Kevin Hatch wrote:
They're collaboration tools, the same you'd find in any groupware
suite.
Thanks for the term.
I agree there's a clear distinction between "passive
communication" documents and the more active communication above, but
with regard to what should be included with OOo, consider the role of
the suite. Is it Open "Office" or more Open "Documents?" --I always
assumed the former, which to me would include whatever applications are
currently useful to office productivity, be they calendars or reference
dictionaries.
I see your point, but the problem with that logic is that there are so
many things an office uses. An office has payroll and accounting, they
have web browsers and a dozen other things. But we can't include all of
those things inside OOo. Not just due to limited resources. Even if we
had infinite man power, those things really should be separate programs.
That said, I still wouldn't advocate the development of
new calendar, email, etc. applications for OOo; there are plenty of
quality open source applications available that already perform those
functions. Partner with them formally, develop standard hooks to tie
them together, and if including them with releases of the core OOo is an
issue, at the very least actively direct users to them.
That's an important argument too. For example, I said earlier that
drawing bitmap images falls within my mental picture of what an
document-making tool should have. But I wouldn't advocate adding that to
OOo because there's GIMP.
[snip: summary -- the line is fuzzy]
Yes, the line is fuzzy. :-)
Well said. But if it's an office tool that's used by most people most
of the time, then I'd include that before a less useful purely document
creation feature.
Another advantage of using reasonably self-contained categories is code
reuse. For example, a spread sheet needs some vector graphics
functionality (to make charts). Vector graphics are an obvious
complement for a presentations program. So... if you're going to make
Calc and Impress, it makes sense to go the extra mile and make Draw. And
in so doing you end up with a better word processor, spread sheet and
presentations program than you had before.
I suspect that this line of reasoning is what led to OOo's current
design. And I like it. I find that OOo's features are very
complementary, so the quality of the software is greater than what you'd
expect by simply counting the number of features.
Cheers,
Daniel.
