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List:       koffice
Subject:    The Real Cheer up! (was  koffice feature and release plan)
From:       Vadim Plessky <lucy-ples () mtu-net ! ru>
Date:       2001-09-17 20:08:51
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On Monday 17 September 2001 16:19, Ben Hall wrote:
|   On Monday 17 September 2001 09:31, David Faure wrote:
|
|   > This list is depressing. Everyone wants features _and_ timelines for
|   > those features, but when it comes to actually patching the code......
|
|   I've been lurking on this list for about a week now, and it scares me
| when this is said, but it's most certainly true!  In the single week that
| I've been listening in, about three different people have come up with the
| "idea" of using SO/Gnumeric/<your_app_here> filters, and have asked for
| repeats of features already.
|
|   Sure KOffice isn't ready to displace MS Office yet, maybe it never will,
| but it's good enough for all of my routine tasks.  I'm not willing to pony
| up the code, so I'm not going to start whining when I find that feature X
| is missing.  Besides, does the KOffice team who's giving everyone there
| time even want to compete with MSO feature for feature?
|

I am a little bit longer than 1 week on this list. To be precise, around 1 
year :-)
And I also have impression of this list *depressing*.
But, I also see positive moment in fact that "everyone wants features _and_ 
timelines for those features*
This means: not-Linux-centric users started using KOffice.
And if I remember correctly, this was the goal of KOffice, no?

KOffice has now very diverse user base. Much more diversified than, say, MS 
Word/MS Office.
As Praedor wrote, he wants to use KWord for scientific texts/articles. Tomas 
Diehl would like to see it more DTP-oriented. Other people happy that they 
can print fax/letter with KWord.
But somebody else wants to send Greeting Cards made in KOffice.
I was working in defferent kinds of businesses.
While in one company I was using actively MS Access (database programming, 
reports) and Word, in other - Word and Excel (data analysis, forecasting, 
business planning), in third one - PowerPoint only! (yep. can you imagine? 
presentations almost every day!) 
 As you see, my usage pattern is rather wide.
Hopefully I had a chance to study some technologies last year (JS, HTML, XML, 
CSS, DOM, a little bit PHP) - as I didn't have time for this before.
Now I understand pretty well how much of my time I *wasted* before not using 
those technologies...
Yep, it's nice to be experienced MS Office user, but when you can do the same 
task BETTER, in many cases - FASTER just with small HTML/JS combination...
So you really start to think what is the reason to have these MIS 
departments, with 100's, sometimes 1000's *certified specialists*?

I have never seen MS Office users (not programmer!) who used Word macros'es 
or VBA. Yes, I was doing SQL quiries in Access, but it is somewhat 
exception.We (with my colleague) were the only 2 people in 100+ company who 
were able to do those queries...
And, working after it in 88000 people company, I haven't seen MIS people who 
were doing macroses, VBA or quries. Do I need to say that computer 
installation was outsourced to EDS?..
And, typical MS Office use in this Fortune 100 company was typing in fax in 
Word, printing it and sending by fax? 
(presentations, in most cases, where coming in *ready to show* state, on 
CD-ROM -s o their format doesn't matter anyway)

Now back to KOFFICE
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
* it has most important features
* it's ready for average corporate user
* it has some unique features which are not presented in MS Office or 
WordPerfect suite from Corel.
* and, of course, it's ready for typical student/school usage pattern

As about DTP work or scientific dissertations - yes, I am not sure KOffice 
suitable for this. And there was no goal to make it suitable for those 
tasks...

Benefits over MS Office/Word Perfect 
---------------------------------------------------------
* "in-house" PDF creation
* native support for XML (internal document structure)
* open file document standard (XML-based), doesn't requre commercial licensing
* native support for Unicode
* fast startup time
* fast printing speed
* possible to deploy on multiple different platforms (x86, PowerPC, 
SPARC/Solaris, Alpha, MIPS, IBM s/390)

From all features listed above MS Office has only Unicode support, and it's 
somewhat partial, IMO.

As about Export to MS Word format...
Let me explain my position on it.
1) it's nice to have, no doubt
2) MS Word file support is not critical for business use.
Sad to say, but typical MS Word user is *not aware* what is .doc format.
He just opens file on his disk or received by mail *with Word*, that's it.
  Do I need to say here that Word 2000 opens HTML?
//  I did extensive testing. HTML exported by KWord, accepted by Word 2000 
pretty well!
3) direction of MS Word/Office format development (XML, schemas) demonstrates 
that MS want to walk away from old Office format. They want to use XML, with 
some custom (non-standard) extensions.
So, it undersores importance of direction KOffice is moving to (XML, XHTML, 
CSS), or where it is already. Depending how you count.

Now, *manager's* position on "Export to MS Word format"
You need it? Fine. Some developers of KOffice need money, too.
I can guess that if you put to filter developers $5000 for start, they will 
give you prompted date for basic export filter.
Next $10000 will move delivery date by 3-4 months. That's it :-))
// Pls correct me if I am wrong here...

|   I use kword quite frequently now.  It's very stable, fast and usable. All
| of the things that immediately ticked me off about 1.0 are gone, and it
| makes a great program for small/medium sized documents.  It's great! 
| KSpread has multiple undo!  This is a feature that has been completely
| missing from all versions of Quattro Pro (At least up to 9)!  Go figure..
|
|   Do I use KOffice exclusively?  No.  Is i good enough for 90% of what I
| do? Yes.  And it's a joy to work with, and free to boot!
[...]
|
|   Ben

-- 

Vadim Plessky
http://kde2.newmail.ru  (English)
33 Window Decorations and 6 Widget Styles for KDE
http://kde2.newmail.ru/kde_themes.html
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http://kde2.newmail.ru/font_test_arial.html

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