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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: Really bad review of KOffice 1.4.1
From:       Sebastian Sauer <mail () dipe ! org>
Date:       2005-09-18 13:52:07
Message-ID: 200509181552.07588.mail () dipe ! org
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kent@mslinux.com wrote:
> I just want to see motivated people who think KOffice
> can kick the living daylight out of MS Office on the Windows platform and
> be able to produce code to prove it.

I guess nearly everybody who provides his free time to work on KOffice is 
highly motivated. No question that KOffice already kicks MSOffice :)

1. We would like to suggest not to concentrate on support for native 
MSOffice-formats. As you may read already even MS announced that wellformed 
XML will be the default format for MSOffice in near future (* see note at the 
bottom). So, rather then beeing able to import/export various native formats, 
it would make much more sense to improve the XML/XSLT solution we have right 
now in koffice/filters/xsltfilter/* bringing me to my next point...

2. OpenDocument is the way to go and guess what, it's XML too. So, it would 
make much more sense to finesh it and be 99.9% compatible with OpenOffice 
first. Based on an integrated and fully working XML/XSLT-solution it 
shouldn't be that hard to get a import/export system for MS-XML done. Even 
XML/OpenDoc leaves enough compatiblity-issues and work up for next years. 
Think of embedded macros, databases, OLE or brides to the UNO-runtime.

3. Whole KDE could profit from better XML/XSLT/XForm/XQuery-support. As far as 
I know some kde-devels are already working on something similar named KDOM2 
and (afaik) it's scheduled to replace the existing DOM-implementation in 
KHTML. So, it wouldn't be needed to start from the scratch nor to let the 
project die once the money is over and ppl have to continue with surviving by 
doing jobs outside of KDE.

4. Well. Finally I've to add, that at least Kexi has already a nice working 
import MSAccess-Databases solution written by Martin Ellis. Compared to 
OpenDoc aka word-processing there seems to be no standard for databases. Also 
I would like to suggest Jaroslaw Staniek as possible "target" for work done 
on win32-support. He doesn't only develop on and uses windows on a daily 
base, he also did already a lot of great win32-porting work for kexi and 
kdelibs in general. Also I would suggest, just like Boudewijn did, that's a 
shame dfaure provides his skills for non-KDE / non-KOffice related stuff.

* MS will provide open XML, but cause of patents we (FOSS) arn't able to use 
it. But that doesn't prevent e.g. companies or even users to use some XSLT to 
import/export from/to MSOffice-XML if they buyed a license from MS to be 
allowed to do so...

This mail is (C)2005 by the Kexi-Team :)
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