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List:       koffice
Subject:    RE: KOffice issues [Re: Question about your KPresenter's review]
From:       "Lukas Smith" <smith () dybnet ! de>
Date:       2002-03-04 15:27:27
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Again i would like to point all interested people to xml.openoffice.org.
I just posted a message on openoffice.org about this again, since
similar stuff popped up there.

Xml.openoffice is a site dedicated to finding a general packaging
solution for all office suites. There has also been talk about a
standard format on that list.

I know I keep pluging that site but
#1 its very important
#2 its not taking off
#3 I suck and don't have time nor the skills to get involved myself

Anyways ... here is a quote from said email (quoting myself here of
course):
"The thing is that such a standard will also help in another respect. If
we could agree on a basic standard which all the suites can extend to
their needs we would make the filter job a lot easier for all.

Any filter that could convert to that standard format would then be
available to all office suites. This will be a significant improvement!!

This would in effect be a library that could also be used in other areas
to facilitate open exchange of data through non proprietary formats.
People could write PHP, PERL etc bindings for this library.

This is not about sirvival of the fittest but just saving tons of time.

And yes the main challenge is first setteling what needs to go in this
basic standard and how that basic standard should handle things.
Obviously most office suite will want build on top of this in order to
differentiate themselves in the feature set. So this is the place where
each of the office suites could do their "thang".

But its pretty rediculous complaing about the unopeness of MS's formats
when open formats are not implemented. Maybe implementing a filter for
open formats would also be a good starting point for new developers that
want to help out but that are not yet experienced with the office suite
they are working with nor reverse engineering proprietary formats with
obfuscated documentation."

Best regards,
Lukas Smith
smith@dybnet.de
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_______________________________

