Re: It makes no sense

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Re: It makes no sense
by Cyrille Berger on Friday 02/Nov/2007, @16:22

"still not spend time on supporting it." it means we won't spend time developing our own OfficeOpen XML support. One of the KOffice hacker allready made it possible to use OpenOffice to silently convert files to odf to then open them in KOffice.

But if there is a good OOXML to ODF converter, we will of course be able to leverage it and use that. I would also like to point out, that OOXML is not yet an ISO standard, and a lot of changes are needed to be made to the standard before it can become one, so support for OOXML is clearly not a priority for the next release.

Related Links

·   Articles on KDE Office Suite
·   Also by Cyrille Berger
·   Contact author

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Re: It makes no sense
by Level 1 on Friday 02/Nov/2007, @16:53

I think the koffice people need to implement at least basic microsoft document support if they expect people to use it. I love kde to the end of the earth and use kde apps everywhere I can, except office apps, there I use openoffice; The fact of the matter is I'm a college student in America. I can't turn in reports in odf, because my school uses ms word. I can't force people to use odf, but if kword supported doc it would be much easier

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Re: It makes no sense
by Adrian Baugh on Friday 02/Nov/2007, @17:19

You clearly haven't found the "Save As" option (or are trolling...)

File -> Save As; select Microsoft Word document. It's not rocket science...

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Re: It makes no sense - compatibilty with msformat
by Pol on Saturday 03/Nov/2007, @04:18

I don not think he/she is a troll. Compatibility with Ms-office is crucial in spreading koffice.
Can one export kword files containing tables and pictures to the ms-doc format?
Can one _import_ ms-doc formatted documents containing tables and pictures?

Until last year, as far as i remember, that was not possible.

Are developers making progress in that direction?

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MS formats are history
by Right direction on Saturday 03/Nov/2007, @10:03

The onus is on M$ to become compatible. However, that'll never happen voluntarily. So, we have for the time being Sun's ODF plugin for MS Word:
http://www.sun.com/software/star/odf_plugin/

MS formats are history. Sure several of the .doc formats are around now, but not a single one of the specifications has been published. That means as soon as a universal format gets a critical mass, people will leave.

KOffice is making the right move to turn to open standards.

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Re: MS formats are history
by yxxcvsdfbnfgnds on Sunday 04/Nov/2007, @13:41

I don't think anybody ever seriously considered/proposed making MS Office formats the default formats in KOffice. ODF should stay the default file format in KOffice.
But good reading support for MS Office formats is crucial.

I have a Linux PC and an iBook with Mac OS X. Thus I'm also visiting Mac user forums. You probably don't imagine it how big the resistance against the upcoming MS Office 2008 is. That release will display most existing MS Office documents just fine, but it won't support VBA scripting. If killing a feature that only a minority uses causes so much uproar, just think about how much resistance an office suite will get (on platforms where MS Office is available) that can't even open many MS Office file remotely correct.

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Re: It makes no sense
by AC on Saturday 03/Nov/2007, @02:15

OpenOffice is bloated and hard to use because instead of improving the apps they are always following Microsoft. There's no need for another app to go that way.

For example kpresenter is different from ms powerpoint, but IMHO it's better and easier to use (although some features are missing).

The bottom line is: we don't need another ms office!

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Re: It makes no sense
by T. J. Brumfield on Saturday 03/Nov/2007, @18:44

It isn't bloated for copying MS Office, and it certainly departs from MS Office in many ways. It is bloated because of a large, perhaps poorly written code base.

MS Office is perhaps the best piece of software MS has put out. It is very feature rich, stable, and loads very quickly. It is well integrated, and really a good product. If it were multiplatform, I might just use it on Linux believe it or not. Because it isn't multiplatform, I use OOo on both.

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Re: It makes no sense
by Leo S on Sunday 04/Nov/2007, @08:48

Yeah, Office is truly excellent. Openoffice is ok for basic needs, but for anything more advanced I have to turn to MS Office (especially excel is leaps and bounds ahead of calc).

Trying to beat microsoft at their own game is impossible. KOffice needs to be innovative and take a different approach, which I think they are already doing very well. I look forward to 2.0.

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Re: It makes no sense
by Reply on Monday 05/Nov/2007, @23:11

You should turn in reports in PDF, not .doc or .odt.

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Re: It makes no sense
by yxxcvsdfbnfgnds on Sunday 04/Nov/2007, @13:27

"But if there is a good OOXML to ODF converter, we will of course be able to leverage it and use that."

My point is that you don't want to do it. How hard is it for a C++ developer like you to launch an external executable from KOffice? If it's a piece of cake then just check if odf-converter is installed in the system's PATH, run it to convert an OOXML file to ODF, and open the resulting ODF file. AFAIK Novell already does this in their OpenOffice built.
When I mentioned odf-converter the last time, I just received hatred, because the converter is Mono-based. So what? I don't want to become Mono a requirement for KOffice either and that's why I just propose to make it optional.

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Re: It makes no sense
by Steve Brennan on Monday 05/Nov/2007, @14:03

Yes and we all know about the Microsoft/Novell deal too. Sure Novell can use mono, and OOOXML and whatever Microsoft technology it wants to, they've signed a deal with Microsoft that allows them to do so.

Open standards work for everyone, Microsoft standards only work for those whom Microsoft allows them to work for.

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