About Calligra Active and what it should intend to be

[Carl Symons]

On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 7:49 AM, Boudewijn Rempt <boud at valdyas.org> wrote:
> On Monday 03 October 2011 Oct, Vít Pelčák wrote:
>> 2011/10/3 Shantanu Tushar Jha <jhahoneyk at gmail.com>:
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > (Cross posting as the topic might be of interest to both MLs)
>> >
>> > There was recently some discussion on the Active ML about Calligra Active
>> > and how to make the user experience better.
>> > Aaron Seigo had an interesting suggestion in the mail he sent [1] which
>> > says-
>> >
>> > "
>> > but imho the most important thing is for these
>> > projects to focus on being amazing document _viewers_.
>> > "

[snip]

>
> For both the N900 and the N9, there's one document viewer, based on Calligra. And onthe N9 it also shows PDF documents, in addition to all the current office file formats. One viewer, optimized for the platform. Calligra Active can be that viewer for Active.
>
>> > I gave it a thought and realised that we need to discuss this. The reason I
>> > can think of is that a larger percentage of the use cases are for viewing
>> > the documents instead of editing them.
>>
>> Hm. And if user has associated LibreOffice already (very likely scenario)?
>
> LibreOffice on a tablet? That's not going to give a good user experience. I've seen LibreOffice on a WeTab, and it was not a pretty sight. Calligra is actually really good as a document viewer these days, and it's easy to create a nice gui that fits the platform, using QML.
>

I've taken notes on tablet using KWrite. Not optimal, but it does the
trick for capturing thoughts.

LibreOffice is miserable. So far my main "sharing" tablet use is
presentation. Usually I design and construct them on a device with
mouse & keyboard and LibreO. It works great--more capability than I
have use for. But LibreOffice won't even display these properly on the
tablet. LibreOffice Impress is worthless on the ExoPC/oSUSE/Contour
tablet. Basic functions just don't work.

I want an "amazing document viewer" optimized for the tablet.
(Probably the same for smartphone. I don't have one.) I'd also like to
be able to do simple edits in case my
presentation/document/spreadsheet needs to be changed a bit on the
fly. I don't think there's a need for a complete start-to-finish
workflow. It would be very cool to have a UI for Calligra (I'm looking
at Words right now) that resembles that for Kontact Touch. A context
aware panel slides in from the side with big buttons. Selecting a
function opens an attached display with big buttons.

It's hard to imagine that I'd use some of the Calligra Words tools,
e.g., Bezier curves. Maybe a basic set of tools and an easy way to
configure.

What is in the basic set of tools? I agree with what Boud said! Mobile
users. Content consumers. And also device manufacturers and nonKDE
developers who recognize the KDE Active (Plasma & Apps) direction.

Incidentally, I worked in a coffee shop for several hours yesterday on
my Plasma Netbook. The people at the next table were there the whole
time working on mobile devices with detachable keyboards...one was an
iPad with a clunky fold up docking station (the woman is moving to
some sleeker bluetooth keyboard). The other person was using some
smart phone with an external bluetooth keyboard.

The smart phone guy was not in production mode, but the iPad person
was flying...100+ words/minute. Taking precise notes of their
conversation.

Carl

>>
>> > I'd like views from the Calligra team about this, should we continue what
>> > we're doing now (that is, try to improve the viewing to the most we can and
>> > then go to editing), or concentrate only on viewing?
>>
>> Sorry, but I'm missing point here.
>>
>> What should make me switch from LibreOffice to Calligra? Focus of
>> Calligra on viewing documents and lack of editing tools?
>>
>> I thought, that the major advantage of Calligra/Koffice lies in fact,
>> that, unlike LibreOffice, it doesn't carry burden of legacy code.
>
> And can be adapted to have any kind of UX you need. Using QWidget, MeegoTouch or QML.
>
>> What type of user is your target? Mainstream will have LibreOffice
>> already installed. What is advantage? Faster startup time when startup
>> of application means only insignificant portion of whole time spent in
>> program?
>
> The advantage is a user interface optimized for touch.
>
>>
>> Decision is still yours, but personally, I don't consider focus on
>> viewing as good idea at all.
>
> --
> Boudewijn Rempt
> http://www.valdyas.org, http://www.krita.org, http://www.boudewijnrempt.nl
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