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List:       kde-promo
Subject:    Re: [kde-promo] KDE 3.5 is very alive! Possible Dot-Story?
From:       "Aaron J. Seigo" <aseigo () kde ! org>
Date:       2006-04-05 18:46:29
Message-ID: 200604051246.30538.aseigo () kde ! org
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On Wednesday 05 April 2006 13:29, Birger Kollstrand wrote:
> For the majority of the world decent MS office compatibiløity is a must.
> How is that now in KOffice? If it's not good then it's hard to make it a
> star to promote.

a few years ago i would've been right with you. but today i see this as the 
hole-in-the-sock approach.

i take it as an axiom that any given piece of software is not right for 
someone. the question is "who is that someone, and do we need to cater to 
them right now?"

for enterprise usage, excellent ms office compat is a must (and for many, even 
OOo isn't good enough). for many home, educational and small office users 
it's not really that important. approximate support is good enough as they 
generally create more than they review other's documents and formats such as 
PDF and HTML are used more regularly for interchange. and let's face it, ODF 
is the future here (even if that is a long-term goal)

and that said, what ms office file format does krita need to support 
exactly? ;)

so ... if this is all generally true, then perhaps KOffice concentrates on 
being a really great creator's tool and markets itself towards those people. 
perhaps the graphics suite and database tools are pimped harder than in a 
typical office suite. perhaps it's not even marketed as an "office suite" in 
the typical sense but as a collection of applications under the same banner 
much like apple's iLife apps.

in other words, let's get koffice to as many people as would benefit from it 
today. which is quite a few.

now ... think of the end results: by growing the user base, we'll also grow 
the general interest in koffice and thereby the development efforts put into 
it. maybe then we'll see ms office format support improve. but if we simply 
don't ever promote it to anyone then we end up no further along that we are 
now.

in other words: start simple, do some specific things really well, get a user 
base, improve from there. repeat. as an exercise to the reader, one may want 
to look at amarok or digikam's evolution over time in this respect.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

Full time KDE developer sponsored by Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com)

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