take KOffice out of Kde?

[Terry-67]

Thomas Zander wrote:

<snip>

I still really want to have a professional graphics designer or such to
create a new KOffice logo and a new website with our own identity. The
website is required to be php driven, and contain no flash.
If you know where to find people that can create a professional looking
website like this, I'm sure every KOffice contributor would love you :)
--
Thomas Zander

I'm a little surprised that the people for that are not already part of Kde / KOffice.  The new OO forum going up at http://user.services.openoffice.org is being built largely by enthusiasts who became involved as a result of discussions on a private OO support forum.

The graphics requirements are complicated by the artist having to use Krita.  Krita users are the obvious people to ask.  Wouldn't it be worth publishing your requirements on the present KOffice site?  I see various competitions are mentioned there.

I don't know any Kde-friendly designers or site builders but I'm having a look around.  Do you favour the use of a content management system such as Joomla, Drupal, alfresco or other?

[Terry-67]

Inge Wallin wrote:

<snip>

I'm not particularly fond of the tans as a concept, but the PCLinuxOS banner
was beautiful.  On the other hand, I think it was a bit too 'techy', and we
would probably want to have something a bit more orientation to ordinary and
even artsy people. Remember, we do have a creativitiy suite as well.

        -Inge

Is there some way of reaching out to Krita users other than through the distros?

What about a site like distrowatch.com or tuxmachines.org?  [Thinking cap on.]

[Terry-67]

Inge Wallin wrote:

On Thursday 04 October 2007 08:01, Thomas Zander wrote:

> What we really need IMO is a set of (user) tutorials and content. For
> example on that planet link above I read about "a fabulous way to do list
> numbering".  Which made me laugh.  Its an incredibly complex thing to
> setup and KWord is just amazingly simple to use with good numbering (not
> changed a lot between 1.x and 2.0) What we really need is a tutorial
> explaining things like that.
> I even started the idea of writing a book like that, but nothing has been
> written as of yet.

What we could really use is something like authors.koffice.org, like the one
that exists for OOo.  We, the programmers, can't write as well as real
writers, so what we should do is to try to bring in more of those. Making it
easy for them to publish their work is an essential way of lowering the
barriers for entry, and I hope that we can have such a site before or soon
after the release of 2.0.

> ps. there is a developer wiki on http://wiki.koffice.org but it probably
> is entirely unhelpful for users, so, yes, I applaud having a user-site
> for this stuff.

Yes, users and 3rd party stuff like templates, small tutorials, etc.

        -Inge

Would user sites be part of the kde.org domain?  Someone (yourself, IIRC) mentioned a forum.  I've got a site on wikidot.com and it seems to be an unbelievably good service.  I came across it through polishlinux.org which has a wiki there, as does TinyMe, a re-master of PCLinuxOS.  An easily used wiki (with forum if required and, later, blogs as well) could be set up there within a matter of minutes.

Finding contributors will be the difficult part.

[Terry-67]

Boudewijn Rempt wrote:

On Thursday 04 October 2007, Terry wrote:

> One answer I got on another forum (not PCLOS) is that KOffice needs to
> be cross-platform.  The person suffers from cerebral palsy and has to
> use Windows at times so that he can take advantage of Dragon Naturally
> Speaking.

We're getting there, fortunately, with 2.0.

--
Boudewijn Rempt
http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi

Improving accessibility is no big advantage commercially, I suppose but catering for the main O.S. is.  Does the vision for KOffice include commercial and other network users?  Or is it strictly for mum, dad and the kids?

On Friday 05 October 2007 11:43:26 Terry-67 wrote:
> Is there some way of reaching out to Krita users other than through the
> distros?

When the windows release is out I'm sure sites like download.com and artsy
websites as well as art magazines (zoom / computer arts / etc) would be
potential distributors of Krita and our other creativity apps from the
KOffice suite.

--
Thomas Zander


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[Terry-67]

Inge Wallin wrote:

<snip>

We have very informally spoken to some KDE centric distros, and if KOffice 2.x
delivers, it may very well start to replace OOo as the default office suite.  
I don't expect that to happen before 2.1, though.