> -----Original Message-----
> From: koffice-admin@mail.kde.org [mailto:koffice-admin@mail.kde.org]
On
> Behalf Of Vadim Plessky
> Sent: Monday, March 04, 2002 4:19 PM
> To: cathy@thyrsus.com; esr@thyrsus.com
> Cc: KOffice
> Subject: KOffice issues [Re: Question about your KPresenter's review]
> 
> On Saturday 02 March 2002 01:11, Rob Landley wrote:
> |   On Wednesday 27 February 2002 12:32 am, Catherine Olanich Raymond
> wrote:
> [...]
> |   > > At a moment, I have no choice but tell "wait a minute. I will
save
> |   > > your attachment to my disk and reload Windows".
> |   > > It looks _stupid_, and I feel myself quite uncomfortable in
such
> |   > > situation.
> |   >
> |   > Thanks.  In my case, my personal machine at home is not
dual-boot,
> so I
> |   > couldn't even do that much.  We have a dual boot machine, but
it's
> so
> |   > slow I have hesitated even to attempt to use Windows on it.  :-(
> |
> |   File formats are a communications protocol.  A way of sending data
> from
> | one user to another.  Even word processing ones: you get .doc files
in
> an
> | attachment because there's a critical mass of people out there who
> generate
> | them and who expect them.
> |
> |   The ain't gonna convert to a new format until you convert their
tools
> out
> |   from under them, and to do that, your tools MUST handle the old
format
> | well enough to be usable with the old format.  Period, end of story.
> 
> I beleive we are still at the beginning, not at the end :-)
> I agree 100% with you [Rob] that we need to achieve crtitical mass
first.
> And KWord/KOffice for Windows [despite the fact that many KDE
developers
> and
> users *hate* Windows] would be a great tool to increase KOffice's User
> Base.
> 
> [...]
> |   > > * good motivation to promote PDF usage inside your office or
with
> |   > > partners.
> |   >
> |   > What does "PDF" mean?
> |
> |   Portable Document Format.  Naturally, since it has the word
"portable"
> in
> | the name, it's pretty much by one company only (Adobe), and by
> "portable"
> | they mean "both windows and macintosh".  (Queue blues brothers: "We
have
> | both kinds of music here: Country and Western!")
> |
> |   Konqueror should be able to handle them, and if not the command
"xpdf"
> | from he command line displays them quite well.
> 
> AFAIK Konqueror displays those PDFs perfectly.
> You just need "kdegarphics" RPM /package to be installed. as
KGhostScript
> is
> part of that package.
> 
> |
> |   They're mostly a presentation format rather than a word processing
> | format, though.  More akin to powerpoint than word.
> 
> Yep.
> And there is an opinion circulation around (PDF world, SVG world,
etc.)
> that
> SVG can be a good replacement for both PostScript and PDF.
> Anyway, there is no development going around PostScript, all
> "improovements"
> are going into PDF.
> As soon as KDE/KWord can "print to SVG" - we can get another
"portable
> document format"
> It seems that selection of SVG viewers under Windows is again limited
to
> Adove SVG plugin - but on Linux, we have KSVG coming,  and when KSVG
> reached
> maturity, it can indeed be a good choice.
> Unfortunately, QSVGprinter class is still not present in Qt 3.0.x, but
as
> soon as it "gets in", we can expect a lot of interesting stuff coming
out
> of
> Qt/KDE.
> 
> |   > > Languages support (Cyrillic, for example).
> |   > > KWord uses Unicode, embeds fonts, etc., and so far (it's
version
> for
> |   > > KDE3) is free of font embedding/encoding problems with
Cyrillic.
> |   >
> |   > That's good to know.
> |
> |   KWord never struck me as badly written or badly designed.  Just
> | incomplete and maybe in need of a little more testing.
> 
> It depends what you mean under "completeness" :-)
> Is Word 2000 complete? For sure.
> But I doubt you canuse it for something different than "fax printing"
> It even doesn't have WYSIWIG!
> And if you at least once asked your MS Word to "export HTML" - than
you
> already know that you should NEVER use this feature.
> 
> |   >
> |   > Er, Vadim, I'm sure that's true.  But I don't understand how
that is
> |   > likely to affect me as a user.
> |
> |   It's very simple.
> |
> |   A web browser that can't understand HTTP, HTML, CSS, Javascript,
and
> in
> | some cases flash plugins, is unusable on the internet today.  It
doesn't
> | matter if it handles postscript, docbook, and the old OS/2 INF file
> format
> | spectacularly.  It's not a usable web browser because that's not
what
> all
> | the web pages people want to look at are in.
> |
> |   A tool that can convert HTML into something else you can view
might be
> 
> I can add here that I tried using Konqueror as "PDF generator" as
well.
> And it works smoothly - you just need to test KDE3beta for this task.
> HTML was "hand-written", and in contrast to KDE/Konqueror, Mozilla and
> Opera
> could not print it out correctly.
> So, I sugggest that
> * you can use HTML+CSS if you have Linux/Konqueror installed
> * if you are forced to share those docs with Windows or Mac users -
print
> well-written HTMl to PDFs, using Konqueror, and share with those
people.
> 
> |   decent.  Might even be part of a somewhat useful read-only web
> browser.
> | But you can't do online banking with it, or send email through a
web-
> based
> | service.
> |
> |   If I receive a document from someone, there is no point whatsoever
in
> | being able to edit it if I can't send it BACK.  I might as well just
> have a
> | viewer, not a word processor.  And sending it back to a windows user
> (still
> | 90% of the market and going to stay that way until this chicken and
egg
> | problem is solved) in KWord, when what they're going to try to read
it
> with
> | is Microsoft Word, is truly pointless.
> 
> You need to save that doc in HTML, or print to PDF.
> HTML generated by KWord can be easliy imported to Word 2000.
> I tested it several times, it works.
> 
> |
> |   > > Ironically, but documentation is not the biggest problem withg
> KWord
> |   > > or KPresenter . At least in my opinion.
> |
> |   I think KPresenter is designed around the wrong premise.  KWord is
a
> | seperate issue.
> |
> |   > > FILTERS, *FILTERS* - that's what killing KOffice at a moment.
> |
> |   I agree 100%.
> |
> |   > > Well, problem is known, every month someone is asking "when
Kword
> |   > > will have MS Word Export filter" - but, as KDE/KOffice is a
> volunteer
> |   > > project, we need either wait or submit patches. Or provide
funding
> |   > > :-)
> |
> [...]
> |
> |   Just about the ONLY way to get a decent kword export filter for
.doc
> | files in a finite amount of time is to suck the appropriate code out
of
> | OpenOffice. I'm told that the openoffice code is pretty frightening,
but
> my
> | understanding is that word is worse.
> 
> It would be interesting to have someone volunteering this.
> 
> |
> |   > Please note that I have not criticized KWord on this basis.  The
> |   > criticisms that began this thread are all based solely on my use
of
> |   > KPresenter, in which I began a new slide show that did not
attempt
> to
> |   > incorporate information from *any* Windows-based or Microsoft
> program.
> |   >
> |   > I did not attempt to use KWord for opening MS Word documents
from my
> |   > office based on reports from Rob Landley and because I had
already
> |   > found Star Office usable for that purpose (see below).
> |
> |   We first tried Red Hat 7.1 (OpenOffice 1.0, I think), with no .doc
> file
> |   support at all.  Then we tried 7.2, which can read word files, and
> write
> | RTF files.  Ok, I can see this, decent way to avoid the word export
> | problem, word can read RTF (usually pretty transparently too), so
it's a
> | tolerable choice. But KWord can't read RTF files.  My response to
that
> | turns the "R" into a "W"...
> |
> |   It's like whoever wrote it had such a windows-centric view of the
> world
> | that interoperating with other windows users was important, and
> | interoperating with other KDE users in the same environment was a
> situation
> | that had simply never occurred to them.  If I distribute an RTF
document
> to
> | my office mailing list, KWord users can't read it.  Even I can't
read it
> | unless I keep the original...
> |
> |   Did I miss something?  I feel I must have, but I couldn't find a
way
> to
> | make it read RTF...
> 
> Yes, I also found this, and this is pretty frustrating...
> Kword can write RTFs and can't read...
> 
> BTW: is someone working on compatibility with StarOffice6/OpenOffice
(OO)?
> I rememebr it was discussed once on this list, around 6 months ago,
but
> have
> no further info.
> As StarOffice will use XML-based file format, I guess writing
>      StarOffice <-> KOffice
> filter should be not so difficult as writing MS Word export filter.
> It would be nice too if StarOffice/OO separated import/export
operations
> from
> the main package.
> Than I guess you can use folowing sequence:
> * import MS Word doc to OO
> * save in XML/OO format
> * convert from XML/OO to XML/KOffice
> 
> Than you even won't have to open StarOffice/OO, you can edit docs
using
> KOffice!
> 
> |
> |   Rob
> 
> --
> 
> Vadim Plessky
> http://kde2.newmail.ru  (English)
> 33 Window Decorations and 6 Widget Styles for KDE
> http://kde2.newmail.ru/kde_themes.html
> KDE mini-Themes
> http://kde2.newmail.ru/themes/

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