<strong>You don't get this do you??? Apple won't update AW until Bill Gates allows them to do so. Some parts of agreements are made public, others are not. There's no way in heII M$ would have sold Office so well if only Apple had a decent works suit. <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
The reason wouldn't be that Appleworks is 95% perfect for most people already and it is 15% the cost of Microsoft Office.
It couldn't also be that Appleworks probably requires a major rewrite since it has been around (codebase wise) since well forever and likely has a lot of legacy code to rip out. (Although a lot of this probably happened with the carbonization, but more would need to occur)
I'm mostly happy with AW, feature-wise. There are some things it could definitely do better (and I'll list them at the end), but it does what it does well. I'll happily trade power user features that I don't need for a simple, clean interface.
What I want is an actual, OS X native application. I want sheets, not dialogs. I want native widgets. I want Quartz font rendering, transparent support for Services like chellspecking, the Font panel, etc. I'd like robust AppleScript support. Now that people have learned how to use the Aqua interface with some degree of efficiency, I'd like everything tightened up just a bit. And I'd like to see the end of the old-style event loop that spams the OS even when the application is idle.
As far as features go: If the app was done in Cocoa (as I believe it should be) they could take the already-superb integration between modules to the next level: Separate AW out into different apps (although they could all be in the same bundle, to avoid confusion - the main point being that separate apps are easier, quicker and cheaper to code, maintain and enhance), and make them talk to each other more closely via the means available. Take advantage of QuickTime by making its capabilities more available. The simple fact of redoing the vector module in Quartz rather than QuickDraw will make it much nicer. Support Unicode everywhere, along with inline support for character sets that move in different directions (ack, spacing on the technical term for that - I mean, for example, inserting a Hebrew phrase into an English document, and having it come out right-to-left even though the surrounding text is left-to-right) and move to UTF-8 as the standard encoding. Move to an XML-based file format.
Bring back Publish & Subscribe, which will rock with one-click web serving, WebDAV and Rendezvous. Apple recently retired AW's XTND API (that's right, folks, it's had a plug-in architecture for years! That's how the file format translators work), so I'm hoping for a better replacement.
I read an interview with the man behind Nisus. He pointed out that one of the reasons it's taken so long for Nisus Writer to go X native is that the necessary APIs aren't quite there yet, so they've been filing bugs and talking to Apple engineers and waiting for updates so that they can proceed. Writer is, of course, vastly more powerful than AW, but I wonder if Apple ran into the same wall. Yes, Virginia, OS X is still going through growing pains.
Things about the current AW that I don't like:
1) The database. Yeah, it's primitive, and I'd prefer relational. But I can live with it, except for the lack of a text field that can take more than a couple of hundred characters. I'm not looking to create a table of Russian novels, with formatted text, but I'd at least appreciate a limit of, say, a couple of thousand characters.
2) I belabored this point already, but: Poor OS X integration. It looks funny and acts funny, and it tends to act like it's on its own little island.
3) HTML generation sucks. Really, how hard is it to use the paragraph tag for paragraphs, guys? I'm not asking for Dreamweaver, but correct HTML and support for stylesheets (as a direct translation of AW's own styles) is a necessary start. If AW adopted an XML-based file format, they'd get robust HTML practically for free.
Those are my main gripes. I'm not a power user even by the standards of what AW is capable of, so it's a short list. But those are the things that bug me the most.
now we just would have to implement it in FC/EN. </strong><hr></blockquote>
You know, I'm such a spiteful creature, I may just have to spam the star-cross'd forum just because you said that.
Create comes fairly close to what you're suggesting with AW, Amorph, albeit with many more features and maybe with more emphasis on layout and graphics.
OK, I think that's a nice way of telling me to shut up.
<hr></blockquote>
Not at all. Providing the frameworks by stealth is an excellent idea and I think Apple's already started going down that road.
I just think that without a common file format and partnerships to wrest control away from MS, all the other stuff will not be enough to take marketshare from Office.
Apple could see Office v. X put into "maintenance mode" without having anything to show for it. And that could be a big problem.
In Liberation.fr, Jean-Louis Gassee (founder of Be, Inc.) writes about the state of Apple.
One interesting unknown tidbit that Gassee offers is that Apple recruited the team from GoBe back in 2001.
GoBe produced an office suite entitled GoBe Productive for Windows, Linux and BeOS platforms and made it to version 3.0. This software met positive reviews in the press.
