Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Fwd: Libre Office's future strategy - suggestions from a Computer Weekly article that may be of use to the Foundation

> Le vendredi 29 octobre 2010 à 09:29 -0400, James Walker a écrit :
> > Maybe something that we should think about is creating a Document Foundation
> > family of products.
> >
> > I would not really put more products into the main LibreOffice software, but
> > find and/or create additional products that enhance the usability of LO. ...
> > One thing we really need to think about is an email/calender product.
> > and some kind of project management product that easily intergrates with LO,
> > even if those products are ones that are out there already they need to be
> > easily intergrated into LO.  Are there any that have kind of staled that we
> > could approach the community to help them out and bring them under the
> > foundation to help them grow.
> >
> > Of course the easy thing to do would be a partnership with Mozilla,  and use
> > Thunderbird, and Lightening.
> >
> > I have always felt that the project has been missing email, calender and
> > contact management software.
> >
> > James
Le 2010-10-29 09:33, Monfort Florian a écrit :
> I think this is a great idea, and I was also wondering if the Scribus
> project couldn't be added to it.
>
> After all LibreOffice doesn't provide a REAL and COMPLETE publication
> solution face to INDesign, QuarkXpress etc ... Scribus is a good one,
> and is free.

I think LibreOffice is already a rather large suite, and the larger it 
is, the heavier it is and the harder it is to maintain and develop. So 
where shall we stop?

There are good reasons to integrate Writer, Calc and Draw (or Inskscape) 
and Impress. After all, the same individuals typically will write 
letters and reports. Those documents are likely to include calculations 
or even simple tables, charts and basic plans. It is likely that the 
same document may lead to a corporate presentation. Likewise, teachers 
may work the other way around and prepare a presentation (i.e. their 
course) and an accompanying document (i.e. course material). So it makes 
sense to integrate all those modules, and even to develop a much better 
integration so that even tables written in a document (i.e. Writer doc.) 
are done using the Calc module. Better integration should also mean that 
a nice presentation done in Impress could be imported as is and expanded 
to make the accompanying document, for example. Right now, one has to 
restyle the entire document twice: once in Impress, once in Writer.

As far as I am concerned, integrating a database into LibreOffice is not 
really essential. After all, it is not every day that one designs a 
database and writes a report within the same project. On the other hand, 
seamless data exchange between the database and Writer or Calc is essential.

On the other hand, the publication is typically done afterwards, and 
very often by a different person than the one who wrote the document. So 
the important consideration is to allow one to import the ODT document 
and make a really good printed document, and ideally to allow one to 
export the text back in ODT for future work. It would also be good to 
develop filters that allow one to import an ODT document into InDesign 
and QuarkXpress.

As for e-mail and calendar product, I find Thunderbird with Lightning a 
much better piece of software than Outlook. I also find it much easier 
to use, but my 13 other colleagues stick with Outlook 2003 and don't 
want to touch Thunderbird with a 10-ft pole. One nice feature of 
Lightning is that it allows me more than one calendar.

--
Michel Gagnon
Montréal (Québec, Canada) -- http://mgagnon.net

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