This release specifically introduces the database management application Kexi, the image editor Krita and upgrades the major KOffice components to use the OASIS Open Document format, an industry standard allowing better interoperability across applications and platforms.
KOffice 1.4 Beta 1 Released
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Why? When we have OpenOffice.
Maybe you are not aware of the hornet nest of the new Java integration of OO2.0? Maybe because OO is heavy on some machines? Maybe because some people prefer gnumeric? Maybe because choice is good? Maybe because they can?
Because OOo sucks. I don’t like it. Koffice is far more usable for my point of view. It is very nice to see that Koffice is getting better and better. The developers are doing very good work. It also nice to see that Koffice is adopting OASIS.
Wow, why did nobody before you ask this intelligent question?
Let me give it a try:
Because it’s different?
Because it’s lighter on resources?
Because it’s better integrated into KDE?
Because it provides applications OpenOffice doesn’t provide?
Because it works differently from OpenOffice?
Because there are developers that like to develop it?
Because there are users that like to use it and god forbid even prefer it over OpenOffice?
Because there is no reason why there shouldn’t be different office suites?
OOo does definitely not “suck”, but there is still a place for alternatives because some people do not like the direction it is moving to. I still prefer OOo because of its completeness, but OOo2 requires the Java Media Framework for Movie and Sound support which is *ridiculously* difficult to install.
It is clear that this is a political decision by Sun because gstreamer is defitively mature enough for that and has *much* more plugins, but no, Sun decided to use the Java Media Framework in order to push its own platform. This is what many people dislike. I do accept that, others do not.
Let’s face it: You must be a UNIX “expert” to install it, so ordinary users cannot insert sounds into their presentations. As sad as it is, but OOo2 can no longer be recommended to everyone, only to experienced users. And Sun strictly *forbids* anyone to make the installation easier by repackaging it as RPM/DEB/whatever…
And this is where KOffice and GNOME office become interesting although they are not yet that mature because they are 100% free and anyone can package them so that ordinary users can easily install them. By the way: Windows users can continue using OOo2, because it works out-of-the-box whithout being a computer scientist since it uses DirectShow instead of Java Media Framework.
This is only one of several points. You see that OOo is definitely dominated by Sun and Sun *does* use it in order to push its own technologies although *some* of them are inferior to what the community has to offer.
One more statement, did anyone try to work with presentations that have embedded movies in OOo2? OOo was always very, very slow and memory-consuming, but OOo2 + Java Media Framework is absolutely *ridiculous*. Yes, it’s a free office suite but you need the very latest and most recent hardware in order to use it… No, there is a need for lightweight alternatives!
OOo2 may be difficult to install if you want the Java Media Framework for Movie and Sound support , but I think you don’t have to be an expert to do that. Only the experts who create distro’s need to do the hard work. Only if you want to do many things yourself because you do not want a bloated distro, then things become harder, but those users don’t mind fiddling.
Regarding Java, I don’t like it. But I have to agree that OOo2 does a much better job when importing MS Office documents. So for the time being, we really need OOo. For some quick word processing Koffice is faster and easier to use (OOo takes /hours/ to load in core).
You are right, OOo’s import filters are the best ones available today. Nobody can beat them. And I never said that OOo is bad now. I’m using it myself every day! I only wanted to explain why alternatives are nice, even if very few people are actually using them.
Regarding JMF: No desktop-distro includes that so far (at least I don’t know of any) and third-party people cannot package it because it’s not distributable whithout a special contract. This was only one example of what some people dislike about OOo: It’s actually controlled by a single company, Sun.
It’s possible to criticize these things and still accept that it is a good choice today, but some people (especially the one who wrote the first comment) must see that the situation is not that simple. In the end, it’s the devopers’ decision anyway what they want to spend their time on, not ours.
I’m one of those people (in the minority) who thinks that Sun isn’t explicitly trying to push down Java on everyone through OOo. I think they’ve expanded their use of Java just because it was easier for their developers to make the new features in Java. And since that uses one of their own technologies, all the better from their point of view.
I haven’t used KOffice, so don’t bite my head off here. But I was under the impression that it couldn’t yet do sound or movies. So if you want to do that, you would have to use OOo (or MS Office).
