OpenOffice.org to Get Firefox Extensions and More

I_am_Rambi writes "OpenOffice.org is set to get new features including Firefox-like extensions. From the article: 'Second, and I think that although we have no clear road map for this yet (besides, our version naming scheme is going to change once again ), OpenOffice.org and StarOffice shall include the Mozilla Foundation's Thunderbird and Sunbird (calendaring application) in the future. Besides the inclusion of those two softs inside the office suite, connectors to Sun Calendar Server and Microsoft Exchange will also be developed accordingly.'"

Re:Questions on Thunderbird/Sunbird Inclusion

[Ashe Tyrael]

Why not Evolution? Put simply, the windows port of Evolution is still in the "we're trying to get it to work properly" phase, whereas the others are all the same pretty much across all platforms.

This isn't to say I'm not waiting and hoping for the windows port of Evo, but if they need something there "now" to base their integration on, then they have to choose something thats there.

Re:What Open Office Needs...

[cp.tar]

Actually, it needs both.

I'd love to see an office suite designed like Firefox, with simple core functionality (the 10% of capabilities which 90% of people use or so) and extensions/modules (preferably unloadable/reloadable) which would add certain capabilities to those who need them.

I don't think OpenOffice.org will get a complete rewrite, and I haven't neither the time nor the knowledge to start something new myself.
A shame, really.

Re:Yeah, but what I want to know

[TheRaven64]

Speaking as a professional writer, I don't see the advantage that an outline view has over the current Navigator (in case you haven't used it, it's a floating outline view that can be used for quick navigation). But then, speaking as a professional writer, there is no possible way in which you could convince me that a WYSIWYG word processor is the right tool for any jobs I have; they are toys for people who have grown out of finger painting, not tools for people who deal with large quantities of text.

Open-source feature bloat?

[Alan426]

Is anyone else worried about this becoming a gratuitous push to add new features? Why should OOo include Thuderbird? If I want that application, it's not difficult to install the latest version from their own distribution. It seems to me that refining the core functionality and compatibility of the office applications should be a higher priority than bloating it up with unrelated features.

Now, OpenOffice viruses!

[Animats]

A new attack vector!

OpenOffice should not have plug-ins. Why copy Microsoft's mistakes.

Re:Oh come on...

[ElleyKitten]

You don't have to be a programmer to file a bug report. If you want to complain about the usability of OO (or anything open source), then complain to the people who can actually fix the problems. It would be mroe productive than whining on a message board.

Re:Open-source feature bloat?

[ElleyKitten]

OpenOffice wants to take marketshare from Microsoft Office. One block in convincing people to switch is the lack of an Outlook equivalent. Sure, people can go to Mozilla.com to get Thunderbird, but it's hard to convince people that OO is an MS Office replacement when it doesn't have an equivalent to their most-used program.

Re:Extension I'd like to see

[AuMatar]

This idea has been tried, and tried, and tried, and tried. It was called COM, DCOM, CORBA, etc. In reality it just doesn't work- someone doesn't like how the default works and writes their own service, with a new improved API. The user base splits. The end result is everyone writes their own "system level" service. Its a nice idea thats utterly impractical and fails every time.

Really weak vision

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that this is a really weak vision. Integrating a calendar and mail program doesn't really do any big wonders for the office workers. People can already use existing mail and calendar applications and some of them integrate ok with OpenOffice.org. What I'd like to see is features for collaborative work and other groupware features.

I also fear that the code base for OpenOffice.org is too heavy and difficult to work with. I foresee a long time when almost nothing will happen while they rewrite the core. This is exactly what happened to Netscape and for the same reason: The code base was so convoluted that it wasn't possible to work with.

Seriously, I think that KOffice [koffice.org] is the future of free office suites. It is developing incredibly fast and they have far more apps in the suite already. I read an article at the KDE news site [kde.org] that some students had implemented pretty advanced stuff in just some short Google Summer of Code projects, and I don't believe that could happen for OpenOffice. When they release 2.0, it will run on Windows AND OS X and from then on it's just a matter of more features. Mark my words... You read it here first.

Re:Professional writers

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I would say the opposite. It is much more important that you don't use a WYSIWYG tool when you've got graphics. You want to be able to say "I don't know what page this is going on, but when it gets there, put it in the upper right corner and cause the text to flow around it seperated by a 10 point border." ...or other things like that.

If you've ever used Framemaker or Quark or InDesign, you'll know those are WYSIWYG tools designed exactly to address this issue and there is a reason almost the entire publishing industry uses them.

WYSIWYG editors are very bad at this. Especially Word.

Word is WYSIWYG, but it is not really a layout tool at all. If you're trying to use it for the wrong task, you'll have a lot of problems. Now go try a real WYSIWYG layout tool and notice how easy it is.

Adding new things and reformatting takes forever due to Word's horrible reformatting problems.

Here's an exercise. Take LaTeX and Adobe InDesign and go build a 50 page magazine including five or more graphics on each page, with good, but unique layout and colors on each page. Note that they are both using the same layout engine, but one of them offers a WYSIWYG mode in addition to a text/XML editing mode. Notice one of them lets you insert, scale, set transparencies and filters on graphics easily and one is a huge pain in the ass.