Once 2.0 is out, I will start to contact more distributions about this, but
it's a really long-term goal.  On the positive side, people do notice
KOffice, and I will have the second speaking slot after Aaron's keynote at
the KDE 4.0 release event in California. This means we have all of KDE behind
us, and they also think that KOffice is an important project.

        -Inge

<snip>

Your notion of "long-term" seems short enough to me.  In view of recent friction at oo.o, the Novell version of OO for SLED seems like a possible contender for use by other distros.

It seems as though post KOffice 2.0 would be a better time to start raising the subject of office software here and there.  I've found a positive response where I've mentioned KOffice so far.  It is seen as lacking features (I can't comment) and a "lightweight" alternative.

I'm thinking I could do some research on KOffice 2.0 (supposing the information is available) and start publishing it.

On Friday 05 October 2007 11:56:42 Terry-67 wrote:
> Improving accessibility is no big advantage commercially,

That depends; various businesses and certainly governments don't want to touch
our software if its not accessible.
With Qt4 its 98% accessible already, though.  All normal widgets will be
available for blind (/etc) users.
Its just the custom widgets (our canvasses are a prime example) that we need
to do a11y work on.

> I suppose but
> catering for the main O.S. is.  

I bet it will make a big difference in how many people take it seriously, yes.

> Does the vision for KOffice include
> commercial and other network users?  Or is it strictly for mum, dad and the
> kids?

I can't speak for all of KOffice, but my vision is quite extended.  Though I
don't aim to reach this any time soon ;)
The plugin structure in KOffice is a testament to that, I expect companies to
write custom plugins to make their business processes run smoother.  I used
various usecases found in law offices in examples before.

Bottom line; my personal aim is to put the infrastructure in place for
advanced stuff (mostly done) and then build on that to make KOffice for
mum&dad and slowly expand into other markets.
Naturally infrastructure like paragraph/character styles and advanced
numbering I already added in KWord2-alpha can be argued to already exceed the
goal of mum&dad :-D

Cheers!
--
Thomas Zander


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On Friday 05 October 2007 11:51:18 Terry-67 wrote:
> Would user sites be part of the kde.org domain?  Someone (yourself, IIRC)
> mentioned a forum.  I've got a site on wikidot.com and it seems to be an
> unbelievably good service.  I came across it through polishlinux.org which
> has a wiki there, as does TinyMe, a re-master of PCLinuxOS.  An easily used
> wiki (with forum if required and, later, blogs as well) could be set up
> there within a matter of minutes.

The domain name is not the hard part;  we have a wiki.koffice.org as an
example that is not under the .kde.org hierarchy.

> Finding contributors will be the difficult part.

Yeah, we need to take care of only placing under the .koffice.org domain name
things we (the KOffice community) believe in to be sustainable. By this I
mean that the domain name makes it feel more official, and we don't want a
one-day-fly to be too strongly affiliated with us.

I guess trying out one of the free services and when we find a working
solution we can make it more official (and make devs go there for providing
answers) is a strategy I would suggest.
--
Thomas Zander


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[Inge Wallin-3]

On Friday 05 October 2007 12:06, Terry-67 wrote:

> Inge Wallin wrote:
> > <snip>
> >
> > We have very informally spoken to some KDE centric distros, and if
> > KOffice 2.x
> > delivers, it may very well start to replace OOo as the default office
> > suite.
> > I don't expect that to happen before 2.1, though.
> >
> > Once 2.0 is out, I will start to contact more distributions about this,
> > but
> > it's a really long-term goal.  On the positive side, people do notice
> > KOffice, and I will have the second speaking slot after Aaron's keynote
> > at the KDE 4.0 release event in California. This means we have all of KDE
> > behind
> > us, and they also think that KOffice is an important project.
> >
> > -Inge
> >
> > <snip>
>
> Your notion of "long-term" seems short enough to me.  In view of recent
> friction at oo.o, the Novell version of OO for SLED seems like a possible
> contender for use by other distros.

Well, I meant that the fulfillment of the goal probably is long-term, not when
I/we start working on it.

> It seems as though post KOffice 2.0 would be a better time to start raising
> the subject of office software here and there.  I've found a positive
> response where I've mentioned KOffice so far.  It is seen as lacking
> features (I can't comment) and a "lightweight" alternative.