Maybe because some people prefer gnumeric?
Umm, gnumeric in KOffice? That’s at Gnome app…
Maybe you are not aware of the hornet nest of the new Java integration of OO2.0?
Everything you could do before, you can still do without java. Only new features require it, and I don’t think any of those are available in any other office suites anyway. Again, correct me if I’m wrong about this.
Anyway, I do wish KOffice luck. They’re certainly much lighter than OOo and better integrated into KDE. More importantly, choices and competition are always good because they make the end products better.
Please, don’t choose between Openoffice and Koffice!
We have the opportunity to have two different office suites, and that’s a great thing!
Please, don’t say Openoffice sucks or KOffice sucks. We know that both has their strenghts and wickness.
So let’s hope that both Openoffice and KOffice will grow and become great peaces of software. Ok? 🙂
when will koffice import M$ document standards as well as O.O.o?
when that answer is “now”, i’ll switch over.
I know at least in OO.org if I import an excel spreadsheet a good portion of it has to be rewritten, because OO.org doesn’t behave (ie fuctions return different values for things such as blank cells etc..) the same as excel.
So going from .xls to the openoffice.org 1.x series .sxc format was an issue, now OO.org 2 has a .ods extension it wants to save my files as, i’ll have to go through the sheet again to make sure everything translates properly (haven’t bothered yet).
Is the same to be expected if I decided to go with .gnumeric files?
In reality, it isn’t the programs fault directly, every project seems to claim to have some “XML so it’s totally transparent and universal” file format, but there are always issues with moving files between office suites, simply because they don’t all behave the same for a given task.
I’d like to see a lot of office apps (forcing eachother to get better or get dumped), but a unified document format, then i’d just use AbiWord cause it’s fast as hell! But, i guess that would only exist in a sweet sweet dream world
March on shining diamond KOffice!
> when will koffice import M$ document
> standards as well as O.O.o?
Maybe never, maybe soon. Nobody knows it and nobody will ever know it before it happened. Compare it to KHTML: It was well-designed from the beginning on, but very, very incomplete. Today it’s quite complete and usable. It’s as usual as it is always with free software: Sometimes there are surprises, sometimes not. We will see!
Besides all general “why?” talk, has anybody tried this release (Live-CD or installed)?
> but a unified document format, then i’d just use AbiWord
> cause it’s fast as hell! But, i guess that would only
> exist in a sweet sweet dream world
I think you can forget that right away.
A lot of work (design *and* implementation) has already gone into the OASIS formats. OOo2 and KOffice will support them. I think that’s the future of open document formats.
I’ve always prefered Koffice over OOo. Kword for example is so easy to use – perhaps because it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of OOo? I find OOo bloated, slow, and lacks some of the critical funcationality I need in a word processor (some will be addressed in v2, but sadly many won’t)
Koffice, looks nice, works well and produces some nice documents with minimum of fuss. Also supports multi-languages better than OOo (even better than v2 will). If only I could get it running in Windows (Now that I’ve given up on Linux) !
everyone one should concentrate on making open office better than trying out all sort different routes. microsoft is right “all roads in linux leads to chaos.”
what we need is a leader a visionary a person who can command the gnu developers towards well define goals. it should not be like HEY OPEN OFFICE IS SLOW LET MAKE KOFFICE and all sorts of different office suits. I want something like – everyone lets sit down and fix open office.
“And Sun strictly *forbids* anyone to make the installation easier by repackaging it as RPM/DEB/whatever…”
The official OpenOffice.org Linux pack is a zip file containing RPMs for a bunch of distributions. I also don’t see repackaging is a problem with the Ximian OOo code tree, let alone the other distributions that offer OOo. Some commercial repackaging and code changes have also occured.
Looks like your statement is incomplete or incorrect. Either enlighten us, correct it, or retract it.
Go troll somwhere else.
1. Koffice began well before openoffice was around.
2. OpenOffice is a bloated mess, probably harder to fix than it’s worth.
3. Sun uses it to push their ideas, which is perfectly ok, but not necessarily what everyone else wants.
4. If everyone reasoned that way we’d still be driving around in model T’s.
…now either default to the OASIS OpenDocument format or can read/export it. That’s a start. If all other word processors and spreadsheets … supported OpenDocument, we’d be better off.
