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exactly. I think thom missed the point of the whole kde4 naming debacle when it happened

the distance between kde or koffice versions is measured in months. everyone else calls the test versions of the software "BETA", ever hear of it?

Don't forget though, in the Open Source world almost everything is Beta... maybe that's why they just don't bother.

Edited 2009-05-28 16:13 UTC

everything beta, or most development effort goes unpaid, same for most marketing effort, users are needed to test it and devs to fix and extend it..

so here you go, you look at the marketing message of a humble effort to make something that is free for all.. some people try to make a difference.

in the mean time they enjoy coding, and get other less tangible benefits.

i for one think it all looks really slick. user ready and properly attractive.


and to the guy that doesnt like hte icons: if after using them for a while the icons feel really awkward, or hard to distinguish, i'll voice up for sure..

till that time:

bravo.

Still can't get over the 4.0 thing can you?

Apple's "Think Different" asks people to do such things, rather than do things like everyone else. if we didn't have people trying new methods, the world would be a boring place with no innovation and people following other people like sheep.

What are you talking about? I'm pretty sure I said that I have high hopes for koffice2, like that they're trying to do and generally very supportive of the project. I'm a huge supporter of trying new and different things, where did you get a different idea from?

Read your own first paragraph, it wasn't needed.

I was disagreeing with Thom's assessment of how koffice was handling their release. How is discussing a point made about the release of koffice in an article about the release of koffice not relevant?

Edit: and just to reiterate so there is no confusion. I'm a fan of koffice and I'm a fan of what they're trying to accomplish. I've been running the dev releases for almost a year now and I hope that koffice will soon become good enough for me to use as my main office suite.

Edited 2009-05-28 22:10 UTC

It's most certainly not stable and release ready.

From their own words:
http://www.koffice.org/wordpress/

KOffice 2 went through about six beta and release candidate versions.

What is there is tested. The thing that makes KOffice 2 not suitable for most end users is a lack of features implemented yet, it is not a lack of testing.

PS: Correction. Seven beta versions:

http://dot.kde.org/2009/03/05/koffice-20-beta-7-released

... and AFAIK one release candidate:

http://www.kubuntu.org/news/koffice-2-rc



Au contraire, I'd say it was very likely to be better characterised as stable but not yet feature complete.

Edited 2009-05-29 00:01 UTC

Microsoft called theirs "Vista" and Apple called theirs "10.0".

Edited 2009-05-29 05:15 UTC

Yes, expecting people to comprehend plain English and use their head is clearly the wrong way of doing things.

Well, I would prefer to have them actually release something that is somewhat usable rather than have them turn into another e17.

They have already had one of those, following after no less than seven betas. Apparently you missed it.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/KOffice-2-0-RC1-Has-Landed-108978.sh...

Well no I've actually used all the betas, as I've been following the development of koffice for a long time. I had forgotten that they'd already had a release candidate, but my point still stands.

Well no I've actually used all the betas, as I've been following the development of koffice for a long time. I had forgotten that they'd already had a release candidate, but my point still stands. "

How does it still stand?

Your point was some weird murmuring about how they should have named a release candidate as a release candidate.

They did in fact do exactly that.

My point was that calling a product X.0 and then adding a footnote stating that it actually isn't ready for use does not in any way show that "they have learned from KDE4's mistake".

I still think they should have called this a release candidate, which is what it is.

But it _is_ ready for use by the target group: developers (the platform is already being used to build a mindmapping application, a geolocation aware plugin, someone is using it for their thesis work, all outside KOffice). For that target group, we needed a release. For that target group, a .0 release is very relevant.

FFS, give it up already.

Every program undergoing a major rewrite has a ".0" version that doesn't yet implement full functionality. Every single one.

Even bloody GNOME 2.0 ... no bloody audio, and lots else missing besides.

http://www.osnews.com/story/1280/A_User_s_First_Look_at_GNOME_2_0

Got it yet?

Sheesh!

http://www.osnews.com/story/1280/A_User_s_First_Look_at_GNOME_2_0/p...

