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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: KOffice potential, a call for developers
From:       Raphael Langerhorst <raphael-langerhorst () gmx ! at>
Date:       2005-01-08 17:25:28
Message-ID: 200501081825.28969.raphael-langerhorst () gmx ! at
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Hello,

Thanks a lot for your comments, I am just about to submit the article 
on dot.kde.org, so it came _just in time_, comments later, copy to 
the koffice list.

Regards,
Raphael

On Saturday 08 January 2005 18:14,Philippe Rigault  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Sending you the message directly.
> I first posted this reply to koffice-devel@kde.org, but since the
> list is moderated, I don't know what its fate will be.
>
> BTW, I want to contribute (personnaly and with my institution) more
> to Koffice, and there are a few things I can bring, but this is the
> subject of another discussion.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Philippe Rigault
>
> ----------  Forwarded Message  ----------
>
> Subject: Re: KOffice potential, a call for developers
> Date: January 8, 2005 10:12 am
> From: Philippe Rigault <prigault@oricom.ca>
> To: koffice-devel@kde.org
>
> Hi,
>
> Please find my comments below.
> I am interested in making your post more attractive for
> organizations/businesses/senior-individuals that could contribute
> to koffice (I am not so interested at random junior volunteers).
>
> Best regards,
>
> Philippe Rigault
>
> > KOffice is one of the youngest office suites available.
>
> I would suppress this (irrelevant, and not accurate).
>
> > And it is
> > built on KDE. This advantage brings enormous potential in terms
> > of integration, performance and even scalability which are vital
> > for business deployments.
>
> Excellent, this is the key point.
>
> > You can help to utilize these capabilities and
> > bring the full potential of KOffice to life.
>
> I would rather say:
> The Koffice team is looking at contributors for significantly
> increasing the potential of Koffice.
>
> > The functionality KOffice has already reached in its short life
> > is incredible if we consider the small number of developers that
> > made this happen.
>
> Avoid using adjectives like 'amazing', 'incredible', 'tremendous'.
> Use objectivity instead.
>
> Having a small number of developers is a _bad_ feature that does
> not inspire confidence to an organization (btw, it is no excuse for
> the state of a program. Remember: to the --uneducated-- world,
> Linux has all been written by one guy...).
>
> > And still, KOffice has a great performance despite all
> > the functionality already implemented. This makes it even usable
> > on quite old hardware.
>
> I would prefer something like:
>
> KOffice has great performance and is fully usable on low-end
> hardware, which makes it suited for organizations and individuals.
> (you can elaborate on return-on-investment and recycling hardware
> if you like).
>
> Note: 'great performance' means different things to different
> people. People using large spreadsheets (>10,000 rows) might not be
> so thrilled about kspread's current limitations and performance
> (and OOo for that matter).
>
> > Because KOffice is built directly on KDE, it can offer the best
> > office experience on a KDE desktop.
>
> This is a very important point (the most important IMHO), which
>  differentiates koffice from all other suites (including OOo with
> KDE-look). Please give it more importance.
>
> I can think of a few clear distinctions:
> - the communication framework between applications (DCOP)
> - the complete abstraction of document location (accessing a file
> by path, URL, fish://)
> - startup time and interactivity
> - Full Qt framework
>
> Examples targeted at showing this are missing.
> My experience is that showing real-life examples is key. Each time
> I show a 5-minute demo of what I can do on my KDE desktop, people
> go WOW, because some concepts basic for us (DCOP and fish:// are
> examples) are new to them.
>
> > Even full OASIS document format support
> > is targeted for the next release (1.4) which is the same file
> > format as OpenOffice.org 2 will have. This will make data
> > exchange with OpenOffice.org seamless!
>
> If you bring OOo in the picture, please provide arguments for
> differentiating Koffice form it. If one wants OASIS document
> formas, why would he/she run Koffice instead of OOo ?
>
> > Much work has already been done, but KOffice simply needs more
> > developers to fully utilize and implement the potential it has.
> > Many
> > central office components like KWord, KPresenter, Kivio and
> > KSpread are already quite stable but still have a few glitches
> > here and there.
> > Karbon14 (vector graphics) and Kugar (report generator) are in
> > a less good shape because of lack of developers. Also smaller
> > components like KFormula, KChart or KDGantt could use some
> > attention.
>
> The key to attracting contributors to a project is to show them
> - that the project is interesting and has visibility (they don't
> want to miss the boat)
> - that the increase in contributors is done for a reason, i.e ther
> is a plan for using the added resources (they will take the boat to
> go somewhere).
>
> I don't see much on the second point there. I think that
> establishing a clear, ambitious list of priorities is a must.
>
> > And KOffice has many more applications to offer that will
> > hopefully be included in next major releases: Krita (Pixmap
> > Graphics), Kexi (Database Frontend) and KPlato (Project
> > Management).
>
> Remove 'hopefully' (after all, developers/packagers have the full
> control on what is happening).
>
> > All these
> > applications are in development, have a huge potential ... and
> > could use more human resources.
>
> Counterproductive statement if it does not show that resources are
> targeted at a precise outcome.
>
> > As you can see, KOffice is close to offer a very complete office
> > environment, probably the most feature complete office suite
> > available,
>
> Er, I am not sure I would go as far as that.
> Koffice lags _far_ behind other suites in MS-compatibility.
>
> -------------------------------------------------------

-- 
Raphael Langerhorst, JID: raphael@jabber.pilgerer.de
G System, The Evolving Universe - http://www.g-system.at
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