Re: [libreoffice-users] Some ideas regarding LibreOffice development

Hi Ilya,

On 30/03/11 23:48, Ilya Chernykh wrote:
> I just want to propose two ideas regarding LibreOffice which I feel important.
>
> First, I think it would be great if LibreOffice set had its own browser.

With respect, I think this is a bad idea <:-) Nothing makes a bad 
application like feature creep. Given there are already fantastic, 
freely available, open source browsers out there, I can see no reason 
whatsoever for putting a full browser inside of an office suite.

It's not just that it's a duplication of effort; I can't even see any 
reasons for this. I don't understand the reasons you gave.

> - Make it easy to embed web pages in LibreOffice documents

What do you mean by this? Why would one want to "embed" a web page 
inside a document?
If one wanted to show something from a website to someone, one should 
use a screenshot, since the website in question might change at any time.
If one is interested in showing some particular data from the web, I 
believe LO has functions for importing data from online sources.

> - Make interaction with online web pages easier

Again, how is a word processor document meant to "interact" with a web page?

> - Provide a useful browser well integrated with other LO applications

Again, what does this mean? Why does a spreadsheet or database need to 
be "integrated" with a web browser?

> which could be also well integrated with KDE4, KDE3, Gnome (as Libre Office is currently)

As I said above, there are plenty of browsers that run in all these 
environments. In terms of "integration", if any desktop environment 
community wanted to integrate a browser directly into the desktop, I'm 
sure they would have done so. I would suggest the reason they haven't is 
that a browser doesn't belong in the desktop, just like it doesn't 
belong in an office suite ;-)

> - It cannot resolve URLs provided as just a site name. I.e. it can open  
> http://www.mysite.org/index.htm (http://www.mysite.org/index.htm)  but cannot just  
> http://www.mysite.org (http://www.mysite.org)

That's because "mysite.org" isn't a document - it's an address, which 
will first be interpreted by a DNS, which will direct your browser to a 
server, which will interpret your request and /maybe/ serve you a static 
page, but /maybe/ (and quite probably these days) will create something 
completely dynamic.

I might add that even though a URL ending in ".htm" implies that you're 
accessing an .htm document, there's no guarantee of that (if the site 
you're accessing particularly wanted to confuse people or obfuscate the 
way it worked).

> - It displays the web pages in editing mode with service information which is not normally 
> displayed in the viewing mode.

If you want to see what it looks like in a browser, why not go look at 
it in a browser?

> - There are no navigational buttons and address bar.

Well, that's because it's a word processor.

Basically, Writer is not Dreamweaver, just the same as Microsoft Word is 
not Dreamweaver. If you're trying to use Writer to edit websites, I'd 
strongly suggest you check out KompoZer, Bluefish or Amaya instead, or 
Google "open source web editor" or something, I'm sure there are other 
projects I haven't even heard of.

I think you'll have much more success and be much happier using those 
tools than trying to use a word processor for something it's just not 
designed to do <:-)

This hasn't been designed to just criticise your ideas for no reason - 
if there is a real problem with Writer not doing something it's supposed 
to do, I'd like to understand what that problem is. And at the same 
time, if you're really swimming against the current, trying to use a 
spanner to hammer in nails, I would like to see your needs satisfied in 
a better way, probably with a different tool.

> Second, I suggest to make the Basic IDE a stand-alone LO component.
>
> It can be currently started with command soffice ".uno:BasicIDEAppear" and as I know there is a 
> separate icon for Basic IDE.
>
> It would be great if a menu entry for this IDE was created by default, the menu of the IDE included 
> all necessary entries for creating a new macro etc on their usual positions (i.e. in file menu) etc.
>
> As creating a compiler could be a very difficult task, it still could be used as interpreter for 
> creating separate VB script files and run them from the console much like Python interpreter does.

I haven't played with macros in LO much, but This sounds like a much 
better idea :-)

Best regards,

-r

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