Re: Thinking wild or make place for a cloud office

[Xen]

Raphael Bircher schreef op 17-10-2016 0:54:

Hi at all

Just a cracy idea. What happend if we start a complete new project
from the scratch. Apache OpenOffice Cloud? Not a big Office like now,
just a small one.

Please forgive me... it's 0:52 local time.


I considered a cloud presence or (client) to be also a good way to move 
forward.


But I will not interrupt the people doing it now ;-).

Regards.

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Re: Re: In regards to Open Office

[Xen]

Hagar Delest schreef op 04-10-2016 22:04:


My fear is: if AOO exports in OOXML (as LibO does), what will happen
to ODF? Most users would just use OOXML since it would be compatible
with AOO and MS Office. It may lead to frustration because of the
glitches from the conversions. OTOH, it may attract new users.


Personally: I hardly ever do things because of 'rational reasons' of 
that kind. I dislike the very idea of OOXML to begin with and as a 
developer I just lost interest in developing for MS Windows when I was 
about 18. My favourite format is ODF because I do not use MS Office 
anyway (haven't used it since about 2000) and "odt" also looks nice in a 
file browser.


But I'm at pains because for me both OpenOffice and LibreOffice are 
insufficient in terms of quality and robustness and I have started 
writing stuff in Google Docs because (a) it doesn't crash and (b) it 
doesn't throw away my text.


And for me a vital issue is the poor undo functionality in both 
programs.


Every other program out there has 1000x superior undo functionality as 
compared to LibreOffice and OpenOffice.


The smallest text box in some Browser has better undo functionality than 
what we have here. And I cannot live without that, because I often have 
to redo some parts of my text and I cannot constantly save everything 
for fear I am making a mistake.


Hence, today I write in a browser. At least on Linux. On Windows I have 
options (most notably just Wordpad).


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Re: In regards to Open Office

[Xen]

Hagar Delest schreef op 03-10-2016 22:57:


Even if it came from a previous format, the goal was to make a
documented format to allow compatibility with other applications. So
not designed from scratch, agreed, but changes made for
interoperability. That's how I understand the target of ODF.


I just feel that even though people may say they are doing so for "good 
reasons" in the end you will have found that they just tried to feed 
their own table. And were doing so for their own reasons. If you are a 
smaller party and you want people to cooperate with you then it helps a 
lot if you can show that non-interoperation has no good reasons for it; 
it is to take those arguments away from critics: now you have no reason 
to not cooperate.


It just stems from the political perspective of someone who finds 
himself in that position.


It's what /anyone/ would do from that position. That doesn't make it 
better or morally superior; it is just a good strategy to take when you 
want to be the one they should take up for consideration.


So I am just saying it was done for their own reasons and not for 
'altruistic' reasons of that kind; many people may say so, but in the 
end it was just self-interest (and there is not really anything wrong 
with it and I guess that is the whole point of that).


These advocates proclaim moral superiority by pretending to be 
altruistic and then condemning those who are not the same.


But in the end we are all the same and we do things for our own reasons, 
and the open source advocates do so also.


It was /not/ done for altruistic reasons and therefore we are the same 
as some company who is also not doing it for altruistic reasons. This 
façade that people are doing things for different reasons than what they 
are actually doing them for, is what creates the issues.


This creates the façade of moral superiority when it is not so; we are 
all just human, after all.


And the whole point of that is that it is okay to do things for your own 
reasons. You don't first have to "prove" that you are doing something 
for good reasons before you can go and do it.





There is no enemy. Agreed. But Users should be aware of the rules.


I must say I found myself in a similar situation when the Opera M2 (mail 
client) started corrupting my data after I had accidentally started the 
program twice (at the same time). My email from that period was mostly 
lost; for how could I ever recover this.


So I am not unsympathetic to wanting to be in a place where you can be 
sure your data is safe.


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Re: In regards to Open Office

[Xen]

Jörg Schmidt schreef op 03-10-2016 12:14:

From: Hagar Delest [mailto:hagar.del...@laposte.net]



I think that ODF was designed to be a fully open standard to
give the users back the property of their own data.


No, that's not correct.

ODF was written this it was compatible with the capabilities of the 
program OOo.
This is a purely technical issue, and does not mean the ODF would 
therefore not

designed open.


But [MS Office] OOXML is not what we could label a real open
format. There are parts that still refer to proprietary bits.


fud, or show me exactly what parts you mean

e.g. the old binary formats has MS disclosed, see:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/de-de/library/office/cc313105(v=office.14).aspx
https://msdn.microsoft.com/de-de/library/office/gg615407(v=office.14).aspx


The first version of that document was from 2008. So that's been 8 years 
now and counting.


Coincides a bit with my feelings about it. Microsoft was only fiercely 
competiting when it was young, mostly also /because/ it was young (and 
arrogant, hostile).


Typically it is the mindset of a young adolescent and I know Bill Gates 
also had an attitude like that.


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Re: In regards to Open Office

[Xen]

Hagar Delest schreef op 03-10-2016 0:27:


In fact, I came to OOo in 2006 because I used to use MS Word to
compile data and one day a file got corrupted for an unknown reason. I
discovered that there was no way to recover the file because it was
proprietary. I think that at that time the .doc format was not
disclosed yet (but I may be wrong). What is sure is that I could not
get my file back. So I searched the net and found OOo and ODF. And I
adopted OOo because of the file format (I had already tried OOo 1 but
did not like it).

If OOo had not gained popularity, I'm not sure MS would have created
something similar with their OOXML. And if the vendor lock-in policy
is less an issue now, OOo and ODF may be for something. What it would
be if they hadn't been there?

Just to precise something: I'm not complaining, and I don't say Linux
people are the best or whatever. I just say that file format is an
issue. I admit that I think MS do not play fair (but that's logical,
else, they would certainly lose users).
Up to the user to decide what is more important for him.

