KOffice GUI Competition Winner 204
Boudewijn Rempt writes "The KOffice GUI Competition has been won by Martin Pfeiffer. His entry was chosen from eighteen submissions by the jury because of its innovative, ground-breaking approach to workflow and document handling. Many submitters broke away from the beaten path and explored wild and wonderful ideas. The results page also has all submitted entries available for review."
It's not shiney enough. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's not shiney enough. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It's not shiney enough. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not about pretty versus functional, it's about immediate satisfaction versus long-term gain.
The quality of a search engine is immediately apparent. You either find what you are looking for or you don't.
The productivity of an office suite isn't immediately apparent. If it saves you a few hours per month, then the average person won't notice.
The prettiness of an office suite, on the other hand, is immediately apparent. The average person can load it up and go "ooh" or "ugh" straight away.
The OP's point stands: it's not about who's better, it's about who can impress the average end-user immediately. In the case of office suites, this is manifested as "prettiness wins". In the case of search engines, this is manifested as "relevant results win".
Usability (Score:2)
For example, I've been reliving the "good ol' days" with ZSNes and GSnes (GSnes being a snes9x frontend). ZSnes has an interfaces which is independent of my windowing environment, so it doesn't get any of the fancy KDE/etc decorations etc. However, on closer inve
Re:It's not shiney enough. (Score:4, Insightful)
Geeks believing Yahoo is pretty is the reason we have ugly UI's on Linux.
Re:It's not shiney enough. (Score:3, Informative)
The software they run U G L Y.
Blue background and gray text... perhaps so you won't notice when you BSOD. My local bank is using software originally programmed for Win95 machines.
A lot of data entry and POS (point of sale) software looks horrible outdated, but it gets the job done. Go Figure.
Re:It's not shiney enough. (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, kind of interesting your bank uses software programmed for Win95 - I thought most banks used OS/2
Re:It's not shiney enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
1) New version still works, and looks nicer.
2) New version no longer works.
The benfits on 1 do not outway the disaster of 2.
Re:It's not shiney [sic] enough. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:It's not shiney [sic] enough. (Score:2)
You know, for years I used to genuinely think that the word "outage" was actually spelt/pronounced "outrage".
Re:It's not shiney enough. (Score:2)
Now, if I was starting a new platform today I'd look for cross-platform compatibility (thick client) and web applications (thin client), but if you're wondering why businesses aren't doing that today - well it many cases it's decisions made in the 1990s or 1980s or perhaps even older.
Re:It's not shiney enough. (Score:2)
Re:It's not shiney enough. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's not shiney enough. (Score:2)
Re:It's not shiney enough. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's not shiney enough. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It's not shiney enough. (Score:4, Funny)
Emacs on a Sun3 !!!!!
close (Score:2)
Re:It's not shiney enough. (Score:2)
Like "the other white meat"? (That's probably an Americanism that no one else will get...)
Re:It's not shiney enough. (Score:2, Informative)
No, software doesn't wear out. When new software with bells and whistles is released, it adds to the amount of choices available to you, but nobody's forcing you to install the new apps.
In the office software arena, there are plenty of lightweight apps and suites if you're prepared to look. Abiword, Sphygmic spreadsheet, Siag office, the Softmaker suite or even Ragtime, for some definitions of lightweight...
Re:It's not shiney enough. (Score:2)
Nobody in the FOSS world is forcing you to install the new apps.
Re:It's not shiney enough. (Score:5, Interesting)
What you need is "can't live without it once you've used it" features that aren't available elsewhere. I would have to say, after reading through his PDF submission, that, at the very least, there is the beginnings of a much more overview and workflow oriented approach to working with office documents that could be exceptionally powerful. Yes it needs to be implemented well and have decent scope. Ideally some manner of workflow view for an entire corpus of related documents - reports, spreadsheets, presentations, the lot - would be ideal. It takes a little imagination to see the full possibilities, but I think they really might be on to something here, and I am keen to see the final results.
Jedidiah.
Re:It's not shiney enough. (Score:2)
I am enthusiastic that people are working on new ways of producing documents. An application with a whole new approach might help in making encroachments on Microsoft's monopoly. However, given that Microsoft tends to "innovate" by copying other peoples' ideas, once a new approach is settled on and produced, it might be a good idea to obtain a patent and assign ownership to one of the open
Check it out (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a pity the real poor coverage KOffice gets in the web compared to OpenOffice, being a really cool suite with great programs. It deserves a lot of respect what are they doing.