The software featured various word processing, page design, layout, drawing, and photo components:
Use the components separately - or combine them to experience a whole new level of productivity and power. Draw a "live" spreadsheet into your word processing page. Add an illustration and edit it on the spot. Turn the whole thing into a slide show. All the tools are at your fingertips in every document you create.
The concept is similar to a the ill-fated OpenDoc technology which Apple pushed a few years ago. With no doubt, this rumor will spawn further speculation on an significant Appleworks update, which has been rumored.
<hr></blockquote></strong>
I could go for this! OpenDoc I believe that I mentioned something about this in another thread! Good idea bad execution, I guess it is time to revisit the OpenDoc concept.
Create comes fairly close to what you're suggesting with AW, Amorph, albeit with many more features and maybe with more emphasis on layout and graphics.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Stone Studio was on my mind when I wrote that, actually.
The cool thing about OS X is that you don't really need a formal API like OpenDoc to accomplish a lot of what OpenDoc was capable of. The system is designed to do that sort of thing much more easily (look at Services). Not that I think a formal API would hurt, but Apple will probably wait until the integration of Carbon and Cocoa into Foundation is complete. They aren't quite there yet.
Stone Studio was on my mind when I wrote that, actually.
The cool thing about OS X is that you don't really need a formal API like OpenDoc to accomplish a lot of what OpenDoc was capable of. The system is designed to do that sort of thing much more easily (look at Services). Not that I think a formal API would hurt, but Apple will probably wait until the integration of Carbon and Cocoa into Foundation is complete. They aren't quite there yet.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Not that I think a formal API would hurt, but Apple will probably wait until the integration of Carbon and Cocoa into Foundation is complete. They aren't quite there yet.
Comments
<strong>You don't get this do you??? Apple won't update AW until Bill Gates allows them to do so. Some parts of agreements are made public, others are not. There's no way in heII M$ would have sold Office so well if only Apple had a decent works suit. <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
The reason wouldn't be that Appleworks is 95% perfect for most people already and it is 15% the cost of Microsoft Office.
It couldn't also be that Appleworks probably requires a major rewrite since it has been around (codebase wise) since well forever and likely has a lot of legacy code to rip out. (Although a lot of this probably happened with the carbonization, but more would need to occur)
Nick
What I want is an actual, OS X native application. I want sheets, not dialogs. I want native widgets. I want Quartz font rendering, transparent support for Services like chellspecking, the Font panel, etc. I'd like robust AppleScript support. Now that people have learned how to use the Aqua interface with some degree of efficiency, I'd like everything tightened up just a bit. And I'd like to see the end of the old-style event loop that spams the OS even when the application is idle.
As far as features go: If the app was done in Cocoa (as I believe it should be) they could take the already-superb integration between modules to the next level: Separate AW out into different apps (although they could all be in the same bundle, to avoid confusion - the main point being that separate apps are easier, quicker and cheaper to code, maintain and enhance), and make them talk to each other more closely via the means available. Take advantage of QuickTime by making its capabilities more available. The simple fact of redoing the vector module in Quartz rather than QuickDraw will make it much nicer. Support Unicode everywhere, along with inline support for character sets that move in different directions (ack, spacing on the technical term for that - I mean, for example, inserting a Hebrew phrase into an English document, and having it come out right-to-left even though the surrounding text is left-to-right) and move to UTF-8 as the standard encoding. Move to an XML-based file format.
Bring back Publish & Subscribe, which will rock with one-click web serving, WebDAV and Rendezvous. Apple recently retired AW's XTND API (that's right, folks, it's had a plug-in architecture for years! That's how the file format translators work), so I'm hoping for a better replacement.
I read an interview with the man behind Nisus. He pointed out that one of the reasons it's taken so long for Nisus Writer to go X native is that the necessary APIs aren't quite there yet, so they've been filing bugs and talking to Apple engineers and waiting for updates so that they can proceed. Writer is, of course, vastly more powerful than AW, but I wonder if Apple ran into the same wall. Yes, Virginia, OS X is still going through growing pains.
Things about the current AW that I don't like:
1) The database. Yeah, it's primitive, and I'd prefer relational. But I can live with it, except for the lack of a text field that can take more than a couple of hundred characters. I'm not looking to create a table of Russian novels, with formatted text, but I'd at least appreciate a limit of, say, a couple of thousand characters.
