In this interview, Jan Holesovsky, author and leader of the KDE.OpenOffice.org project, now employed by SUSE, gives a glimpse of what to expect in terms of OpenOffice.org integration on the KDE desktop.
KDE integrates OpenOffice.org
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
It’s nice that everything is fitting together in Linux GUI land.
For SuSE’s continued support of KDE on the desktop. With an OOo that fits naturally into the KDE desktop, KDE becomes much more suitable as a business desktop.
With an OOo that fits naturally into the KDE desktop, KDE becomes much more suitable as a business desktop.
Does a business really care that the office suite ‘fits naturally’ into the Desktop Enviroment? I think not. What a business cares about is how productive its employees are. Normal worker-bee users, I think, are not going to be affected by the fact that OO.o does not of the exact same icons, scroll bars, progress bars, and gui colors as the rest of the system. A folder means open, a bold letter means bold, etc. Just my thoughts… From what I saw, it looks like a lot of good work.
Rayiner: I just noticed that you’re posting from Georgia Tech. I find that funny, because, as I peak out the window at work, I look out over Bobby Dodd stadium! Go Jackets!
I wonder what effects this does have on KOffice?
KOffice has already adopted OOo’s format, and OOo is going to be intergrated further into KDE…
It puts KOffice in an excellent position: a lightweight standards compliant office suite.
KWord is frame oriented, and Writer is page oriented.
KOffice offers various applications with no OpenOffice replacement, like Kivio, Karbon etc…
KOffice is great. But it is not as mature as OpenOffice (yet).
Yes, it is true that perfect integration is not really important for productive use. But having the very nice KDE file and print dialogs instead of the ugly and not very convenient ooo dialogs will increase *my* productivity quite a bit.
And having a completely integrated KDE desktop is a nice way to impress windows users who do not have that kind of integration.
Elegant workings are always a good sign. I choose my prefered word processor. Friends, family, and co-workers choose theirs.
We talk, and our tools actually facilitate a natural exchange.
For me this announcement is very good news.
And having a completely integrated KDE desktop is a nice way to impress windows users who do not have that kind of integration.
What are you writing about? Didn’t Microsoft already integrate Office into the Windows kernel? I could have sworn I read that somewhere..
Actually I hope they stop developing Koffice. OpenOffice is by far the better office suite of the two and its free (both price and code) so why waste time with Koffice?? Use time on other issues instead, but then again if you ask me, this is a big problem with linux, too many programs that do the same…join forces instead.
So is there any chance that non-plaintext cut/copy/paste will work between OpenOffice and KDE apps?
Actually, a lot of people prefer the way that KOffice is designed, with such things as KWord’s frame based processing.
KOffice also has:
Kexi – A database interface and lightweight implementation system
Kivio – A powerful diagramming tool
Karbon 14 – A nice vector editing package
Moreover, KOffice programs:
Are easily portable through QT – KOffice on OSX, for example.
Are fully embeddable into applications for SMBs, for quick development of powerful business tools
Are scriptable via DCOP – Also useful for SMBs, and can integrate fully with KDE’s PIM applications and custom applications for complex tasks
Use KIO Slaves, for network transparency – massively time-saving in modern network-focused workplaces
Can save PDF files!
Can edit PDF files directly!
All support KDE-wide spell checking automatically (with 3.2, even Konqy has spell checking)
And last but not least, internationalisation is going very well on all KOffice components, making it ideal for non-English speakers.
OpenOffice is by far the better office suite of the two and its free (both price and code) so why waste time with Koffice?? Use time on other issues instead, but then again if you ask me, this is a big problem with linux, too many programs that do the same…join forces instead.
Have you ever used KWord? Its based on a completely different paradigm than the OO.o Writer/Word model. Different strokes for different folks.
