About Calligra Active and what it should intend to be

[Inge Wallin]

On Monday, October 03, 2011 16:24:21 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_.
> > "
> 
> I thought, Okular is for that. Why should I have Calligra installed?
> What is advantage? To have bazilion of viewers each being able to open
> only specific document?

Okular can show lots of formats, including odt actually, but it cannot show 
ods, odp, odg or the other open document formats.  And, frankly, odt is not 
shown well.

So when you have a real document, either in the open document format or in a 
microsoft office format, then Calligra is necessary.

> > 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)?

Very unlikely in a tablet setting since LibreOffice doesn't work well in a 
touch screen setting. Even more unlikely in handsets with small screen size. 
LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org are monolitic and there is no way to provide a 
new UI on top of the engine. They are too interwoven.

Calligra is the only free office suite that has this separation between the UI 
and the engine and that can be put into new environments by giving it a new 
UI.

> > 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?

You continue using LibreOffice on the desktop (for now at least :) ) and use 
Calligra on tablets and handsets. They are fully compatible.  Or at least we 
try to make them so.

> I thought, that the major advantage of Calligra/Koffice lies in fact,
> that, unlike LibreOffice, it doesn't carry burden of legacy code.
> 
> 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?
> 
> Decision is still yours, but personally, I don't consider focus on
> viewing as good idea at all.

You forgot the qualifier: Focus on viewing *for the moment*. When we have a 
kick-ass viewer it's not that difficult to add some or a lot of editing 
features. But a full editor takes a lot of time to get ready. Better then to 
make a really good viewer to begin with.

> Regards
> Vit Pelcak
> 
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