I’d love to eventually stop sending Microsoft Word DOC files or PDFs when neither are optimal for a variety of reasons.
what we need is a leader a visionary a person who can command the gnu developers towards well define goals.
What you really mean is: We need a _dictator_.
But of course, you forgot to define who “we” are, and why “we” (if you even manage to define a homogeneous entity called “we”) should stop doing what “we” are doing right now, trash everything “we” have done up to now, and begin headlessly accomplishing tasks that our “great leader” and “benevolent dictator” assigns us. However ridiculous they might sound (like digging through the mess OOo is, and fixing it, or developing for it in a proprietary and unbearably slow language language (java) no free software distribution can ship.)
How can it be that the freedom of the free software is mostly attacked as its weakest point? Yes, it does lead to chaos, like every natural evolution does, but such is life! If you eleminate the “freedom” in Free Software, you wouldnt even have anything to attack against any more. You wouldnt have “life” at all.
“What you really mean is: We need a _dictator_. ”
did i ever say that ? dictator works for the benifit of self than others. a leader leads the people towards benifit of everyone eg : linux
it is linus (n not linux). if everyone in linux community (not gnu) starts doing his own things it will be horrible mess. linus has been able to control and streamline the entire process. whats needs to be done/who does it/what is expected/what to release.
no large project can survive if there isnt any leader/goals. this is not 199x and we dont use basic.
rather than splitting the developers and resource we should concentrate on a single path/goal.
open office is seriously lacking functionality to be accepted at corporate level. for home or soho its seem ok. rather running after your own ego/agenda/cult if developers can get together and work towards what is needed to be done – we can have a far far better open office much earlier than possible (faster/feature rich/compatible with ms office)…but NOOOOOOO open office suck we are going to make another office xyz. this is going to drag on for years nor open office nor Koffice nor Abiword nor [another 10-20 office or word processors] will get any where near ms office functionality/bolt
1. being first donest mean a thing
2. how can u say that.
3. if u start doing what everyone wants u wont reach anywhere.
1. Of course it does, according to your own logic. If you don’t stick to what you are doing but constantly drop everything and then start chasing the “next big thing”, you’ll end up never doing anything constructive.
2. Look at the code. Look at the system needed to run it comfortably. Look at what people not employed by sun has to say about it. DON’T just look at it and say “OMFG it can open .doc files, let’s drop everything else!”
3. Of course you will. You will arrive to several places that look different and there might even be a place that you like, albeit at a slower pace, rather than go to a place where no one really wants to be 3 times as quick.
now shoo!
I have to agree with Anonymous.
oo is a bloated mess which has emerged from a corporate culture. I’m told that oo represents tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of man hours. Where has all that time been spent? Answer: developing framework – a whole object system (UNO) and a windowing toolkit.
This means that oo not only has to maintain an office suite, but all the other framework components that they thought they needed to produce (very much like mozilla).
koffice on the other hand doesn’t need to create all these framework components as they already exist. It also means that they get good integration and interoperability with the desktop; oo doesn’t even get a consistent look and feel with any native desktop!
Why recreate the wheel when there already exists mature platform independent components (gtk, qt, wxWidgets, c++ etc.).
IMHO, Sun are making the same mistakes with oo as they did with Java – sacrificing performance and memory for a vague notion of cross-platform compatibility.
In other words, IMHO Sun’s approach with oo (and java) is primarily flawed.
Regarding JMF: No desktop-distro includes that so far (at least I don’t know of any) and third-party people cannot package it because it’s not distributable whithout a special contract.
Gentoo has it:
http://packages.gentoo.org/search/?sstring=jmf
cheers
SteveB
Wow, it’s just like computing in 1997! *thumbsup*
“it is linus (n not linux). if everyone in linux community (not gnu) starts doing his own things it will be horrible mess. linus has been able to control and streamline the entire process. whats needs to be done/who does it/what is expected/what to release.
no large project can survive if there isnt any leader/goals. this is not 199x and we dont use basic.
rather than splitting the developers and resource we should concentrate on a single path/goal.”
I’m not sure I agree with this attitude and sounds a like like the Manager/Worker roles that a lot of us have to enjoy.
