OpenOffice.org to Get Firefox Extensions and More 207
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.'"
LJ Talked More About Extensions (Score:3, Informative)
Questions on Thunderbird/Sunbird Inclusion (Score:5, Informative)
Finally, Thunderbird seems to release updates more rapidly than OO.o. Does anyone know how updates will work? Will those who installed it through OO.o immediately get Thunderbird updates? Or will they wait until the next OO.o version bump?
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Re:Questions on Thunderbird/Sunbird Inclusion (Score:4, Funny)
I want it removed, thanks very much.
Re: Exchange support in Mozilla (Score:3, Informative)
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On the other hand, if you want Exchange support in Mozilla, vote for bug 128284.
Chances of this happening is slim to none, unless some funds the 10,000's of man-hours necessary to do this.
It's not just extended MAPI they want to implement since MAPI is an API not a transport protocol. They need to reverse engineer MS's private RPC implemention, on which some private variant of MAPI is used. Good luck to the poor soul tasked to do this.
License-wise, this does not save you anything either, since ever
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Why not Evolution (Score:5, Interesting)
However, it's not me -- it's Sun. And for Sun, the deal-breaker is that Evolution is GPL-licensed. The Mozilla license is much more suited to their private-branding model.
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And for Sun, the deal-breaker is that Evolution is GPL-licensed.
Oh yeah, Sun hates the GPL [linux-watch.com]
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However, it's not me -- it's Sun. And for Sun, the deal-breaker is that Evolution is GPL-licensed. The Mozilla license is much more suited to their private-branding model.
Let's not forget that Tbird is cross-platform, whereas GNOME apps are iffy (if at all) at running on Windows.
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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.
Evolution on Win32 (Score:2)
Really weak vision (Score:2, Insightful)
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
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When I read the topic the first thing that came to my mind was "But they should be trying to reduce the bloat, not add more!".
What I really want to see from OpenOffice is the ability to install separated applications... I shouldn't be forced to install Impress and Calc if I only wanted Writer...
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Extension I'd like to see (Score:4, Funny)
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But seriously, Is there a plugin similar to the 'APA referencing Macro' for MSOffice? (allows autoformatting and reference placement of references, in the correct APA format for all the types of sources - web/book/journal/speech/tv, with correct punctuation italic etc...
It was always my crappy formating of the referencing that got me caught out until i started using 'APA refrencin Macro'...
Also, if anyone knows of a free alternative (apart
Re:Extension I'd like to see (Score:5, Interesting)
But seriously, Is there a plugin similar to the 'APA referencing Macro' for MSOffice?
I'm a little concerned by the plug-in trend for applications. I think it is implementing functionality at the wrong level. How much work does it take to create a plug-in to make references like this that work with Word's macro feature. How much effort to make it work with OpenOffice's plug-in system? How much work to implement it once for every application you might want to use references within?
Mac OS X has introduced system services. One plug-in that works on all text that uses the standard APIs in any program. There exists one for automated formatting of references, by the way. If other OS's would just adopt a similar system, or better yet adopt a standard for all of them, we could remove so much duplication of effort and users would get to choose the best of breed for anything they wanted. I mean one spell checking plugin for Firefox, one built into Word, one built into InDesign, one built into Eudora, and none available for photoshop, IM, IRC, and your favorite text editor is a serious waste and failure to properly use the resources put into these tasks. I'm very unhappy with this trend towards application specific plug-ins when what is really desired is modular plug-ins that can be used anywhere.
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KOffice works like that already. It's a great idea and I'd love to see it in operation.
I believe said functionality only works for KOffice components, though. For example, a grammar checking plug-in that works with KWord will not work with GAIM. Is this still the case? My reliance on these plug-in type services is one of the main reasons I'm using OS X for my primary workstation instead of Linux.
OOo would be better off IMHO to split so that the applications can be run in a more standalone manner. This
Re:Extension I'd like to see (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Extension I'd like to see (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
That isn't the same thing at all, because a program author has to build in support for that library, it does not work by default on all text you see on that OS. The iChat team at Apple and the Adium programmers (whoever they are) did not sit down and decide to include spell checking functionality in their IM clients. Nor did they decide to provide support for transl
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THe application has to have support enabled in it- it has to know to call the third party service.
The user calls the service, unless the program author incorporated it in some other way.
They may not know every service- they may have created a framework where user input to text boxes are passed up through a series of plugins.
Nope, text the user selects is passed to the service they select. For example If I highlight some text "this works" then select the Safari: Services: Convert: Rotate-13 the text
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In KDE they are called KParts, and any KDE application can load and use them. For example, spellchecking is used by many apps via a KPart, including the khtml component, which is itself a KPart - so KParts can even use other KParts.
