see this on Outlooks plug-ins for syncing your palm. In the web-based version, the server would be handling some of the load - especially the HD space - so you wouldn't need to downsize OOo as much. It can still be streamlined - no doubt, but the size wouldn't hurt portable devices as much if it were available online. -- -Chad Smith -- Alexandro Colorado CoLeader of OpenOffice.org ES http://es.openoffice.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On Tue, 2005-09-20 at 15:05 -0400, Chad Smith wrote: To stay current (read *AHEAD* of Microsoft) we need a functional, working, easy-to-use, standards-compliant, WYSIWYG HTML editor. Not Nvu. Nvu breaks a lot of code. Not Frontpage - good Lord, please nothing like Frontpage! Something like Blogger.com http://Blogger.com. Something with a simple set of about 10 - 15 buttons like Bold, Italics, Underline, Bullets, Listing, Alignments (left, center, right, justify), Increase font, decrease font, color, insert graphic, link, and spell check. Add in some basic tabling abillity, and you're all set. So why not just use one of the open source Wiki environments? They support all this stuff? If they aren't good enough as is, modify one of them and make it an optional extra. Mozilla composer? Again improving that would be less draining on resources that inventing something new. Personally I can't really understand why most of the OOo website isn't a wiki. Ok have the bits that need to shut people out as secure as Fort Knox, but Wikipedia shows that if you make it easy to contribute you get a lot of contributions. -- Ian Lynch [EMAIL PROTECTED] ZMSL - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On 9/20/05, Alexandro Colorado [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 20:13:44 +0100, Chad Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A web version of OOo would be awesome. There are a few attempts at this (an online office suite) that are already out there (Thinkfree Office, EI Office, Office Hero) - they are all mostly out of Asia, so their English interface isn't that great. And none of them are from huge companies (like Sun, IBM, Microsoft, or Corel), so the development on the backend isn't that I know we recently asked them about opendocuments to this people and they actually said that if they had a filter they will do it. naturally we supply them with all they needed: http://www.writely.com/ That's pretty cool. I'm glad you showed me that. And it's free! I'm gonna start telling people about that. That's cool. Then don't use OpenOffice.org the important thing here is the opendocuments really. If you have a completly new slim Web word processor that support opendocuments you will have the best of both worlds. Well, I don't totally agree with you on this. I don't think opendocuments matters at all. I sincerely doubt it will ever take off. It is, and likely will remain, a geek-only format on two office suites, one of which is locked on a geek-mostly very small market share operating system. Maybe I'm wrong. It'd be nice if I was. But whatever, doesn't really matter to me. I personally think OpenOffice.org is the important thing. And compatibility is the thing that makes OOo work. Writely is cool because it can save your work on their server (something that is scary for some now, but will likely become the way things work in the future) and print them out and save them to your hard drive - in the Microsoft Word document format. This is a great example of what I was talking about - thanks for finding it. I think that having a web-version of OOo (like http://www.writely.com/ - it's free) would be awesome. You could set up KOffice like this - similiar to how WorkSpot works - (actually WorkSpot http://www.workspot.com/ is an example of a pre-existing way to put OOo online - it has GnomeOffice, KOffice, and OpenOffice.org, although the versions are very old - 1.0.2 for OOo). If someone wanted to set up a server with a heck of a lot of RAM and lots of storage and bandwidth, running a stripped-down distro of Linux (like DSL) with OOo installed - they could host a web-based version of OOo. Of course, getting OOo to run directly from the browser would be a lot less costly. Anyway, maybe it would need to be done from the ground up - but even if the web-based suite was a new thing just made to look, feel, and act like OOo, with the OOo branding behind it, that would be awesome. I think you get my opinion of it. It would be awesome and cool. Since I keep saying those. I need to work on my vocabulary. Anyway, that's enough outta me for now. -Chad
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On 9/20/05, Ian Lynch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So why not just use one of the open source Wiki environments? They support all this stuff? If they aren't good enough as is, modify one of them and make it an optional extra. Mozilla composer? Again improving that would be less draining on resources that inventing something new. Here's what I want to avoid - having to download anything (although an optional off-line / in browser version could be available, along with the big-dog OOo suite). It needs to be able to run from any computer in the world with Net Access and a broswer. OS-agnostic. Browser-agnostic. Standards-based stuff. It needs to be able to save to a hard drive or flash drive - or be emailled to whereever, or published via FTP. Of course, if someone wants to host WebOOo and offer (for pay?) optional hosting of the documents, then great! But the option to save as DOC, OpenDocument, PDF, Flash, RTF, or whatever needs to be there. Wikis usually just publish to the site in html or php or whatever. It's not a printable, sendable document. Wikis are for web-publishing, not document creation. Personally I can't really understand why most of the OOo website isn't a wiki. Ok have the bits that need to shut people out as secure as Fort Knox, but Wikipedia shows that if you make it easy to contribute you get a lot of contributions. Amen to that! Wikis/blogs/comments/community/user-created - all very cool. -Chad Smith
