On 7/20/06, André Wyrwa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
No we don't. Mozilla is doing sufficient work in that area and we don't need to re-invent the wheel. All we need to do is integrate with Mozilla products wherever possible.
Tight integration - like download them at the same time tight. And Thunderbird needs a lot of work, from what I hear. (I use Gmail online, so what do I know about a mail client?)
- A Publisher Program intergrated Publisher? As far as i understood it so far, Publisher is a DTP application. It is thereby out of focus of an Office Suite and Scribus should be your preferred alternative. However, I'd be happy to see Writer leave the Word processor arena behind and go more into a DTP direction.
Why is DTP outside of an office suite? You don't make flyers in an office? I make them all the time - and bulletins, and posters, and newsletters.... DTP is big, and should be included in an office suite. People say Draw is good for this - not in my experience, but YMMV. And Scribus, although they say they are "native" in 3 major platforms - Windows, Mac, and Linux - they have some weird dependency issues that really should be included in the installer, instead of making users download 10 different things and stick them in different places on the computer. And the Windows port is still beta. Again, out of scope for an Office Suite. Plus again, a solution (NVU)
comes from Mozilla.
I think it's all the same, content creation for an email, content creation for a memo, content creation for a web site. More and more stuff is moving to the web. Web page creation is a part of more and more people's jobs. It should be included in a complete office suite. And, for the record, N|vu is not done by Mozilla. It is based on the Composer function from the old Mozilla Suite, that's true - but it a completely different project that is run by the people at Linspire. Or was run by them. I haven't seen any updates on N|vu in about a year. Nothing since they went 1.0. It's a descent program, but it still could use some work, IMHO. Go look at what's out there. OOo should only integrate these things
where integration makes a lot of sense. In all other cases, external projects provide your needs.
Integration is a good idea for Firefox, Thunderbird, and maybe N|vu - but not with Scribus or any other project that is not truly cross-platform. The Mozilla projects are really the only ones that are as cross-platform as OOo. GIMP isn't (since it needs GTK+ on Windows, and X11 on Mac) - AbiWord is, but we've got Writer, so we don't need AbiWord. That's really about it. So if we work with anybody - it should be Mozilla. Again, that's just me talking. Other people may disagree. Flowchart Drawing -> Yes, definately something that makes sense to
integrate. Draw's flowchart drawing should be improved and integration should be enhanced...like i.e. have a basic flowchart generated automatically from a structured writer document and stuff like that. Look into Draw's current offers in that area and alternatively, have a look at Dia of GNOME.
Dia is for Windows, too. http://dia-installer.sourceforge.net/ - but it requires GTK+ eMailing, Web-Authoring, Calendaring -> Where is the sense in an Office
Suite integrating that functionality? Where is the integration between Outlook and Word or Excel? Having this in an office suite is total nonsense.
Um, not really. It's all about content creation. What's the difference between writing a memo in Word and an business-wide email to your coworkers in Outlook? Why shouldn't my contacts be available to me when I'm writing a resume - just like they are when sending an email? Why wouldn't I want my calendar to link to a presentation I'm about to give in 30 minutes, so I can go over it one more time? Mozilla cares for that and that's fine. Integrating
Calendaring and Project Planning would make a lot of sense, though. However, look at Thunderbird and Sunbird. Also, Lightning will be the next gen calendaring extension for Thunderbird making it even with Outlook.
Those projects are not nearly as good as, well, let's just say the propriatary models. Not yet. Not by a lot. This coming from my friends in the business world that live and die by this stuff. Me, I'm too laid back to use my Google Calendar. Desktop Publishing -> Yes, integration would make sense, but you really
don't need a text processor and a desktop publisher. Rather turn your text processor into a desktop publisher, i'd say. For the time being, go with Scribus.
EW! Hell no. Sorry. Wrong answer. Two totally different things! I don't want to write a memo in InDesign any more than I want to design a tri-fold leaflet in Word. That's like saying PowerPoint and Draw are the same thing because you can put words and pictures together on them. Apple has a program called Pages, it's a part of their iWork suite. (If you can call 2 bundled programs a "suite".) Pages is a Desktop Publishing Program. It is not a word processor. If all I had on my computer was the OS and Pages - I'd have to use another computer to do word processing, because Pages is a horrible word processor. It's an okay DTP, but trying to write a simple letter or report with it - horrible. It doesn't act anything like a word processor. I would rather OOo leave out any attempt to do DTP than to try to make Writer one. Let Writer be a word processor, and just that. M'kay? Thanks! -- - Chad Smith http://www.gimpshop.net/ http://www.whatisopenoffice.org/ http://www.chadwsmith.com/
