Idea #9406: Make OpenOffice Sexy, port RedOffice

127

Written by Liam McDermott the 3 Jun 08 at 01:23. Category: Office.
Related to: Nothing/Others. Status: New

Description

A fantastic front-end to OpenOffice has been developed. Currently it is only available for Windows, but will be ported to Linux shortly.

As this new front-end will be available under the GPL we should use it in Ubuntu (or see if upstream would be willing to include it).

OpenOffice is often accused of looking archaic, not only that but we need to catch up with the interface of Microsoft Office 2007. Something you might not notice at first glance are the new templates, they're far nicer than the ones OpenOffice ships with (shouldn't be difficult to remove the Chinese symbols if required).

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Ubuntuforums.org thread #816624

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Comments

xavi1337 wrote on the 3 Jun 08 at 01:51

Agree that OO needs a major upgrade with it's UI. Unfortunately, I doubt that Ubuntu has enough of a forward looking mentality to stray away from the default OO package. Hopefully this idea can be pushed upstream

Auzy wrote on the 3 Jun 08 at 03:18

And isn't it only in chinese? Do we know if it is designed to easily support other languages?

Liam McDermott wrote on the 3 Jun 08 at 03:24

And isn't it only in chinese? Do we know if it is designed to easily support other languages?
Well, yes. It's still OpenOffice underneath the new UI and that supports lots of different languages. :)

pejeno wrote on the 3 Jun 08 at 03:42

Though it's not part of what Ubuntu does, I think it would be good if the distro leaders could suggest this new UI to the OOo developers so they polish it and include it in a future release. I think they would be more eager to listen to the people behind a successfull distro aimed at desktop users than to us regular folks.
The UI definitely looks nice, but an option to go back to the old one for those not used to it should be given.

geordee wrote on the 3 Jun 08 at 05:16

I checked screenshots of Redoffice, and it is worth pursuing. What appealed most to me is the ribbon placed as a sidebar, which will be an advantage while using widescreen monitors. Openoffice.org definitely needs UI improvements, and distros should push for such changes.

Jerrac wrote on the 3 Jun 08 at 05:54

Yeah, the only thing I liked in Office 2007 was the way the ribbon worked in Excel. Made it way easier to do a lot of stuff.

I have been wanting to see OpenOffice or some other open source office product innovate in the the UI, and the screen shots of RedOffice look like they are on the way to being really good.

Liam McDermott wrote on the 3 Jun 08 at 08:34

> I think it would be good if the distro leaders could suggest this new UI to the OOo developers so they polish it and include it in a future release.

This is true, although it could be maintained as a seperate package (a fork almost), and if that package got into the Debian/Ubuntu repos, we'd have our wish.

With something that gives such a large boost to the looks of OpenOffice it won't be long before someone packages it. Not sure about getting it in Debian though, packaging is not something I know much about. :)

Auzy wrote on the 3 Jun 08 at 08:36

yeah, I understand its openoffice under Liam, but has their interface been internationalised?

glibik wrote on the 3 Jun 08 at 10:02

I take issue with the assertion that "we need to catch up with the interface of Microsoft Office 2007".

It seems to me there has been far too much copying of Microsoft this and that in a number of OSS projects over the last 10 years. I remember a time when pretty much everything in the open source world was way ahead of anything available from Microsoft, using just about any measure one could think of.

The last 5 years I've seen some particular disappoints. For me, each new version of Gnome and KDE has become less and less intuitive and more difficult to work with. It appears that both KDE and Gnome developers are trying to make their respective UIs more and more like the Windows UI. :-(

It's bad enough that I have to suffer the shitty Windows UI in my work as a systems admin, but why should I be progressively pushed towards it at home, and, when I work with proper computers.

There are many reasons I've been using Unix and Linux systems in preference to Microsoft Windows for the 10-15 years, not the least of which being the ease of use and of getting things done.

End of Rant ... for now.

I haven't seen, or tried to use, this 'new' front end, so am not going to vote the idea up or down.

