I believe that an office suite should not just be tools to print to
paper in a structured way. An office suite should collaborate and
effectively communicate ideas between users. Some others have seen ways of
doing this, they seen to fall short of the goal
What would be nice is to have the ability to do a full install an
the server and a minimal install on the workstations. The problem is if a
network has an Alpha applications server and i386 workstations. What if a
common shell script started the application? It could then determine the
architecture it was running on and load the appropriate libs (or possibly a
hardware dependant version of the app) for the architecture. That way it
could be installed on any server and run on any workstation.
The main things that I believe it should take advantage of are full
integration into gnome (specifically GMC), GDK Mozilla, and support for
other server services (such as M$ Exchange). This is where I think that M$
office became so popular in the corporate world, because Exchange has some
nice mail features that procmail doesn't even touch (although our Exchange
server is down three times a month (that's another letter entirely)). I
think a replacement for procmail is in order because the only thing it
really does is move local mail. It would be nice if Abi developed a
replacement for procmail (and a supporting mail client that is native to the
suite) that lets users communicate more effectively.
Drag n' drop should be the same standard on every platform!
Unfortunately it is not so. Abi should use the Dnd that GMC uses; GDK
Mozilla uses a different dnd standard, but since it is open source we can
change it to suit our needs. The virtual fs that GMC uses is quite handy so
it would be nice if Abi used the same vfs, since Mozilla has no ftp client.
Abi should use GDK Mozilla because Mozilla is the Unix standard browser and
it's open source. I like how WPSuite 8 for WINx used Communicator but
changed the mail and news clients, though I didn't find them as useful as
they could be. I also think that Abi Word should be able to be used as an
HTML writer and frame set maker. Not just to use as a page maker, but
because HTML and RTF mail is kind of nice. And why not a web-site manager?
If you include a page builder why not a site manager? Also how about an irc
client that supports a whiteboard?
A personal database is cool, but it would be nice to see an actual
database client that could query and display data base servers like Oracle,
any SQL, Informix and the like. We use this horrible called Tolemac which
takes care of student grades class schedules and other things like that. The
main problem is that it is written in basic, runs on dos, is super slow,
inaccurate, and has many printer problems.
Support for True Type Fonts!!!!!!!!!!! hopefully no needed
explanation.
You also have to take into account of the idiot factor. As I said
before many of the students are born-and-bred windows users. They tend to
panic when they cant find c: and they sure as hell don't know how to mount a
floppy. I think an interface should by default be usable by the laymen, with
the extra options found under advanced menus, extra toolbars or a
configuration module. The help system should also be easy to use for the
user and administrator; more and more IT departments are switching from NT$
to linux but are inhibited by the lack of readily documented specific help.
I also think that the help system should use the gnome help browser.
Some other features not found anywhere.
I am also a student here at Wesley and I have has to write many
research papers. The toughest part about writing a research paper is
documenting sources (anybody else who has written one knows the anguish of
documenting sources). Many hours have I spent searching and searching
through countless English books looking for the correct way to reference a
source. It would be wonderful if word processors had a citation/bibliography
wizard/builder that covered MLA and APA formats. Another thing that would be
nice is an actual dictionary, not a list of English words but an actual
dictionary. Of course a thesaurus and search commands are needed.
Voice dictation would be nice, but I would rather see a standard
Voice Recognition shell that would emulate keystrokes. If there is one it
would be nice to use but not necessary.
OK that's it from me. I hope you take into account what I have said, and
thanks for reading the entire thing.