But if the focus is the application and not the file format, then
what? Make a free clone of MS Office?


You mean to stick with their format? No, if you are creative you will 
create your own format to suit your needs, but you don't create your new 
format for external reasons that have nothing to do with creating an 
application.


The format is useless without application, and since application is its 
only reason to be the focus is always on the application and not on the 
format, because the format merely serves that other thing.


So I'm only saying that ideological reasons are not a good reason to do 
anything. It has to have a use also.


And I only wanted to indicate, as I discover, that no matter how big of 
a mouth people have, in the end they are only doing stuff because it 
works for /them/ also. I think that in the end you find that ideological 
reasons are what people SAY but not what they DO.


The whole Linux ecosystem is so similar to the corporate world that I 
have started seeing them as the same thing.




In this case, there is a point supporting OOXML. But it would slightly
become a de facto standard (what was .doc, ...). But would never be
fully implemented in all the applications due to the references to the
proprietary functions.


Well you know that is the façade of open source: that there is any kind 
of guarantee that the thing /would/ be implemented if the thing was 
entirely non-proprietary. Without proprietariness there is usually not 
much of a reason to do anything.


I am just saying that open source nature gives no guarantees at all even 
though they are often projected (but never realized). To go back to 
GIMP, it is a disorganized whole, there is no organisation almost to its 
parts. This lack of organisation (both in the developers and the product 
itself) creates a disorganized picture that is fragmented. Without 
leadership you cannot do anything.


A visionary needs to charge forward himself (or herself, perhaps) and 
not wait for what others do, but Linux developing is 80% waiting for 
what others think and do. Before you can do anything. Some people call 
this "design by committee". It is the death (and dearth) of creativity.


I thought back in the day that OpenOffice (certainly under Sun) was an 
inspired project and it certainly was, I believe. We see today that 
people like mr. Hamilton would probably not survive the bitterness and 
alienation and ghastliness of the rock-steady but hostile approach the 
LibreOffice developers have. There are, in those communities, no elder 
people that have a bit of wisdom to go with: it is all youth and 
normally youth that doesn't know much. I am very grateful people such as 
himself are here.


The only older people in such communities are new weds (to the system) 
that actually know a lot less than the young ones.


It is youth and arrogance of youth for the most part, what I see. In 
communities like what LibreOffice is today...


But as mr. Hamilton just said; ODF is not fully implemented in anything.

Proprietariness doesn't necessarily mean closed source; it means it is 
controlled by a single party (for example).


It means that single party does not have to suffer design by committee 
issues.


That can also mean people are less likely to adopt it (what you do) but 
this is a balance by how much you want to cooperate with people and how 
much you want to plow ahead yourself. Waiting too much for the approval 
of others creates a dead product.


And the only thing LibreOffice is doing is they are improving the 
/technical/ nature of the code (they are all technical people) and they 
only promise (better code checking tools and the like) stuff that 
doesn't mean a better user experience for users, it only means a better 
user experience for developers.


Maybe then after a while they start to focus on the good stuff but thus 
far they have only done developer

Re: In regards to Open Office

[Xen]

Dennis E. Hamilton schreef op 02-10-2016 23:01:


It is a misunderstanding to assume that there is some "strict" ODF
conformance requirement.  That is factually not the case, nor does
anything in the specification require some clear conformance for
interoperability.


Exactly the same issue as with DLNA/UPNP as what I mentioned. People 
found that the standard was too loose to really guarantee 
interoperability and some things were optional that were actually needed 
for full functionality as well.



ODF may simply become whatever LibreOffice
does, just proving that any open-format standard can become a silo.


Proving that the application is the focus point and not the format.


PS: The ODF specification is not tight enough for what many seem to
automatically presume.  For a technical analysis of that, I have a
free-to-download technical paper that walks through how it goes, with
the failures of change-tracking as a case study:
.  Click on the title "Tracked Changes" for
the free PDF.  Sections 1-2 should make the situation clear enough.


I assume that change-tracking involves the being able to undelete stuff?

There is now a (or was, last summer, a) GSoC project on LibreOffice as 
to that issue.


I saw some of your diagrams. I guess the point was to indicate that the 
cross-line deletes can be done in multiple ways and if two applications 
differ they produce differing results.


It seems so much to me like a ... you might even call it an exercise in 
futility. Getting people to cooperate that all want to do a different 
thing.


The situation is now such that you will not be able to know which ODF 
document was created by what application, and since it is rather 
important to know which one it was, we have a problem here, sir.


Using the same format is now a /hindrance/ rather than a blessing.

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Re: In regards to Open Office

[Xen]

Hagar Delest schreef op 02-10-2016 21:56:

Le 02/10/2016 à 19:29, Xen a écrit :
Jörg was only mentioning that the ODF format was also designed without 
compatibility in mind, and that it is an equal situation.


I think that ODF was designed to be a fully open standard to give the
users back the property of their own data. This was to give users an
alternative to the proprietary formats like .doc, .xls, ...
The problem was that legacy file formats (.doc, .xls, ...) could not
allow intercompatibility between software. Hence the need of an open
standard.


Well Jörg stated this:

ODF 1.0 corresponded to 99% of the original OpenOffice-XML Formal (sxw, 
sxc, etc.)

written only for OOo.

So maybe I should have been more specific. The reality is that ODF was 
not designed; it already existed and apparently, was only slightly 
adjusted and then turned into an "open standard".


But please, I want you to also look at the reality and not just the 
shoulds and wants.


No one outside of the open source community really uses ODF. Probably, 
some new application will see reasons to create its own format if only 
to provide extra features or whatever that the old standard doesn't. 
Also, even if you are not commercial and trying to limit what another 
can do with your files, you can have a reason to e.g. not use a zip file 
format, or whatever else you might say.