Okay, so if I install KDE (I only have a Gnome machine right now) and I install a random application like an IM client. Can it automatically use the spell checker without the programmers having taken that into account? Can I globally install a KPart that translates from German
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So, to answer your question, no. KParts only work with KDE apps, not any random app you might install. That's reasonable, since you wouldn't expect OS X services to work with, say, Mac OS 9. That said, no Linux desktop will give you the same rich experience you find on OS X.
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The applicaton obviously has to be KParts-aware. Kopete, the KDE IM client, uses the spellchecker, I believe.
I'm still unclear on this concept. So Kopete is "KParts-aware." Can I download a KPart that translates English to German and German to English. Can I install that KPart globally, and will Kopete then be able to perform these translations on my chat messages, without the Kopete developers doing any additional work?
I don't believe shared libraries are an adequate replacement for services because sh
APA Style (Score:3, Interesting)
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A firefox extension? (Score:2)
And it only took how many years of people begging for this one feature?
Yeah, but what I want to know (Score:5, Interesting)
Examples: Gallery import between versions, [openoffice.org] or the all-time champion outline view [openoffice.org] -- the longest-lived request with a huge votecount, declared by quite a few professional writers and educators as the show-stopper keeping OpenOffice.org out of their offices and schools. Apparently the team has other priorities.
Re:Yeah, but what I want to know (Score:5, Insightful)
Professional writers (Score:5, Informative)
I quite agree that if your output is primarily text, you're much better off with LaTeX or the like. Gorgeous results without the constant distraction of formatting.
However, there are a lot of professional writers who have to integrate high proportions of graphics into their work, and for them a WYSIWYG tool is quite appropriate. The ability to restructure a document (the big missing feature in the Navigator) is a serious handicap there.
I'm not a professional writer, I just sleep with one.
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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."
Re:Professional writers (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Hyperlinks in LaTeX (Score:2)
I won't argue about graphic layout; this is simply outside my expertise. But for making hypertext documents,
LaTeX+package hyperref+TeX4ht+pdflatex works extremely well and produces nice HTML and PDF documents from
the same source. For the wor
RTFM dude, RTFM (Score:2)
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."
Say what? One of the core principals in technical writing is making sure the text and the graphics relate to each other effectively. WYSIWYG is the easiest way to make sure it happens. I've been using WYSIWYG editors to produ
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If you are having problems with short Word documents that contain pictures, I suggest you RTFM and learn how to use styles to control flow, stop inserting blank lines to force layout, and how to paste in pictures so they are in-line text objects and not floating.
I agree with you that WYSIWYG editors are very suited to this task and it is entirely possible that they are having issues because they don't know how to use Word. There is another class of people, however, who do know how to use Word, but still
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hmm. what did you mean by that ?
you can promote & demote chapters, change their levels and so on from navigator.
or is that some other kind of restructuring you want to be able to do from the navigator ?
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However, there are a lot of professional writers who have to integrate high proportions of graphics into their work, and for them a WYSIWYG tool is quite appropriate.
...or a WYSIWYM [lyx.org] tool.
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No, it really isn't. What they need is a text editor and a good letter/report/etc wizard/template/whatever. Giving users control of layout when they probably only want, and definitely only need, control of content is a BAD IDEA.
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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.
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with you. As a professional writer I can apply and test formatting much more quickly using a WYSIWYG editor in combination with a view of the underlying markup than I can using a no
Speaking as a power editor: OO SUCKS! (Score:3, Insightful)
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 paragra
How much programming does $10 Cdn get? (Score:2)
perhaps the money that you so kindly would spend on this would be better spent *paying someone to write the features you are missing*.
I see that copies of MSOffice (legal surplus inventory) are selling for as low as $10 Cdn on eBay. I think I paid $40 a couple of years ago for the same package. How much programming will that buy?
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That's a sunk cost. Notice that TDN wrote that she's using MSO2K, not the latest. Also, we might as well get used to the idea that companies long ago justified the cost of MSO as part of basic computing. It's not on the agenda, and if we want to put it on the agenda we're going to have to overcome issues like TDN's.
Don't waste bandwidth telling me this isn't prudent decision
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I did that -- when I got the mark. I'll give it another shot, but promise not to hit me.
I favor vim myself, but your milage may vary. The point being that when I am writing I concentrate on . .
Back in the day I was an advocate of the development
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You're preachin' to the choir here. A while back my parents wrote a novel, and went to one of those self-publishers. The publisher required that work be submitted in MS Word format. Why, I don't know, but those were the rules.
They also required that you use the margin and indentation controls within Word to control formatting. Sounds like a reasonable ru
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But what is wrong with WYSIWYG for page layout? It allows immediate results and easy editing. Even with the best editor set up, you still have to glance up from your HTML/TeX code to see what the document looks like. With WYSIWYG,
What professional writers need (Score:2)
Finally someone asks the right question. And the answer is ... it depends. It depends on whether we are writing, editing or doing layout. The choice of tool changes with where we are in the project, what the final output will be, and what the budget supports.
