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List:       koffice
Subject:    Re: KOffice issues [Re: Question about your KPresenter's review]
From:       Rob Landley <landley () trommello ! org>
Date:       2002-03-06 0:10:27
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On Tuesday 05 March 2002 02:02 am, Catherine Olanich Raymond wrote:

> > 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.
>
> Wait a minute.  Why should I, an artless user, have to save my KWord
> document in HTML just to get a product that someone using a Word machine
> can read?

It's not a question of why a naieve user should have to know to stand on one 
foot and cluck like a chicken to send a document from KDE to the rest of the 
world.  That's just gravy.  And it's not just that HTML is almost guaranteed 
to lose a boatload of formatting.

The file type associations on the word user's system aren't going to pop up 
Word when they receive an HTML document.  They're going to pop up explorer, 
which is not going to allow them to edit and send back the document.

Now there may be some way to lie to windows (This isn't REALLY a web page, 
it's a word processing document) without confusing word (it doesn't LOOK like 
a word file), but just the concept makes me nervous...

How this is better than the RTF solution is a seperate question...

> > Than you even won't have to open StarOffice/OO, you can edit docs using
> > KOffice!
>
> Uh....I'm not following this.  Don't you still need OO to convert the Word
> document to something KOffice can handle?

He's suggesting it should be possible to break out OpenOffice's nifty word 
import/export filters and bolt them on to KWord.  He's just trying to find a 
relatively non-intrusive way of doing it which doesn't involve getting sucked 
neck-deep into fairly icky OpenOffice code which has (so far) been ported 
from OS/2 to Windows to Linux, purchased by Sun, and subjected to an "IP 
cleansing" process quite probably removing anything approaching a comment.

I'm in the process of putting together a Linux From Scratch system, meaning 
when I get that far I'll finally have a copy of KDE compiled from source.  At 
which point I can bang on this kind of thing myself, time permitting.  Having 
once been an OS/2 kernel hacker (employed by IBM and everything), StarOffice 
doesn't frighten me.  It can't possibly be in worse shape than Feature 
Install was when I inherited it.  (Not that FI was in great shape when I left 
it, but you can only go just so far upstream against a fundamentally borked 
design.  It's like trying to "save" a recipe halfway through cooking it, the 
easy way is to just start over with a clean bowl and fresh ingredients...)

Rob

(People sometimes think there are crummy examples of coding in the Open 
Source community.  They've never encountered a project where coders were 
literally paid by the line, the architects fundamentally changed their mind 
about five times during implementation and the implementors theory was "I get 
paid the same either way", and of course let's not forget programmers on six 
month contracts when the project has been going for two years, so you have 
code that's been handed off three times by people who didn't care about what 
they were leaving behind.  Uphill!  Both ways!)
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