Mac OS X - quo vadis calligra, calligraconverter

[matus.uzak at gmail.com]

Hi again,

> And iWork sucks at that? After all they claim support*. Or is too expensive? I
> would have guessed that iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) is the natural choice
> on OS X. Hm, all already 3 years old? So I guess they just suck to a degree :)
> Or have a too unfamiliar interface/UX, compared to what people are trained to.
> All guess work here.
>
> * http://www.apple.com/iwork/compatibility/

People I have asked claim that OOo/LO does a much better job in means
of compatibility with MS Office.

I have collected a bunch of files in MS binary file formats created by
iWorks that our filters classify as invalid
and most of those can't be opened in MS Office 2003.  MS Office 2007
does a better job because input filters
were improved.  I have spent some time analyzing those and came to a
conclusion that it's not worth to spent
time on processing such invalid files at the moment.  I can only
generalize about the quality OOXML compatibility
based on my experience with binary file formats.  I don't have access
to iWorks to analyze it's export filters on test data.

>> Then I mentioned calligraconverter to people working at science
>> academy and university.  They were impressed
>> that there's a command line tool enabling them batch conversions and
>> can be included into scripts.
>
> Did they also mention what would be their typical use cases for this tool?

They usually have a bunch of files in MS file formats in a shared
repository, so they could do batch conversion to ODF.
And of course convert OOXML to ODF locally and continue using OOo/LO
until especially Words are ready for everyday use
of the whole population. :)

We claim that "Calligra import filters for docx/xlsx/pptx are the best
free translations tools available anywhere.", [2] and we should build
on this and promote it better to attract potential sponsors. A
separate calligraconverter package would make a good start.
It would mean that people don't need to install the whole calligra
suite.  Can we consider this as a drawback?

[2] http://www.calligra.org/news/first-beta-version-of-the-calligra-suite/

-matus

On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 2:48 PM, Friedrich W. H. Kossebau
<kossebau at kde.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Am Mittwoch, 30. Mai 2012, 12:31:45 schrieb matus.uzak at gmail.com:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have had some time to socialize a bit and I have spent it by asking
>> Mac users which office suite do they use. :)
>> And the answer was OOo or LO recently. They simply have to deal with
>> Microsoft office formats and communicate
>> with people using MS Office on MS Windows.
>
> And iWork sucks at that? After all they claim support*. Or is too expensive? I
> would have guessed that iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) is the natural choice
> on OS X. Hm, all already 3 years old? So I guess they just suck to a degree :)
> Or have a too unfamiliar interface/UX, compared to what people are trained to.
> All guess work here.
>
> * http://www.apple.com/iwork/compatibility/
>
>> -----
>>
>> Then I mentioned calligraconverter to people working at science
>> academy and university.  They were impressed
>> that there's a command line tool enabling them batch conversions and
>> can be included into scripts.
>
> Did they also mention what would be their typical use cases for this tool?
>
>> And there's
>> no information at calligra.org about calligraconverter.
>>
>> Let's provide an option to download calligraconverter as a separate
>> package.  Mac OS X and GNU Linux users
>> can still use OOo/LO to edit and save files to MIcrosoft formats but
>> use calligraconverter to deal with OOXML.
>
> +1
>
> You made calligraconverter for a reason, there is demand for it.
> Now if you want people to join the community around that product as users, it
> needs to be googlable/discoverable and easily gettable. Nothing new, but just
> be consequent :)
>
> Cheers
> Friedrich
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