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Re:Check it out (Score:5, Insightful)
OpenOffice runs on Windows and OS X.
Given most computers run on Windows, that translates to more coverage. You want to slingshot KOffice into the limelight with OO.org port it to Windows.
It would also help Mass., with its ODF migration.
Re:Check it out (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Check it out (Score:2)
Re:Check it out (Score:2)
Re:Check it out (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Check it out (Score:2)
Re:Check it out (Score:2)
Re:Check it out (Score:3, Informative)
If you really want to look at it that way, think about how it would "help" MS lose an MS Office sale.
Re:Check it out (Score:2)
AKA you don't buy Windows for its OpenOffice support, you don't even buy Windows and say, well I would have gotten linux, but I can still run OpenOffice... So I went with Windows.
Re:Check it out (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it's open source and enough of us want it to. The whole point of open source is that it's less restrictive than commercial software.
Re:Check it out (Score:2)
Re:Check it out (Score:2)
Re:Check it out (Score:2)
I have a feeling you could build a very powerful presentation program out of the Inkscape codebase. It is, of course, well beyond my meager skillset (or available time) to do such a thing (hence my short and simple hack to make Inkscape useful for the LaTeX presentations I do now), but I would imagine that if a group of people got serious then quite a lot could be achieved.
Jedidiah.
Re:Check it out (Score:2)
There is exactly one reason I don't use KOffice over OpenOffice.org: printed fonts look absolutely horrible. Specifically, the kerning is so awful that the results are sometimes unreadable. I'm not some hyper-nitpicky font fan, but an average user who wants his output to look nice - and KWord can't do it. There is absolutely no way I'd submit a resume or other important docum
Re:Check it out (Score:2)
Actually, it's because we like choices. The more suites and apps the better, as long as they have a common format so we're not locked in to the first one we try.
The actual proposal (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.koffice.org/competition/gui1results/ma
Frankly I think a lot of what he suggests strike me as rather "duh" concepts -- things which ought to be rather obvious but are ignored in some of the major office suites. I'm not sure how I feel about an application having a "desktop" which is separate from the actual OS' desktop; it seems like it would lead to a situation where every application has its own desktop, possibly with conflicting UI metaphors, and that's not a good end result for the user.
Re:The actual proposal (Score:5, Informative)
Internal desktop (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Internal desktop (Score:2)
Without KDE it could just not have those features, and on it use them. If I am not mistaken the KDE team has already integrated some stuff into KDE that the OS is unaware of (in removable media)
Re:Internal desktop (Score:2)
it's disadvantage (close ties with kde, which have so far limited it to *x only) could be turned in serious advantage over other office suites that do not have such a connection with desktop environment (ms actually already are using methods to integrate with os better by reusing compone
Re:The actual proposal (Score:2)
Re:The actual proposal (Score:3, Interesting)
That would [protopage.com] never [palm.com] ever [chrischandler.com] happen [google.com].
Re:The actual proposal (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you need to view it less as the application having its own desktop so much as the office suite having a "workflow" view. There's plenty of space in the office suite market for such an overview option, particularly if it can provide a workflow overview of a inter-related corpus of various documents (spreadsheets, presentations, reports, etc.) as well as just a single document. Think in terms of how Aperture is a workflow oriented overview for photographers and imagine a workflow oriented overview for office workers. I think there's plenty of scope for dramatic improvements there.
Jedidiah.
Re:The actual proposal (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The actual proposal (Score:2)
Re:The actual proposal (Score:2)
Call it sour grapes... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know if my idea sucked or was plain and obvious, but it's a huge bummer it's not even on the results page for some reason, as though they never received it. Mine was an interface reorganization with an emphasis on a context-sensitive area to keep things familiar and free of clutter (first thing to go was that horrible toolbar).
I can't believe all this time I've been sitting here thinking they were reading it. I put a lot of work into it. I wonder what the heck happened.
Since it doesn't matter now, I offer it to Slashdot. Click here to read my entry in original PDF form [scaredlittleboy.org] if you want to check it out. Let me know what you think. It's nothing revolutionary, but it's not intended to be. These crazy experimental office interfaces are exactly what the user doesn't need.
Man, what a disappointment that they never even got it. Figures. But hey, I offer mine here as GPL too--if someone wants to use it for something, go right ahead.