People contribute to projects mostly because they find it enjoyable. If you start taking that away with “leaders” who instruct and dictate what the next “tasks” should be, then a lot of that enjoyment is going to be taken away. Hence people will stop contributing and migrate to projects where they can enjoy themselves. Just look at GNOME for an example…
ps. The “Danger of Fragmentation” is vastly overrated.
>when will koffice import M$ document standards as well as O.O.o?
Wrong, the key question are how often do you really have to import MS documents?
Koffice is light in resources, and has the potential to be as multiplatform as openoffice.
It is known to have a been cleanly programmed (what should I know, and could be a fast, light and modular alternative to the 2 big ones.
The market needs competition, and openoffice (the other suite in the duopoly)is too slow and bloated, but Koffice has still too far to go to be an alternative for in a production environment.
so:
– use oasis format (check)
– port to windows (expand user/programmer base)
– use openoffice filters (should be feasable with the common oasis format)
– keep it light: soon nor openoffice nor Msoffice will work on a 600 Mhz computer.
– support Koffice, submit bugs, program if you can.
KDE does not need a 54th program to sort music files, not a 69th sucking game that crashes my computer, it needs a good office package: Kontact and Koffice and 1 good music player.
> > “What you really mean is: We need a _dictator_. ”
> did i ever say that ? dictator works for the benifit of
> self than others. a leader leads the people towards
> benifit of everyone eg : linux
Of course you did. You suggested to drop every single free office suite out there and to start working “together” (no matter of different design goals and ideas) on fixing and improving open office. Since there are people that have no interest in fixing and improving open office, and invest their free resources and time into another office suite, they would have to be _forced_ to stop and destroy their work (for the benefit of everyone, because their competing projects do harm Free Software in general), and to start working on a project they dont want to, just because your “leader” (whose ideas they dont share) decides so. This easily fits the definition of a dictatorship.
> if everyone in linux community (not gnu) starts doing
> his own things it will be horrible mess. linus has been
> able to control and streamline the entire process.
Process of what? Of developing a single piece of software, a single project, the kernel. Nothing more. Every single project has a project leader. But thats not what you required in the first place. You required to shut every competing project entirely down, because everything else than working on a “flagship product” (as if the free software universe were a corporation) would be a waste of time and resources, according to you.
> no large project can survive if there isnt any
> leader/goals. this is not 199x and we dont use basic.
The OpenOffice.org office suite, as an example of a “large project”, does have a designed project leader and a goal. What was your problem again?
> rather than splitting the developers and resource we
> should concentrate on a single path/goal.
Its very unlikely that the developers of OpenOffice will take part in the development of other free office suites, i.e. “split” their resources up. The wont.
Different people have different ideas and visions. Different people also create different office suites, and its not alway possible to cooperate so closely you’d obviously want to. Their primary goal isnt teaming up and competing with some magalomaniac software corporation, although you’d obviously wanted it to be that way.
It does not wor in the Free Software world, and it also doesnt work in the ClosedSource world. You’l never see apple throw the towel and accept Gates as their “leader”. No other software smithy will do that either. You seem to _entirely_ have missed the point of competition and basic freedoms of decision making.
good point Geert.
Afterall Apple as a platform only got off the ground because of 1 application, their (revolutionary – at the time) spreadsheet.
Linux is great for choice, but often too much choice just creates confusion. Linux only really needs 1 really good, solid office package (IMO, KOffice could be that… much more so than OOo or Abiword) and a good, really good music player (I’m still hoping one will come along soon)
“How can it be that the freedom of the free software is mostly attacked as its weakest point? Yes, it does lead to chaos, like every natural evolution does, but such is life! If you eleminate the “freedom” in Free Software, you wouldnt even have anything to attack against any more. You wouldnt have “life” at all.”
And that is the core issue here. We don’t need dictation or anything of the sort.
We need more people to learn coding as a second language to their native language. That way people can get involved instead of constantly bitching from the sidelines. The more people hacking on code, the more even the evolution will seem.
It only appears like anarchy because we have not had the critical mass of casual coders we need for the FLOSS model to take its fullest bloom, but I believe it will happen as children are in a day and age where computer languages are more defined and should be easier to pick up.