"I usually start my reviews with the positive points of a product and then continue with whatever I found as 'bad'. In this case, I just can't hide my dissapointment about the new version of Gnome. As a user, I expected more, and I want more. The new version removes the flexibility found on Gnome 1.x and it does not introduce anything really new or spectacularly interesting in its UI design. Gnome 2 fails to impress. It is not intuitive. It feels limited and not done yet. While it is not solidly stable yet on all of its respects, it is stable enough. But the 'not done yet' refers to the feature-set of the environment, not to its actual stability. It needs more work, it needs more enrichment at most places, and it needs even more refinement on the GUI and its scattered setting panels or on the small icons feeling 'glued' to the text on the menus. Because of this re-write of the Gnome environment, I keep feeling that this is version 1.0, and not 2.0."

It rather depends what you mean by "ready for use", doesn't it?

In less than 20 seconds, I had started Karbon14, drawn a yellow star, and saved it as a SVG file, and exited the application. Ten seconds later I had navigated to the file in Dolphin, and had opened it in Firefox and Gwenview and also re-opened it in Karbon14, which AFAIK is the only native Qt application which lets me do that (make .svg files).

http://ourlan.homelinux.net/qdig/KDE4_desktop/star.svg

(You won't be able to see that in IE).

This is beyond the capabilities of OpenOffice draw.

KDE4 icons are .svg files.

If I am a developer, and I want to make .svg files for my KDE4 project ... I could use Inkscape or SK1 (which are GTK applications) ... or I could use Karbon14 (a native Qt application, remember).

I then edited my .svg file and put a red smiley face inside the yellow star (OK ... so I'm not an artist ... is that a crime?)

http://ourlan.homelinux.net/qdig/KDE4_desktop/smiley-star.svg

So it does have uses, and it is perfectly stable enough.

It just isn't yet full-featured enough to recommend for general use.

Edited 2009-05-29 13:14 UTC

Sorry ... I forgot to mention the main purpose of scalable graphics files. If you have a capable browser (firefox, chrome, safari or opera will do), and you can see the .svg pictures ... zoom in and out (ctrl + and ctrl - in firefox). Watch the pictures scale.

Can't do that with bitmaps.

im a kde user..

i like the logo's, i dont think a logo has to convey that 'thing' yr talking about. pictograms do need. like toilet, elevator, departure and exit. they need to convey a clear thing.

logo's do often not, and that doesn't matter.. look at Mmmm, McMany logos of big brands. yet we know em all. NOVELL, Sun, MsOffice.

For the document logos should convey i think, and those do also.

I think the logo's are fresh'n'daring. Something new, and properly consistent. I also think they convey that KOffice is simple/basic, not a very direct quality, but some that actually mean something to most people that are soon to use it.


but again, im a KDE user - not not so much KOffice but i hope to be soon.

cies.

i think you may have missed my point. i guess what i was trying to convey was that these logos, which will in all likelihood become the icons for the individual applications, do not obviously belong to the apps that they belong to. they are too abstract. if a user had, for example, an icon for each of those apps in his or her dock/panel, it would not be clear what apps they belonged to. the symbols on them are too vague. it would be very easy to (frustratingly) open the wrong app. since KDE 4 has been striving for user-friendliness, this seems to be a step backward.

aesthetically, they are obviously fine and modern. but that isn't enough. it's bad enough for a new user that some of the apps have overly vague names. kexi? krita? karbon? what's the likelihood that a new user is going to bother with the app when they can't easily see what it does without opening it? unfortunately, most people aren't as adventurous as the kinds of people that hang out on osnews.

Edited 2009-05-28 18:37 UTC

I think you're confusing logos and icons. They are separate. Those pictures you linked to are the logos. I don't think the developers have any intention to make them the icons of the applications.

i'm not confusing anything. as a matter of fact, i clearly referred to them as logos.

yet, the logos are very clearly styled like icons. it is fairly clear that those logos could go on to become the default icons for these apps. for branding consistency if nothing else.

they are vague. it's just my opinion.

Er, no. The logo's (designed by a professional artist, paid by nlnet, btw) are meant to be application logo's. The application icons are themable -- oxygen, tango, whatever.

"it's bad enough for a new user that some of the apps have overly vague names. kexi? krita? karbon?"

Well, you know, all the good names are already taken. MyPaint, YouPaint, TheyPaint, ItPaint, WePaint...