It indeed does lack features compared to OOo and it is also much more
lightweight.  What's nice is that it will continue to be lightweight also
after we have come to par with OOo feature wise. I agree that we should start
to raise the question already after 2.0 is released.

As I mentioned somewhere, I have been invited to give a speech about KOffice
at the KDE release event in California, and one thing that I will definitely
bring up is this very question.

> I'm thinking I could do some research on KOffice 2.0 (supposing the
> information is available) and start publishing it.

Sounds wonderful.  What do you want to know?

        -Inge

--
Inge Wallin               | Thus spake the master programmer:               |
                          |      "After three days without programming,     |
inge@...       |       life becomes meaningless."                |
                          | Geoffrey James: The Tao of Programming.         |
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[Inge Wallin-3]

On Friday 05 October 2007 11:43, Terry-67 wrote:

> Inge Wallin wrote:
> > <snip>
> >
> > I'm not particularly fond of the tans as a concept, but the PCLinuxOS
> > banner
> > was beautiful.  On the other hand, I think it was a bit too 'techy', and
> > we
> > would probably want to have something a bit more orientation to ordinary
> > and
> > even artsy people. Remember, we do have a creativitiy suite as well.
> >
> > -Inge
>
> Is there some way of reaching out to Krita users other than through the
> distros?

Krita is currently our most high-profile application.  I think that we can get
the message out about Krita and thereby also about KOffice by writing
articles in magazines.

> What about a site like distrowatch.com or tuxmachines.org?  [Thinking cap
> on.]

Hmm, how do you figure this would work? I think we need to add user awareness
about Krita first of all. Then we can start working on the distros.

        -Inge

--
Inge Wallin               | Thus spake the master programmer:               |
                          |      "After three days without programming,     |
inge@...       |       life becomes meaningless."                |
                          | Geoffrey James: The Tao of Programming.         |
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[Inge Wallin-3]

On Friday 05 October 2007 11:39, Terry-67 wrote:

> Thomas Zander wrote:
> > <snip>
> >
> > I still really want to have a professional graphics designer or such to
> > create a new KOffice logo and a new website with our own identity. The
> > website is required to be php driven, and contain no flash.
> > If you know where to find people that can create a professional looking
> > website like this, I'm sure every KOffice contributor would love you :)
> > --
> > Thomas Zander
>
> I'm a little surprised that the people for that are not already part of Kde
> / KOffice.  The new OO forum going up at
> http://user.services.openoffice.org is being built largely by enthusiasts
> who became involved as a result of discussions on a private OO support
> forum.
>
> The graphics requirements are complicated by the artist having to use
> Krita. Krita users are the obvious people to ask.  Wouldn't it be worth
> publishing your requirements on the present KOffice site?  I see various
> competitions are mentioned there.
>
> I don't know any Kde-friendly designers or site builders but I'm having a
> look around.  Do you favour the use of a content management system such as
> Joomla, Drupal, alfresco or other?

I agree that a user-oriented website is very important for the success of
KOffice.  Currently I don't have any time, but I think we could start to
gather people after the KOffice sprint in Berlin 27th-28th of october.

        -Inge

--
Inge Wallin               | Thus spake the master programmer:               |
                          |      "After three days without programming,     |
inge@...       |       life becomes meaningless."                |
                          | Geoffrey James: The Tao of Programming.         |
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[Boudewijn Rempt]

On Fri, 5 Oct 2007, Terry-67 wrote:

> The graphics requirements are complicated by the artist having to use Krita.
> Krita users are the obvious people to ask.  Wouldn't it be worth publishing
> your requirements on the present KOffice site?  I see various competitions
> are mentioned there.

I don't think using Krita is a hard requirement -- at least, I wouldn't want to
force Krita, even if it's for making art for a koffice website.

Boudewijn

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[Terry-67]

Thomas Zander wrote:
> <snip>
>> Finding contributors will be the difficult part.
>>    
>
> Yeah, we need to take care of only placing under the .koffice.org domain name
> things we (the KOffice community) believe in to be sustainable. By this I
> mean that the domain name makes it feel more official, and we don't want a
> one-day-fly to be too strongly affiliated with us.
>  

So, if private individuals were to try something, you would not want it
using an url such as, for example,  koffice.wikidot.com  The site could
be named something like "friends of KOffice" with some other url.  Or
(another possibility) a general office software discussion site called
something like "office view".  It could carry a feed from the KOffice
news page (as my personal site does) and some links and information but
otherwise be clearly independent of KOffice.