Functional clarity (Score:3, Interesting)
I must say that your PDF reads much like an Apple GUI guideline, and not like something intended for KDE. What I mean to say is that it shows how much you value functional clarity (perhaps too much so, in the eyes of
Re:Call it sour grapes... (Score:3, Interesting)
uhgg (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't say that I'm very impressed with the winner or any of the runner ups. The OS community should seize the opportunity to accept and leverage professional interactive design.
The commercial software industry doesn't do this very well... does it's make sense to exploit this weakness?
Re:uhgg (Score:2)
It's peculiar how the open source aesthetic and the Microsoft aesthetic find such similar ways to be stomach-turningly wretched.
Re:uhgg (Score:5, Informative)
From what I understand of interaction design, it's hard work. You can't have a contest "design an interface" and be done with it. That might be a start, if the design is based on observation. The next step would be to start implementing and bring users in for testing early on; then change the design as needed and keep testing. The design must be an iterative process. This is of course difficult with software; many use patterns may not be visible in the short term so I imagine it's easy to draw the wrong conclusions from the observations...
Re:uhgg (Score:2)
That said, opening this project up to the design community, even with massive time constraints, would probably yield more successful solutions.
We want verifiable results (Score:5, Interesting)
The issue is to do with fonts. I'd like to have a situation where the entire KDE desktop respects fonts selected by the still missing font manager. Right now, we have two areas where fonts can be configured and these are not [neccessarily] respected by all KDE apps! A wish issue has already been submitted.
Re:We want verifiable results (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:We want verifiable results (Score:4, Insightful)
What I'd like (Score:4, Interesting)
What I'd really like to see is a tool to remember what documents are associated with different projects. When I'm working on my "river1" report, for instance, I want to have "river1 draft manuscript.doc", "river1 budget.xls" and "river1 project plan.doc" open for easy access, and Matlab up with the path set to the river1 directory. I should be able to do all this with a single click.
When I'm working on the "Lake Suchandsuch" project, I want to be able to open a different set of tools and documents with one click: perhaps a putty terminal connected to my high performance computer account, a gvim window with "buggy code.c" open, and a PDF of a scientific manuscript with details of the algorithm I am trying to implement. Does anyone know of a tool that can do this?
Re:What I'd like (Score:3, Insightful)
What about bash? Seriously, though, I don't know of a tool that can save a particular desktop context, although KDE tends to save the context on logout, so when you log back in it's pretty much as you logged out. I don't think it extends to files within apps, though, unless they are KDE apps.
It would make a great utility to sit in the task tray (for windows or for KDE or gnome or OSX or whatever): one click and it saves the complete desktop context (open files a
Re:What I'd like (Score:2)
Re:What I'd like (Score:2)
something like
soffice ~/docs/river1/*.od*
amarok -play (or whatever is the correct commandline switch
gimp ~/docs/river1/*.jpg
then launch this from a desktop you want all the apps to be on.
using some additional switches you can also position documents in particular locations on the desltop etc.
of course, this isn't very easy and is not feasible if things change often enough.
i have created some scripts like these for myself,
Congratulations, (Score:4, Funny)
The sorry state of Open Source user interfaces (Score:5, Insightful)
After 20+ years of research results that tell people what good user interface guidelines are, plus companies such as Apple that have products that more-or-less adhere to these guidelines, it seems that the open source community (I know, equating
Re:The sorry state of Open Source user interfaces (Score:2)
Re:The sorry state of Open Source user interfaces (Score:2)
You forgot the inevitable and entirely useless "this is why open source/linux will never make it" replies.
Re:The sorry state of Open Source user interfaces (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The sorry state of Open Source user interfaces (Score:2)
I tried to organize functionality so there was only a relevant subset showing at a time that appeared in a context-sensitive sidebar and arranged in rows called "strips." Different sets of controls were available in mini-tabs at the top of the sidebar, so editing a text documen
Re:The sorry state of Open Source user interfaces (Score:2)
You know what ? Linus disagree completely with you, he says that's a good thing to do.
And just look at the flame wars that ensued. And then you're wrong about FOSS, as Gnome does the opposite, and lots of people sided with Linus on the flame war against Gnome.
The point is that in FOSS, you have two d
Re:The sorry state of Open Source user interfaces (Score:3, Interesting)
Out of curiousity, what are the various UI-related annoyances that are kicking around still? I'm not arguing, I'm just honestly curious as to what bugs you - maybe I, or someone, can try and help fix some of it.