And that is why those screaming from the sidelines are next to worthless, because they take no proactive action for themselves to become a part of the model which needs them to learn and engage, not endlessly criticize while sitting on their hands.
Cheers to Koffice and ALL FLOSS projects.
Also, I want to clear something up. Using an open source project is not the same as “supporting it”, and therefore your opinion should carry weight. That is because the power in open source is not in the final product (though many certainly are competitive and powerful), but in the process of its development. Even donating money isn’t really “supporting it” unless you are paying a specific developer to develop a specific thing.
You actually support it when you become a part of that process, and actually utilize the freedom by contributing and editing code. That is essentially how you vote in the FLOSS system. It is the equivalent of caring enough to drive to the voting place and cast a ballot. Your code might be accepted or not accepted, your candidate may win or not win. But that is the point where you expressed yourself and utilized your freedom. At the very least, you can manage your home and your projects the way you voted.
Like they say, if you don’t vote, don’t criticize.
That isn’t to say people can’t have their opinions and their complaints… that is just to say that those opinions and complaints are essentially worthless if the person won’t take the time and energy to get their ballot in the box.
If you did vote however, then your complaints have merit, because you actively proposed an alternative to the current state of affairs. You can code that alternative, and it can be your example of how you would have run things.
The more casual coders accepting their active democracy the better. If you feel the need to complain, then it is your responsibility at the very least to vote.
“Using an open source project is not the same as “supporting it”, and therefore your opinion should carry weight.”
and therefore your opinion will carry little weight.
download Abiword….. and you can forget about OpenOffice, Koffice, Word, etc. It has all the functionality of bigger appz without the bloat…
I don’t think that, even after all this time, abiword quite cuts the mustard.
. It has all the functionality of bigger appz without the bloat…
If you think abiword has all the functionalty of OpenOffice let alone Word then you are seriously ill informed.
Not saying that everyone needs all that functionality though. I find Abiword to be nice to look at, but not that practical.
all these corporations wanna turn us into sheep. MS did it quite successfully and now we are trying to break out. now Sun is doing it. Lets scrap koffice and use openoffice exclusively and help sun do MS did.
<action> NMLU sings, “We are poor little Lunix users, who have lost our way, baaaaaaaaaaaah – baaaaaaaaaaah – baaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
I use both depending I what I need to do.
A month ago or so I was trying to persuade my girlfiend to use Ooo (because it loads and saves MS formats so well) but after using it for a week or so she dismissed it as clunky and buggy, hmmm sadly I had to agree. As an experiment, we tried running Microsoft Office using WINE, and to my surprise (and her joy) it’s much quicker than Ooo and works 95%, so she’s happy….sorry Ooo team.
Some people mention “bloat”, I can forgive “heavy” apps when they make my life easier, load quick and don’t hog resources for longer than necessary.
We tried KOffice recently, I really like the way KOffice is shaping up, and I’m hoping to return to the days of being inspired by office software, instead of being frustrated and/or bored by it. The last time that happened was just after installing GoBe Productive on the ol’BeOS box and I STILL can’t find ANY other suite on ANY other platform which functions in such tight and “Productive” manner. Embedded objects are a NIGHTMARE in Ooo and a breeze in GoBe Productive. Ever tried live-connections between spreadsheets and documents? Change the sheet and the document changes in REAL-TIME, I need that facility, WHY can’t I have it!!! …damn it!! lol
Good, I’m glad you all believe there should be more of a variety of applications. So next time, when someone else releases an application that does something similar to an open source application, don’t complain.
Don’t complain, when and if Corel releases WordPerfect again for Linux or when Ahead releases the next version of Nero Linux. There needs to be more variety such as when some of you mentioned why they prefer KOffice.
I am sick and tired of “Oh OOo is evil, because Sun is trying to push Java through it” Well, if you dont want to use it, dont use it, stop whining.
all these corporations wanna turn us into sheep. MS did it quite successfully and now we are trying to break out. now Sun is doing it. Lets scrap koffice and use openoffice exclusively and help sun do MS did.
Well, if Sun is doing the same thing like you say, how on Earth is helping them going to help!