So, since ODF was not really designed, and since you can turn any 
standard into an open standard, you could say e.g. Microsoft "should" 
implement and support that open standard, but that's not really related 
to it being open; being open merely guarantees that it would be easier.


But the question was incompatibilities.


By design, there should not be any compatibility aspect in an open
format : if the file format is fully documented, then each software
should respect that format and then the compatibility with other
applications will be achieved.


Tell that to the person who tried to open a Calligra document in 
LibreOffice: all of the bulleting marks were replaced by something else 
and the document didn't look the same at all.


But moreover I think many "open standards" must or apparently always do 
accept a reduced level of functionality, think of the specification for 
DLNA/UPNP in which some really useful functionality is barely possible. 
Causing smaller companies that do want to provide a good user experience 
to use their own format or protocol, or to extend the thing although 
hardly possible.


So the reason Microsoft is so hard to make compatible (and many others 
perhaps) is that they do introduce stuff for their own that hardly 
anyone else can use.


But that's also how you create a better user experience and be honest, 
most of the Linux software world... If I must not speak of AOO here then 
I will mention GIMP, which has the full top menu under the context popup 
(right mouse button) which is such a glaring deficiency (no actually 
context menu, then) that no serious party or company that would want to 
earn money would ever design such a product that way.


GIMP is just near (or nigh) unusable. But I am straying from the 
subject.


In the best case an open standard is going to force companies to reduce 
their level of functionality. In the worst case it is just not going to 
be adopted and remain a pecularity of a select few that can open their 
own documents but no one else does anyway.


So without regard for principle or ideals, look at the actual outcomes 
today.


- We have one side of the world using a closed standard and the other 
using an open standard, and the only reason the "open product" can (or 
has tried to) read the "closed product" is because of market share. 
OpenOffice *needed* to read MS-Word (for instance) but MS-Word did not 
need to read OpenOffice all that much. Both are really doing their own 
thing and do not communicate much.


They are both "islands" in that sense.

Meanwhile AOO and LibreOffice are infighting and Calligra is too 
under-developed to be worth anything. And seeing my personal 
experiences, support for the format is no guarantee that the document 
will look the same from supporting-application to 
supporting-application.


Hence /format/ seems not to be the focus point but /application/. An 
application needs to have a guaranteed, dependable way of rendering the 
format without quirks.


If it does not, having an open format is of no use really. Microsoft's 
format is probably quirky as hell (or its application is) and that is 
more of a problem than being closed.


So closed or open does not seem to determine much of actual outcomes.

Almost every program can open .doc documents so there never really was a 
threat (at least not today) of your data being "hijacked" or 'locked' 
due to vendor-lock-in. That's not a realistic situation. It is /more/ 
difficult to archive or migrate 

Re: In regards to Open Office

[Xen]

Rory O'Farrell schreef op 02-10-2016 15:59:

Top posting:

This thread is going off at half cock!

Hagar's implied point was that any change in editor is almost certain
to cause some alteration (greater or lesser) in formatting.  Why this
should be and whether the precise file format is responsible is hardly
relevant.

Rory


Jörg was only mentioning that the ODF format was also designed without 
compatibility in mind, and that it is an equal situation. I think that 
should be allowed to be mentioned. It was only to correct the sentiment 
that "it's Microsoft's fault once again". If you don't want skewed 
sentiments to be corrected, then don't utter them, please. Then we all 
won't talk and none of us will have a problem.


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Re: In regards to Open Office

[Xen]

Jörg Schmidt schreef op 02-10-2016 14:05:


And let me say it absolutely clear:
I've heard how MS has denigrated many years Linux, but I have also
noticed that MS
reality of ODF recognized.
Only with better software, we can beat MS, not with stupid sayings.


It is easier than ever today, I must say. Microsoft creates worse and 
worse software by the day, for the most part. But for the most part 
Linux is not improving either...


I believe in the competition for the better software, not I believe in 
the power

of ideological talk.


Indeed just saying some software is better won't make it better.

Thank you for these sentiments. In the Linux world many things are make 
believe. If you can get enough people to agree that a pear is orange, 
other people will start believing it too.


Some Linux advents and groups and products keep repeating "their great 
community" and "their awesome software" verbatim every day. But saying 
it is great doesn't necesarily make it great and I see the same on 
television if I have stayed away from it for a while (it will be called 
nationalism).


Only honesty can really improve things. Anyway, sorry for this. Regards.

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Re: Introduction

[Xen]

John D'Orazio schreef op 01-10-2016 1:10:


I still don't quite get what this phrase is trying to express, and it
really sounds like Yoda to me too. I would certainly try to rephrase it 
so
it flows better. My understanding is that this is what it's trying to 
get

across:
"You will often find in the mailing lists that a shortcut notation is 
used

to refer to the same lists. Writing a list name in full, like
dev@openoffice.apache.org can be tedious. So you will often see it 
called

just "dev"."


Well, that's it entirely.

A useful shortcut notation you will often see on the lists. Writing a 
list
name in full, like dev@openoffice.apache.org can be tedious. So you 
will

often see it called just "dev". Similarly, top-level lists like
tradema...@apache.org are often referred to as "trademarks@". This 
shortcut

can be used to refer either to the mailing list and to the team that
operates the mailing list. The context should make it clear, e.g., "You
should check with trademarks@ on whether this will be problem"."


The preceding 2 sections were about the mailing lists. While on the same 
topic, the person writing has a thing on their mind.


It first mentions the thing without describing it in full. But what it 
fully expresses is just what it says of course :p.


The closest alternative is:

"Often times on the lists you will find that a shorthand notation is 
being used to refer to these lists. This shorthand notation will be like 
"dev" or also "trademarks@" and both will refer to a mailing list, in 
case you didn't yet realize ;-). The notation can also refer to the team 
that operates the mailing list. The context in which it is used should 
make that clear, e.g. "You should check with trademarks@ on whether this 
will be a problem." would refer to the people on that list. These lists 
reference "dev@openoffice.apache.org" and 
"tradema...@office.apache.org", just to be clear. The reason is that 
writing the list name in full could be quite tedious."