Remco wrote on the 3 Jun 08 at 11:45

It would have to be ported to Gtk to be really viable. I bet there are many small differences between this custom toolkit and Gtk, even besides the GUI. Things like button placement order, access keys, icons, file manager, text edit behaviour... those are important things to have consistent across apps in an environment.

OpenOffice itself already fails in that respect, but this is probably even worse. OpenOffice tries to get most things right with their native-look-alike GUI toolkit.

And by the way, the next version of OpenOffice will have many improvements that will put it beyond MS Office.

And I think a side-bar ribbon was planned for OpenOffice anyway. That's really the only new thing this RedOffice provides. The rest is just a fancy OSX-like widget theme that looks completely out of place on Windows and Linux.

Liam McDermott wrote on the 3 Jun 08 at 12:58

> I take issue with the assertion that "we need to catch up with the interface of Microsoft Office 2007".

Well we could just stick our heads in the sand, but the feeling I'm getting is that people LOVE the interface in Office 2007. That's just empirical evidence though.

> It seems to me there has been far too much copying of Microsoft this and that in a number of OSS projects over the last 10 years.

I agree, actually. It would be great if OpenOffice had a completely new, unique and innovative UI. Unfortunately the plan all along has been to imitate Microsoft. As Microsoft have improved their UI, we must match it.

> And by the way, the next version of OpenOffice will have many improvements that will put it beyond MS Office.

That's not been my experience. I still hear large amounts of grousing that features are missing from OpenOffice. See: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/07/1710202 about two-thirds of the way down, the complaining starts on outline mode, low limit on calc rows and columns, lack of support for OpenType fonts etc. etc.

Anyway, let's not turn this into an MS Office Vs. OpenOffice bash-fest, and get really off-topic, I just wanted to point-out that this is over-exaggeration. OpenOffice is great stuff though. :)

edm1 wrote on the 3 Jun 08 at 19:02

To those suggesting this needs to be sent to OOo developers, Redflag (the developers of redoffice) have already agreed to commit to the global OOo developers community.

http://blogs.sun.com/webmink/date/20071003

glibik wrote on the 5 Jun 08 at 12:43

>> Well we could just stick our heads in the sand

Alternatively, we could stop trying to follow all the time and go back to doing what the FOSS community used to do so well. That was lead the world of software innovation and software design.

The issue I was having a Rant about is much bigger than merely the front-end for a single application.

Liam McDermott wrote on the 5 Jun 08 at 19:12

@glibik Yes and I was agreeing with you. However, I don't think this is really an effective place to put such a rant. In fact, that would probably be better as an idea in its own right. Or at least as a rant at the OpenOffice devs (not sure how far that'll get you though).

This idea does perpetuate a bad meme, but it was OpenOffice who set that course, not the people who vote on this idea. We just want OpenOffice to be the best that it can be: as it's purpose is to copy Microsoft Office, then we will try to make it the best copy of Microsoft Office possible.

Either that or we try to pursuade the OpenOffice devs to come up with a great new UI of their own/our devising, or fork the project. Neither are very viable: firstly the OpenOffice devs are a rather closed bunch who're adamant on following the MS Office UI (going by empirical evidence though, I might be wrong), secondly I for one have my own Free software projects to run: do you have time to fork OpenOffice? Thirdly, I have no idea what an Office suite UI _should_ look like. If you or anyone else has any ideas, I suggest you do a mockup and submit them to OpenOffice!

Redrazor39 wrote on the 9 Jun 08 at 22:11

I HATE The crappy Windows UI. I LOVE how RedOffice is taking what MS did right and adapting it differently and better!

Tabbed ribbon as a sidebar is a Godsend for widescreen small laptops like mine.

I LOVE THIS :)

I WILL SUPPORT IT 100%

The UI in Ubuntu and everything Ubuntu really needs a serious overhaul. I don't care if we alienate millions of people, as long as it's efficient, good looking, and well-working GUI as well as CLI.

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