Daniel Carrera wrote:
Randomthots wrote:
This is why I question the philosophy of keeping the "wall of
separation" between "office productivity" apps and "communication
tools", like browsers and e-mail clients that some on this list seem
so adamant about.
It would be stupid for OOo to try to do everything. It has to make a
decision about what it's trying to be, and stick to that.
Sure. But is that decision carved in stone? Regardless of customer
demand or desire? BTW, what exactly is the "it" making this decision?
Not the program itself, I assume. It's people, right now mostly people
working for Sun, and people have been known to change their minds when
appropriate.
And this has NOTHING TO DO with the FORMAT. The OpenDocument format is
suitable for CAD systems, the web browsers of tomorrow, and many other
things that don't exist in OOo. This doesn't mean that OOo should now
add a CAD system and a web browser to the suite. That's a ridiculous
argument.
I wasn't really trying to say that OOo *should* be everything to
everybody. I wasn't even particularly talking about OOo, but rather
ODF/XML and how it relates to HTML. I was thinking about evolution and
convergence in more general terms.
Why do people insist on confusing the format with one application that
happens to support the format? It's bewildering. I'd expect people on
OOo lists to know better. The argument over what OOo should do has
absolutely nothing to do with what the OpenDoument Format should cover
and be able to do.
Do you also expect every single OpenDocument implementation to d oevery
single thing OpenDocument is able to represent? Think about that.
Daniel, you implied about 5 times more than what I actually said. In the
process you almost completely missed my point.
Consider the evolution of html and what is being touted as the next step
in that process -- XHTML. Which is what? A flavor of XML. What's ODF? A
different flavor of XML. Common denominator? XML. Will there be a
convergence? Well, you're an advocate of ODF, as am I. If ODF is
successful, it seems inevitable to me that html as we know it today will
eventually be deprecated and subsumed into a future iteration of ODF.
Now what does that mean for the future direction of OOo? If html is
eventually deprecated in favor of ODF then apps like OOo become the
functional equivalent of present-day apps like Dreamweaver. And any app
that creates and manipulates ODF has to, as a prerequisite, be able to
faithfully display ODF files. In that world a browser would just be an
ODF viewer. It would be trivial then to include browser capabilities in
OOo and arguably stupid not to do so.
You keep using the word "should" in these discussions. This word denotes
either a moral statement or an expression of preference, an opinion.
(Frankly, I'm not entirely sure where to draw the line between the two.)
You treat it as if your *opinion* is some sort of scriptural canon that
only an apostate idiot would dare contradict. It's only an opinion and
mine is just as valid as yours.
Should OOo include a CAD component? DTP? Browser? E-mail?
Draw is already a kind of CAD-ultra-light. It has all the basic
components of CAD, it's just not very sophisticated. It wouldn't take a
lot to upgrade Writer to a full DTP app. Enable the URL drop-box and
type in a http:// url. It *will* retrieve and display that web page. It
does a poor job of formatting it, and if you hit a link it opens the
link in your default browser rather than the same or another OOo
web-window, but that basic browser ability exists.
It's just a matter of design choices which are ultimately somewhat
arbitrary. There's no reason someone couldn't take the OOo code as a
base and create a functioning CAD app or DTP app or a Browser or an
Accounting program or a Calendering app or an e-mail client or *whatever*.
So what should drive these decisions? In the case of Sun it's pretty
obvious to me the answer is "Anything that can help unseat the Microsoft
monopoly." If that means optimizing the code so that the performance
more closely rivals MSO, then so be it. If that means developing an
Outlook replacement because a lot of potential MSO converts are held
back by the lack of same, then by all means create one! I think it's
appropriate to leave the CAD, DTP, etc. to others since these aren't
normal parts of an office suite but others may make different design
decisions based on whatever criteria they choose.
--
Rod
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