Well, in my style, perhaps.

If you would want to analyse:


A useful shortcut notation you will often see on the lists.


- person just came up with something he had almost forgotten and 
references it in advance as in "oh yes", points to thing.


Writing a list name in full, like dev@openoffice.apache.org can be 
tedious.


- reason for the thing that is going to be described


So you will often see it called just "dev".


- references both the thing and the reason for it

Similarly, top-level lists like tradema...@apache.org are often 
referred to as "trademarks@".


- describes the thing further, and the reasons for it.


This shortcut can be used to refer either to the mailing list
and to the team that operates the mailing list.


- Mentions that the previous two things were the shortcut first hinted 
at.



The context should make it clear, e.g., "You
should check with trademarks@ on whether this will be problem"."


- explains last sentence.

Point is that yes it is Yoda style. And if you skip reading the other 
parts or you jump into the text it is quite incomprehensible, perhaps, 
yes, I think.


But it's no different than.

"Another thing. I mentioned earlier that ... I still feel you should do 
it but there are reasons bla. It is just not right yet."


It is just something someone would say that just came up with something 
important that was nearly forgotten, or something of the kind.


If you took it out of the paragraph and turned it into a header it would 
suddenly make more sense:


5. A useful shortcut notation you will often see on the lists.

Writing a list name in full, like dev@openoffice.apache.org can be 
tedious. So you will often see it called just "dev". Similarly, 
top-level lists like tradema...@apache.org are often referred to as 
"trademarks@". This shortcut can be used to refer either to the mailing 
list and to the team that operates the mailing list. The context should 
make it clear, e.g., "You should check with trademarks@ on whether this 
will be problem"."


Because it is exactly that, the text is just not formatted that way.

It's a header not formatted as a header, that's all ;-).

It's an announcement of what is to follow, like a header would be.

Maybe it's pedantic, but yeah. That's just... I think what it 
exactly is, or close to it.


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Re: Introduction

[Xen]

R. Mark Aldrich schreef op 28-09-2016 22:55:


Section 5 starts with
"A useful shortcut notation you will often see on the lists.", which
makes sense if you read it as Yoda, but I think it would make more
sense to change it to "You will often see useful shortcut notations on
the lists."


That has a different meaning.

The author is not saying that you will often see useful shortcut 
notations on the lists. The phrase references a part that has not been 
uttered, so you would have to say something like "Some useful  you 
may come across on the lists are "dev" and "..." as abbreviations of 
mailing lists" -- because the existing statement consists of parts, and 
so if you want to put it "back together" you must unite those parts.


In general you cannot rewrite individual statements, you must rewrite 
the whole thing if you want the text to keep its flow and consistency 
and meaning.


It's the same as

"Something you may want to know about... Yesterday I came across 
something I want you to know, and it is that ...". It is just a way of 
conversing, or phrasing things.


or

"That thing I was thinking about. You have heard it before. It is ...".

So if you change it, you must at least rewrite the whole section. But 
ideally you would change the whole thing (in style) ;-).


Personally I would only do so if I thought a different style would be 
more readable and more comfortable or convenient as a way of relaxing.


Less staccato, and more fluid, perhaps.

Anyway, just saying ;-).

However the current style precisely expresses what it needed to express. 
Fixing stuff and then discovering that the result is worse than before 
is not a good way to spend time ;-).


Regards.

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Re: Become the IMAP client for documents [Re: Differentiate or Die]

[Xen]

Peter Kovacs schreef op 18-09-2016 5:38:

I don't know how much can be gained by simply using an alternative 
that is in essence, the same kind of program. I still won't have cloud 
access and will be far away from using something like Google Drive or 
OneDrive.

btw. have you tried dropbox?
they have an official Linux client.



I wouldn't really ever feel safe with Dropbox.

That's just disaster waiting to happen, in a way.




I recommend the documentary: indi games: the movie. Gives you an Idea
on why people do wired things.


You mean weird?

I am not really talking about those kinda guys. I am really talking 
about games that have no market at all. Downloading the film though. 
When Diablo II was released it was not a many-million-dollar budget 
game. Of course they had professional musicians and all of that.


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Re: Become the IMAP client for documents [Re: Differentiate or Die]

[Xen]

toki schreef op 17-09-2016 17:52:

On 17/09/2016 10:46, Peter Kovacs wrote:


(Maybe WPS is a good alternate to you then. I read in the german Linux


Why would a program whose developers, in the name of destroying the 
user

experience, removed features, functionalities, and capabilities. The
only user case in which that is a virtue, is one in which the user has
no qualms about not being able to open documents created with the 
software.


After reading some threads on a Dutch review site I can't say I have 
really seen any positive reviews or remarks about WPS. Most of that came 
down to ill compatibility with MS products. I am sure it works fine on 
its own but also cannot save or open(?) in ODT.


I'm not sure if it is still based on OpenOffice?

Seeing the number of changes they have made to their (international) 
versions and their name, I don't think they have a very consistent 
outlook on the thing. It seems rather 'spurious' or haphazard. Very 
successful in China apparently. And the Android app is apparently 
greatly recommended over any alternative (so for tablet use etc). Recent 
free versions should have less limitations (no watermark on printing) 
but may still not save in .docx format.


Personally I generally mistrust Chinese products. I have only once tried 
a Chinese email client, and it was not a good product.


I also hardly trust their "phone home" capabilities, but that aside.

I tend to want to filter Chinese products through Japanese or western 
agencies ;-).


Also never really happy with the cheap stuff I order from the cheap 
websites... it just feels dirty to me, except one time with some plugs.


So I don't really think WPS is a good alternative, but then I also don't 
really know what you mean here, Toki ;-).


Regards.

