Native KOffice for Mac OS X 335
bsharitt writes "A preliminary version of KOffice has been built natively on Mac OS X. It looks like a lot of the hard part is over, and now a lot of cleaning up and bug fixes stand between Mac OS X and a free full featured office suite." There's also a story on the dot.
My take on KOffice, and how it might be on OSX (Score:-1, Insightful)
It is in this respect that in its initial versions KOffice seemed to me to be a little bit unfocused, (and maybe a little unsuited for OS X in that regard). Yes, there are applications that fall into all of the Official Office Suite categories, except for a database application, which, fortunately, is under development (I'd bet money that more companies use databases than make charts and presentations or, for that matter, draw pictures). Vector graphics are great for computer artists and hobbyists, but they're scarcely essential to business.
I am not a spreadsheet expert by any means. I rarely use them and never use their advanced features. In discussion with people who do use spreadsheets a lot and who have taken KSpread for a spin, I've gotten the impression that it's a very nice little application that does not match the features of Excel, or 1-2-3, or late versions of Quattro Pro, or even the spreadsheets in StarOffice or Applix. This is not necessarily a bad thing, in my view, because such applications have suffered from such feature bloat that their original intent often seems lost.
But I do use word processors, a lot. I've written these columns in KWord for months now, and KWord has steadily gotten better. I haven't explored all its features by any means. But I have used many word processors on many platforms, and not just Macintosh.
It has a couple of attributes that annoy the hell out of me. First, its import-export filters are all but useless. (When I finish this comment, as I comprise them before posting in alternate applications, I'll save it as a text file, then open StarOffice to format it before saving it there as HTML. When opening the text file, I'll have to go through it and replace the pound signs it uses to denote tabs with actual tabs.) Second is an ease of use problem that is inexcusable.
It is now standard pretty much everywhere: when one is editing a document, if one highlights a word or section and then begins typing, the new typing replaces the highlighted text. This is true largely throughout KDE2 as well, in such applications as KMail and Konqueror. Not so in KWord. Highlight some text, start typing, and you're typing next to the highlighted text. This is inconsistent with every modern word processor--and for no good reason.
Likewise, it would be nice to be able to actually configure the thing and save the configurations from session to session. Here, at 1280x1024, I need the magnification set to 200 percent. Not sometimes but all the time. I use a U.S. Letter layout, not sometimes, but all the time. Yet there is no way of making these the defaults--indeed, the only things one may semi-permanently set is whether or not a couple of toolbars appear.
I simply cannot imagine any business that has a choice electing to use KWord at this point in its development.
So, really, who is KOffice's target audience? Is it Mac users?
Sometimes this can be determined by playing around with an application for awhile, but this doesn't work with KOffice: It's not especially easy to use, but it's also not so feature rich that it can be said there are rewards in store for those who master it. It's plenty stable, so it can't be thought of as a beta. No, the impression is that it is a competently executed thing that nobody devoted much time to designing. But that doesn't mean it's bad.
Re:OpenOffice.org (Score:5, Insightful)
For some people, that may not be a big deal, but most of us on OS X hate to have to use X11, and would *much* rather use native apps if we can at all avoid X11. It's not that it's bad, it's just that it's an inconvenience and doesn't blend in well with the rest of the environment.
Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is going to potentially have more impact on the popularity of Open Source software than anything to date. Office X on OS X has some really annoying "features" like the finking on it's self through a LAN. If this is solid and "Mac-like" it could prove to be a very popular alternative for Mac users who want to be free of Redmond.
90/10 rule in effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, in almost all Open Source projects the 'hard' and 'easy' parts are reversed...
The challenge and glory is done, now all that's left is methodical, monotonous bug chasing. Who's up?
Re:Free not important? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm ignorant... (Score:1, Insightful)
Apple should take care of this project (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple? Like they did with khtml.
Re:Free not important? (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider the example of lack of Hebrew support [theregister.co.uk] in Microsoft Office for Mac. There is no technical reason for it; the Unicode-based MacOS X is ready to support Hebrew out-of-the-box. It's just a political decision of the vendor [microsoft.com] of this particular office suite trying to force Israeli Mac users to abandon their platform of choice. I think this example is enough for you to understand why *free* (as in speech) office suite is a big deal indeed, after all.
Standardization is what is needed (Score:-1, Insightful)
Re:Free not important? (Score:5, Insightful)
I expect I'll use a word processor on my personal system four or five times a year. Therefore, spending $230 on Word would be a complete waste. I welcome a free word processor.
Re:Opportunity (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:OpenOffice.org (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OpenOffice.org (Score:5, Insightful)
Because we're all much better off when three or four teams of talented programmers compete with eachother to make ALL of their solutions better and better.
With your logic, one could just as easily say; "Microsoft Office is the best! I use it in my office every day to produce tons of heavily formatted documentss. It saved me. I'm never going back to Open Office. KOffice was not as useful as Microsoft Office when I tried to switch before. Why not just concentrate on making Microsoft Office better and better?"
see?