Krita used to be called KImageShop -- guess what? We were sued. Not too surprising really. KImageShop was renamed to Krayon. You know what? We were sued. By Freiherr-let's-pose-as-a-poor-teenage-girl-to-catch-c64-tape-pirates- von Gravenreuth on behalf of a website that peddled e-cards and was called Crayon. Kandinsky was mooted for a new name. There's already an Atari ST graphics application of that name. Krita means "to draw" or "chalk" in Swedish, so it's at least somewhat on topic. And we're getting quite a good name recognition, plus, google alerts on "krita" generally are about krita. When they are not about an American nurse for the elderly of Indonesian extraction, that is.

And, frankly, the name PhotoShop doesn't really convey much to me about what the application does, nor does a name like Excel or Oracle help a lot.

I think you attach too much value to the descriptiveness of application names. Uniqueness is much more important, as is pronunciability or memorability. Krita, Kexi and Karbon do pretty good in those respects.

don't take it personally. i wasn't trying to belittle those names by any means. it's more of a 'seeing the bigger picture' sort of thing. i just meant, since the names aren't particularly descriptive, it *could* help if the associated logos and/or icons would convey a little more info.

well, i've gotta disagree and say, 'PhotoShop' is pretty descriptive. but, i do agree with 'Excel'. luckily for MS, that particular app has a reputation that precedes it. and, to reiterate, it's not the descriptiveness of the name that is my main concern. (and concern is sort of a strong word... more of an observation.) basically, you can have a descriptive name or a descriptive logo/icon. without prior knowledge of an application, a new user probably won't bother.

but for what it's worth, i just found these:

http://pinheiro-kde.blogspot.com/2009/03/koffice-icons-2-highdef-on...

and they're pretty fantastic. the blog post says that these are 'application icons' but i am assuming they are actually mimetype icons maybe?

How about this; "KDE Office Spreadsheet", "KDE Office Wordprocessor", "KDE Office Collaboration Suite". Sure, it isn't sexy but at least the end user would have the vaguest clue as to the purpose of the application.

What? Ridiculous?

iPhone, iTunes, iMac....

True, its funny given that the i used to stand for 'internet' as in, 'if you purchase this product you can get into the internet really fast' - that was back when (and still occuring today) where people think they must get on the internet, they don't know why, but apparently it is the 'next big thing' and they must be part of that 'big thing'.

With that being said, atleast it actually mentions what the purpose of the product is in the name, "iPhone", it's a phone, "iTunes" obviously something about music and playing it, "iMac" which used to be "Internet enabled Mac". Compare that to KOffice where there isn't any hint as to the purpose of the application in the name.

Edited 2009-05-29 06:33 UTC

aside from Kwrite, Kspread and Kpresenter?

Those aren't names, those are descriptions mixed with vendor information. The descriptions are already shown in the startup menu of KDE, more prominently actually than the application name so you _already_ get those.

The purpose of each application forms the text of the menu entry via which you start the application.

e.g

Applications Menu --> Office ---> Kword Word Processor

I have Lancelot menu settings set to "Show categories inside the applet", so that the Applications menu button is left-most in the panel, in the position where on Windows you would find the Start button. So it is literally just three clicks to start up.

The application name (in this case Kword) and its purpose (in this case, Word Processor) are on separate lines of the menu, next to the menu icon. The menu icon is a pencil, writing out the capital letter "W".

http://ourlan.homelinux.net/qdig/?Qwd=./KDE4%20desktop&Qiv=name...

It couldn't be simpler. Even you should have got "the vaguest clue" about what the application is, and what it does, from all that.

Edited 2009-05-29 09:30 UTC

KDE has a lot going for it, but even now, well into the 4.x series, I feel like it needs some UI polish. Gnome and OSX both seem careful to minimize the clicks and selections to get things done while KDE seems to keep imitating Windows. Oh sure, you can theme it pretty well, even customize it, but that great reusable framework perpetuates a Windows-influenced design.

So close to excellence, just noticeably not there.

Literally just three clicks, from a clean desktop, to start any KOffice application, including the click to bring up the top level menu.

Applications menu --> Office --> KWord

http://ourlan.homelinux.net/qdig/?Qwd=./KDE4_desktop&Qiv=name&Qis=M

(The Applications menu button is the left-most icon in the panel).

Just one click required if you copy the menu icon to the desktop or to the panel or into any folder which has a folderview on the desktop.

No clicks at all if you set a hot-key.