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Re: Become the IMAP client for documents [Re: Differentiate or Die]

[Xen]

Peter Kovacs schreef op 17-09-2016 12:46:

Hello


I have a question.

I dont know the Open Document Foundation. But maybe they work on it. I
mean they forked from Oracle OpenOffice because they were frustrated
that the errors were not fixed.

I personly do not know, but I would not be surprised if Apache
Foundation as the successor to Oracle has not has such structures. I
think classic way is within Apaches Foundation that they cooperate
with one or more  interst groups (free devlopers, communities,
cooperations / Companies) that has an interest in development of the
Product. With this method different Companies can cooperate in order
to achieve their individual goals and save money with synergy. Can
someone maybe enlight this point? Am I right?

So the question is which Structures does Apache Open Office offers to 
users?



Xen are you willing to pay a sum in order to get a fullfillment of
your needs? - Or is it more important to you that the feature you need
already exist?

(Maybe WPS is a good alternate to you then. I read in the german Linux
magazin (I think latest edition) that they are pretty stable and quite
good on working with docx.)


I had not known about it, so thank you.

I am not impressed with its looks, but they don't feature large size 
screenshots, so I don't know.


I hesitate to go to completely new solutions particularly if it means 
abandoning what I am already familiar with and also if it is not 
actually a new type of solution, but really more of the same. Something 
like Google Docs is, of course, inspiring. I am also a developer.


I don't know how much can be gained by simply using an alternative that 
is in essence, the same kind of program. I still won't have cloud access 
and will be far away from using something like Google Drive or OneDrive.


At least on Linux, and even though on Windows these things are obviously 
much easier


I don't want to bitch here but Windows usage is not very possible for me 
just yet. Having stuff in the Cloud is even a form of data security for 
me. I have little to hide at this point and just having secure data (not 
losing it) is more important than any thoughts of "oh google".


Migrating to a non-prominent tool for me is never a very appealing 
thing. It's the same with computer games: there are a 100.000 of them 
but only a few that really appeal. The "no name" or "B-brand" computer 
games generally are not that interesting and I wonder why companies even 
*try*. If you do something, at least try to be the best, and don't just 
copy what another has done in the hopes of some success.


With computer games, this is often shown with the lack of creative 
story.





I believe Open Source as such has no Market interest. They exist as
long as someone has the Code. Development is not the main focus.


That almost sounds like it is just a storage place for projects, a dump 
place of sorts, where projects can retire ;-).


I realize what I say could be visionary or "different" or challenging or 
odd or weird or non-functional.


It is just that I approach it as a developer with a bit of an 
entrepeneurial mind. I see the potential for something, you just have to 
believe in it. Not saying I can do it, but if people would be inspired 
with the same, I would not be the last to be interested to join in on 
that.


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Re: Become the IMAP client for documents [Re: Differentiate or Die]

[Xen]

Dennis E. Hamilton schreef op 16-09-2016 18:23:


However, OneDrive does accept ODT documents and they can be viewed
on-line via Microsoft Office Web Apps (now called Office Online).
There is online editing although it might require being a Microsoft
Office user.  I will have to check that.  Also, it might be that a
Linux-operating browser isn't compatible with what the Web Apps
require.


Oh, apologies. I seriously had not been able to find "Office Online" 
when I had searched for it :-/.


I haven't been able to test it and the site is very slow, also your 
screens didn't make it through(?).


I can say I instantly dislike it though. But then, I dislike most of 
anything Microsoft does these days (that started with Windows 7 and the 
ribbon and the new configuration screen and start menu, and got much 
worse with Windows 8).


I probably personally could not get myself to use this product (Office 
Online) even though it seems to work fine with Linux (I am not an 
exclusive Linux user, but for now..) and Google Docs is just a much 
better product from my point of view,


but I myself am currently also a Lumia user (and I detest it) and 
because Google has its accounts linked to everything (YouTube, etc.) I 
run a much larger risk of having to dump my "Google Accounts" because 
something happens in one of the other "services" that makes me want to 
get rid of it. This is why personally I hesitate strongly to use Google 
for anything permanent or even persistent.


For me, Microsoft is only : OneDrive and my (this) phone. Microsoft is 
also more married to the platform (of Windows). So for me personally 
Microsoft has a great advantage because the chances that I will dump my 
Microsoft account "for no good reason" are just much slimmer (knocks on 
dead wood).


Microsoft software is abysmal compared to android from my POV. But the 
platform itself has advantages for me (Windows 10, OneDrive). I guess my 
stance on OpenOffice should change.


But I still think there are two aspects that speak in its favour:

* the desktop is being abandoned by many suppliers. However it is in 
part hype. Tablets are not really that usable and even hybrid devices 
have their detriments. They are not sturdy, you can lose components, you 
cannot replace batteries, etc. etc. Ideally there'd be cloud services 
offered by smaller suppliers that do not have to be as big as the big 
software companies but that can "tackle on" to a larger framework where 
actual hosting is done by independents of some sort, but the framework 
is supported by a community or industry standard.


* Microsoft software is just very poor ;-).

LibreOffice does not really target Windows users at all. I hardly doubt 
I can find a person within 10 minutes of searching on the street (I live 
in a city centre, and it is friday night) who has ever heard about 
LibreOffice if I tried. Well, one person would, but it was a techie, and 
another whom I meet now and then is also a programmer.


"Free Software" does not inspire anyone outside of tech, really, apart 
from the fact that you don't have to pay money for it.


People are perfectly fine with not being in "control" of their devices 
in that sense.


As long as their devices do what needs to be done, they don't give jack 
shit about who is doing it or who controls the software, mostly.


So if LibreOffice's only selling point is "FOSS" or because of its 
superior build system or because of its lean code, well... that only 
applies to programmers, and programmer-lovers, not to actual real 
people.


I use LibreOffice today because it looks better, but even though I don't 
like it, I really have to use Google Docs or risk losing my work due to 
crashes or the inability to undo.