Just FYI, GoBe’s back, albeit for Windows. If that doesn’t bother you, then it’s there for you.
@ Morty –
“Wrong, the key question are how often do you really have to import MS documents?”
every day.
until i can turn around and tell my boss that the corporate image of the company won’t suffer from sending borked documents to clients then he won’t touch O.O.o/Gnumeric/Koffice.
and he supports FOSS!
why don’t you just use pdf for external documents and koffice/abiword for internal use?
“I am sick and tired of “Oh OOo is evil, because Sun is trying to push Java through it” Well, if you dont want to use it, dont use it, stop whining.”
Right, we should use something else, something like KOffice, perhaps, which appears to be improving, which is the topic of the article . . . what’s your complaint with the discussion?
“all these corporations wanna turn us into sheep. MS did it quite successfully and now we are trying to break out. now Sun is doing it. Lets scrap koffice and use openoffice exclusively and help sun do (what) MS did.”
“Well, if Sun is doing the same thing like you say, how on Earth is helping them going to help!”
Looked like sarcasm to me. As in why would anyone want to ditch Koffice to help Sun? He pretended to support a ridiculous idea to point out how ridiculous it is. At least I hope that’s what he was doing
“And Sun strictly *forbids* anyone to make the installation easier by repackaging it as RPM/DEB/whatever…”
“The official OpenOffice.org Linux pack is a zip file containing RPMs for a bunch of distributions.”
Gah.. reading comprehension please. He was talking about the Java Media Framework which is necessary for some of the new features of OOo. The later revelation that Gentoo packages it somehow gives some hope, but if it’s the only distro that feels it is able to, it isn’t much use, and the GP’s point stands.
@Dimble
>until i can turn around and tell my boss that the corporate image of the company won’t suffer from sending >borked documents to clients then he won’t touch O.O.o/Gnumeric/Koffice.
@Anonymous (IP: —.fastres.net)
>why don’t you just use pdf for external documents and koffice/abiword for internal use?
Exactly, Anonymous got the point right. When communicating with clients how often do you need to have the documents editable? And I think your boss will find the corporate lawyers approving of only using readonly documents like PDFs.
> And I think your boss will find the corporate lawyers
> approving of only using readonly documents like PDFs.
So you haven’t seen KOffice’s PDF import filters yet? 😉
(Of course, they don’t restore everything of the original document.)
“Go troll somwhere else.
1. Koffice began well before openoffice was around.”
No, it didn’t. OpenOffice.org was developed from the StarOffice code base…what…10 years ago?
“2. OpenOffice is a bloated mess, probably harder to fix than it’s worth.”
OpenOffice is not for everyone. Unlike Koffice — an office suite I like well enough — it is intended to be portable to all operating systems.
“3. Sun uses it to push their ideas, which is perfectly ok, but not necessarily what everyone else wants.”
OK. Push your own. It’s OSS.
“4. If everyone reasoned that way we’d still be driving around in model T’s.”
??????
you have no idea how tightly intergrated ms office is. M$ gets a LOT of feedback from large business houses. how they use technology to increase productivity. you buch of people think that a office suite which can just do some fonts and other random things is great for everyone. fact is : u have never been seen how corporates work. a person who suggested that abiword is good enf = he needs to open his eyes.
with a MS powered company – a manager is at a meeting – he just records the meetings via cam it is automatically email to him via outlook along witht the agenda and everything. he can then schedule the plan and co workers will be informed about it. THIS IS WHAT I CALL IS INTERGATION. these people get paid millions every month and they WONT spend tinkering about with filters, export, copy paste and /etc/.. files.
MS Office improves productivity. A NON-IT guy should be doing his job and not learning how to make linux work for him.
Koffice is a JOKE compared to Excel in terms of what can be done. You have not seen the power of MS office. Excel is a bolt for a small company but for a corporate its a gods gifts.
In our company we have one studioworks (SW) workstation machine. We need excel – open office doesnt cut it – let me tell you why. If u design a model in SW u can export all the points in excel. Just change the values in excel and the model updates itself. This is excaltly what is need to make a decent office suite. maybe its a bit slow – but it atleast gets the work done. It increase productivity.