For writing and text-hacking, content shuffling and document restructuring, MSWord is my tool of choice. It gets me to the final draft and through the review cycles. As I said in another post, OO gets in the way when a document needs radical surge
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The "layout tools", like FrameMaker and Quark Express (I've used them both), suck at text entry and editing, and are they meant to - they are PAGE LAYOUT tools with minimal text editing capabilities.
While both are a bit heavy for text editing, I've never had problems entering text in either of them.
If I know the final output has to be in FrameMaker or Quark, I'll set up MSWord so the style names match and import the final text.
I have had serious issues using Word for text editing, including crashes
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While both are a bit heavy for text editing, I've never had problems entering text in either of them.
That's probably because you can actually TYPE! I rarely do straight text entry, I do a brain dump and then edit it, which sucketh royally in a page layout program.
[me]If I know the final output has to be in FrameMaker or Quark, I'll set up MSWord so the style names match and import the final text.
[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]I have had serious issues using Word for text editing, including crashes for larg
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Framemaker is not a word processor, it is a desktop publishing application. There is a huge difference between the two, although most word processors try to pretend that they are desktop publishing applications these days (and fail, miserably).
Framemaker was the tool used to typset the last book I worked on, and it's okay. There were a few things I didn't like about it, but it's not bad. The thing is, it's not a writers' tool, it's a publishers' tool. Writers need to
Open-source feature bloat? (Score:5, Insightful)
Resistance is futile. (Score:5, Funny)
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Well, incorporating Tbird is much better than them writing their own MUA from scratch...
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Exactly (Score:2)
Now, OpenOffice viruses! (Score:3, Insightful)
A new attack vector!
OpenOffice should not have plug-ins. Why copy Microsoft's mistakes.
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I think they are looking at it from the point of view of copying Mozilla's sucesses.
Doesn't have to be that way (Score:2)
There are a few things they can do to make sure OOo plug-ins don't turn into MS Office VisualBasicScript-type attacks.
1. Make it impossible to embed a plug-in into a document. Even if a document requires a certain plug-in, embedding it for quick installation (or even worse, auto-installing it) would be a very bad thing. The most it should do is pop-up a message reporting what plug-in is missing and link to the trusted
Signed? (Score:2)
Signed code? Signed by whom?
Wow, OSS groupware that works with Exchange (Score:2)
btw I realize there are some decent OSS groupware project going but the ratio of mature workable solutions vs projects that get announced with big fanfare, promise ease of use, and full Exchange compatibility is about 1,000 to 1.
Happy Happy Joy Joy ! (Score:2)
Oh NO! (Score:3, Funny)
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Word on the street is that that the Pentagon doesn't want this in use by the military. Especially if your name is Will.
recipe for disaster (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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Ugh... (Score:2)
Hello, Weight Watchers? (Score:2)
OpenOffice.org and StarOffice shall include the Mozilla Foundation's Thunderbird and Sunbird (calendaring application) in the future
Oh, good. Open Office sure needed to get bigger. ;-)
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Re:What Open Office Needs... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh come on... (Score:5, Insightful)
Being ignored (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
I have. I have been ignored. And so have the other non-programmer professionals who have had the same requests for improvement.
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I would assume they have.
No, I don't. I have no idea what the Open Office people are doing. I use KOffice.
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In slashdotese:
"You don't know WTF you're talking about and STFU"
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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.
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Ooooooooh, I don't know. My instinctive reaction to the story was, "Cool! Now all they have to do is embed an OS and it'll be done."
Could use a decent text editor though.
KFG
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So... (Score:2)
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Or when I have an extra ten minutes to kill waiting for it to load. Seriously, the only other Windows application that I have that loads so slowly is that pig QuickBooks.
The real answer is... (Score:2)
About six months after Microsoft discontinues Office for Macintosh.
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I think you mis-read (Score:3, Interesting)
They mean they want to re-structure OO.org to be modularly based and run on a GUI framework, *like Eclipse and XUL do*.
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This is different from running on top of the the Eclipse IDE or Netbeans IDE, though.
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Admittedly in the case of Openoffice.org the situation would not get any worse than it is already.
Endnote, Zotero, and other Bibliographic Notes (Score:2)
There are a few issues with your post.
An office suite is A LOT more than a bibliographic management system & it would not be a small task to implement it in XUL in Firefox. There have been a number of online word processors & they haven't yet seen great success.
The other thing is that Endnote is not that great of a bibliographic manager & there are more serious attempts to replace it. Zo [zotero.org]