Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:46 am Post subject: Open Excel
Hello,
I wish NeoOffice to drop this matrix-like name, get a serious one, and do what OpenOffice is not, namely split the various applications into independent ones, like mozilla's organization did with firefox and thunderbird. Make an OpenXquill and OpenXcel, for example, make them run fast, and focus on having the broadest community of users and developers you can.
Joined: Dec 08, 2005 Posts: 291 Location: Berlin, Germany
Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2006 10:45 am Post subject:
Well, Samwise, Bob has a point. I have it from authority (Thanks Bill, and give Melinda my love) that Ed and Patrick are two Californian hippie dudes, hanging out most of the time at the beach. NeoOffice is in reality developed in a Chinese programmers sweat shop in an industrial zone close to Shanghai. 50 Million $ is about the sum they "earned" so far from donations & the EAP. They spend the money almost entirely on beer (Ed) or secret pleasures, which aren't legal in some countries (Patrick). Lately, they have been buying a neat old castle in the Loire valley in France - hence the recent activity about "flying to Lyon". Ed & Patrick are the Sopranos of the software world - that's why we love & envy them.
Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2006 12:41 pm Post subject: Re: Open Excel
Bob Hunter wrote:
Hello,
I wish NeoOffice to drop this matrix-like name, get a serious one, and do what OpenOffice is not, namely split the various applications into independent ones, like mozilla's organization did with firefox and thunderbird. Make an OpenXquill and OpenXcel, for example, make them run fast, and focus on having the broadest community of users and developers you can.
Bob
God, that's hilarious.
BTW-- "neo" has existed before the matrix. Besides an anagram of "one", it also means new or recent as in neologism, neo-nazi, neoconservative, etc.
As for splitting the applications up and all that other jazz, I'll do it after lunch.
Samwise, does the mozilla project runs with that much? If OpenOffice (which is linked to Sun, notoriously needy for funds) is unable to run the project with a state-of-the-art approach, then get the infrastructure from mozilla.org and copy from their exemplar experience! I do not understand this oriental philosophy about making one with everything, but this 400MB+ application that wants to make coffee is just hilarious. And it is fucking slow, excuse my French.
Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2006 2:49 pm Post subject: Re: Open Excel
Waldo wrote:
BTW-- "neo" has existed before the matrix. Besides an anagram of "one", it also means new or recent as in neologism, neo-nazi, neoconservative, etc.
Actually, NeoOffice is short for Neolithic Office
Neolithic means something like New Stone. And the people in the NeoLithic age developed some really nice things that we still use, like pottery and farming and domestic animals... They were also good at making really big blocks of stone and arranging them in artful and useful (for astronomy) patterns.
Huge blocks .
Best wishes,
Oscar _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Joined: Nov 21, 2005 Posts: 1285 Location: Witless Protection Program
Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2006 3:05 pm Post subject:
Bob, Welcome to the Neo(lithic)Office forums.
While it may ... seem that some of the other replys here are rude - that is because what you are asking for is a HUGE task. Something that only MAJOR corporation would have the resources (Time, Money, Manpower, Skills, etc).
The Developers here are spending their own time, money, resouces, skills, to port an already working Office Suite (OpenOffice.org) to the Macintosh platform AND have the common Mac look and Feel (Aqua interface).
Tasks such a completly re-writing millions of lines of code to make individual modules ... is just so HUGE that it evokes ... hilarious comments.
If you are in a position to fund/support such a HUGE task - you are most welcome to try.
OR select another application that better suits your needs (may I suggest MS Office for the Mac - before it's discontinued).
For something that is: FREE, Functional, MS Office Document compatible, support the ISO OpenDocument Format, eliminates the need for MS Office on my Mac, and more (did I mention F R E E ), I think the NeoOffice is an Outstanding Value - YMMV.