I don’t get it when people say things like [i]”too many programs that do the same”/i>. Windows has the same problem! Look at media players:
Windows Media Player
iTunes
WinAmp
Zinf
Real Player
Kazaa
Napster
…to many more to list here…
They all share some funtionality. Does that mean they all should go away? No! What about image editing tools? You’ve got Photshop, Fireworks, and about a thousand other crap-tacular programs that line the shelves at your local software stores. No one’s telling them to stop making software… Why should Linux only have “one true <insert app type here>”?
Just because you’re too lazy to pick one, doesn’t mean other people should suffer from lack of choice. After all, that’s why many people have embraced Linux: Choice.
I don’t get it when people say things like “too many programs that do the same”. Windows has the same problem! Look at media players:
There is a huge difference between the number of programmers working on Windows software and on Linux software. And since there are much less Linux software programmers, it would be a wise thing that they did not work on the same types of software.
Linux has already OpenOffice, KOffice, Abiword, Gnumeric. At the same time, it doesn’t have DTP (Desktop Publishing) software that can compete with the versions of PageMaker or QuarkXPress available 10 years ago for Windows 3.1! The only Linux software of this type is Scribus, which is still fairly primitive.
It has got a bunch a media players but all of them suck in terms of GUI. Look at MPlayer: 90% of its options are only available through command line. Now try to convince a user coming from Windows that passing options through command line is a good thing…
Photo editors is another problem on Linux. Nearly everyone agrees that Gimp’s GUI sucks. But still there is nothing better available for Linux. Designers and photo artists who work with Photoshop, Painshop Pro and Corel PhotoPaint definately are not going to like Gimp. So, making a Qt port of Gimp and giving it a Photoshop-like GUI would be a much more interesting software project than to make yet another work processor or text editor…
What makes you think that people who are good at doing word processors would be any good at making a photoshop replacement? Further, People who work on open source do so because they enjoy what they are doing. If they didn’t enjoy it, they wouldn’t do it. If they don’t enjoy it, and they aren’t getting paid for it, they’re not going to do very good work, and its pointless for them to waste their time trying. The allocation of developers that Linux has currently is not the only one commensurate with developer freedom, but the most efficient one — because people naturally gravitate towards the projects to which they have the most to contribute.
PS> Gimp’s UI has gotten *much* better in 2.0. Its much more conventional than the 1.x UI. It needs to take better advantage of context menus, but overall its much better.
People, people. OO.o is not a `GNU/Linux’ app, it is a multi platform (eg: MS, Apple, *BSD) app. So is KDE for that matter. Please stop being so Linux centric.
IF OO is integrated does that mean I can get finally set its menu to appear in a Mac OS style ?
I usually avoid that setting because its so wierd normally to see only kde apps using this behaviour while you are using apps from different toolkits.
It looks like they’ve nearly got OpenOffice to use KDE themes.
There is also a special theme for Gnome while uses the current KDE theme to draw the widgets.
Which means that with this type of OpenOffice, and the QtGTK theme installed, you can control the appearance of most of your desktop apps using KDE themes alone – negating the need for duplication KDE/GTK themes.
This is not to say that KDE is better than Gnome, but it provides an interesting solution to the problem distributors are facing post-Bluecurve in integrating the appearance of the various desktop environments.
I just wish now that they’d turn off the filebrowser by default (the big empty space by the open button) and add a decent zoomer. Then it would really compete in looks with other apps.
As for KOffice, it is significantly less bloated than OpenOffice (a favourite issue around here 😉 ), KWord has advanced and intuitive support for frames, and the whole thing starts up a lot faster. Also if Kexi gets going it could become a lot easier to do mail-merge with KOffice than OpenOffice.
After being a daily user of Photoshop and Photo-Paint (which is better), I switched over to FreeBSD. Since then, I have found myself trying to right-click to get all of my image functions many times while using these other programs. It is much faster and the fact that you can unpin the menus is very useful for frequently used functions. Plus keyboard redefinitions are a snap. Just press the key you want and choose it in the menu.
Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean you’re correct.