2) I belabored this point already, but: Poor OS X integration. It looks funny and acts funny, and it tends to act like it's on its own little island.
3) HTML generation sucks. Really, how hard is it to use the paragraph tag for paragraphs, guys? I'm not asking for Dreamweaver, but correct HTML and support for stylesheets (as a direct translation of AW's own styles) is a necessary start. If AW adopted an XML-based file format, they'd get robust HTML practically for free.
Those are my main gripes. I'm not a power user even by the standards of what AW is capable of, so it's a short list. But those are the things that bug me the most.
[ 12-29-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
<strong>Bring back Publish & Subscribe, which will rock with one-click web serving, WebDAV and Rendezvous. </strong><hr></blockquote>
This would be great...
It is the one thing missing from .mac
the ability to easily post a soap-box editorial if you will from your iDisk straight from a wp app.
great idea! (the rest of what you said isn't bad either
honestly i think the omnigroup should make an appleworks-like application and blow any apple effort out of the water...
<strong>
now we just would have to implement it in FC/EN.
You know, I'm such a spiteful creature, I may just have to spam the star-cross'd forum just because you said that.
Create comes fairly close to what you're suggesting with AW, Amorph, albeit with many more features and maybe with more emphasis on layout and graphics.
Now there's a company that has a history for doing this sort of thing. They now have a bunch of drawing/web/layout tools in the Stone Studio, but they used to make applications like <a href="http://www.stone.com/DataPhile.html"; target="_blank">DataPhile</a>, <a href="http://www.stone.com/CheckSum.html"; target="_blank">CheckSum</a>, and they still make <a href="http://www.stone.com/TimeEqualsMoney/TimeEqualsMoney.html"; target="_blank">TimeEqualsMoney</a>.
OK, I think that's a nice way of telling me to shut up.
<hr></blockquote>
Not at all. Providing the frameworks by stealth is an excellent idea and I think Apple's already started going down that road.
I just think that without a common file format and partnerships to wrest control away from MS, all the other stuff will not be enough to take marketshare from Office.
Apple could see Office v. X put into "maintenance mode" without having anything to show for it. And that could be a big problem.
[quote]<strong>
In Liberation.fr, Jean-Louis Gassee (founder of Be, Inc.) writes about the state of Apple.
One interesting unknown tidbit that Gassee offers is that Apple recruited the team from GoBe back in 2001.
GoBe produced an office suite entitled GoBe Productive for Windows, Linux and BeOS platforms and made it to version 3.0. This software met positive reviews in the press.
The software featured various word processing, page design, layout, drawing, and photo components:
Use the components separately - or combine them to experience a whole new level of productivity and power. Draw a "live" spreadsheet into your word processing page. Add an illustration and edit it on the spot. Turn the whole thing into a slide show. All the tools are at your fingertips in every document you create.
The concept is similar to a the ill-fated OpenDoc technology which Apple pushed a few years ago. With no doubt, this rumor will spawn further speculation on an significant Appleworks update, which has been rumored.
<hr></blockquote></strong>
I could go for this! OpenDoc I believe that I mentioned something about this in another thread! Good idea bad execution, I guess it is time to revisit the OpenDoc concept.
[ 01-15-2003: Message edited by: Brendon ]</p>
<strong>
Create comes fairly close to what you're suggesting with AW, Amorph, albeit with many more features and maybe with more emphasis on layout and graphics.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Stone Studio was on my mind when I wrote that, actually.
The cool thing about OS X is that you don't really need a formal API like OpenDoc to accomplish a lot of what OpenDoc was capable of. The system is designed to do that sort of thing much more easily (look at Services). Not that I think a formal API would hurt, but Apple will probably wait until the integration of Carbon and Cocoa into Foundation is complete. They aren't quite there yet.
<strong>
Stone Studio was on my mind when I wrote that, actually.
The cool thing about OS X is that you don't really need a formal API like OpenDoc to accomplish a lot of what OpenDoc was capable of. The system is designed to do that sort of thing much more easily (look at Services). Not that I think a formal API would hurt, but Apple will probably wait until the integration of Carbon and Cocoa into Foundation is complete. They aren't quite there yet.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Not that I think a formal API would hurt, but Apple will probably wait until the integration of Carbon and Cocoa into Foundation is complete. They aren't quite there yet.
Thanks for the tip!!