You don't have to be a graphic designer to appreciate the difference. Even working with highly technical explanations of engineering manuals that follow a very formulaic layout, you can't deny that Framemaker is simply easier to use, make edits and use all those crazy features like graphics, color, and hyperlinks that are hacks in LaTeX.

and a lot of those people cringe in fear at the thought of actually doing anything at all outside of a WYSIWYG. So a WYSIWG, while much worse at actually getting things done, is the only thing that they can use.

I like vi. I hack PHP and a little C together and build custom XML formats and help systems. I prefer to do my HTML work in a text editor instead of a WYSIWYG. That does not mean WYSIWYG is better or exclusively what I want to use for all, or even most word processing and layout tasks. It's time to stop speculating as to why those poor incompetent "graphics people" are using WYSIWYG tools and actually evaluate them and notice that they are the best UI for some jobs.

Re:Why not Evolution

[Kunta Kinte]

And for Sun, the deal-breaker is that Evolution is GPL-licensed.

Oh yeah, Sun hates the GPL [linux-watch.com]

Re:Extension I'd like to see

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

The end result is everyone writes their own "system level" service. Its a nice idea thats utterly impractical and fails every time.

...except it works on OS X right now and has been working for years. It is probably the second most important reason Linux is not my primary workstation OS. I keep reading how Linux is "catching up" on the desktop, but every time I use it I find it is still behind in vital areas such as this, because no one cares to implement these right and all the people that need or really want these features have moved to OS X and abandoned Linux except for servers. Maybe having one company that can just do it is always going to be the reason Linux lacks functionality. All I know is unless I can use my spell checker, grammar checker, translations, scripts, statistical analysis, dictionary lookups, thesaurus, online resource lookups, text manipulations, biblio reference formatting/creation, and other services in all my major applications and without having to configure preferences separately, I'm unlikely to ever move to Linux.

Re:I think you mis-read

[Goaway]

He did not mis-read. They say exactly what he read it as. Maybe they meant something else, but that is not what they actually wrote.

Re:Extension I'd like to see

[AuMatar]

YOu can do that in linux today- use CORBA and/or a shared library. For example, the 2 big libraries for spell checking are ispell and aspell. THe fact is that in practice noone does this. The reason is that when you don't have 1 company driving that "Everyone must use application X", people use what they think is best. Guess what- people differ on what is best. So you end up with an array of products instead of one- for example 4 or 5 major desktops, each with their own API. Its less integrated, but in the end the competition creates better software. The "thou must use X" philosophy only works so long as there's tight central control, and either all software is pushed out new versions simultaneously or you never update the functionality of the core libraries. Works for Mac now because APple writes 90% of the software used. If it actually had 3rd party support, that functionality would die overnight.

Speaking as a power editor: OO SUCKS!

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

For the people whose text I edit, OO may be adequate. But it's not yet, and maybe never will be, a tool for serious editing. Speaking as a professional writer and editor who has used both the MSWord and the OO outline views, MSWord's outline is orders of magnitude better. I see a measurable difference in productivity when I have to do substantive editing on a document in OO, not just the spelling checks and wording tweaks that some people call editing.

MSWord lets me reveal levels, open and close paragraphs or entire sections full of paragraphs, drag and drop sections, promote and demote sections, and edit text all in the same window. That violates the principle of "don't make the user switch focus when they are in the groove" concept of GUIs. It is the main reason I'm still using Win2000 and MSOffice, and why I am reluctant to recommend OO to anyone who will need to do substantive editing. It's awkward as hell.

The enhancement request for a better outline view - specifically a request to make it work just like MSWord's outline view, has been in the request queue for years and has a lot of comments explaining exactly why it is a good enhancement. Don't tell me, "It's open source, go ahead and do it". If I could have fixed it, I would have fixed it you gits. But, it's easier for me to stay with MSWord than learn to program ... for which the folks in Redmond are undoubtedly grateful.

Similarly, a request for the ability to do overbars on text as easily as underlining has been in the queue for several years, requested by people who write the datasheets for the chips in computers the OO programmers work on. Forget the equation editor, its contents can't be searched or replaced like text.

Why doesn't the OO team (or almost any other FOSS project team take other professionals seriously when they tell you what features they need the mnost? Yes, MSFT is also of the "we'll tell you what you need", but at least they gave me a decent outlining tool ... it's one of the things they got right early on.

Re:Now, OpenOffice viruses!

[VJ42]

Why copy Microsoft's mistakes.

I think they are looking at it from the point of view of copying Mozilla's sucesses.

recipe for disaster

[hswerdfe]

recipe for disaster:

Take Massive One Highly Bloated And Slow Open Source Application
Mix well with Second Highly Bloated Open Source Application.

Stir and run.....then wait.....

seriously OOo is way slow an bloated.
Useful yes, but SLOW!

This Is not a good idea, I generally don't like half ass attempts at "Integrating" programs.

either build the Program from the ground up as an API and integrate them fully.
or don't do it at all.