Re: [libreoffice-design] Breaking out of the box (applications versus objects)

Hi Greg!

Before anything else, welcome from me, a recent members too! :)

I like your approach and share your ideas. I actually think that at 
future, applications in general will be more integrate and unified like 
that. But personally I'd fell a bit uncomfortable if I'd have to do 
everything in a unique application. Sometimes is good have a different 
context to help when the workflow is changed.

But as Bernhard well pointed, it's possible work in other applications 
inside one of them using OLE bjects. But I must to say the current 
implementation of this feature, his behavior, looks like a 
Frankenstein... :/

Maybe the great solution would be improve the OLE feature until the 
point its behavior gets closer at most to your proposal, Greg. ;)

Best wishes,
~Paulo




On 27-01-2011 22:44, noh.way.jose wrote:
> I'm new to this community, so please forgive me if the topic I'd like to
> discuss has already been aired.
>
> To set the scene, first a bit of summarised, probably partisan and probably
> only partially accurate context. I point this out because I wouldn't want the
> thread to spin off into pedantic historic details and corrections.
>
> Having been around the computer industry for many years now, I have kept
> abreast of computing advancements by reading the industry news, developing
> products and using them. A pattern of acquisitions, mergers,aggregations, best
> practice, standards and plain copying has been going on so relentlessly that I
> believe that the fruits of these enterprises no longer adequately meet users
> needs as well as can be.
>
> The original modern interface (Xerox Star) didn't differentiate by application
> but by  objects familiar to users. The application rot started with the
> commercial versions of this approach but really got application centric with
> Windows '95. My rough recollection is that MS Office started as a bunch of
> acquisitions that map pretty much to the applications we see now, whether MS,
> OOO or LO. That is; a word processor, a presentation manager, a spreadsheet
> and a database. Leaving the DB out of the argument for the moment, as a non
> presentation centric technology, I'd like to propose Libre Office consider a
> mid to long term strategy to ditch the artificial boundaries between
> applications. Let us return to the idea of supporting users' needs without
> filtering them through artificial application capabilities!
>
> Instead of applications, let's have a document, a variety of choices of
> rendering the document (print, screen, presentation, web, edit, collaborative
> edit,&c.) and tools. The tools can still be categorised, but not as they are
> in applications, where the application is a hard boundary. The tools here
> could all be used, irrespective of the presentation mechanism. Categorisation
> of the tools need only be done as a means to support user tasks, perhaps along
> multiple dimensions, using tags. This proposal means only having to develop a
> tool once and allowing the concurrent availability of tools that the
> artificial applications boundaries would normally exclude. For example, DTP
> tools, such as layout grids and text flow, which could be used alongside more
> traditional word processing tools in documents, presentations and other
> formats.
>
> Of course, the toolset and the rendering mechanisms could be extended in a
> modular way, making the development time-line much more appropriate to an open
> source community, with competition for tool developers to build a better tool.
> If the core design team act in an editorial and standards capacity, then the
> result can hang together seamlessly. (Apple seems to have cracked this a bit
> ;o)
>
> Enough rambling from me. I'd be really interested to see if there's anyone
> else who gets what I'm on about and whether there's enough interest to start
> investigating in more detail. If on the other hand you think I've got it all
> wrong, I'm happy to defend my views or admit defeat, depending on the
> feedback.
>
> If you read this far, well done :o)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Greg


--
Paulo José O. Amaro
Computer Science Student
Federal University of São João del-Rei
WebDesigner / Linked Empresa Júnior
Blogger / casatwain.com

--
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+help@libreoffice.org
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/
*** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***