I would be contented with the spreadsheet alone, with no need to carry the weight of all the rest. Just scrape out the spreadsheet, and make it run stand alone. Why? Smaller, faster, best supported. To those like me, who do not want to have the slightest bit of software from MicroCrap in their machines, the Office suite is missing an important component: the spreadsheet. All the rest is already available. The app for Design is best replaced by other open source projects, like InkScape for example. The app for text processing and presentations is best replaced by TeX. What else is around in OOo? Oh, yes, the Database, which is best replaced by PostgreSQL. So, if one scrapes out those apps which have best efforts elsewhere, one is left with the spreadsheet. But no, to have the spreadsheet one must load the machine with about 300MB of extra unwanted applications! NeolithicOffice is not up to date, and the OSX interface could be donated to the OOo project, so that new releases are in sync. Do you want to do something original, eventually worth a PayPal account? Then cut away the needless bits from OOo and focus on the spreadsheet alone.
So, if one scrapes out those apps which have best efforts elsewhere, one is left with the spreadsheet. But no, to have the spreadsheet one must load the machine with about 300MB of extra unwanted applications!
What about Gnumeric?
If you can live with Inkscape's X11 interface then you may use Gnumeric.
I would be contented with the spreadsheet alone, with no need to carry the weight of all the rest. Just scrape out the spreadsheet, and make it run stand alone. Why? Smaller, faster, best supported. To those like me, who do not want to have the slightest bit of software from MicroCrap in their machines, the Office suite is missing an important component: the spreadsheet. All the rest is already available.
Well, I think you're missing the point of an office suite. It is so much easier on people to have an interface that is almost identical across applications. For instance, I use Excel 2003's extended paste button at work a lot. And then get really frustrated with the fact that it is not available in Word. The bonus for users is in smaller learning curves. For developers, so much is shared that you get more functionality for your work. I like that idea.
Feel free to cobble together your work suite, but I like the concept behind Neo. _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Have you ever read the Bugzilla Guide? It's linked from the "File a bug" page in Bugzilla
(At one time we did want to re-work the appearance of Bugzilla so that it forced you to read stuff when you first began reporting bugs...but there were lots of bugs to fix, and not enough time.... )
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Joined: Nov 21, 2005 Posts: 1285 Location: Witless Protection Program
Posted: Sun Aug 13, 2006 3:02 pm Post subject:
Thanks Smokey,
I had read most of it before but it was good to read it again (and again ). Thanks for adding the link to the Wiki.
It's good to have other references for folks to read.
Should this have a link on the Main Page for the Wiki? It's seems so important? I ...
NEVER MIND - I found it listed under How to Report Problems. Should "Bugzilla" be added to the link text?
Grin - I know I'm just ... full of "suggestions". I'm just looking for ways to help the maximum number of user questions.
I just look for answers to questions, that I, or new users might have.
I want to make it CLEAR - I am super IMPRESSED by the level of support that the Neo Community provides. The Wiki is ... FAN-tastic. It's an HONOR to be able to hang out with such GREAT people.
Philip (Lucky to have such a wonder community to visit/support! )
This is totally beyond the scope of NeoOffice, but I do see the value of smaller, leaner and more focused subsets of the office suite application. Remember Netscape Communicator? It had a browser, email client, web design program and I think at one point an IRC client all built into a single application. Mozilla's Seamonkey had/s the same pieces... At some point, Ben Goodger and some other Mozilla developers (Dave Hyatt?) decided to break the browser out of the suite and focus on just that, and the result was FireFox.
I could see a slimmed down NeoWriter, NeoCalc, etc as standalone apps being of value-- myself, I only use the word processor and very rarely any of the other features.
But then again, back when Netscape Communicator was the standard, computers were much slower, with far less memory than today, so loading all the unnecessary pieces was more of a hassle than it is now.
Anyway, it's outside the scope of Ed and Patrick's efforts here. I wonder if it would be difficult to scrape out all the other stuff to make smaller apps in the OpenOffice.org world, and how hard it would be to port that to neooffice if it ever happened...
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