There is a very clean UI for all the KOffice applications once they have started:

http://www.koffice.org/wordpress/krita/krita-screenshots/
http://www.koffice.org/wordpress/kword/kword-screenshots/
http://www.koffice.org/wordpress/kspread/screenshots/
http://www.koffice.org/wordpress/kpresenter/screenshots/
http://www.koffice.org/wordpress/karbon/karbon-screenshots/

Its like there is some kind of desperate competition going on to see who can come up with the most inane, and just plain wrong, criticism of KDE.

Seriously, where do people get this sort of nonsense from?

Edited 2009-05-29 09:54 UTC

With spreadsheets it really is a difficult choice.
Having a "wide" window can be wrong, as can be a "high" window.
Depends on the things you do with it.

Names of database apps:

Oracle
Firebird
Access
Informix

Kexi is at least as obvious as those.

Why?

Applications for GNOME very often include a "g" in their name.

Applications for Mac very often includ a "i" in their name.

Why are these not likewise "tired"?

On the KDE menus, applications are grouped into application categories and named after their function. The "k" in the application's name (only for some of the applications, BTW) is barely noticeable.

Examples:

http://lancelot.fomentgroup.org/images/screenshots/lancelot1.7-air....
http://lancelot.fomentgroup.org/screenshots

Amarok and Kontact application names appear on those menus, but the most visible text in the menu entries for those applications is "Audio Player" and "Personal Infromation Manager" respectively.

This is far better than on Windows where one finds applications typically grouped on the menus according to the vendor's name. One is expected to just know that the PDF viewer is produced by Adobe.

Edited 2009-05-29 01:06 UTC

But not as old and tired as people complaining about the naming.

What a joke! Look I understand that package-managers make it much easier for developers to manage code, push out updates, etc--but trying to bolt on a package-manager for Windows is just broken behavior for that platform plain and simple. I shouldn't have to sit there and try to figure out what libraries I may or may not need and whether or not the application I want is in packages A) B) or C).

A package-manager is not "just broken behaviour" for Windows at all. It'd be equally awesome as it is in Linux IF it was as well supported, or if someone made an equally good package-manager as there are for Linux. The ones I've seen are more or less half-assed attempts at throwing together something that might or might not work.

I should be able to click through to download an installer and install my application. Furthermore I should be able to get everything in a lump download if that's what I want, not this retarded grab this tiny download-manager and download the application from the internet every time I want to install it! Being able to install software offline is one of the biggest advantages of Windows and it bothers me to lose it because the application developer wants to force platform inappropriate choices on the user.

It is possible to install apps for Linux without internet connection. You just might need to download a few packages instead of just one. It is still very much possible as usually the websites also provide links to any dependencies you might need. Still, it'd be nice if you had one single package, just for arguments sake let's call it SuperRPM, that you'd download from the net and would just double-click and install it. The file itself would just hold the regular RPM-file and its dependies, so the system would only install those dependencies from there if needed. Hell, a single .zip file renamed to .superrpm with files "MyApp.rpm", "Dependency1.rpm" and "Dependency2.rpm" would suffice for that and still make installation A LOT easier than it currently is.

WereCatf posted...

I'm not talking about Linux here, I'm talking about Windows, where the default method for handling application installation (like it or hate it) is via individual application installers, which install the application plus all related dependencies as one package. The Linux way works well on Linux and should not change, the Windows way works...well..ahem... on that system and I think applications should conform to the standards of the OS they are installed in.

--bornagainpenguin

The idea behind the package manager is that no one wants to download all of Qt and kdelibs 50 times to install 50 apps, or to make a simple IM installer be 100MB+ to include all the dependencies.

However, it is annoying if you're just trying to grab a single app. I think eventually certain apps like KOffice and Amarok will provide stand alone installers, but I don't know when that will happen. I don't think Windows development is a priority, really, they're trying to attract more developers who can make it integrate better while the existing ones are mostly focusing on Linux still.

I know that both the kde-windows as well as the kde-mac people are investigating things like CPack to make standalone installers for those platforms of KDE software. But it is a hard problem that isn't solved yet. In fact, I don't think KOffice 2.0 has been packaged for Windows at all, although I have seen Patrick Spendrin make commits towards that goal.

But the kind of conceited hyperbole bornagainpenguin spews does a great injustice to the really great and hard work the kde-windows people have done. There are very few of them and they are doing great and pioneering work. Is the result perfect already? No. Can bornagainpenguin do any better? Unless he proves it, I'll assume he is incapable of doing that. Just as he is incapable of reading the KOffice 2.0 release announcement and understanding the target audience of this platform release.