Twirl this (Score:5, Insightful)
If the Mac platform loses MS Office, they lose any chance of selling systems where reliable interoperability is an issue. By which I mean, where people need to be able open and edit Office files natively, without getting the formatting all munged up by import/export filters. This means no more workplace Macs (except maybe the art department) and no Macs purchased by people who need to take their work home. The pundits says this would probably mean the end of the Mac, and I don't see any flaw in their logic.
And yeah, you'll have reliable interoperability when all those PCs get Windows and Office overwritten by Linux, KDE, and KOffice. Which would be a nice change but one I'm not holding my breath for.
Re:I'm ignorant... (Score:3, Insightful)
As other posters have pointed out, Open Office requires a running X server. I like the idea of a native Koffice. Would probably be a better alternative than Appleworks, which is what I currently use on OS X.
I think Koffice is under-appreciated. Though I prefer the power of Open Office on Linux machines with sufficient resources, Koffice is faster and looks good. It's also more intuitive. Hooray for more choices.
Re:Twirl this (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, such a huge percentage of Mac sales, I'm sure. Also, 'MS Office' file formats don't always necessitate
I say that Apple should learn their lesson from IBM and OS/2 - don't go for a 'compatible' solution - go for an ALTERNATIVE solution. Ditch MS and go your own way! OS/2's biggest problem was trying to work WITH Windows, and it killed them. Noone wanted to make OS/2-native software when OS/2 could run Windows software. Why have crappy MS software for the Mac when it doesn't gain them any noticable marketshare?
Re:Twirl this (Score:5, Insightful)
Because, as the parent pointed out, NOT having crappy MS software will LOSE them noticeable marketshare. That's one of the evils of an illegal monopoly in the software industry.
Before Steve Jobs returned to Apple, Netscape was the default web browser for Mac OS installations. In the findings against Microsoft in their antitrust case [yahoo.com], it's mentioned that Bill Gates threatened then-CEO Gil Amelio with cancelling MS Office for Macintosh:
So, until there's office software out there that's used at anywhere near the frequency MS Office is used, Apple can't afford to dabble seriously in the office suite market for fear of losing their PC compatibility. After all, Microsoft cancelled Internet Explorer for Macintosh before Safari was even at 1.0. I'm surprised they haven't blown up over Keynote. The only thing that's saving Apple at this point is that Appleworks (aka Clarisworks) still sucks.
Nice effort, but . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
. . . the hard part is over . . .
Not by a long shot. It's hard to say this without sounding like a troll, but what most open source developers just don't get is that the hard part isn't the coding, but putting on the polish so that the app is useful to someone else. Looking at the screenshot, I can pretty much tell you that no Mac user is going to be comfortable using what clearly is not a well-designed Mac app. The fake widgets are out of place. The nested tab views (or two rows of tabs, depending on how you see it) is a terrible interface error straight out of Windows. I imagine trying to use this thing would show it to be even more clunky than the X11 version, where a user would more understand what they're getting into.
Apple gave a very public lesson on the proper way to port OSS when they did Safari. This port clearly took nothing from that lesson. I don't really want to come down on the developers who got it working, because I know the kinds of efforts involved, but I have to say that if anyone thinks this will be of real help to the average Mac user, they are very much mistaken.
Re:looks nice... (Score:3, Insightful)
That being said, after seeing a few other ported apps between linux, windows, and OSX (in whichever direction) it wouldn't surprise me one bit if nobody with the ability to do so actually fixes those icons
Re:Nice effort, but . . . (Score:1, Insightful)
but the interface they built around the engine is entirely non-open.
I like O software, but to be honest I'm GLAD that the interface to KHTML (ie. Safari) isn't open. Let's face it. Open source software just ain't that grand. Could you really have seen or imagined Apple released an open-source browser? Why? What for? That's kinda silly and unnecessary.
So, a proprietary skin on an open core. Kind of like OSX itself for that matter.
Yes. And it works BRILLIANTLY!
perfecting the standard *nix/X11 desktop
There'll ever be one?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:OpenOffice.org (Score:3, Insightful)
Fine, go improve it. Improve it to your heart's content. Be happy, be free.
But don't tell others they can't go improve other open source office tools.
Re:Why not 100% MS compatible office? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Where can I donate? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Opportunity (Greetings from 1996) (Score:3, Insightful)
I just don't see Jobs throwing out Mac OS, and moving to NextStep (or BeOS, which is just as possible an alternative). It wouldn't make a lot of sense.
Re:If Apple ported OS X to x86, I'd migrate now. (Score:3, Insightful)
It wouldn't. Befere 1997 Apple had authorized clones and the clonemakers paid flat rate of $50 for each Mac-compatible machine sold. It was a bad deal for Apple. It's always better to have a $500 margin selling a single PowerMac (and their margin on G5's is obviously much higher) rather than sell 5 copies of OEM MacOS for $50. They traded their market share (that plummeted) for profitability (that rocketed), but that's a wise choice - commericial companies go for profit, not for market share.
How Native is Native? (Score:3, Insightful)