Of course (???) people mention that developing for LibreOffice is much 
easier (?) than for AOO.


But LibreOffice really has no future other than becoming like the only 
open source Linux solution that exists.


There is not going to be a future where Windows or Mac users will ever 
want to know about it. People are not interested in a product that only 
has great quality code, but not great quality features or anything of 
the kind.


So the future for AOO, if there is any, still lies with Windows users 
mostly.


It is still the free alternative, but these days the free alternative 
must also support cloud services.


That's all I can say. If Microsoft software doesn't support ODF all that 
well, then maybe you just have to deal with that in a way.


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Become the IMAP client for documents [Re: Differentiate or Die]

[Xen]

Phillip Rhodes schreef op 08-09-2016 22:18:

So anyway, just wanted to seed this discussion and hopefully provoke 
some
serious thinking around this.  Let's think hard about what we want to 
be so

that
we can easily say "Why develop/use AOO instead of X?" type questions.


I just wanted to take this opportunity to voice my ideas again ;-).

I will keep it short this time.

I am a user who is disgrunted by both the features and stability of 
LibreOffice and probably also OpenOffice, since many features are the 
same. One important feature for me is a GOOD undo facility and both 
products don't have it, because they don't store, or merge, block level 
undo's resulting from typing. In mostly any editor I can go infinitely 
into the past as I undo stuff but in OO and LO it is limited to a few 
sentences at most.


Last time this happened I swore to never use LO again and started using 
Google Docs.


The only reason I am not using Microsoft Office (365) now is that there 
is no Linux variant of it.


Given these flaws and failings for me (and sometimes LO just crashes and 
takes your work with you and it is unrecoverable) and given the fact 
that I think OO looks outdated (on Linux), I would have ventured in the 
past that these were the most important things for me:


* I do not want to be exclusively dependent on the ODT format editors 
anymore
- In Windows I have much better fonts available (or more of them) than 
in Linux
- Even Google Docs just has much better fonts than Linux and it even has 
the Linux fonts, so there you ahve that.


* I would like AOO (or anything) to be a glue between the platforms. 
Cloud is becoming very important or is already so. Being able to 
reference documents on Google Drive can be important. Being able to 
reference documents on Microsoft OneDrive can be important.


- Google Docs natively saves.. or ehm, downloads, documents in .docx, 
but can also process .odt, I believe. So in order to stay relevant you 
must focus, for instance, on perfect interoperability between AOO and 
the .docx that result from Google Docs.


- Since there is no Microsoft Office client on Linux, and neither do 
they have an online editor, it becomes product to become that client to 
Microsoft OneDrive that can also edit or save in .docx format. Now there 
are a few meagre solutions for using OneDrive on Linux, but it is not 
much.


Suppose AOO had its own OneDrive client plugin? That you could use AOO 
to browse and modify, load and save, documents on OneDrive?


Just the same as that Microsoft Office would do, is what I mean. Just 
become cloud-ready. Just allow a person to save on OneDrive.


* Fix the OpenOffice looks (at least on Linux). That black hard shadow 
behind the "page" is not good enough anymore. Make sure it looks nice 
enough and start with that thick black border.


Google Docs works awesomely if a bit slow (due to the internet 
connection) and you can't do everything you can do in a regular editor 
(particularly positioning and such things) (and you can only choose a 
few font sizes) but in general (apart from not being able to actually 
manually really save stuff) the editing experience is much nice than 
either OpenOffice or LibreOffice. And it's just a new product, right.


It's not perfect but looks much better than anything else I've seen and 
you don't run the risk of losing your content, that I constantly have 
with LibreOffice/OO.


I have probably lost important court battles due to LibreOffice.

So I will say 3 things:

- fix the looks
- interoperate with OneDrive and Google Drive if possible (OneDrive more 
important) and ensure perfect compability with these formats
- focus less on your own prominence as a True Alternative and become a 
slave, so to say, to the document formats used by the Big Two, (which 
are .docx and .odt) and just make sure your program can use these 
formats AND interface with the cloud storage that they use.


Then if you've got that settled you can eventually maybe migrate or move 
to your own cloud platform or provider or choice of providers so that 
you become like an IMAP client to IMAP servers, even being capable to 
copy documents in between, etc. Become the IMAP client for documents.


That's what I will say: become the IMAP "mail" client for documents, 
that can interface with various cloud platforms as you edit locally but 
can also save remotely.


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Re: Differentiate or Die

[Xen]

Jim Jagielski schreef op 09-09-2016 20:11:

One of the great things about FOSS is the tight connection
between users and developers. After all, most developers are
users that have an itch to scratch.

If there are things that the user community wants, then
chances are good that developers will be jazzed about working
on them, or, at least, the pool of potential developers
might be increased.


This is hardly ever the case.

The whole point of developing is that users who are not developers, can 
also use it.


There is no great project that can come about by mere itch-scratching. 
You cannot take a 100 developers that are not connected and have them 
agree on a product that needs to surface.


What I mean is that this might work for small deviations of an already 
existing project, but I venture that most successful (smaller) projects 
are started by individuals that may be scratching their own itch, but 
they are also visionary about it and are doing something they really 
like.


A bigger entity like OpenOffice needs vision that is shared by multiple 
people (or the group as a whole) and cannot depend on random or spurious 
individuals who seek about to change something. That's like individually 
trying to change the leaves of a tree, but only a small part of them. 
You can never change the tree that way.


Most of the stuff that has been suggested of what I've seen is only 
small, meagre changes, if I can put it that way. Changes that do not 
really require vision at all, at least not something bigger than what 
there already is.


If the user wants something but cannot develop it, and if the developer 
wants something, and can, we have a problem, because users (in general) 
and developers are not the same kind of people.