Jedidiah.
Re:The sorry state of Open Source user interfaces (Score:2)
Re:The sorry state of Open Source user interfaces (Score:2)
Jedidiah.
Wow, I like this very much. (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.koffice.org/competition/gui1results/mo
Some difference from iWorks??! (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry for my blindness. But does somebody can point me the difference in the principle between this proposal and Apple iWorks already developed? I see the same style drawer, same page thumbnailer and so on. Currently I see worse iWorks clone, since iWorks/Pages2 offers you better working space since you use only the tools you need actually.
IMHO, @ KDE there was much better proposals than this one.
Am I missing something?..
Re:Some difference from iWorks??! (Score:2)
BUT, I have to say that I don't think this is a bad thing! I've been using Pages and Keynote for a few months now, and I absolutely love them. Pages is a little bit different than your average word processor, but that's what I love about it. It lets me create a document with my content, rather than hassle with settings and other blech. U
I've seen this UI before... (Score:2)
In search of the elusive paper replacement (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason is simple - you can put anything down (that you can with a writing implement) anywhere on a piece of paper. For example, you can start with drawing a sketch in the middle. Then putting down some annotating text and connecting them with arrows to the sketch. Perhaps you could make a detailed diagram of an especially complicated part at a corner. On the back of the sheet you can make some quick back of envelope calculations. After you are done, you can put the whole thing safely in your wallet.
Do we care about typefaces, point sizes, and that sort of thing? No. All those have nothing to do with the formation, recording, and refining of ideas. However a lot of time was spent on these features that should really belong on an end node down near the very bottom of the creative process.
Re:In search of the elusive paper replacement (Score:2, Interesting)
But as a synthesis on top of what I gather is the spirit of your comment, jotting ideas is naturally messy, and the act of refining and reflecting on
Re:In search of the elusive paper replacement (Score:2)
Perhaps someone [literateprogramming.com] should implement this. Someone might even write a GUI [ctan.org] frontend [lyx.org] to it!
Re:In search of the elusive paper replacement (Score:2)
TWW
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
To those who say KOffice is duplicated effort: (Score:2)
The two things I desperately want from KOffice (Score:2)
One, a decent outlining function in the WP. Drag and drop of sections and auto renumbering.
Two, the functionality of Filemaker v4 in Kexi. That is, make up a form with calculation fields, forced choice from popup menu, drag and drop layouts - all the stuff that makes it possible for an ordinary user to do an application in FM in a half hour, and that will take him....how long in Kexi?
Do both of these, and it will be an absolute killer.
There is also a bit of an is
Re:Koffice only has one disadvantage (Score:5, Insightful)
Importing
Re:Koffice only has one disadvantage (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, kword can open PDF files, which is something that openoffice still can't do AFAIK.
and GIMP too... (Score:2)
Still, I wish that there were a native KDE app that could handle adding/editing PDF's more natively,
Re:Koffice only has one disadvantage (Score:2)
yeah, there are some, but it is developed in a pretty nice speed.
Re:Koffice only has one disadvantage (Score:2, Informative)
I've not used KDE's PDF printer, but since you get to it from the print menu, I'd think
Re:Koffice only has one disadvantage (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Koffice only has one disadvantage (Score:2)
oo.org also seems to support some sort of forms in pdf documents.
Re:Koffice only has one disadvantage (Score:2)
A halfway decent PDF creator will take a PostScript file, and convert it to a PDF.
PostScript distinguishes between text and images.
PDFCreator makes PDFs that have text that is rendered as text.
Re:Koffice only has one disadvantage (Score:2)
The real problem, as you noted, is the
Pretty much all KDE apps can "print" to PDF (Score:2)
Re:Koffice only has one disadvantage (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not as good as OO.org at opening word docs, but I just tried one someone emailed me and it opened up fine and I could get at the content.
Even better, they're standardizing on the OpenDocument format. Hopefully, the more folks use opendocument the fewer issues exchanging files between different office apps.
Re:Koffice only has one disadvantage (Score:2)
Re:KDE (Score:2, Informative)
Re:KDE (Score:2)
That is because you use Nazi techniques to do your calculations.
Re:If only... (Score:2)
They're the ones that drone on and on (and on) about innovation, and we're the ones that don't use their stuff supposedly because it's crap or we just generaly don't like it.
So by your own reference you invalidate your arguement to the very crowd you're trying to appeal to.