> I guess trying out one of the free services and when we find a working
> solution we can make it more official (and make devs go there for providing
> answers) is a strategy I would suggest.
>  

Having just been through this exercise (I was one of the prime movers if
not the prime mover to get another forum for OO users), I'm painfully
aware that most users are apathetic.  If you have something good,
though, the support will be there.  PCLinuxOS needed help earlier this
year and they got it in spades.

--

Regards, Terry North

Murphy's Law is recursive.

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On Friday 05 October 2007 14:19:11 Terry wrote:
> > Yeah, we need to take care of only placing under the .koffice.org domain
> > name things we (the KOffice community) believe in to be sustainable. By
> > this I mean that the domain name makes it feel more official, and we
> > don't want a one-day-fly to be too strongly affiliated with us.
> >  
>
> So, if private individuals were to try something, you would not want it
> using an url such as, for example,  koffice.wikidot.com

I'd be fine with such a name.
Its only the domain names that end on .koffice.org (like users.koffice.org for
example) that I was targetting with my comment above.

> The site could
> be named something like "friends of KOffice" with some other url.  Or
> (another possibility) a general office software discussion site called
> something like "office view".  It could carry a feed from the KOffice
> news page (as my personal site does) and some links and information but
> otherwise be clearly independent of KOffice.

That sounds like a great plan :)

--
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[Terry-67]

Inge Wallin wrote:

> On Friday 05 October 2007 11:43, Terry-67 wrote:
>  
> <snip>
>> What about a site like distrowatch.com or tuxmachines.org?  [Thinking cap
>> on.]
>>    
>
> Hmm, how do you figure this would work? I think we need to add user awareness
> about Krita first of all. Then we can start working on the distros.
>
> -Inge
>  

Yes, user awareness matters.  I was surprised to discover how many apps
come under KOffice.  If you want the logo designed with Krita, someone
has to be using it and it's necessary to reach that someone with a
request for a logo.  tuxmachines lets subscribers write blogs.  I
thought I could start writing about KOffice, the coming 2.0 version,
plans for user support, the need for a website designer and a graphics
designer, anything at all.  raiden's realm is another site which
supports Kde and I could pay it a visit.

Those are my first thoughts.  Until a few days ago I thought KOffice 2.0
was still a long way off and I was thinking of having to continue with
OO for another 12 months or so.  I was trying to work up enthusiasm to
re-write my Calc scripts in Python to ease the eventual transfer.  That
was not an inviting prospect.  Creating a small test file for KSpread
scripts now seems like a viable step to take and I'd much rather do that
than re-write scripts for Calc.  I'd much rather be working on KOffice
(which looks like the future) than OO (which looks awful as past,
present or future).

As I began by saying, a couple of us have even discussed the possibility
of developing a new suite.  My associate is looking at Lotus Symphony.  
Using those names seems almost like blasphemy to me.  I suppose it will
be a long time, if ever, before we see the likes of Lotus 123, AmiPro
and their companions again.  I could do more in an hour with AmiPro than
I could do in a day with Writer.  After reading the comments here, I'm
quite enthused about KOffice.  I think more people will feel the same
way if they find out what lies ahead.

--

Regards, Terry North

Murphy's Law is recursive.

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[Jaroslaw Staniek-2]

Terry-67 said the following, On 2007-10-05 11:51:

> Would user sites be part of the kde.org domain?  Someone (yourself, IIRC)
> mentioned a forum.  I've got a site on wikidot.com and it seems to be an
> unbelievably good service.  I came across it through polishlinux.org which
> has a wiki there, as does TinyMe, a re-master of PCLinuxOS.  An easily used
> wiki (with forum if required and, later, blogs as well) could be set up
> there within a matter of minutes.

Re. wikidot and gazzillion other businesses, it's all consisted mostly of FOSS
components that many of us use and/or know already.
For example, I am a part of the team introducing KDE-blessed http://kde.org.pl 
and http://forum.kde.org.pl. So we have no technology problem here.

> Finding contributors will be the difficult part.

