Hi, >> 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?)
That's a distribution topic, not a development one. What can you make better in Thunderbird in terms of integration with OOo components? Well, you could have a database or calc file (database is better) with your contacts and you could use Writer to create your mail bodies. But what for? In MS-Office i always disabled the "use Word to edit emails" option. Yes, Thunderbird needs a lot of work, but it is on the other hand quite a good emailer already. And do you think it would need less work to create just another one from scratch? I'd rather go the improve Thunderbird way. Everything else really is a distribution issue. > 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. You really don't want to have your avarage corporate content provider create the prepress for your flyers. It goes through the fingers of a graphics designer anyway. But i actually do agree that DTP is big. Much bigger than word processing. In fact, word processing is a desease, in my opinion. As some good article i read not too long ago, pointed out, you either need a text editor to create content that doesn't need layout or you need to create a layouted/formatted document and hence a DTP application. That's why I'm saying, make Writer more of a DTP application. Trash the whole word processing metaphor. Word processors are unusable. MS is trying to solve this by UI changes now, but it will only help them so far. OOo has potential to solve it by taking the style metaphor further than MS, but still doesn't go far enough. See further below... > 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. What are these dependencies? For my windows install i only needed Ghostscript. Well, yes, could be integrated into the installer. Distribution issue. > 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. ...exactly. If you wanna go that far, HTML/CSS is the ideal thing for me. In an ideal world you would create unformatted content that is semantically structured, just like in HTML/XML. You would then apply different stylesheets to that content just like in CSS/XSLT to get a print document, an email, a web page or a presentation out of it. But so far no-one goes that way and HTML/CSS is still not powerful enough to replace classic DTP. When i saw the OOo2 style capabilities, i thought "wow...there it is...this is the first step". But it's just that. OOo still has all the crappy inconsequent classical word processing stuff. To go the above descrived way it would need to force the user into using semantic formatting everywhere. In other words, it would force the user to apply styles to everything. But it would also help the user in doing that, it would automatically suggest styles (i.e. based on the previous/next style) settings in the styles themselves. But the current Writer is still so far away from that that it still seems like a whole different application. BTW: Adobe seems to start going that way with InDesign and that little content editing application they introduced recently. So, back to topic: Is web creation really business for an Office Suite at current state? Look at a random business. Do they produce their web pages in Frontpage? Or do they rather have a Typo3, Contenido or whatever setup on their web servers and have someone transfer the content from Word documents to the CMS? Corporate web sites are created by web designers/developers, using web development tools. Not by Office users. (And no - Dreamweaver/GoLive and Frontpage/NVU are not the same types of program - the first are so to say the DTP applications for the web, the latter are the word processors for the web - that's why Frontpage is basically dead). > And, for the record, N|vu is not done by Mozilla. Right, i wasn't exact here. Thanks for pointing it out. > 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. Problem here is the different environments: - QT (Scribus) - GTK/GNOME (GIMP, Evolution, etc.) - XUL (Mozilla) - OOo Bridge (OOo) - wxWindows (...) Basically, they are all cross-platform or on the way there. XUL and OOo are just the ones that are the most successful at current state. > 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? Let's see... Scheduling your Presentation in your Calendar is not integration, it's linking documents/data. You can easily do that between applications if they provide a minimal API for that. Writing a letter in Word and then sending it via eMail is about the same. No need for an "integrated" eMail client. Really, in an OOo eMail client, what would you do that's different from Thunderbird? And still, where is the big deal integration between Outlook and Word? I just can't see it. The contacts are a better point. But as said above...they should be available in a database to all applications. Meaning, all applications should implement a way of accessing that database. However, OpenOffice has the MailMerge functionality. But as far as i understand that uses calc data as input. And here is the problem that's been around for years: every application set maintains it's own way of keeping address data. Which is mostly because there never was a good way provided with the very platform. Outlook contacts only come with MS-Office, Thunderbird address book only comes with Thunderbird. Actually the old windows address book application was a good start, but it just got lost on the way, because it wasn't getting enough development attention. > 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. Right. But would it help us get even with the proprietary stuff to start over from scratch again? The valid point I'm giving you, though, is the issue with the different cross-platform environments. That's the only thing that gives these applications a reason to be part of the OOo suite. > 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. Right, that's why you use a text editor for your memos and InDesign for your leaflet. What's that thing with the half-and-half in between that text processors represent? What's wrong with creating your avarage low layouted office text document in a DTP program? Ok, text processor might not exactly be what you want. But think of the Windows "Wordpad" application. I'd say if you need functionality beyond that, do it in DTP. Did you ever think about how sick the whole "place anchor for picture" thing in Word Processors is? It's UI horror. Really. I'm placing a picture. I'm placing it where i place it. Right there. What's that whole anchor thing? In my company the big majority of people doesn't even get that the text in their word documents jumps around weirdly when they move a picture just a slight bit, because suddenly the anchor has jumped to the next paragraph. It's horror! And it's conceptual, not implementational - although OOo's implementation helps it heaps. > That's like saying PowerPoint and Draw are the same thing > because you can put words and pictures together on them. It's not. And if draw would have a presentation mode, they would be the same thing. ;-) > 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. So what are the things you do in word processing? > It's an okay DTP, but trying to write a simple > letter or report with it - horrible. But is that because it is in itself complicated or is it because you are more used to how your word processor works than you are to how your DTP program works? Of course it depends on how easy your DTP program makes things for you. > It doesn't act anything like a word processor. See, it seems to be all about the ways you are used to. > 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! I'd still say: make it a DTP-Word Processor. ;-) Or better: either go the Wordpad and DTP way or go the content/style separation way. Still sticking with this: Word processors are usability deseases not because of the way they are done, but because of what they are. André. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