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
Chad Smith wrote: On 9/20/05, Randomthots [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Exactly. It seems to me that these decisions should be based on more pragmatic arguments. Particularly, What have users of office suites come to expect? and What is do-able given the existing infrastructure and resources? The fact (opposed to the philosophy) is that OOo already *does* include an HTML editor - one that sucks. It needs to be fixed. Whether that fixing comes by rewriting the exisiting code, tweaking the existing code, or removing the exisitng code and adding a pre-existing outside source of code, like Nvu or something, is up for debate. But the question of whether or not an HTML editor should be included is moot. It should because it is. And because it's expected by the end users in a corporate environment. There is real productivity value in having these different components that have the same look-and-feel, the same nomenclature, similar menu layouts, etc. UI consistency makes learning to use the different components much easier. OpenOffice.org does not need to be a programming software suite with editors for Perl and Ruby and Python and CGI and C++ and all this other coding stuff. That's what emacs is for, which, by the way, those of you who need and like it are welcome to it. It's a terrible general word processor, but a damn fine tool for coding. Exactly. +1 OOo is not a programming tool - it's an office suite. There is a difference. HTML is less about programming (emacs) and more about creating content. Blogger is an example of this. Thousands of people creating tons and tons of web (HTML) content without ever coding a thing. What OOo does need to add are things like a DTP program, a bitmap editor, and include a OOo-skinned version of Firefox and Thunderbird (at least as an optional download) that is formatted (with extensions and/or plug-ins for both OOo and Ff/Tb) to work together directly - (so like an Email this document button that opens Thunderbird, or a preview my webpage button that opens Firefox.) +1 snip Now, Chad, I'm on YOUR side. I realize that, Rod. It's just I want to nip the philosophical debate about the definition of the word is and all the flavors of meaning of an office suite and the endless banter of OOo is NOT an MS clone. vs I know, but MS does somethings right. vs Who cares about MS, what should OOo be doing, regardless of MS. (The later of which is my personal opinion, but that doesn't really matter.) But before we discuss the addition of entire components to the suite, my vote would be for addressing some long-standing inadequacies to the basic functioning. +1 there, but I'd want to qualify that OOo's HTML component is one bug ol bug that needs to be fixed. Let me explain what I mean. I just got back from a conference of web developers, and all but the very noobish ones said that they code all their HTML and PHP by hand. They said the WYSIWYG stuff is for non-developers (and I would hardily agree.) However, non-developers are making a huge impact on what the internet is all about. The biggest and easiest example of that is the Blogosphere. How many tens if not hundreds of thousands of people now have a voice online without knowing what p/p does or means? To stay current (read *AHEAD* of Microsoft) we need a functional, working, easy-to-use, standards-compliant, WYSIWYG HTML editor. Not Nvu. Nvu breaks a lot of code. Not Frontpage - good Lord, please nothing like Frontpage! Something like Blogger.com http://Blogger.com. Something with a simple set of about 10 - 15 buttons like Bold, Italics, Underline, Bullets, Listing, Alignments (left, center, right, justify), Increase font, decrease font, color, insert graphic, link, and spell check. Add in some basic tabling abillity, and you're all set. Just my $0.02 worth (BTW, when did the cent symbol disappear from keyboards? Where did it used to be?) I've wondered that myself. I don't know where it used to be, but I wish I had it. It may have been were the @ is now. And, of course, the @ is more important. But we could get rid of the useless ones like ` and ~ . Some day soon (and it's already started happening) you'll be able to make up your own keyboard layout. -Chad Smith Robert Derman replies: I just dug out my old Olivetti manual and it was on the @ cent key just to the right of the :; key, where the ' key is now. the ' apostrophe and quote marks used to be in the top row. ~ is used for some hosted web pages, so unfortunately we do need it. However I don't know of any use for the ^ over the 6, that would be a good place for the cent sign IMHO. Does anyone know what the ^ is for?