What Koofice/OpenOffice developers need to do is ask the corporate people what they want. How can we increase productivity…
LET THE MOTTO BE “LINUX PROVIDES BETTER SOLUTION AND NOT SOME FREE SOFTWARE”
For systems that are in direct contact with a casual user – easy and functionality IS of prime importance.
No, it didn’t. OpenOffice.org was developed from the StarOffice code base…what…10 years ago?
(*sigh* reading is soo hard..)
First of all I’d like to see proof for this statement, because when I used staroffice back in 5.x days it was a closed source product. And spinning off that codebase into a bunch of gpl, lgpl and bsd licensed projects and call that koffice seems very unlikley. Secondly how about reading what I actually wrote? In my eyes O,p,e,n,O,f,f,i,c,e does not read like S,t,a,r,o,f,f,i,c,e at all. And remember that the latter was closed source.
OpenOffice is not for everyone. Unlike Koffice — an office suite I like well enough — it is intended to be portable to all operating systems.
What? Did I argue that OpenOffice should be the one and only office suit? Your reading-abilities are a shame. And koffice is afaik portabel to anything where you can run kde.
OK. Push your own. It’s OSS.
Wtf? That’s exactly what I’m effectively telling mr “drop-everything-else-and-start-working-for-free-for-sun”
“Just FYI, GoBe’s back, albeit for Windows. If that doesn’t bother you, then it’s there for you.”
I’ve seen the windows version before, as I’m not really a big MS fan I try not to use their OS, but I’d be willing to try it out. I purchased the original V2 for BeOS, infact I got the GoBe bundled OS+Productive
Ok, so I just checked their site again, and they haven’t change anything for a long time from the looks of things, they’ve quit the mailing lists too. It seems they were even working on a version for Linux back in 2002, there’s a link in the mailing list archives for anyone wanting to try it out.
Sigh….it pains me to see another small fish get fried, particularly GoBe, isn’t there a re-write rumoured for Zeta? I’d certainly buy into that
….but hey, I’m off-topic, for linux, KOffice might fill this particular gap, it’s getting closer every release
someone has made a good on OOo using JMF for its media support, instead of using gstreamer.
while I agree that gstreamer it a more open/free way.
but my question is, does it available in Windows platform?
I think the main difference of OOo and other free office suite/apps (like KOffice, AbiWord, Gnumeric) is its Windows support. AbiWord, for instance, can run on Windows, yes, but not as good as on Linux, imho. For OOo, Windows is a first-class citizen.
But, hey!, as long as KOffice and OOo can share documents in OpenDocument format … just use anyone you like!
I think the main difference of OOo *FROM* other free office suite/apps is…
Someone said the Windows version doesn’t use JMF but DirectShow.
Now what exactly is this OASIS Open Document Format?
just noticed that a new version of Qemu is released, as I’ve got knoppix running on a bootable qemu disk (i.e. runs in windows) what’s the chance of getting koffice on windows with qemu?
anyone done it, I’d be interested to know.
<LET THE MOTTO BE “LINUX PROVIDES BETTER SOLUTION AND NOT SOME FREE SOFTWARE” >
It’s not “some free software”, the word free here means freedom. It seems like you don’t care about your freedom and probably never heard about GNU and RMS. let me guess.. are you one of those illiterate corporate suit-and-tie fools? Maybe you are right, maybe linux is not for you, go play more with your windoze box. It increases YOUR productivity. 😆
KOffice feels much nicer for home use. A bit of this, a bit of that. With a lot of templates for about every social, family and home economics stuff it could be the linux killer app.
I think you are right, KOffice is not office-workflow optimised. I don’t care.
> With a lot of templates for about every social, family
> and home economics stuff it could be the linux killer app.
That’s what the new member of the kde-*.org family will be about: http://www.kde-docs.org/
There are, among others, several sections for KOffice apps.
“Now what exactly is this OASIS Open Document Format?”
Google: oasis opendocument
Click on the first few links. Read.
Summary: ‘The OASIS … XML format covers the features required by text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents,…’. Typical ‘office’ documents.
Wasn’t the Open Document Format a proposal of the European Union to create an open standard for information exchange in Europe instead of depending on propietary closed standards (ie Microsoft .doc .xls .ppt etc)?