The general request in general of users in FOSS to endlessly file 
unwanted bug reports is one example. They are not treated as users, but 
as developers, and this doesn't work. People become disheartened over 
such onslaught of bugs and the constant requirement to file them.


A developer needs to be responsible, and needs to responsibly listen to 
the users. That's the only way it can work. You need to be a service 
provider.


For me, rare is the occasion that a FOSS developer will say: right, you 
are right, I am going to implement that thing for you.


It happens. But not that often.

Mostly they want your free time, and not do anything themlves, and then 
have you develop their feature that they might want, but they will only 
say so after the fact whether they actually do. Lazy bums, I call them 
;-).


Free labour and you can turn it down as much as you like ;-).

Recently for me the AutoFS developer was interested in a feature or 
discussion, and the libblkid developer instantly agreed to develop 
something, as it was apparently needed to fix other things.


Both are kernel projects, so maybe there is a hint ;-).

The only thing you can do, potentially, ever, is to envision a future 
and then agree on it. You need vision to start with. You cannot 
haphazardly have individuals make minor changes or even structural 
changes that don't change the base project or where it was going. There 
was once a company that had vision and a product came about.


And now, if you don't agree to have the same level of vision, you won't 
go anywhere. You will stay stuck where you are right now.




But open source, and open source projects, should not be
run in a normal, corporate s/w development mode, where some
"entity" decides what features are needed, etc... We should
be in touch with what our users, and our potential users, want.



You are right, and pardon me if I misinterpreted your message a little 
bit (you were top-posting).


But the corporate mode ideally also just listens to users.

And then creates a product that they know will sell.

And this is true of everyting. Just because you are FOSS and there is no 
money involved doesn't mean you should create unsellable products.


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Re: What would OpenOffice NON-retirement involve?

[Xen]

Marcus schreef op 04-09-2016 11:09:


you don't need to figure this out on your own. You can ask me how it
works. It would be much faster and more efficient. ;-)


How common is not that experience ;-).

For some reason in Linux (or in general) we assume or we are given 
reasons to believe that people will not answer our calls when we ask for 
help, and we do ask for help (often in frustration) people send us into 
the woods or say that we need to find the answer on our own (for 
instance by reading help pages better) and so we assume and regret the 
fact that it is unlikely a question will simply be answered.


So we plough on in despair and work hard to find the answer that someone 
else already has (but sometimes refuses to give ;-)). And then when 
someone says "you can just ask" we are flabbergasted because most of the 
time we are told the opposite


How strange a gesture of friendliness in this world.

How strange a gesture of friendliness.


But I suggest you do not focus solely on acquiring more volunteers or 
workers or developers.


What you need is to put forth a vision that will attract those people. 
Do not try to attract them yourself, let the vision attract them.


After all, you seek to inspire those people right? Inspiration is like 
the opposite of transpiration: it gives energy. Maybe it is the opposite 
of expiration you don't want the project to expire, so you need to 
inspire people.


I mean, start by positioning Apache OpenOffice in a way that gives it 
new life.


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Re: Merge with LibreOffice?

[Xen]

Hagar Delest schreef op 03-09-2016 19:04:

Le 03/09/2016 à 18:47, Xen a écrit :
OpenOffice is unusable on Linux, you can't easily install it and once 
installed you don't know how to fire it up; it is not in the path, it 
is not in the menus, and you have to provide this on your own, if it 
even works.

Not at all. I use xubuntu since several years and it's rather easy to
get rid of the remnants of LibO automatically installed and then
install from the deb packages.
The desktop integration works very fine.


Well having to remove LO is one issue to begin with.

That means they have you locked out to begin with (mostly because 
/usr/bin/soffice conflicts).


Desktop integration used to fail for me some time in the past (in KDE) 
now it works, sorry, did not know that. Previously (not long ago) I 
installed the desktop integration package and could not see it in the 
menu, even after having uninstalled LO.



Mark Shuttleworth once said on an interview how to his opinion the 
LibreOffice devs (that would then split off) made the Oracle 
employees' lives hell. Even though Ubuntu has taken on LibreOffice 
after a while, he was no fan at all of what happened.

I still don't unnderstand what happened there and why he did not
support AOO instead. I may have missed some political argument at the
time of the split.


Perhaps it was not his own call, I don't know. He may have done so for 
political reasons (if it was him doing so) that relate to LO having had 
already a bigger foothold and it was easier or more politically correct 
from a FOSS point of view to go with LO.


I doubt many technical issues were at the core of the choice (but I 
wasn't there either).


It seems it must have been pressure from the "FOSS" community in that 
sense. Ubuntu I believe regularly packages older versions of programs 
and then just supplies patches to them (with them) for its own distro. 
E.g. Grub2, the version Ubuntu uses is from januari of 2014 or a little 
earlier. A present day Ubuntu 16.04 version uses a grub version that old 
;-).


But I don't know, I just content myself with knowing that Ubuntu's 
choice does not bely Shuttleworth's opinions, but Shuttleworth's 
opinions may bely Canonical's choice.


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What would OpenOffice NON-retirement involve?

[Xen]

Phillip Rhodes wrote:

OK, counter-point to the other thread... let's talk specifically about 
what
needs to happen next, given that some (plenty|most|all|???) of us want 
this

project to
continue moving forward.


What has to happen next?  What is the most important thing/things we 
could

be
working on?  What could I do *right now* to help move things in a 
positive

direction?



How can we attract more developers?  How do we counter the FUD that is
already being promulgated in response to the "retirement" discussion?
 etc...



Phil




I just want to give you my impression.

For what OpenOffice needs to begin with.

