LWN: Comments on "KOffice heads toward 1.4"

Qt on Win32

aleXXX — 2005-05-13T16:25:05+00:00

> I've also heard other that UserLinux use the argument that it's better
> to not use Qt for a platform, because they want to support closed
> source software.

Well, Qt perfectly supports closed source software, they even have an
extra license for this kind of software :-)

Alex

Qt on Win32

rqosa — 2005-05-13T04:37:38+00:00

> it doesn't run on Windows

Well, there is the option of running KDE on Cygwin. (However, I don't see anything from KOffice in the Sourceforge project filelist...)

KOffice heads toward 1.4

dan_ — 2005-05-12T14:09:55+00:00

Has anybody forked the code to read MS word documents from OpenOffice yet?
OpenOffice is a large slow-loading program so its a pity so many of have
to run OpenOffice to have any chance of reading Ms Word files.

KOffice heads toward 1.4

jriddell — 2005-05-12T11:12:59+00:00

KOffice release dude David Faure has commented on the file incompatibility
issues.

http://lwn.net/Articles/134845/

or for non-subscribers:

http://kdab.net/~dfaure/lwn-dfaure-letter.html

Qt on Win32

hingo — 2005-05-08T12:16:53+00:00

That is good news! Thanks. It solves more than half of the problem. (The other and smaller half being GPL vs LGPL, which is both very understandable and not an issue for OSS.)

I don't claim that Windows has anything to do with maturity, just that a project is much more interesting to spend resources on, when the potential user base is more than 100 times bigger. With Office software it's even more true, because the usual path is MS Office + Windows -> Open Source solution + Windows -> Open Source solution + Open Source Operating System. KOffice simply didn't have a shot at these MS Office migrations until now.

Qt on Win32

droberge — 2005-05-05T18:33:33+00:00

Fortunately, this won't be a problem for too much longer; Qt 4 will be GPL under Windows just as it is under Mac OS X and X11. I'm not sure portability to Windows is the maturity aid you claim it is, but it is true that portable code tends to be cleaner.

Qt on Win32

hingo — 2005-05-05T17:05:31+00:00

What really bugs me, is that at one point the KOffice suite had more potential than any other free Office suite. But since it doesn't run on Windows, it is kind of uninteresting, because that's were you have to start if you're gonna move away from MS Office. And as a consequence, KOffice has not matured to what it could have been. And this holds true for Qt in a more general sense as well. People choose GTK or other toolkits, to be portable to windows. I've also heard other that UserLinux use the argument that it's better to not use Qt for a platform, because they want to support closed source software. And so slowly but surely, we'll be watching Qt - the once superior toolkit technically - loosing ground.