Hi everyone, I've been meaning to write this e-mail for a while now, but haven't gotten around to it until now -- I hope it's still relevant.
The Next Decade Manifesto and the recent press release (available at http://www.documentfoundation.org/lists/announce/msg00016.html for those who haven't read it yet) open up a lot of question and comments: "TDF founders foresee a completely different future for the office suite paradigm, which - in the actual format - is over 20 years old, to be based on the document (where the software is a layer for the creation or the presentation of the contents)." What exactly does that mean for the internal structure of LibreOffice? Does this mean that LibO will be more object-oriented? "In addition, each single module of LibreOffice will be undergoing an extensive rewrite, with Calc being the first one to be redeveloped around a brand new engine - code named Ixion - that will increase performance, allow true versatility and add long awaited database and VBA macro handling features." Great. "Writer is going to be improved in the area of layout fidelity and Impress in the area of slideshow fidelity. Most of the new features are either meant to maintain compatibility with the market leading office suite or will introduce radical innovations." Can't wait to see it. I'm very curious as to what the "radical innovations" will bring. "The Document Foundation is going to be at the heart of the Free Software universe, where users want to build a different future for office suites, working together with developers." It'd be great if TDF focused on integration and interoperability with other open-source projects. I'd really like to see Linux become the primary platform to focus on (yes, Linux has a much smaller user base than Windows, but that will never change if software companies keep favoring Windows). For Linux, OpenOffice.org (going forward LibreOffice) is vital. It would also be great if LibO, KOffice, AbiWord, Gnumeric, Ease, and all the other open-source editors worked together to set standards. It'd be great, for example, if you could choose a standard open-source font triad that was bundled with all (relevant) open-source software (and closed-source software too) to counter MS's Times-Arial-Courier triad (and the rising Calibri-Cambria-Candara triad). Or if you could agree on the same keyboard shortcuts. Lastly, it'd be nice if all the office suite powers integrated with and helped expand websites for open-source fonts (http://openfontlibrary.org/), clipart (http://www.openclipart.org/), and ODF templates (no central website yet). I'm guessing collaborating on a single extension framework is out of the question, but would a single dictionary framework (for spelling and grammar checks) be plausible? "Users read, write, modify and share documents, and are focused on contents rather than software features. After 20 years of feature oriented software, it is now the right time to bring back content at the centre of user focus". Does this mean that the ribbonesque UI that came out of OOo Renaissance will be abandoned in favor of a more efficient and less distracting UI? -- Unsubscribe instructions: Email to [email protected] Posting guidelines: http://netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html Archive: http://www.documentfoundation.org/lists/discuss/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived ***
