[odf-discuss] News on MS pluggin

[Ian Lynch]

On Sun, 2006-10-15 at 18:29 -0700, marbux wrote:

> I'm not far enough along with OOo to pronounce on the comparison. But
> it would have to be pretty bad to exceed Word's bugginess. My big
> regret with OOo so far is that its designers tried to mimic the market
> leader rather than building the proverbial better mousetrap. 
> It would really be fun to work on an open source word processor that
> is designed to fulfill user needs rather than to replicate the
> Microsoft Word experience.

Kword? AbiWord? The thing about OOo is that a) the code is developed on
mono which makes it monolithic and that is not at all easy to change. b)
The take up of OOo compared to other FOSS WPs seems to indicate that
having something familiar to users is important at least to initiate
change.

> Personally, I believe the days of the giant office suites are
> numbered.

Possibly, but its going to take time. There are several steps needed.
Show the Emperor has no clothes and alternatives are perfectly viable
(OOo). Provided reliable interoperability (ODF) Provide the diversity to
give choice. In the latter stakes web based applications like Google
Office will play a big part simply because they are easy to get in front
of people.

>  With open file format standards we should be moving into an era of
> smaller, more special-purpose applications rather than more apps built
> upon apps. I think Microsoft management shares my belief else we would
> long ago have seen an Office redesign from scratch. 

An Office redesign from scratch would a) be expensive to do, b) signal
that new approaches were OK c) Compete with their own cash cow. So
whatever the logic its very difficult for MS to even contemplate it
purely from a marketing pov.

> That belief is why I devote so much time to exploring ways to minimize
> the application componentry framework needs for apps that support
> OpenDocument.
> 
> I'm drifting so far off-topic that I'll stop now. :-)

Half the fun of lists ;-)

Ian
-- 
www.theINGOTS.org
www.schoolforge.org.uk
www.opendocumentfellowship.org