1) rename it to ApacheOffice
2) keep the intellecutal property (of the name) but release it after a 
while (maybe 10 years in full)
3) Focus on user interface beauty and essential features that don't work 
right, but should (no feature expansion, only feature improvement)

4) Disallow LibreOffice from taking in improvements and/or commits
5) Appear it as if you are starting a new product (call it a restart)
6) Change the binary names from soffice etc. (the star office remnant) 
to something more modern (such as openoffice or aoffice or 
apacheoffice).
7) Focus (again) on user interface improvements to make it 'compete' 
with e.g. Google Docs (or LO itself)
8) Disregard compatibility issues for a while but focus on only two 
things: compatibility with the most popular MS Office version to date 
(or currently) and compability with one office suite on Linux of choice 
(Calligra and LibreOffice/OpenOffice are not compatible) -- disregard 
all the rest.


9) Focus on introducing a form of interoperabolity with Google and 
Microsoft cloud (Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive) that will make 
*their* (desktop) clients irrelevant in a way.


You cannot use Microsoft Office 365 from the web. You need a client for 
that. This is either Windows or Mac or Android or iPhone or whatever. If 
you can provide an alternate client you become something that can in the 
future expand to its own platform, even if it doesn't feel entirely 
right.


10) Ensure printing works perfectly, PDF writing works perfectly, and 
introduce a few more PDF features such as integrating PDF documents into 
an existing PDF, a little bit of editing. Become that tool. Suppose 
someone has printed 3 separate PDFs and now wants to combine them into 
one document. Enable that feature, provide that tool.


11) Again, make sure the interface is attractive (no black border around 
a page, use shadows).


12) Try to see if any kind of interoperability or co-working or shared 
goals with Mozilla "BlueGriffon" could exist. BlueGriffon is the only 
available HTML editor that is to my mind usable enough and also free, in 
that sense.


Some of these things may seem like you'd be begging for approval or 
becoming a lesser thing because you submit yourself to the platform of 
another person or entity.


But I'm just speaking out of a sense of what would be popular.

1) Having your program as a tool that can do stuff no other tools can 
(such as PDF combining, and subscribing/logging into Microsoft and 
Google cloud) instantly transforms it into something valuable to have 
around


2) If your interoperability with the Microsoft and/or Google formats is 
excellent (Google Docs can export to Microsoft) people will also want to 
have your tool around because they wouldn't be so dependent on the 
existing tools (and platforms)


3) This is particularly helpful for non-tablet users. People who still 
use desktops are often not served or serviced by existing developments 
on the tablet/android/iphone market.


LibreOffice can continue being that Linux desktop powerhouse for all it 
wants. Linux is not popular and hard to use no matter how much Ubuntu is 
trying to get that to change. People are not safe on Linux. I am not 
safe on Linux and I know almost everything.


I would suggest being a little sneaky and borrowing from the popularity 
of Microsoft and Google cloud platforms. Become a client and become 
compatible with either LibreOffice or Calligra in your native format. 
That means losing your identity as a separate, own thing. You become the 
glue that ties a lot of things together.


Personally I would suggest using Calligra but its program is rather poor 
in quality to this day.


Nevertheless it is all ODT and it is the small things that can render a 
document unusable (such as bulleting completely changing between saves).


So it would mean choosing either LibreOffice or Calligra as your source 
of what your own document format should be. So you lose your own sense 
of identity in being a leader in this area.


The moment OpenOffice becomes that tool that people can use to use 
Microsoft OneDrive or Google Docs, every linux distribution will want to 
have it on board.


If you change your binary executable names, no one will be offended by 
its install.


If there is a sense of interoperability between it and BlueGriffon, in 
terms of a

Re: Merge with LibreOffice?

[Xen]

ws.

But the stark reality that things are often missing, is then not allowed 
to get out. It's all paradise here, remember?


This "fighting a war" (often between open source and commercial 
products, of which Oracle was one, in a sense) inspires dirty tactics 
and lies and deceit and moreover, and most importantly, 
misrepresentation of the facts.


Taking "number of commits" as the grand figure of software quality, is 
one of those misrepresentations. Like someone here has said, in my own 
words then:


- if you take a million bad programmers or programmers who work for bad 
reasons and have bad intents, and you let each of them spend a million 
man hours on a product, then they will have produced less quality code 
than one person with good intents spending only an hour.


If you walk in the wrong direction it doesn't matter how many cars you 
have and vehicles and gasoline, you are still going in the wrong 
direction.


Now I can't say I am so charmed by how OpenOffice *looks* these days (it 
looks rather old, these days, on Linux at least) but I also do not 
witness from the LibreOffice people any great sense of purpose and 
direction that actually makes sense.


Maybe they have won the war (because they have inflicted great hurt) but 
I think their victory is hollow and they have turned LibreOffice into 
something only Linux distribution people actually want to use (and maybe 
not even that).


Their hundred million users -- I think most of them comes from 
automatically installed Linux distributions? OpenOffice is not in the 
repos. They take away your choice.


Those are some of those tactics. Open source is about freedom, but not 
freedom of people (in this case).


At least with those restrictive licenses, it is not. OpenOffice is 
unusable on Linux, you can't easily install it and once installed you 
don't know how to fire it up; it is not in the path, it is not in the 
menus, and you have to provide this on your own, if it even works.


Mark Shuttleworth once said on an interview how to his opinion the 
LibreOffice devs (that would then split off) made the Oracle employees' 
lives hell. Even though Ubuntu has taken on LibreOffice after a while, 
he was no fan at all of what happened.


The peculiar thing is that the fan boys are often much less nuanced in 
their thinking than the actual people that know a thing or two, even if 
the fan boys proclaim adherence to those very same people. There just 
seems to be a lot of propaganda going on, and mr. Reg, I just think your 
message is indicative of that.



Again, this probably sounds like an attack, but it really is not meant 
to

be.
Hoping for some informative responses.


If you haven't come back to this thread for a month then I think 
everyone who has questioned your motives in this would have been right 
on the money, I'm afraid?


Because the only serious question to ask you is:

What do you mean when you say "merge"?

Have you actually thought about what that should mean?



With Regards,
theduke


Regards, "Xen".

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