Keith Bates wrote:
On Fri, 16 May 2008 12:04:36 +0300 (EAT)
"Sammy Njuguna" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
2008/5/16 jonathon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 8:16 PM, Drew Jensen wrote:
What is being called for is the ability to say - there is one
( or
more )
email clients that works closely with the other modules in the
package.
Other than the ability to use OOo to create webpages that
masquerade as email, what functionality does OOo need, to better
integrate with email clients?
My take.
I have invented a *notional* program called "The Mail Program"
which I will
refer to as TMP. This *might* be an existing program that gets
modified, Thunderbird for example, or a new program that gets
written for the purpose.
I don't much care except that Thunderbird comes close to fitting
the bill already. But if there is a better candidate ...
I also expect that whichever of OOo and TMP is installed *second*
on a user's system will notice that the other is already there and
configure itself accordingly, or at least to offer the user a
choice (or series of choices) as to whether s/he wants this.
I also expect that if TMP and OOo are both installed and if the
user then uninstalls one of them, then the one that remains does
*not* lose functionality. For example, with MS Office, if the user
uninstalls Word, Outlook Express can no longer check spelling. As
far as I am concerned this
is just shoddy.
The numbering below is for convenience only. I do *not* intend it
to imply a
priority ordering.
--
Harold Fuchs
London, England
Please reply *only* to [email protected]
Could'nt have put it better myself Harold,That is the way to go!
Sorry, I have to disagree.
Firstly the assumption that an office suite should do everything one
does in an office is an absolute fallacy. People might assume that's
the way it is, but it doesn't make it right.
I see nothing in the proposal that would assume that a suite should do
everything.
But the assumption is itself contradictory. Why do we not hear any
requests for integration of financial software into OO? After all
financial controls such as accounting, invoices, payroll, etc.
etc. are core to any business. The only reason why we don't get
hundreds of emails asking "where is the accounting module" is that
Microsoft doesn't do it that way.
One could make the point that the reason that we don't here the
complaint were is the accounting module is because the accounting piece
is used primarily by a small subset of people in an office where as the
e-mail and calendering piece would possibly be more wide spread.
People have been conditioned to make certain assumptions about what
belongs and does not belong in an office suite.
Or conversely people have come to there own conclusions of what they
believe would best serve there needs in an office suite. Not everything
that happens in the world is the result of some dark conspiracy. Regular
people are quite capable of thinking and deciding things all on there
own without being influenced by others.
Does OO have to meet that assumption? I don't think so. We can suggest
alternatives ways of doing things and that's fine.
If it plans to compete in the area of office suites it had better listen
to the assumptions of the people who are going to be using the software
or it will fail no matter how good it is.
Next, question is this: If we believe that email should come in pretty
forms rather than just straight text, who determines what format all
those pretty features are going to be in? It used to be html until MS
in its infinite wisdom decided that email composition was a word
processing feature not an email feature and changed the default
into .doc format rather than html. So do we let people compose .doc
or .odf in your TMP? Should proprietary document formats even be
considered when sending documents by email (much less composed in an
email program)?
Since test and html are de facto standard in most all mail programs it
would not be amiss to presume that they should be there in TMP as well.
As far as I remember even when using Word as the mail editor in Outlook
the final product is not a .doc formatted file.
What about those silly schmucks like me that think email is best
composed as a plain text format for most situations? What if we choose
to use a non-Thunderbird, non-TMP program that is actually far better
than Thunderbird (obviously I don't know what features TMP has!) at
dealing with email.
Then by all means continue to do what you do today. Nowhere in the
proposal is there anything that says that one has to use them or even
install them.
How would you see this working in all the different operating systems
that OOo is produced on? It would be particularly galling to linux
users such as myself who believe in the philosophy that an application
should just do one thing really well and communicate well with other
applications rather than trying to do everything in one monolithic
world-dominating program that takes a super-computer to run and is prone
to break by the nature of its architecture.
Read the proposal. Nowhere does it say that it is a monolithic program
that is all or nothing. As a matter of fact it is on suggested that a
download including TMP be made available. Otherwise it would be a
separate download that does exactly what you ask for. To communicate
well with others.
Why should OOo, which is trying to break the stranglehold of one
software manufacturer, be beholden to the same philosophy and then tied
to another organisation in this way?
You seem to make the assumption that use of TMP would be forced on you
in some way. There is nothing in the proposal that even remotely does that.
Yes let's work on better communication between, for example,
dictionaries and email composition. But let's not fall for the bigger
is better, tying everything together is better belief that has really
done little more than change one set of problems for another.
Again there is nothing in the proposal that I see that is doing that. It
does state that if there is an e-mail program that can fit than by all
means use that. There is nothing there that says it has to developed by
OO.o All it is doing is setting forth possibilities of what it could
look like.
OOo is a brilliant office application. It can do better. The way ahead
is actually the way that Firefox has moved forward- plug-ins and
extensions. OOo is just starting to move down that track and i think as
extensions develop, many of these problems will be sorted out by third
party developers working out add-ons that will meet specific needs.
There is nothing in the proposal that would preclude TMP being done as
an extension.
That's my take on it all.
And why doesn't Ooo have a podcatcher built in? After all I use my
office computer to download and play music- that make it an office
function for me :-)
Then by all means feel free to write the extension to do that. ;-)
Regards
Keith N. McKenna
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