And anyone who has ever had to package Windows software using an installer, whether bitrock, nsis or msi, knows that that is not an easy thing. Completely apart from the crt-problem, there are so many vagaries associated with making an installer that for larger software projects it's a full-time effort in itself.

boudewijn sneered...

And mostly what they have are toys. I remember the hype around cygwin, and how it went exactly nowhere over the years despite the excitement generated. I personally have always thought it was at least in part due to the complicated installation procedure people lost interest. Now when I see these same types of errors repeating with another interesting project...what should I do? Bury my head in the sand and pretend everything is great?

boudewijn sneered...


ad hominem much?

boudewijn sneered...


I'm not saying it would be easy, I'm just saying it is worthwhile. Certainly better than implementing yet another package-manager for Windows that will simply get re-invented the next time someone else comes up with the bright idea to shoe-horn Unix methods into a Windows system. Unless we were talking about something used all throughout the system it is useless to create yet another package-manager that the average Windows user won't use any way.

The application works, is supposedly available for the platform, so why not just get it on that platform with as few hoops as possible?

--bornagainpenguin

bornagainpenguin, I'm pretty sure Windows is not an officially supported platform for KOffice. At best, it's in the alpha/beta stage. So it seems a little odd that you've spent so many posts complaining about how it doesn't have a very good windows installer. I mean, there is a lot of stuff in KOffice2 that's only half finished, so it's a little curious that you've picked that to harp on.

Accept that you're doing something that isn't a focus of the project yet, and live with it. Or better yet, try to fix it if you can.

I don't think anyone here has disagreed with you that the existing system needs to be improved, but your style here is coming off as a big rant rather than a useful suggestion.

Edited 2009-05-31 04:17 UTC

smitty posted...

I have less issues with the requirement for libraries and more of one with the bolting on of a package-manager on a system that doesn't use it. I understand the applications will have library requirements, but since this is KOffice we're talking about here, shouldn't it be much easier to just install the suite of applications KOffice comes with and all dependencies from a single installer? One that I can download all at once in a zip file?

smitty posted...


It never seems to be, does it? Yet I first used Firefox, OpenOffice.org, Frozen Bubbles, ZSNES, VLC, etc etc on Windows, not Linux. Then when I did move to Linux for most of my daily stuff I was pleased to have those applications there for me, that I'd already become accustomed to using on Windows.

--bornagainpenguin

PS: Sorry for the time between posts--I was scheduled to go see Star Trek again and I wasn't about to miss it for anything.

Funny, last time I installed MSOffice (granted, a long time ago), it looked very much like a package manager : a big tree of features to install, insatll-on-request, or exclude. The only thing it lacked to be a proper package manager is handling of updates.

I've also seen the "installer which downloads the program" concept more than once in the Windows world, done by Microsoft, Adobe, and probably others.



Good ! That's what a package manager is designed to save you from.



It sounds tempting... But you seem to underestimate the amount of dependencies that need to be downloaded. What would you say if a program packaged dotnet, DirectX, and half a dozen minor libraries in its one-file installer ? And again for every further release, even though the versions of bundled libraries don't change ? And make a whole new release when that small lib is found to have a security flaw ? And include that big package (say Kexi/Access) which you never use ? This is what you're asking for when you ask for one big zipfile.

Package managers are a Good thing. On Windows, most decent non-trivial programs end up (re)implementing one in one form or another, if only to manage updates. It's a mess, but better than the alternative. On Linux, the package manager is included with the OS. It's a pain that it's a different one for every distribution, but at least it's only one per distribution.



I expect the installer allows you to install from allready-downloaded packages, no ? If not, it's certainly a valid feature request to send.



Then you really didn't give the system any chance. Especially considering Koffice 2.0 is not targeted at general users, and KDE-on-Windows is a young, amazing-it-works-at-all project.

I agree. Ik ben het er mee eens. Du hast recht. C'est agréable.

I'm more interested in Krita myself. GIMP is good and all, but I really, really seriously hate how it is split up in several windows and it feels like a mess. That Krita looks cleaner and more coherent, though in the screenshots there's quite a lot of wasted screen real-estate there. I'd also like it a lot more if it was a GTK+ app since I don't use a single Qt app at the moment.

this is a test