Yes this is a problem. And contributors forming this part of community have to
be rather long-term. So far we have not may folks that write articles or blogs
on KOffice topic, no matter whether these are published under kde.org or
koffice.org. We rather depend on 'media' people devoted to many KDE topics,
not just KOffice.

I also guess that the reason why people propose marketing KOffice outside of
KDE is that KDE is still perceived just as a desktop, not as 1) a platform
providing set of development technologies, 2) a culture of its own kind.
But fortunately there's large coordiated work to improve this situation for KDE 4.

(CC'd Aaron, he'll most likely like this topic)

--
regards / pozdrawiam, Jaroslaw Staniek
  Sponsored by OpenOffice Polska (http://www.openoffice.com.pl/en) to work on
  Kexi & KOffice: http://www.kexi.pl/en, http://www.koffice.org
  KDE3 & KDE4 Libraries for MS Windows: http://kdelibs.com, http://www.kde.org
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[Terry-67]

Jaroslaw Staniek-2 wrote:

Terry-67 said the following, On 2007-10-05 11:51:

<snip>

> Finding contributors will be the difficult part.

Yes this is a problem. And contributors forming this part of community have to
be rather long-term. So far we have not may folks that write articles or blogs
on KOffice topic, no matter whether these are published under kde.org or
koffice.org. We rather depend on 'media' people devoted to many KDE topics,
not just KOffice.

I also guess that the reason why people propose marketing KOffice outside of
KDE is that KDE is still perceived just as a desktop, not as 1) a platform
providing set of development technologies, 2) a culture of its own kind.
But fortunately there's large coordiated work to improve this situation for KDE 4.

(CC'd Aaron, he'll most likely like this topic)

--
regards / pozdrawiam, Jaroslaw Staniek
  Sponsored by OpenOffice Polska (http://www.openoffice.com.pl/en) to work on
  Kexi & KOffice: http://www.kexi.pl/en, http://www.koffice.org
  KDE3 & KDE4 Libraries for MS Windows: http://kdelibs.com, http://www.kde.org

When I migrated from Windows to Linux, the one thing I had to ensure was the availability of a spreadsheet application which could handle my spreadsheets and which could be automated by scripting. I dismissed KOffice and Gnome Office almost out of hand because I thought of Kde and Gnome as creators of GUIs for the operating system for whom office software would be little more than an "extra". First KSpread then AbiWord pretty well confirmed my suspicions.

wikidot has been inaccessible today.  The site now has an explanation available but before that I was completely in the dark and a little disappointed by the lack of any notice.  I've set up an exploratory page at http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:Office_software_options

[Terry-67]

Inge Wallin wrote:

On Friday 05 October 2007 12:06, Terry-67 wrote:
<snip>

> I'm thinking I could do some research on KOffice 2.0 (supposing the
> information is available) and start publishing it.

Sounds wonderful.  What do you want to know?

        -Inge

Far more than you have time for.  I need to start at the beginning but I suppose the main thing to start getting out is how things will change.  I'm happy to stick to information released officially.  That slog can wait until the new work week.

Raiden's Realm and tuxmachines seem like the best outlets.  Articles in the former end up on the latter usually but I'm inclined to give tuxmachines the first shot.

[Terry-67]

Inge Wallin wrote:

On Friday 05 October 2007 12:06, Terry-67 wrote:
> > <snip>
>
> Your notion of "long-term" seems short enough to me.  In view of recent
> friction at oo.o, the Novell version of OO for SLED seems like a possible
> contender for use by other distros.

Well, I meant that the fulfillment of the goal probably is long-term, not when
I/we start working on it.

<snip>
        -Inge

I've caught up with a podcast in which Mark Shuttleworth (no less) evidently mentions "they may consider switching office platforms to KOffice because of all of OOo's problems".  I couldn't get the ogg file to work and was distracted while playing the mp3 file but, assuming he did say that, it's encouraging.

[Boudewijn Rempt]

On Saturday 06 October 2007, Terry-67 wrote:

> I've caught up with a podcast in which Mark Shuttleworth (no less)
> http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?p=254624#254624 evidently
> mentions  "they may consider switching office platforms to KOffice because
> of all of OOo's problems".  

I hope Mark considers putting some funding into our efforts... We're stretched
awfully thin.


--
Boudewijn Rempt
http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi


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