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On Tue, 2005-09-20 at 16:19 -0400, Chad Smith wrote: Well, I don't totally agree with you on this. I don't think opendocuments matters at all. I sincerely doubt it will ever take off. Bit like the boss of IBM who famously said the world might need maybe 4 computeres ;-) It is, and likely will remain, a geek-only format on two office suites, one of which is locked on a geek-mostly very small market share operating system. Maybe I'm wrong. The UK government, the EU government and Massachusetts seem to think otherwise to name just a few influential agents. XML is important as more and more applications and their associated documents move to the Internet. If the Internet is to stay Open you need Open Document formats so even if it wasn't the OASIS one it would need to be invented. Even MS have effectively acknowledged this by proposing their own XML format claiming the OASIS one is defective which is a bit strange since they didn't say that previously and they are represented on the OASIS committee. On current evidence, governments are not going to just accept another proprietary document format from a single company effectively giving that company control of the internet. It'd be nice if I was. But whatever, doesn't really matter to me. I think it will matter to everyone that uses the Internet even if they don't actually appreciate why. I personally think OpenOffice.org is the important thing. And compatibility is the thing that makes OOo work. Yes you need it as a stepping stone to get to the next stage. But after that point OOo itself will be only one set of tools that operate on the data structures. Others will arise even if many consumer users don't become aware of them. There are lots of software tools in use that most users have no idea about but which actually benefit them. Writely is cool because it can save your work on their server (something that is scary for some now, but will likely become the way things work in the future) and print them out and save them to your hard drive - in the Microsoft Word document format. This is a great example of what I was talking about - thanks for finding it. I think that having a web-version of OOo (like http://www.writely.com/ - it's free) would be awesome. You could set up KOffice like this - similiar to how WorkSpot works - (actually WorkSpot http://www.workspot.com/ is an example of a pre-existing way to put OOo online - it has GnomeOffice, KOffice, and OpenOffice.org, although the versions are very old - 1.0.2 for OOo). If someone wanted to set up a server with a heck of a lot of RAM and lots of storage and bandwidth, running a stripped-down distro of Linux (like DSL) with OOo installed - they could host a web-based version of OOo. Some people already run thin clients like this. I know of schools here that can operate around 40 concurrent thin client sessions to students homes like this. So the computer at home can be a P100 with 32 meg of RAM and run OOo from the school's Linux blades servers. The main limit is the current broadband bandwidth. As this rises it will be possible to give whole communities thin client access to OOo at very low cost and with little support overhead. Leigh City Technology College in Kent is building the infrastructure to do this with racks of blade servers currently running over 100 thin client desktops. East Hull CLC has 120 thin clients that have been running for 3 years from 6 inexpensive servers. While this is not quite the same as web based apps the outcome is similar. -- Ian Lynch [EMAIL PROTECTED] ZMSL - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On Tue, 2005-09-20 at 16:26 -0400, Chad Smith wrote: On 9/20/05, Ian Lynch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So why not just use one of the open source Wiki environments? They support all this stuff? If they aren't good enough as is, modify one of them and make it an optional extra. Mozilla composer? Again improving that would be less draining on resources that inventing something new. Here's what I want to avoid - having to download anything (although an optional off-line / in browser version could be available, along with the big-dog OOo suite). It needs to be able to run from any computer in the world with Net Access and a broswer. OS-agnostic. Browser-agnostic. Wikis generally are. Standards-based stuff. It needs to be able to save to a hard drive or flash drive - or be emailled to whereever, or published via FTP. Sounds like you need an XML ODF then ;-) Of course, if someone wants to host WebOOo and offer (for pay?) optional hosting of the documents, then great! But the option to save as DOC, OpenDocument, PDF, Flash, RTF, or whatever needs to be there. Wikis usually just publish to the site in html or php or whatever. It's not a printable, sendable document. Wikis are for web-publishing, not document creation. I thought the discussion was that OOo needed a web publisher to do web sites. OOo already has the facilities to save files as sendable documents, we don;t have to add anything to do that. Personally I can't really understand why most of the OOo website isn't a wiki. Ok have the bits that need to shut people out as secure as Fort Knox, but Wikipedia shows that if you make it easy to contribute you get a lot of contributions. Amen to that! Wikis/blogs/comments/community/user-created - all very cool. -Chad Smith -- Ian Lynch [EMAIL PROTECTED] ZMSL - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On 9/20/05, Ian Lynch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I thought the discussion was that OOo needed a web publisher to do web sites. OOo already has the facilities to save files as sendable documents, we don;t have to add anything to do that. No Ian, you misunderstand. There are two different things being discussed #1) A repair/rewrite of the HTML editor. This is unrelated to the web-based discussion. #2) A new based version of OOo. This would have all the functionality of OOo (including HTML editor) like Writer, Calc, Impress, etc. except it would run online through your web browser. This way it could run on mobile devices and in any operating system. I want both. If I can't get one, then I still want the other. But I realise that I'll likely not get either. -Chad
Re: [discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 23:18:52 +0100, Chad Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 9/20/05, Ian Lynch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I thought the discussion was that OOo needed a web publisher to do web sites. OOo already has the facilities to save files as sendable documents, we don;t have to add anything to do that. No Ian, you misunderstand. There are two different things being discussed #1) A repair/rewrite of the HTML editor. This is unrelated to the web-based discussion. #2) A new based version of OOo. This would have all the functionality of OOo (including HTML editor) like Writer, Calc, Impress, etc. except it would run online through your web browser. This way it could run on mobile devices and in any operating system. I want both. If I can't get one, then I still want the other. But I realise that I'll likely not get either. -Chad I guess you could get #1 if you get a developer to do it (hire him to do that job). It's really not so dificult to add a functionality to the HTML-Editor since you use the same codebase and could map to the correct XService of the UNO framework. If those services are not available then your developer could make them. You could even make it in pythong and get some bounties from the shuttleworth foundation and get at least some money back from the development. -- Alexandro Colorado CoLeader of OpenOffice.org ES http://es.openoffice.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 09:39:33 +0100, Ian Lynch wrote: On Mon, 2005-09-19 at 01:10 -0500, T. J. Brumfield wrote: With 2.0 looming, has there been much thought of the future roadmap of OOO? One thing I'd really like to see added to OOO is a fully featured HTML editor. There are plenty of WYSIWYG open-source HTML editors out there. I imagine you might be able to borrow perhaps from one of their codebases as a starting point. KOffice has plenty of applications such as KFormula, Kivio and KPlato. Has there been any thought to convert these or add similiar functionality to OOO? I'd like to see the effort going into fundamentally improving the efficiency of the code so that OOo is as compact and as fast as it can possibly be, encouraging posrts to PDAs as they get cheaper and more powerful hardware. Oh and proper support for SVG import. That is fundamentally much more important than replicating things that are easily available elsewhere. Have to agree with this, and add the priority of making OO easier to operate for the new/non-technical user. Right now it's just too dense and the help files need a lot of improvement. All these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but that's how I see the priorities going forward. p. -- Using OOo 1.9.125 on Win XP sp2. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[discuss] Re: Beyond 2.0
Ian Lynch wrote: I'd like to see the effort going into fundamentally improving the efficiency of the code so that OOo is as compact and as fast as it can possibly be, encouraging posrts to PDAs as they get cheaper and more powerful hardware. I bet you're an advocate of eliminating government waste as well ;). Oh and proper support for SVG import. That is fundamentally much more important than replicating things that are easily available elsewhere. I disagree. Not about the SVG; I'm all in favor of that of course. It's a somewhat philosophical question, I suppose: What is the purpose of an office suite? What are the defining characteristics that would guide you in deciding what should be included or not? It seems that according to some people a schedule of appointments, meetings, deadlines, etc. is a document, whereas the exact same information produced by a specialty program and arranged in a grid (i.e., a calendar) is not. A letter to Grandma produced in Writer, printed out, and sent by snail mail is a document, whereas the exact same words formatted identically but transmitted electronically (i.e., e-mail) is not. But if you produce a pdf of the letter so it can be attached to an e-mail it magically is a document again. A web page IS a document. And it seems fairly common for an organization to publish a document simultaneously in printed form, as a pdf download, and as html. I've seen the same thing with presentations. As it is, OOo can create html, but not very well. Improving the html support is more akin to bug-swatting than a new feature or even feature enhancement. It's like making the pdf export more reliable, or improving foreign file format compatibility. Rod - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
