KOffice 2.0 (Jan 2007) Will Run Natively on OS X
Right now, the state of open source office suites on OS X isn't that great, especially with OS X Intel. AFAIK, OpenOffice is the only F/OS office suite that runs on OS X Intel, and it's in alpha and runs only in X11 mode.
This may soon change, however.
Read the good news here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=182819&cid=15109015
(You may need to click on the bottom two comments in the thread, since the first two posts don't tell the whole story.)
This may soon change, however.
Read the good news here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=182819&cid=15109015
(You may need to click on the bottom two comments in the thread, since the first two posts don't tell the whole story.)
Comments
Originally posted by Gene Clean
Who cares? Pages is all you'll ever need anyway. Take that Micro$haft and stick it to them zombies! Oh, wait...
Does Pages have a spreadsheet? Hmmmm..... didn't think so. KOffice does.
As for KOffice, thanks, but no thanks. Qt/Mac is horrendous. Might as well use Java. *shudders*
Edit: downloaded the latest Gimp. It won't even launch.
Originally posted by Aquatic
Otherwise it's just garbage and on one (ok maybe like 83 people) will use it.
How's that Google Earth?
Once I tried "the Gimp"...note the "once".
Qt is NOT GTK+.
Edit: downloaded the latest Gimp. It won't even launch.
X11.
Originally posted by Chucker
As for KOffice, thanks, but no thanks. Qt/Mac is horrendous. Might as well use Java. *shudders*
Qt4 is not bad at all. That's what they'll do it in (most likely) and I, for one, welcome our new, Qt, overlords.
Originally posted by Gene Clean
How's that Google Earth?
It's terrible.
Will it still be beaten sideways with the ugly stick? You bet.
Will I still wonder why they put so much effort into copying the incredibly bad Office UI? Yup. (yes, I know it's for switchers, but come on... give us the option of turning on something halfway intelligent.)
Will I use it? Probably not.
Will I be glad it's available? Absolutely.
(And yes, Google Earth is pretty shoddy in the UI dept, if you ask me. Needs some serious work.)
Originally posted by Kickaha
Will I still wonder why they put so much effort into copying the incredibly bad Office UI? Yup. (yes, I know it's for switchers, but come on... give us the option of turning on something halfway intelligent.)
Does KOffice copy from MS Office as badly as OpenOffice.org does? I thought they were a little more creative. Not that I expect much from KDE folks.
Will I be glad it's available? Absolutely.
As much as it provides choice, and as much as choice is good, it will be a very, very bad example of a Mac app. As such, I'm not sure I can agree with "glad it'll be available".
At the moment I use NeoOffice but it's too slow. I hope Koffice can fill the gap. But 2007?? Dammit I want it now. Why are we always having to wait until 2007 for everything?
Originally posted by Marvin
I would take Qt over Java any day and either over X11. Pages doesn't seem like a Word Processor - it's more of a document design app like Indesign.
At the moment I use NeoOffice but it's too slow. I hope Koffice can fill the gap. But 2007?? Dammit I want it now. Why are we always having to wait until 2007 for everything?
Once developers start using NetBeans and Matisse, Java apps will look sweet:
http://www.netbeans.org/kb/articles/matisse.html
BTW, NeoOffice doesn't yet run on Intel. Also, NeoOffice is still based off OpenOffice 1.1, and it literally takes a minute to load. Otherwise, it's not bad. If they can get a port of 2.0 out for Intel, I'll definitely use it as my default office sweet. OpenOffice for X11 (Intel alpha) is the only free office sweet available for Mac Intel right now.
When KOffice 2.0 comes out, I'll definitely try it out. If it loads quicker than NeoOffice, it will be my default office suite.
I don't understand why so many Mac users are hung up on aesthetics ("Firefox is ugly, so I'm using Safari instead").
Originally posted by JavaCowboy
I don't understand why so many Mac users are hung up on aesthetics ("Firefox is ugly, so I'm using Safari instead").
Hmmmmm. Now, I don't know. Maybe they value good software?
It's being able to *find* the blasted commands in a reasonable way, or being able to discover what the app can even do. Office is *horrible* for this, with related commands scattered hither and yon, buried three or four submenus deep, etc.
I don't care if it looks like standard WIn95 muck, as long as the menus are logically laid out, but unfortunately that seems to be the rarity in the Windows and Linux worlds.
The myth of the manual-less (including Help) app isn't just a myth, it's quite real for me, and many other Mac users. I can't recall the last time I had to crack open a paper, online, or electronic manual to figure out how to use an app. *Almost* had to with Excel the other night, but then I stopped thinking like a user, and thought like a programmer, and I found what I needed.
In my experience, and in my opinion, a user should be able to do two things and not only have a good idea on what the app's capabilities are, but hints on how to get the most out of it:
1) Menu surf. Just peel through the menus once, and build up a mental model. If the menus are organized well, this is easy.
2) Open Preferences. This lets you see what the global settings are for the app, and frequently uncover new toys to play with.
That's it. If I can't sit down at a new app, do those two things, and have a darned good idea how to use it, it is likely to get deleted pretty quickly.
Anyone attempting to emulate Office in functionality has my vote... until they decide emulating them in UI is good as well. In which case I wish them well, but I'll look elsewhere.
Originally posted by Chucker
It's terrible.
Terrible? I don't think so. Garbage that 83 people use? I don't think so.
Can it be improved? Yes. But terrible? That's a stretch.
Originally posted by Chucker
Hmmmmm. Now, I don't know. Maybe they value good software?
Firefox is better than Safari. UI is but one part of the app, and it's almost always the least important part in determining an apps "goodness".
Safari is a browser with a piece of crap javascript implementation, without any significant plug-in interface, slower than almost any browser out there at rendering pages (sans OmniWeb) and the browser with the most retarded implementation of stop/reload buttons.
Firefox, on the other hand, is none of these. Yes, it does not have a native UI, but I'll sacrifice that any day to achieve functionality. After all, what good do looks bring when I can't login to GMail?
Originally posted by Aquatic
Anything that doesn't use Aqua...well...they just shouldn't bother. Unless they want to use Aqua. Otherwise it's just garbage and on one (ok maybe like 83 people) will use it. Once I tried "the Gimp"...note the "once".
Edit: downloaded the latest Gimp. It won't even launch.
Hmm, maybe we have different standards, but I think Gimp has a nice interface, at least for a unix app. It's one of the best of the unix apps that I use anyway. It doesn't have the standard Mac look and feel, but it's a very powerful app and it's free.
Originally posted by Gene Clean
Qt4 is not bad at all. That's what they'll do it in (most likely) and I, for one, welcome our new, Qt, overlords.
You can build an Office suite with QuickTime 4.0?
Originally posted by Gene Clean
UI is but one part of the app, and it's almost always the least important part in determining an apps "goodness".
Ouch. Gene, that's just... silly. All the power in the world in an app does you zero good if you can't get to it. I mean heck, if I handed you a black box with no inputs and no outputs, and it was the world's fastest quantum computer, you'd be a bit befuddled.
Perhaps this is part of the cultural problem, but I see it from novice programmers on up, when they can't figure out that the most important part of their code is, 99% of the time, the interface, not the function. That truism applies up through the layers of the system, right to the user.
No amount of power or functionality can overcome a truly broken UI, but a good UI can make even an otherwise mediocre app reasonable to use.